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So it’s definitely a weird invitation. Shanice wasn’t exactly used to being invited to sleepovers--unless she counted all the times Jenna invited her to her parents' house over holiday breaks--but she was fairly certain that most sleepovers at her age were not so much planned, but were rather the result of many a questionable decision. That decision usually being alcohol and the solution being sleeping on your friend’s sofa with three other incredibly inebriated individuals.
After Jenna had dropped out--or, rather, was turned into a vampire--Shanice hadn’t seen the need to go to parties or to try and make friends with anyone else. She liked Jenna. Jenna was her best friend. And roommate. She didn’t want a new best friend or a new roommate. She wanted Jenna back--the Jenna that always laughed at her jokes and listened to her patiently whenever she started rambling. The Jenna that would stay up all night to help her study for her exams, who would run with her to the mess hall just before closing to carry back lukewarm slices of cheese pizza that they’d wash down with flat ginger ale in the comfort of their dorm room, whose soft snores were a welcoming sound to someone like Shanice, who had been alone for as long as she could remember.
The new Jenna, the vampire one with the fangs and the pale skin who crept back into her life as if she had never left it, was a hard adjustment to get used to. She was different. Shanice was still trying to figure out if it was a good or bad sort of different. So far all she was certain of was that there were a lot more butterflies in her stomach when she was alone with vampire Jenna. But that had to be because she was a vampire, right?
Shanice wasn’t blind--or at least not while wearing her glasses. She saw the way Jenna’s gaze sometimes hovered over the pulse at her throat, the way her eyes seemingly swallowed the darkness around her when she was hungry, the way Jenna would frantically apologize and disappear, invisible save for the way she brushed back the curtains before jumping down from Shanice’s window.
Just the thought is enough to bring her heart to a steady, hurried drum. The letter in her hand suddenly feels heavier. It was addressed to her, full first and last name, in an elegant, unfamiliar script. Nadja, the woman that had turned Jenna into a vampire, had made it abundantly clear that they required Shanice’s attendance at their home.
In short, Guillermo’s vampires were throwing a party. A slumbering party. In any other circumstance, Shanice would be certain that this was a trap. But Guillermo had managed to stay loyal to both the Mosquito Hunters and the vampires he lived with, walking a hard line between being a slayer and being a familiar. Or an ex-familiar-slash-reluctant-bodyguard, who just so happened to be living with vampires, as Guillermo had explained one night.
Regardless, it was the last line, written so hastily compared to the others that the ink had smudged and Shanice had to squint to read it, that had sealed her fate.
P.S. Jenna will be attending as well.
So what if she clutched the letter a little bit closer to her chest? It didn’t mean anything. Right?
**
The thing about Guillermo, Shanice had surmised early on, was that he kept his true feelings and emotions close to his chest. Sure, he could be friendly. Awkward in the same way that Shanice was. She felt safe around him--how could she not when he was the one that rescued her on their first ill-fated vampire slaying expedition? But when she looked at Guillermo, like really, really looked at him, she realized she could rarely read his expressions outside of the similar vein of anxious energy that she was prone to.
He had spent a long time hiding who he was--perhaps even from himself, Shanice realizes with a pang of sympathy. Then, a darker undercurrent of a thought: who was the real Guillermo? The one that spent a decade as a familiar, burying bodies and finding meals for his vampire? The slayer that killed vampires with a cold, calculating hand?
When Guillermo greets her at the door, he seems more relaxed than ever before. The smile that spreads across his face actually reaches his eyes and he leads her into the foyer with a steady hand. He looked at home here, Shanice thinks, giggling to herself a moment later once Guillermo leaves her to grab a drink from the kitchen.
Right, this was his home. Not even the blood of Van Helsing could change that.
“Ah, hello there, vampire slayer! You are the friend of Guillermo and Jenna, aren’t you?” an unfamiliar, accented voice asks.
A shadow falls over her and Shanice has to resist the urge to pull out the crucifix she kept in her pocket at the vampire’s towering form.
Almost immediately as they locked eyes, there was a shift in the vampire’s countenance. Gone was the cold air of a centuries-old immortal, replaced with someone much warmer as he flashed his fangs in a wide grin. “I am Nandor the Relentless, but Nandor is just fine.”
“I’m Shanice,” she replies, pushing her glasses farther up the bridge of her nose. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you.”
So this was Guillermo’s ex-master, she thinks, studying the vampire carefully. He wasn’t really her type, but he was still certainly handsome. His vestments, red fabric embroidered in gold and overlaid by an intricate set of leather clasps, gave him the appearance of a warrior king.
“Guillermo has not told me much about his little human friends,” Nandor admits. “You are not what I was expecting, though.”
“What do you mean?”
He gestures vaguely above her head. “I thought you would be… taller. Scarier. You all go and kill vampires, don’t you? How is that possible when you and Guillermo both look like lost little ducklings?”
“Nandor, you’re up already?” Guillermo asks, returning to the foyer and handing Shanice a glass of water.
The vampire waves a hand. “The sun has set, Guillermo.”
Guillermo checks his watch. “Shit. The batteries died and I didn’t notice.”
Shanice takes the lull in the conversation as a moment to gather her thoughts, taking a sip of water before putting it on a nearby credenza. In reality, though, there was only one person that was currently occupying her mind despite her best intentions.
As if on cue, the rest of the vampires slowly fill the foyer—whether at the scent of a new human on the premises or out of maliciously morbid curiosity as Colin Robinson had insinuated when he slinked over to stand beside Nadja. Shanice feels her heart flutter in her chest as Jenna approaches, still looking pretty much the same as she did as a human aside from the pale skin and fangs.
“You made it!” Jenna squeals, sweeping over to wrap Shanice into a hug. It would have been a classic bear hug if performed by a human. But a hug from an enthused vampire… Shanice felt a sliver of panic as Jenna squeezed her even tighter, worried that she might accidentally break a rib or two.
Nadja clicks her tongue. “Now, remember my chickadee what we said about controlling our vampire strength.”
With a gasp, Jenna releases her hold. She gives an embarrassed grin. “Oh I’m so sorry, Shanice! I’m just so excited to see you here. I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”
Shanice has to bite her tongue to keep from admitting she only came to the weird vampire slumber party because Jenna was attending as well. Instead, she shrugs her shoulders, hands digging deep into her pockets. “You know me—wouldn’t wanna miss a party.”
Jenna frowns, clearly confused, head tilted to the side. “Did you hit your head? You hate parties as much as I do. Or did, I guess. Vampire parties are pretty cool, actually, once you get used to the casual acts of murder and disregard for human life.”
For once, Shanice has no idea how to respond, her eyes drifting once again to the sliver of fangs that gleamed behind Jenna’s parted lips.
Nadja claps her hands together, breaking the awkward silence that had descended over the foyer. “Alright, first order of business: we must begin the ceremonies and games with the traditional ritual that humans call Spinning the Bottle.”
“That was my line,” Nandor whines, quickly earning him a sharp glare. He sighs. “Fine, fine, to the fancy room we go, yes?”
“It’s spin the bottle,” Guillermo corrects, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.
When the group files into the room—forming a circle, but only in the loosest definition of the term—Nadja fishes out what looks suspiciously like a vintage coke bottle, but stained a cherry red. Placing the bottle onto the coffee table, Nadja gives a coy smile to her husband.
“My turn first,” she hums, spinning the bottle at a dizzying speed. Shanice has to look away in equal parts fear and motion-sickness-induced-nausea.
When the bottle lands firmly on Guillermo, Nadja huffs. The bottle, seemingly inert, practically leaps towards Laszlo’s chest.
“Oh, look there… it has landed on my darling husband, Laszlo. It must be fate!”
“Nadja,” Nandor complains. “No cheating! It is one of the tenets of Spinning the Bottle!”
Guillermo frowns. “What do you mean? There aren’t really rules—“
“We played this game back when I was training with the Al Quolaundarian forces,” Nandor explains, interrupting Guillermo without preamble. “We played with rocks, of course, that we painted arrows on. All Al Quolaundar had in excess during those days was rocks. And dirt. Anyway, one of us would spin the rock and whoever it landed on was who we challenged to a duel.”
Laszlo raises his eyebrows salaciously. “Do you mean you would duel with your swords?” He says, pointing none-too-subtly at his own crotch.
If Nandor caught the undercurrent of horniness, he chose to ignore it for the time being. “What fun times we had,” he crows merrily. “I remember challenging Ramil to a duel and slicing off his left ear. Which was quite a feat because the sword I was using was very dull.”
“I… have a lot of questions,” Shanice pipes up, still trying to imagine the vampire in front of her as a warmongering monster. Nothing he had done so far in her presence would suggest he was capable of such ferocity. “But I’m thinking that I should wait and ask you these questions some other time.”
“You want to hear my stories of conquest and bloodshed?” Nandor asks, perking up like a puppy who had just spotted a massive stick it would then try and drag into the house. “Well, you are welcome here anytime! Aside from during the day. Because, you know, not looking to be burned to ash.”
Shanice nods. “That’s understandable.”
“We are going to play this game the way the silly humans in those American slumber party movies play it,” Nadja explains, reaching over to grab her husband by the front of his shirt.
Laszlo grins. “Well who am I to complain—“
Nadja silences him with a well-timed kiss. The kiss slowly turns into a PG-13 make out scene, uncomfortable enough that even Colin Robinson tells them to get a coffin.
“Anyway, I’ll go next!” Colin chirps once the pair eventually separates. Everyone else in the room pales considerably—even the vampires. Shanice didn’t even know that was possible.
“Please, God, no,” Shanice mutters to herself, making the sign of the cross out of habit.
This earns her a few hisses from the vampires in the room, but before they could devolve into more squabbling, the bottle stops spinning.
Nadja makes a noise that is somewhere between a squawk and a hiss. “Absolutely not!”
Colin grins. “Well, that’s fine. I was actually hoping your doll was around…”
Nadja shoos Colin out of the room and, assumedly, in the direction of her doll. The energy vampire skips out of the room with an extra pep in his step, whistling a cheery tune that sounded a lot like London Bridge is Falling Down.
“Guillermo?” Nadja gestures. “Come now, it is your turn.”
Shanice watches as Guillermo nervously reaches for the bottle. It spins smoothly from his grasp. To her surprise, it seems as if no vampire powers are used to deflect or change who it lands on. What is even more surprising is how the chosen vampire beckons Guillermo forward.
“Well?” Nandor says, motioning once again with his right hand as he leans heavily into the chaise, legs tucked beneath him. “Come here already so the game can go on.”
Guillermo hesitates. “You’re not going to cut my ear off, are you?”
Nandor stares back curiously. “How would I be doing that without a sword?”
Shanice watches as Guillermo rises from the floor to approach the vampire on the opposite side of the coffee table, legs wobbling beneath him like a newborn fawn. She holds her breath as Nandor appraises his ex-familiar.
He holds Guillermo’s gaze with an intensity that looks much more intimate than a game of spin the bottle had any right to elicit. In a single swift movement, Nandor has Guillermo sitting beside him on the chaise lounge, one hand pressed gently to the nape of the human’s neck.
When their lips meet, Laszlo gives a hiss of disapproval, but Nadja’s features twist briefly into what looked like a concerned frown to Shanice.
Uh oh, she thinks. Looks like Guillermo's unrequited crush isn't as unrequited as he thinks it is.
Shanice hears Nandor mumble something that sounds a lot like “So warm” when he pulls away, but she has little chance to dissect the tone before Guillermo collapses face-first on the sofa, eyes closed.
“Shit,” Nandor says. “This fucking guy! Passing out after a little kissy kiss? How rude!”
“That might actually be partly my fault,” Colin Robinson admits, clearing his throat. Everyone in the room startles at his sudden reappearance, the energy vampire’s eyes a bright, electric blue. “I was explaining the history of the eraser to the little guy earlier. I didn’t think I drained him that much, but, well…”
Nandor glares harshly in Colin’s direction, but the ire melts as soon as his gaze turns to Guillermo. There is a moment where he reaches a ringed hand towards the human, but pauses before his hand can make contact with Guillermo's cheek. Nandor brings his hand back towards his own chest, dark eyes suddenly unreadable. “I am guessing he will not stir if we try to wake him?”
“Probably not,” Colin replies. “You know how it is. The only way to recover from being drained by an energy vampire is to sleep.”
**
It's some time later that Shanice watches silently as Nandor scoops Guillermo up from the chaise and into his arms with a fond sigh. He holds him close to his chest in a bridal carry with as much care as Shanice did when she carried one of her favorite books.
“You are lucky, Guillermo. Most vampires would have left their ex-familiar out here to sleep on the chaise. You would have woken up with a horrible crick in your neck and back and you would have been very sorry that you were so drained that you fell asleep in the fancy room. Yeesh.”
The words are certainly scolding, but Nandor’s tone is anything but that. Exasperated, perhaps, but said with obvious affection.
The vampire clicks his tongue, gently tapping a finger against the tip of the slumbering human’s nose. “It was also very rude of you to be tempting me all through the night--like you do every night. I did not know if I wanted to kiss you or bite you back there. Perhaps both, I suppose. If you were still my familiar, that would have been three demerits.”
Shanice knows she should walk away, that she was eavesdropping on the middle of a confession, but her feet feel practically glued to the wooden floor just outside the room.
“How did this happen?” Nandor says wearily. “I was not supposed to do the falling in love with you. Is this some kind of vampire slayer magic? Something that makes you alluring and irresistible to vampires? You can tell me, Guillermo. I won’t let Nadja or Laszlo or Colin Robinson know.”
At Guillermo’s quiet, sleeping form, the vampire merely brushes back an errant curl from the human’s brow with a tenderness that felt almost voyeuristic for Shanice to watch. “I see. Even when we first met, when I should have eaten you instead of listening to you and hearing how much you loved vampires, I had a feeling that I did not want to be feeling. I had a feeling that you were not going to be like any of my previous familiars. And I was right.”
It is at that moment that Shanice manages to pull away, ducking into a neighboring hall and into the shadows before Nandor begins walking out of the room.
“Shanice?” a familiar voice suddenly whispers, cold puffs of breath tickling the back of her neck.
She barely manages to conceal her cry of surprise, spinning around to see Jenna. The thing about being in a house full of vampires was that they were all really, really quiet. Shanice wasn’t used to it, the way Jenna could materialize from the shadows, eyes gleaming. She might have blended in with the dark if not for the golden gleam of her irises, twin flames that dimmed to a human brown as Jenna grinned.
“It’s sweet, isn’t it?” Jenna remarks, nodding her head in the pair’s general direction. Already, Shanice could hear Nandor’s boots as he thudded heavily up the stairs towards Guillermo’s room.
“How long have they been together?” Shanice asks, knowing Jenna had a better grasp on the household’s dynamics since she often crashed in one of the spare coffins in the basement.
“They’re not officially together,” Jenna admits. “But that kiss tonight had to be leading them in the right direction.”
Shanice crinkles her nose. “Wait, they kissed and they’re still not a thing?”
“Nandor is like hundreds of years old. It might take him a little longer to admit his feelings than the average human. And Guillermo has his whole “I love vampires but I also kill vampires?” feelings to work through. So give them a bit more time.”
Shanice absorbs her friend’s words, the ensuing silence sweeping over them like a comforting veil. This was the first time they had really been alone together since Shanice first entered the mansion.
It was at that exact moment that a resounding clank echoed through the hall. A familiar bottle rolled harmlessly on the floor, stopping just at Shanice’s feet.
Jenna winces. “I was… just thinking…” she begins, looking everywhere but directly at Shanice’s face, something as close to a blush as a vampire could muster dusting her cheeks. “We never got our turns at Spin the Bottle.”
Well, Shanice thinks, following Jenna back towards the fancy room. I'm glad Jenna decided to eat her asshole ex-boyfriend last week.
At some point, Nandor had returned from carrying Guillermo to his room to look for the rest of the house’s guests. Upon seeing the two women sitting together on the chaise, he enters the room with a wide grin. He does not notice the bottle on the coffee table nor that it is pointed directly at Shanice.
Thankfully before he can speak, Jenna cups Shanice’s face and brings their lips together.
Nandor clears his throat awkwardly to announce his presence, making the pair quickly separate with matching yelps of surprise. “Well when you are done with the kissy-kissy business, you should come to Laszlo and Nadja’s crypt. We are doing the face masks and the gossip and the painting of our nails, if that is something you both would like.”
At their silence, the vampire continues. “You remind me of two of my 37 wives. They were lovely women, but I did not love them. Mostly because they were in love with each other.”
“Umm…” Jenna says, still looking somewhat bewildered.
Nandor waves a hand. “Anyway, I hope it all works out. Vampires and vampire slayers are… an unconventional coupling. But not impossible, I think.”
With those words, the vampire slinks away, cloak billowing like black wings behind him. Perhaps it was time that he finally admitted the truth, he thinks, hovering near Guillermo’s room, his form casting one long, dark shadow at the door. Jenna wasn’t the only vampire in love with a vampire slayer, after all. But that would have to happen some other night. Guillermo needed his rest and Nandor had very important, very evil plans to attend to with his housemates.
Passing swiftly by Guillermo’s room, Nandor enters Nadja and Laszlo's shared crypt, only briefly wincing as he recalled the aftermath of the bi-annual orgy.
“Well?” the vampire asks, one hand on his hip. “Where is my face mask?”
Nadja rolls her eyes, but motions Nandor over to where she sat with Laszlo, a collection of miscellaneous beauty products spread out before them. "Come join us over here, you big unmoisturized turkey!”
Laszlo merely raises a brow, but wiggles his fingers, showing off a new coat of bright red paint on his nails that Nandor couldn’t help but think looked very cool.
It would be some time later that Jenna and Shanice stumble into the crypt hand-in-hand, giggling and radiating the kind of warmth that manages to tug at even a vampires’ undead heartstrings.