Page 93 of By the Pint

…Your Turning will be overseen by Dr Nina the Wrecker … There will be ample opportunity to ask any questions you may have.

… Due to your exceptional circumstances, we have agreed to waive the turning fee.

“My exceptional circumstances?”

… Please respond to this letter ASAP by scrying mirror or text message. As you well know, spaces are extremely limited. If you miss your appointment, it will be offered to the next person on our waiting list, your name will be moved to the bottom, and our offer to waive the fees will be rescinded.

Wait list times are typically 1 to 2 hundred months.

Yours in sanguineous faith,

The Assembly of the Undead

FAQs can be found on the AU’s BatBox page

I slumped down on the end of the bed. I should be feeling euphoric. I’d pictured this moment a thousand times before. Opening this exact letter, albeit with less vampiric weirdness. But this should’ve been when I cried happy tears.

Finally, a chance to start afresh. To become Casey 2.0.

Better, faster, stronger, with fewer human weaknesses weighing me down.

Dammit, it was not supposed to happen like this.

Dima was silent in my mind. Either I’d successfully blocked my thoughts without trying, or I’d rendered him speechless.

Five days.

Five days.

It wasn’t long enough, I realised.

I needed more time. With Dima. I wanted more time with him.

Killian could contact the Assembly and ask for an extension. Even if it meant putting my name at the bottom of the list and paying the fees. Waiting another one to two hundred months. What was that in years? Eight years … to sixteen, seventeen?

Was I really thinking of giving up my lifelong dream to spend a decade or so with this man? Not giving it up. Postponing it. Sixteen years would make me over fifty. Yeesh. But, fuck, I’d be fifty forever. Did it matter how old I was when I got turned? Was I just being an ageist piece of shit?

Yes. Undoubtedly. I’d seen age as a weakness. Along with everything else. Along with things like feelings, and empathy, and … love.

Love.

The irony was not lost on me. That the things I had tried to avoid by seeking immortality were the very things making me reconsider.

But would he even have me? Would he be mine for that long? Sixteen years was a—

Before I could finish the thought, Dima skidded into the room like a child on the dance floor of a relative’s wedding. A run, and a sideways slide to a stop. He was wearing nothing but grey tracksuit bottoms and his bunny rabbit slippers, and I had to pull my lips into my mouth to keep my happy little sob contained.

“I would have you for as long as you’ll give me.” He crossed the threshold, freely because he had been invited into my suite many, many times before, and floated towards me.

“Dima, my OG bestie!” Killian said, but Dima held up a flattened palm to shut him up.

He stopped in front of me, between my thighs, and cradled my face between his cool hands. “If you want to go to this appointment, I will respect that. I’ll respect whatever decision you make. But if you want to drop to the back of the waitlist, and give me a whole decade with you …” He lost capacity for speech then and thumbed away a tear from my cheek. I didn’t even know I’d been crying.

“And if after a decade, when you get a new appointment, you still don’t want to go through with the turning, I will be here for you. For however long you’ll have me. Not the other way round—”

“Guys?” Killian said, his voice tentative.

“Shut the fuck up, Killian,” Dima said, not sparing the other vampire a millisecond of eye contact.

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