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“Shoo!” Aradia flapped her hands at what appeared to be a patch of sunlight.
Kanaya waited patiently on the stairs, watching a true medium and general spiritual butt kicker, to use Karkat's phrase, at work.
“No, I do not care how much vengeance you need to wreak. And you! You should be ashamed of yourself. Don't think I don't know a dream eater when I see one. Parasitic feeding is gross, and you're gross and you should be ashamed.”
The hand waving stopped, mostly because the glare of a thousand suns was being employed. That usually meant that Aradia had won, and was merely making her point. Kanaya decided now was as good a time as any to interrupt. “Good afternoon. I made some snacks.”
Aradia refused to break eye contact with a patch of wall. Hmm. Maybe she had not won as much as Kanaya thought. But then the dimples came out. “Thanks, Kanaya. A ritual exorcism party should always have snacks! And party hats—No, we are not inviting you. Don't even think about trying it—Sorry, it's been like this all afternoon. Apparently Gamzee has some regulars along with the friends just passing through.”
“How the fuck was I supposed to know that!?”
Kanaya peeped around the door to see Karkat wielding a broom. It seemed singularly unenchanted, considering the atmosphere. Aradia was practically dripping in amulets, mostly, Kanaya suspected, because her fashion statements went for amulets, but also, probably because it was a safety precaution. At least Kanaya assumed so. The circles of the supernatural she dealt in were completely different from Aradia's, and she personally needed sixteen bags of clanky jewelry before she could see one ghost, much less look demons in the eye.
Karkat just continued guiltily, as though he should somehow have known that Gamzee had more than his fair share of incorporeal spirits hanging around him. “I mean, I usually just get treated to sixteen dumbfuck iterations of 'I am death and the destroyer of worlds' because they probably possessed some eight year old once and got really impressed with the history homework before devouring the poor fuck, intestines and all. It's not like half of them don't have twelve different names for themselves like they're an eye-bleeding choir of superheroes who need secret identities.”
Aradia laughed. “It's not a problem, Karkat, really! I like getting everyone in a place where they belong. And hopefully Gamzee will get some real sleep finally. Dream eaters are nasty—Yes, I can see you when you flip me off, you jerk face,” she paused and then added thoughtfully, “well, jerk, anyway. I'm not sure it's possible to be a jerk face if you haven't got a face.”
“You'll take wraps and orange juice after Porrim is done the tattoo, then?” Kanaya asked, edging in the doorway, though a space she hoped was devoid of supernatural activity. Aradia hadn't even put any salt on the floor. Goodness. She must be good. Or over confident.
Then again, the upper story tattoo parlor was the abode of a vampire, and well, between disgust, professional courtesy, and outright fear, the incorporeal evils tended to avoid their corporeal counterparts. Even if the corporeal evils did a swift business in demonic seals, and mystical tattooing. Her latest client was lying with his habitual stained t-shirt pushed all the way up to his neck and practically caught on his boney elbows. It revealed a back with all of the vertebrae sticking up like a five year old's macaroni and glue craft project. Despite Porrim's swift repetitive needle jabs making that wreck that Gamzee called a body jerk, he seemed to be sleeping with a blissful smile on what was visible of his face under the hem of his shirt.
Curtains at the far end of the room fluttered on the breeze, afternoon sunlight dancing in, and then flattened as though someone had put a hand over them. Porrim didn't even look up.
“Thanks.”
“Didn't do it for you,” sneered the final occupant of the room, and possibly the reason for Karkat's locked and loaded broom stick. She had one of the small hand tattoo guns in hand, but was smoking a cigarette and looking tired with the world.
Porrim just grinned. “And who else would you have done it for?”
A nasty smile tugged at the corner of Damara's mouth. Kanaya sometimes wished that her cousin's friends were less—less the way that they were. “Dream eaters like the dark.”
Aradia broke eye contact long enough to give Kanaya a sympathetic glance. Or maybe it was an apology. Gamzee grunted slightly as the needle in Porrim's hand slammed into his back. Porrim was doing traditional work this time around. Kanaya edged closer, fascinated by the way skin rose in inflamed glory around black lines and swirls. Ooh, the stippling was looking gorgeous. Porrim was going all out. How had they convinced her to do that much? Well, Damara's presence, and the inevitable promise that as soon as they no longer needed mediums she would be gone, might be—
As Porrim slammed down again, she licked her fangs anticipatorially. Kanaya always stayed away from tattoo parlors because of the way blood rose to the surface, but Porrim said she had it under control. Unless, of course, she knew a meal was coming soon.
Kanaya nearly dropped the tray as she swung around to glare at Karkat. “How much blood? Come on. Out with it. How much are you paying to get your—to get Gamzee to become,” she felt at loss for words, because there were only so many ways you could say “less of a danger to everyone who's ever known him” and none of those ways would help Karkat feel better, but Karkat's dark eyes bored into her.
“Get him less Mr. Happy Fun Adventures in Murder Mystery Town, you mean? Well, it's a two hundred dollar tattoo and I'm a happy blood donor for, what, half a month?”
“A week,” Porrim's voice curled gracefully around the room to settle companionably at Karkat's side. “I'm very good at this, and you do have that taste about you.”
“Porrim! I introduced them to you because I—You can't turn my friends into your snacks!”
The way Porrim's head shot up should have told Kanaya that she had stepped over the line. But Kanaya was standing trembling in righteous indignation for three seconds too long, in a stuffy tattoo parlor where a friend of a friend was being de-demonfied, and she had just accused her cousin of using her friends as feedbags. Something glinted dangerously in Porrim's yellow eyes.
“Damara, set aside a cigarette for me, would you? I'll be needing to step out for a smoke in a few moments. There are prices, Kanaya. Particularly when I have to make a tattoo that can't be tampered with, or broken. Blood sealing of a tattoo is a longer process than getting the ink done.”
Kanaya didn't blush. She wasn't built for blushing. But guilt crawled up her spine and curled around her throat. Who would even bother trying to tamper with some poor schlub's tat—for some reason Kanaya's eyes swiveled to Damara. The older witch waved.
Aradia just sighed. “Sorry. She insisted on coming. I told her 'no.' We ended up walking to the exact same place at the exact same time by coincidence—you know how it is. Porrim says if Damara can't break it, though, there's very little chance of anyone else breaking it. Which is an advantage.”
Three more minutes of stabbing and then Porrim stood, taking the tattoo gun from Damara, and striding around the snack tray to the door. She looked around. “You kids will keep this place nice and clean while I'm gone? And if he wakes up, feed him whiskey or something until he falls asleep again. Kanaya, basement. Now.”
Kanaya fisted her hands in her skirt as she followed. Despite Porrim's unabashed glee in sunlight there was enough self preservation in her cousin not open too many windows. Any place where Porrim lived, and she had moved around a lot since she turned, had a musty smell like too many years underground. It was the worst on the stairs which went all the way down to the street level in a steep incline, only relieved by the door into the barber shop below the tattoo parlor, and the door outside. The stairs were dark, and enclosed.
Then Porrim twisted around the banister into the small hallway between the barbershop and the stairs, which was, for some reason, a little lighter than the stairs themselves. Some transitive property of stairs, Rose had once joked with Kanaya, made them go on forever. Ever since then, Kanaya had been unable not to stretch all stairways out in her mind, as though she had the strings of space wrapped around her fingers.
The stairs down to the basement didn't even have a light bulb, and since the top of said stairs was used as a general storage closet for the building's cleaning service, Kanaya thought this was an oversight. Porrim steadied her as she tripped over a mop, making Kanaya feel even smaller than the guilt gnawing at her spine.
By the time they got to the cool cellar where Porrim slept, and the vast array of Christmas tree lights twined with second hand lamps flicked on, Kanaya felt as though she was ten years old and just as small, entering the sanctum of her rebellious cousin who had disobeyed her queen vampire for the last time, and really run away from home. Only this time, Kanaya couldn't find the thrill that she had felt then. Just the endless guilt—back then, she shouldn't have been speaking to Porrim; now, she shouldn't have spoken to her that way.
“You need to stop thinking that turning is going to turn you into a monster,” the flat observation was made right before Porrim cast herself onto the cot, and grabbed a throw pillow. There was something grim in the way her cousin's mouth lifted. “Well, it will, but not the way you think it will.”
“I don't—”
“You know, everyone else ignores the creature of the night thing. Everyone. No one else says I'm drinking my clients' blood. I'm sure they think it. A lot. But no one ever says it. You hear 'blood,' and you forget it's the magical equivalent of duct tape. You think I'm just thinking about my next meal. Worst, you think that's what you'll be thinking about when it happens to you.”
“It is all I think about,” Kanaya mumbled. “It has become my obsession, and I do not like it.”
“You don't have to worry so much. It isn't as though there's a huge market for killing young girls anymore. Or at least, not a huge market if you're intending to stay alive and out of Latula's clutches. As long as you're alive, there is no chance you'll turn, and even once you're dead, latent vampirism is very rare, despite family statistics. Okay, so most of us have turned when we—what did you say?!”
Kanaya shuffled. She was getting the hem of her skirt dusty, probably because while Porrim was beautiful and artistic, she had never gotten along with vacuum cleaners, and only did the dusting on an as-really-desperately-needed basis. Kanaya wanted to roll up the sleeves of her sensible blouse and begin glowing brilliant white, causing Porrim to be awed and possibly be ready to seek revenge on her behalf. But the glow came and went when it pleased, and mostly when it pleased was when she was dribbling after meals.
So, she shuffled, and stared at the ceiling, and sighed. “There was . . . an accident a while back. Over the summer. When Gamzee got that really terrible thing in his head. I haven't really told anyone, and just started taking an umbrella everywhere and wearing long sleeves all the time. But,” her thoughts came to s stumbling halt and then wrenched themselves onto new horrible tracks. “Mother has all the blood in the refrigerator, but that's all I am! Just, blood blood blood!” The last came out in a self pitying wail, which would have done Eridan proud. She felt like a mess.
And as though some bubble of great weight had been lifted from her chest. Porrim wasn't her mother, who said things like “there, there dear” and rubbed her back. You couldn't ask your mother if it was natural to be constantly eying everyone's wrists and necks like a human shaped mosquito. Well, Kanaya couldn't ask Porrim either because 'human shaped mosquito' wasn't a phrase Kanaya really wanted to say out loud to anyone.
“I rather do wish to suck on people,” Kanaya finished awkwardly, finally looking down from Porrim's light filled ceiling.
Porrim smiled, fangs almost slipping through. “Here's my pro-tip for the day, don't do it while you're making out.”
“Porrim!”
“Trust me, unless you've had the conversation, it will be really awkward for them, or you'll learn things you probably never wanted to contemplate.”
“I just do not want to do it in math class! I want to think about, about theorems, not whether our teacher would taste like a juicy steak! I wish to be the person that I was.”
“You will always be the person that you are. Everyone. Human, vampire, spirit medium, supernatural whatnot. That's all we are, and it is all we can be,” Porrim's nervous—was Porrim nervous?!—smile slipped into a sigh. “But here's my pro-tip for life. Find something else to focus all of that hunger on. I chose defeating occult forces with art, but I was more—there weren't many other options, and because I hadn't known blood sealing was necessary—well, let's just say I wish your friend had more than just Karkat willing to lend his blood for seven days of ritual.”
“He's not my friend,” Kanaya said over the cold parasite of worry uncurling in her stomach. “I mean, he's just someone Karkat knows.”
“You brought him to see family,” Porrim shrugged. “If I'm stuck with mother assuming Cronus and I are best of friends, take one for the team and be this kid's friend of a friend, okay?”
Kanaya shrugged. It didn't matter either way, she guessed. Karkat had mainly been relying on Aradia for help with Gamzee as far as exorcism was concerned. Kanaya had only mentioned Porrim when Karkat broke down in near teary expletives after Madam Zelda showed up demanding that they find all of her old acquaintances and say good bye properly, with a knife to the face. Madam Zelda had made Kanaya wonder if Damara had ever traveled back in time to act as a traveling fortune teller.
“If we had other donors, what would happen?” she had visions of Karkat keeling over, bloodless, and the tattoo on Gamzee's back warping of its own accord.
“Well, the seal will be easier to create and stable. I've made stable seals before with only one person, but—not to be too doom any gloomy, Kanaya—but your friend is really attractive to passing spirits. Terribly attractive to passing spirits. My first attempt at this was with someone much worse off, so I know, for example, not to let him go without formal blood sealing, but I am getting a lot of pinging reminders about how I got into this business.”
Kanaya nodded. “I will see what I can do.”
“It's a decent project to have,” Porrim agreed, stretching. There was a thump overhead. She sighed. “But, it doesn't have to be the only thing that you do. You don't have to let fixing occult messes consume you.” There was a crash. “Look, I want to talk later. About whatever you want to talk about.”
“But it's possible that a witch is trashing your studio,” Kanaya nodded. “I understand.”
And she did. Intimidating as her worldly cousin could be, she did understand. Porrim wanted to help as much as possible, even if she was more than unnerving. It was nice, having family like that.