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When Laszlo was fifteen, firmly in the grip of hormonal madness, his family took a trip to the seaside. It was meant to be good for his mother’s health, since she was ailing a bit, and since it was the summer months and he was home from school, he was meant to come along, too. Frankly, he found it fucking boring, especially since the seaside cottage where they stayed had neither bookshelves nor a piano. He’d be forced to walk along meekly and perhaps make idle chatter with the other aristocrats. What a load of shit.
The sea itself had its allures, he had to admit. When he’d get up early and go walking along the harbor, he liked to chat with the strong, strapping young sailors and dock boys unloading packages onto the docks. Perhaps he’d pursue a life at sea when he got older and his father wouldn’t have control over him anymore. Or he could become a painter, paint the pretty waves and sunsets, or a musician, maybe, that would be fun. Or a barrister. He was still making up his mind.
When the family went for a promenade along the shore, Laszlo’s mother told him something very intriguing.
He’d wandered off, hoping to get a look in the tide pools (he’d also considered becoming a gentleman naturalist, and maybe he could collect some specimens) when he’d seen something rustling among the reeds and sea-grasses. His eyebrows lifted, and he moved closer. Could it be, perhaps, a wild animal, ready to pounce?
“Laszlo, darling, come back here!” his mother said.
“In a minute, Mother,” he called back dismissively.
“Laszlo, please, it’s dangerous!” she insisted. Her voice had a note of panic in it, so reluctantly, he turned back around, not wanting her to burst into hysterics, as women were wont to do.
“Mother,” he said gently, when he returned to her side. “What’s gotten your bonnet in such a whirlwind? You ought to know I’m an adept swimmer. Nothing dangerous lurks in the shallows, anyway.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “The shallows are very dangerous, you should know this. Spirits lurk there, waiting to lure you to your death.”
“Oh, not the spirits again, Mother.” Laszlo’s mother had grown up in a Slavic country, somewhere in the east of Europe, and she believed all sorts of fairy stories.
“Yes, the spirits!” she whispered to him, under her breath. “You and your father may not believe it, but I know it’s true. The rusalki live there.”
“Really, and what are the rusalki?”
“Spirits of the drowned,” she said. “Drowned women. Lurking in the water, their unclean hair floating like wild rushes, and they seduce you.”
Laszlo’s head spun sharply to face her.
“Tell me more,” he said instantly.
“They’ll take pleasing shapes,” she said, “but my dear, you mustn’t let them take you in. They’ll drag you down, down into the depths. Tangle your legs with their long hair and submerge you, killing you with their wet bodies. Please, please, tell me you will not go there again.”
“All right, Mother,” Laszlo said, and she breathed a sigh of relief, but his head was swimming with visions of wet, slippery, long dark-haired women, waiting in the water to drag him down with their pleasing shapes. How irresistible…
He could not stop thinking about it, when he went to sleep in the cottage at night, and he considered whacking off imagining it, but then he heard it.
Somewhere amid the glowing moonlight, woven into the sounds of rushing waves, he heard it. Eerie, beautiful singing, like the Greek sirens he’d read about in the Odyssey. He’d thought those women sounded very erotic indeed, and now came voices from the sea, women’s voices, and as if in a trance, he rushed out of bed, still in his nightshirt, and raced out the cottage doors and down the sand.
It didn’t look like anything was out there, just waves and wind, but he could feel something out there. He knew his mother’s head was full of bullshit, but fuck it, perhaps he could linger a little longer in the tempting beliefs of childhood, fairy stories and spirits, and hot sexy women come to seduce and kill him.
His head rushing with poetry and sex, he dipped his toes tentatively in the cool water, amid the reeds and rushes, and breathed in the salt air. Fuck, it felt good to be alive. It felt good to give a shit about something, to want something, to take great bites out of the world.
And again, he heard singing. Wordless, feminine singing.
“Who are you?” he said under his breath. “Do- do you want to do some lovemaking?” He wasn’t sure of the right words, but he thought if the spirits were going to seduce him, the least he could do was talk a little dirty to them in return.
He walked deeper into the water, the moonlight rippling around him, deeper and deeper, and the voices got louder.
“Yes, that’s it,” he murmured, his knees getting wet, then up to his waist. “I’m coming now, rusalki women. Take me with you.”
Anything, even drowning, was better than going back to that fucking preparatory school.
He was in as deep as his chest when the water began humming. The song in the air vibrating through the water, rippling, rippling, making him very aroused, and then-
“Lassszzllooo,” came a hiss, he could have sworn it said his name, and the dark green rushes floating in the water began moving, forming, becoming a shape-
And a hand grabbed his ankle.
“Wait, shit, fuck-” he stammered, before slipping beneath the water.
Now he was flailing, fully underwater, his nose and lungs filled with salt, and his eyes filled with nothing but sea and moonlight and wild rushes and-
And floating above him was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Naked, pale in the moonlight, big beautiful eyes, sharp teeth, long dark hair floating around her. He was struck with the absolute knowledge that she was the love of his life.
And then, sharply, her appearance changed, and she was no longer a woman, but a green, hideous thing, made of weeds. No- still a woman- but sad, drowned, sickly, and not at all the vision he’d seen moments earlier.
They can take pleasing shapes, his mother’s voice echoed in his head, before the green woman descended on him and he blacked out.
The next thing he was aware of was vomiting seawater on the beach.
“I, I,” he gasped, and the sailor holding him said, “Don’t talk. Vomit up anything that comes up, so you can breathe.”
It was one of the sailors he’d made friends with at the harbor.
“Henry?” he slurred, before vomiting and coughing again. Henry thumped at his back.
Laszlo heaved out great breaths before nearly collapsing again, and Henry held him gently.
“Shit,” Henry said. “All right. You’re alive. He’s alive,” he added as an aside, and Laszlo rolled his head back to see who Henry was talking to.
Shit.
It was Laszlo’s father, who was glaring down at him in his dressing gown.
“Good,” Lord Cravensworth said. “Get him up.”
Henry helped Laszlo stagger to his feet.
“Good man,” his father said to Henry. “Thank you for your troubles.”
“It’s lucky I was there,” Henry said. “Took a walk along the beach and I saw someone flailing around in the waters, obviously I went in to help-”
“I’m not fucking paying you,” Laszlo’s father said.
“No, of course, I wouldn’t take payment for it-”
“Then go away.”
Henry nodded. “Right, my lord.”
Fuck. Now Laszlo wouldn’t be allowed down to the harbor anymore. His father wasn’t happy that he enjoyed the company of common folk.
Once Henry was gone and out of earshot, and Laszlo and his father had made their way to the cottage’s little garden, Lord Cravensworth turned his fury onto his son.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he hissed. “Going for a moonlight swim? What possessed you to do such a thing?”
“Hey!” Laszlo hissed back. “It was all Mother’s idea! She told me there were women in there! Women who wanted to seduce me! How was I supposed to resist that?”
“Oh, for heaven’s- you foolish, simple boy. You are sixteen years of age and you still believe your mother’s fairy stories. There are no women in the water.”
The green thing swam back into Laszlo’s mind.
“No, but-” he started. “No, there were- There was someone in there- I saw her. There was a woman in there who tried to drown me-”
“You thought you saw something,” Laszlo’s father corrected. “You were drowning, probably because your leg got tangled in seaweed. Your dying mind was clouded with hallucinatory visions. If it hadn’t been for that commoner boy, you would have died.”
“No, listen-”
“No, you listen, ingrate. Your mother told you there were women in that water to frighten you. That’s what fairy stories are supposed to do, frighten fool boys from swimming into dangerous waters where they could drown. It’s not your mother’s fault that her son is led around by his cock instead of his common sense. Now, neither of us are going to tell her, or anyone, that this happened, and for the rest of this holiday, you’re going to stay indoors. Is that understood?”
“Father-”
“Is that understood?”
Laszlo sighed.
“Yes, Father,” he said.
He wished that woman had drowned him after all.
“Laszlo, you will not believe the absolute shitshow I just had with the fucking wraiths at the fucking nightclub,” Nadja shouted, bursting into the room.
The boy, who had just fallen asleep, came right back awake, eyes fluttering open. Laszlo clapped a hand to his forehead.
“I’m awake again, Lazzo,” he said. “Keep reading.”
“Ohh,” Nadja said, wincing. “Did I just wake up the thing that crawled out of Colin Robinson’s chest? Whoops, sorry.”
“You did, yes, my darling,” Laszlo said, yawning. “All right then, boy. Let’s get back to this book.”
The boy pulled the covers up to his chin and looked, wide-eyed, up at Laszlo, and Laszlo felt a stir in his chest. Sometimes he was very happy to have to take care of this thing. But sometimes it was frightening as fuck. And sometimes, oddly, it was both at the same time.
He looked over at Nadja, and she looked back at him. They were always able to communicate without speaking- whether it was some ether bullshit, like Nandor probably would have said, or it was just love. Nadja could see in Laszlo’s eyes that he didn’t want to take this on alone.
“Yes, well, Mommy Nadja is going to sit in on bedtime storytime, isn’t she, little one?” Nadja said in a sickly sweet voice. The boy’s mouth wrinkled into a frown.
“I wanna hear the story already,” he said. “Come on. I wanna know who gets murdered next.”
“All right, dear boy,” Laszlo said, and got back to reading the story. Nadja leaned her head against his shoulder, listening along, and the boy was back asleep within minutes.
“Is he asleep now?” Nadja hissed in his ear.
“Yes, yes,” Laszlo whispered, putting the book down gently. “All right, now let’s get the fuck out of here before he wakes up again.”
He and Nadja dramatically tiptoed out of the room, and once they were out of the boy’s earshot, Laszlo grabbed Nadja’s hand firmly and yanked her into the living room, where he pulled her down on the couch.
“Oooh, darling,” Nadja said. “I knew you’d like this outfit.”
“Oh, I do like it, very much,” Laszlo said, running his hands down her body appreciatively. It was rare that Nadja wore trousers, but it was very fucking sexy when she did. “But I wasn’t actually looking to fuck just now.”
“Really?”
“No, I- I feel quite odd. Let’s just hold each other, if that’s all right.”
“Oh, well, Laszlo, my sweet baby, of course that’s all right. You know you’re safe with me, my little love.”
She rearranged them swiftly, so she was sprawled out against the couch, her arms and legs wrapped around him like very sexy vines, and his head cradled against her chest.
“Actually, that feels very nice,” she said. “You were very clever to suggest this. I am quite tired from negotiations with the stupid fucking wraiths.”
She began telling him the story, and he nestled closer to her, feeling a melty warmth spread through his chest. They were both cold creatures, of course, but Nadja had the peculiar ability to make him feel warm, even when they weren’t engaged in vigorous activities.
“Anyway, it’s a whole load of shit,” she said. “Apparently now everyone thinks they’re owed breaks. I told you this would happen, didn’t I, when Nandor’s familiar started taking breaks? What next, we have to pay them? I don’t even want to know.”
“Well, you sounded quite fierce and intelligent in that story,” Laszlo said. “I wish I could have been there to see you.”
Nadja smiled smugly. “Thank you, darling, I was very morally correct and very sexy.”
“That’s a given.”
They lay there quietly for a few moments, while Nadja scratched at Laszlo’s scalp and felt up his backside. It always felt safe being in her arms, and it felt good when she ran her hands over him. She knew better than anyone how to handle him, like she was an artisan handling a fine piece of art, and he felt appreciated.
“Nadja, love,” he said quietly.
“What is it?” she asked.
He sat up, still in her arms, and looked up at her.
“Do you think I’m a good father?” he asked. “Not that I’m a father, per se. But do you think I’m raising the boy all right?”
“What makes you ask such a silly question?” she said. “He’s alive and well and nobody’s tried to sell any of his flesh for money yet. I should wish to have had such a good childhood.”
“Right, but psychologically, I mean. Do you think I’ve made him feel safe?”
Nadja looked pensive.
“You mean, unlike your own father?” she said softly.
Laszlo looked down at Nadja’s breasts, trying not to get distracted by them.
“Yes,” he said, after a few moments. “Unlike my own father.”
“You are not like that pig shit man,” she said immediately.
“Yes, but-”
“But, but, but, but nothing. You know how fucking annoying it is to raise a children? I had to raise most of my little siblings, they were all pains in the arse. And none of them were made out of energy vampire materials, either! Don’t you dare feel guilty if sometimes you have to tell the little shit to shut the fuck up.”
“That’s not it, darling. I mean that I think maybe I’m making him sad, or I’m not letting him be himself.”
“Not letting him be himself? He gets to perform his creepy little songs onstage and you are always there playing the piano for him!”
“Well, what if I’m being a dance mom?”
“A what?”
“Dance moms, it comes on after Bran and Toby’s show sometimes, it’s about these mothers who make their children endure the horrors of the show business. And it’s quite frightening, really-”
“Laszlo, my love, my sweet sweet darling,” Nadja said. “Come here.”
She yanked him up to her face and kissed him sweetly, licking at his mouth.
“I’m serious, my darling,” Laszlo said.
“Oh, shut up, stupid baby,” she said, and kissed him some more.
When she let him go, she said, “You worry too much. You are a good father, or else you wouldn’t worry so much. Anyway, who gives a shit.”
“I give a shit.”
“Exactly. You keep on giving a shit, and if you do something stupid, I’ll let you know. That sounds good to you?”
Laszlo looked up at the woman who’d saved him from life centuries ago.
“I trust you,” he said. “I trust you with everything. So yes.”
Nadja’s eyes were warm and full of love as she looked on him.
“Good,” she murmured. “Now you’d better fuck me silly, because this sexy outfit totally went to waste at the Council. The Guide didn’t compliment me for it once.”
“Well, she’s an idiot, then,” Laszlo said, and grabbed Nadja’s beautiful, tangly dark hair, relishing in the pretty moan she released, and got to work pleasing his wife.
The following evening, when the boy woke up, Laszlo was already sitting by his bed.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “A story.”
“More murders?” the boy asked, sitting up.
“Not exactly,” Laszlo said. “I thought I’d tell you one more fairy story before we put away those books for good.”
“Oh,” the boy said, his face falling a bit. “I don’t know. The other stories you told me were kind of disappointing compared to the ones in my book.”
“Well, this one’s different. In this one, the real version’s better than the story. My mother used to tell me about women who steal you away and kill you, and they’re very real.”
“That sounds kind of scary,” the boy said.
“It does. But I promise you, the real version isn’t scary at all. It’s very good.”