Page 5 of By the Pint

I didn’t get a nice shiny name tag. I got a printed sticker on fluorescent yellow paper which, in smudged ink, spelled outHUMAN FAMILIAR.

Vlad reached forward and idly ran my lapel through his thumb and forefinger.It’s fourteen-ninety-nine a month after that, and you’ll keep forgetting to cancel your subscription, he added in his head.But I won’t bother you with semantics right now.

I couldn’t say when my telepathy had developed. I only realised as I advanced through the years of primary and secondary school, hearing and seeing peoples’ thoughts wasn’t normal. That not everyone could read minds. In fact, I was on my own. A freak, as some so helpfully pointed out.

Over time, I learned to mask the freak, and hide the unexplainable. My parents and teachers ‘forgot’ about my awkward phase and the weird coincidences that cropped up time and time again, and I began using my ability to boss everything. Ace every test. Win every board game. Dominate every competitive sport. I’d charm every adult into handing over whatever I was obsessing about that week. Into giving me report extensions, and extra portions of dessert. And to intimidate my peers into writing my assignments for me, buying me pizza every lunchtime, and cutting the bullies down before they had even opened their mouths.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a sense of justice that had me halting the playground bullies. It was simply because if anyone was going to control a social situation, it would be me, not them.

I stepped out of Vlad’s reach. “Let’s not get handsy, now, tick. You’re not at the bloodbath yet.”

Ehh, some things never changed.

“Who’s your master?” Vlad asked, his head tilted to the side as he considered whether hitting on me might inadvertently enrage some super mean shadow daddy vampire master.

I should add that ‘nefarious’ had been Killian’s preferred word choice. Part of his less-than-carefully constructed reputation. My master, all five-foot-five of him, was a lot of things — scatter-brained, romantic stargazer, disgustingly slovenly, manwhore — but nefarious wasn’t a descriptor I’d assign to him.

Vlad hedged his bets. “You seek me out tonight. You come find me.” He leaned in again and lowered his voice to, what he obviously assumed was, a seductive whisper. “I need to taste this pert little peach.” In his head he finished it with,It’d be such a shame if anything were to happen to his pretty face.

My heartbeat rose slightly. Adrenaline spiked in my veins in the most delicious way. I reached out and seized Vlad’s tie at the knot.

Gross, polyester. Why would someone, who’d been alive for three-hundred-and-eighty years, wear such crappy, cheap fabric? “Do you know when your problems started?” I hissed in a volume so quiet a human wouldn’t have heard.

Vlad narrowed his eyes at me.Who does this human think he—

“The moment you decided to peddle piss-poor cleaning products without bothering to learn how the internet works. I looked you up, Vlad. I looked every stallholder up before I camehere tonight.” That simply wasn’t true, but Vlad had no way of knowing. I had his attention though. “Figured, as a lone human familiar, I’d need some leverage. Do you know what the internet says about you?” I pulled tighter on his tie, leaving an inch of space between our faces.

Vlad’s mind went blank. Like white noise.

“St Clouds harbour. Eight years ago. New forensics prove Ex-Sanguine was used in the clean-up. You wouldn’t happen to know how your miracle vampire formula and the disappearance of six human groomsmen the night before the wedding are related?”

The white noise inside Vlad’s head morphed into a stream of,Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.Images of a cloaked figure frantically wiping down the surfaces of a luxury yacht flitted through his thoughts.

I cleared my throat. Raised an eyebrow. “So maybe you don’t look for me tonight.” I let him go.

One perk of being surrounded by self-absorbed, undead creatures who paid little to no attention to anything beyond themselves was the anonymity it afforded. Nobody knew who I was — was being the operative word — and I planned to keep it that way.

There were only ever two reasons a human, or non-vampire, became a vampire’s familiar.

Reason number one: an undead kink. Simple. A desire to fuck vampires.

In general, vampires had this unwritten rule not to fuck their own familiars. Don’t shit where you sleep, or something along those lines. So, it made events like tonight’s bloodbath all the more appealing.

Not for me, though. This wasn’t the reason I became a familiar. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to fuck a vampire. Imean, I would, if I found one attractive enough. It was because I firmly belonged to the second court of reasoning.

Motive number two: become a familiar on the pathway to becoming a vampire yourself.

That’s right. I wanted immortality. Simple as that.

Put in a designated number of years’ service, and your master would reward your efforts by biting your neck, swallowing a pint of your blood, then force feeding — because usually you’d be unconscious — a pint of theirs. Having your carotid artery ripped open would do that to a guy.

Killian and I had agreed upon only five years of servitude. I could be quite persuasive, even if he was an apex predator and I, a lowly human. Five years of service, plus one unspecified favour to be claimed at a future date. Well, that date was now.

Currently, thirteen years into my five-year plan, I was starting to get just a wee bit impatient. At thirty-nine, I wasn’t getting any younger.

We’d begun the application process. My name was on the waiting list. I’d had my pre-assessments, bloods, psychoanalysis, the works. Killian had even made us travel to Bordalis to get MRIs done. I didn’t even know MRIs needed to be done, but whatever took me closer to my ultimate goal.

Now it was a case of biding my time and waiting for the Assembly to call me in.

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