Chapter Text
‘Mr. Solidarity? Here are your papers. Thank you for your donation.’
The nurse pushes a slightly damp form across the hospital reception’s counter, accompanied by a crumpled twenty dollar bill.
‘Uh, you’re welcome?’ Jimmy picks it up with the tip of his fingers. ‘What am I, uh. What can I do with this?’
The woman – round cheeks, blond hair in a no-nonsense up-do over blue scrubs – beams at him. ‘All manner of things! This sheet contains a lot of details about your blood you can’t get anywhere but from a trained physician,’ she informs him. ‘See, right at the top here, that’s your blood type. Which is… oh! AB negative. That’s the rarest in the world. Congratulations, you’re really special!’
Jimmy blinks. ‘I’m not–’
‘Further down, you’ll find a list of all the other factors that affect your blood, like antibodies and such. They keep you safe from viruses and other evil-doers in the body, so it’s good to know what your immune system is packing!’
She punches his shoulder. Jimmy flinches. ‘Ow!’
‘Oh, sorry. Was that the arm– Oops. I didn’t see the bandage there.’ She lets out a high, trilling laugh and wriggles her finger at his paper. ‘Last, but not least, the note at the bottom says your blood is very palatable to vampires. Congratulations again.’
The nurse throws a quick glance over her shoulder, then leans onto the counter. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate you coming here instead of going to one of the vampire blood banks – we’re all here out of passion and want to save people’s lives, after all – but you might wanna consider it for the next time. They pay way more.’
Ice drops into Jimmy’s stomach. He crumples the information sheet. ‘No, thank you. That’s fine,’ he stammers. ‘See you next time.’
He walks out before she can stop him, through the sliding glass doors and out into the street. It’s so narrow the sunlight splatters its gold across the facade in front of him, but doesn’t reach the asphalt. Greedily, he inhales the smog.
Very palatable to vampires.
Jimmy’s arm twinges. He rubs the bandage, digging his fingers in, which only makes it hurt more. He shoves the paper into his pocket. There’s no way he’s going to a vampire feeding bank, no matter how good the money is.
*
The first thing he does with his newly acquired riches is head to the supermarket. After the harrowing ordeal of having some stranger put a needle in him while waxing poetically about the kindheartedness of bleeding for society, he deserves a meal. It has the added benefit of getting him out of the sweltering midday heat, which, even though it doesn’t reach the roads, still heats the city like a kettle on a stove.
He’s browsing the pasta aisle, trying to decide whether it would be cheaper to buy a bottle of passata and make his own sauce or pick a jar of pesto, when he notices a figure looming at the other end.
It’s a man in a brown leather coat that reaches from his earlobes to his ankles; including gloves, a hat, and thick, black Ray-Bans. He looks a little like he watched a spy thriller once and the only lesson he took from it was how to be as suspicious as possible. It’s exactly the kind of thing someone would wear… to avoid the sunlight. A shiver runs down Jimmy’s back. He grabs the red pesto, rounds the shelf – and almost runs straight into him.
‘Mr. Solidariy.’
Jimmy jumps almost a foot. ‘Wah!’
His heart leaps into his throat. Close. He’s too close. The other would just have to reach out to grab him by the neck, shove him against the selection of linguine and spaghetti and dig his teeth in. He needs to– he has to– His feet won’t work.
The man holds up a gloved hand. ‘Excuse me, I did not mean to startle you.’
His voice rasps like a gravestone being pulled over a graveyard road. Jimmy’s mouth is too dry to reply.
‘Actually, I’m here to make you an offer,’ the man continues. ‘To use your very specific qualities for good.’
All Jimmy can hear is the rushing in his ears.
The man sighs. ‘Humans. Ah, no matter, I’ll just use shorter sentences. My master is in need of regular sustenance. You are in the unique position to provide such. We are willing to compensate you very well for your service.’ He tilts his head, looking a bit like a crow Jimmy once saw inspecting a bottle cap. ‘Ten times what you received earlier, if I may say so.’
‘How do you know–,’ Jimmy breaks off. ‘No. No!’
Finally, his limbs seem to have rebooted. He stumbles backwards, knocking two boxes of tagliatelle off the shelf.
‘Absolutely not. No. Never!’
The other exit of the aisle is five steps behind him. If he wants to make it there, he’ll have to turn around. It would mean exposing his back to the vampire, triggering his hunting instinct. Maybe he’s got a bag under that coat of his, to put over Jimmy’s head, before dragging him off to drain him dry. Like on TV. They all watch the freaking news; in the lower empires, that’s just an average Tuesday.
‘Very well,’ says the man. His voice sounds vaguely disinterested. He pushes a hand into his jacket.
Jimmy nearly faints.
But he doesn’t pull out a bag, or a gun. Or a rope, or a taser, or handcuffs, or thumbscrews. Instead, it’s just a small, white square of paper.
‘This is my business card,’ he says. ‘If you change your mind. We are open to discussing the details of your compensation, within reason.’
Jimmy stares.
The man watches him for a moment, his expression inscrutable behind his glasses. Then he sighs louder, picks up Jimmy’s hand – eliciting a squeak that sounds not unlike a guinea pig – and presses the paper into his palm.
‘Don’t lose this,’ he warns, turns on his heel and stalks off.
Jimmy sinks against a carton of farfalle. His heart is beating so hard he feels dizzy and the tips of his fingers are numb with cold. Maybe getting this worked up after having his blood taken was not a good idea. He should just have gone home and curled up in bed.
Once the black spots dancing across his vision disappear, he stuffs the business card into the same pocket as the blood detail information sheet, not caring whether it crumples. He’s never calling the daintily printed number under that bloody posh rose crest.
He pays, then high-tails it back home.
*
There are two apartment blocks just off of the campus grounds, called ‘college digs.’ One of them is a sleek, white wannabe high-rise with balconies in the back, overlooking a small community garden, and a parking lot out front. The other is a dilapidated old five-story building with rattling pipes that work in the summer and don’t work in the winter, a door that’s held closed only by an old bucket full of concrete and the rooms are filled with a permanent stink of weed.
The latter is especially pungent today. ‘Did Logan do pot in the hallway again?’, Jimmy calls, opening the door to his apartment.
No reply. He furrows his brows. He lives with four other people, so this kind of thing shouldn’t happen.
He kicks off his shoes and rounds the corner into the kitchen, plastic bag swinging from his index finger, and finds all of his roommates gathered around their three-legged dining table. He’s about to make a joke about not letting the séance ghost eat you or something, when he notices their somber faces. Maybe the events of the afternoon have left him more shaken than he thought, because his insides crawl with dread. ‘Did, uh. Did somebody die?’
‘Not really,’ says Sausage, who’s sitting closest to him.
‘Might as well,’ says Pearl.
Gem and Pixl say nothing.
Pearl picks up a ripped envelope. Jimmy notices three more opened ones next to it, and another, still closed.
‘The landlord is raising our rent. Again.’
Jimmy’s stomach sinks. He knows now what the scene in the kitchen reminds him of: half a year ago, they were sitting right here, like this, opening the same shoddy, gray letters. ‘How much?’
‘Two dollars.’
He exhales. ‘That’s not–’
‘Per day.’
Jimmy blinks. That’s… a bigger number. He’s not good at math under pressure. That’s why they kicked him out of environmental science and he had to go with art studies to avoid being sent home in shame.
‘It’s about sixty dollars a month more,’ Gem explains. ‘For each of us.’
‘That’s the end for me,’ says Pearl. ‘Sixty dollars in total we might have been able to do, but three hundred? Nope.’
Pixl nods. ‘Guess we’re all going to have to crawl back into the holes that we came out of.’
Three hundred dollars, that’s more money than Jimmy has seen at any one time in his life. Which, to be fair, sometimes feels like it encompasses only the past year. Ever since coming here, his childhood in the mesa has taken on a tinge of yellow-edged nostalgia in his mind, like a dream he had once, of lying in a valley striped with terracotta, staring up at the stars under a cloudless night sky and thinking about how to best save the world. But just as there was nothing in the abandoned mine shafts under Tumble Town, there was nothing above – no work, no prospects. Definitely no future.
Jimmy swallows, rubbing the handle of his plastic bag between his fingers. ‘You can’t leave.’
Pearls eyebrows draw together. ‘It’s not exactly a choice, Jimmy.’
‘I’m going to talk to him,’ Jimmy says desperately. ‘He can’t just– I’m pretty sure raising the rent by this much is illegal somehow. It has to be.’
‘I already tried,’ says Gem, hanging her head. ‘Pearl, too.’
Pearl runs a hand through her hair. ‘I told him there’d be people moving out. He doesn’t care.’
‘He’ll never lack for tenants in a city like this,’ says Pixl. ‘The campus housing problem means there’ll always be students who have no choice. So it’s not… you don’t need us, Jimmy. If you want to stay, you can.’
That’s where he’s wrong. Because those other students, they won’t be like Pearl and Sausage and Gem and Pixl. They won’t be willing to lend him some money when he can’t pay rent, or help him out with his groceries, or his homework. Jimmy looks at his shoes, heat creeping into his face. What a disgrace he is, wanting to keep his housemates around solely based on what’s best for him, not for them. ‘What, uh. What are you going to do?’
Sausage shrugs. ‘Don’t know. Go back to my father’s, I guess. Learn how to make actual sausages.’
His father who beats him; who’s responsible for the constellation of cigarette burns on his neck.
‘I’m gonna live under a bridge until I can afford to go back to Australia or something,’ says Pearl. ‘Most likely “or something.”’
Because there’s no one waiting for her in Australia anymore. Not since the tsunami.
Gem and Pixl once again say nothing. The silence stretches. Eventually, the handle of Jimmy’s shopping bag rips, vomiting the jar of pesto and package of spaghetti onto the kitchen floor. He jumps. ‘Oh! I, uh, brought food. We should eat.’
He collects the items and moves to the counter, pushing away a stack of used plates. They only do the dishes when the cupboards are empty, to conserve water.
Pixl cracks a thin smile. ‘Thanks, Jimmy.’
He flushes. ‘No problem.’
He rubs his palms on his pants. Something crinkles in his trousers. Abruptly, he remembers the encounter in the supermarket – and the offer. Ten times twenty bucks in exchange for Jimmy becoming a walking blood bag. That’s… probably also a lot.
Pearl slides off her chair, gesturing for Sausage to follow. ‘Come on, lets help Jimmy so he doesn’t burn the already cooked sauce again.’
‘Don’t move out just yet,’ Jimmy says, over the thunder in his ears. ‘I might have a way to get the money.’
*
The address the gravelly voice gave him when he called the number from Pearl’s phone – his own broke earlier this year – is a manor in a gated community. The gate is open and there are no guards, but once he comes up to the property itself, he finds himself in front of a stone wall that’s at least two meters high. The only thing he can see from there is the slanted, dark roof poking over the tops of the spruce trees clustered around the building.
The plaque below the bell shimmers in a soft, warm ochre. From the way everything else here looks, Jimmy has the sneaking suspicion that it might be actual gold. It strikes him as a bit risky, but then again, who would be stupid enough to steal from a vampire? The lettering is handwritten cursive, so he can’t actually tell what it reads. He chews on his unease for another breath or five, then rings.
Without a sound, the gates swing open. It’s a two minute walk to the front door. Which is also open. The hallway beyond is dark. There’s no one in sight.
Jimmy halts on the gravel. ‘Uh, hello?’
No reaction. He stares, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do here. He’s not walking right into a vampire’s lair, no way. Should he just leave?
A shadow steps out of the dark, solidifying into a tall, thin man with white hair and a white goatee on a gaunt, wrinkled face. His pristine white shirt and dress pants look tailor made. ‘Come in already, we haven’t got all day.’
Jimmy’s heart leaps into his throat. ‘We need to talk about the pay! The, uh, compensation,’ he blurts.
The man’s eyes narrow. ‘Not out here. Follow me.’
There’s an order in his voice. Jimmy takes two steps and then he’s inside.
The man – vampire? – shoves the door shut behind him, leaving them both in startling darkness. It smells both musty and of disinfectant at the same time, like a recently cleaned old basement. Just below, there’s a hint of something sweet.
‘This way,’ the man says. Jimmy can only tell where he is because he’s wearing white.
The vampire leads him down the hallway and into a small kitchen. It has a window that sunlight falls through, brushing an iron stove, a cluster of pots and pans hanging on top of it, and a small table surrounded by four wooden chairs with the kind of upholstery that could have come straight out of a seventies movie. Two of them are occupied. One by what is clearly a maid, the other by a pink-cheeked probably human man in his early thirties, with slicked-back red hair. The man jumps to his feet.
‘Mr. Solidarity, I presume?’
‘I, um– Yeah.’
The man takes his hand and shakes it vigorously. He’s warm to the touch. ‘I am so extraordinarily pleased to meet you, sir. I’ll be your attorney for today.’
Jimmy starts. ‘My what?’
The vampire picks up a stack of papers from the table. ‘Mr. Solidarity wishes to discuss the terms of payment.’
This is the moment. Jimmy straightens. ‘Yes, please. What, uh, what would the payment actually be? In numbers? I know you told me, but I’m not good with math so I need to be sure here–’
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ says the attorney, and names a number. Jimmy gulps.
‘Do you require more than that?’ asks the vampire.
Heat rises into Jimmy’s cheeks. ‘Actually, uh. Just a little?’ He can’t look anyone in the eye. It curdles in his guts like week-old milk. ‘I know it’s already a lot, but our landlord just raised our rent and now me and my friends will have nowhere else to go if we don’t make it.’
‘How much more do you require?’
‘Umm, I’m not– It got raised by three hundred in total. Our rent, I mean.’
‘Three hundred, then,’ says the vampire. He reaches into his breast pocket for a pen, and the motion sparks recognition in Jimmy. He’s the guy with the trench coat! With the same flair that he’d handed over his business card with, he crosses something out on the top sheet of paper and scribbles in something new. Then he pushes the paper at Jimmy. ‘Sign here.’
Jimmy looks down. ‘What is that?’
The vampire’s eyebrow twitches. ‘A contract.’
Duh.
Feeling dumb, Jimmy picks up the pen and scrawls his name on the dotted line without reading any of it. The vampire nods, then turns to another page. ‘And here.’
‘Huh?’
‘This is a non-disclosure agreement,’ says the attorney. ‘From this moment on, you are not permitted to reveal, describe, discuss, or otherwise communicate the terms of your employment to any third party outside of this room.’
Jimmy winces. ‘I kind of already told my roommates.’
The vampire’s face hardens.
‘That’s okay,’ the attorney says quickly, letting out an uneasy laugh. ‘Just don’t tell anyone from now on, okay? Or it’s not going to end w–’
‘You are required to sign it.’
Jimmy stares at the black line. This little piece of paper here means that if he disappears, or his body turns up floating in a river somewhere, his flatmates are the only ones who’ll know he got eaten by a crusty old vampire. Which Jimmy, idiot that he is, just told said vampire and the attorney, so they’ll know to get rid of Pearl and Sausage and Gem and Pixl, too. His stomach sinks. Oh, this is bad.
‘You are required to sign,’ the vampire repeats.
Okay, Jimmy thinks, rooted to the spot. There is an easy solution to this. He just won’t violate the terms of the contract and all of them will be safe. Plus, they need the money too much for him to be making mistakes now. It’s this or Tumble Town, and Australia, and cigarette burns.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he signs.
*
The vampire doesn’t immediately push him up against the wall and bury his teeth in Jimmy’s neck, which is a huge relief. Instead, he nods at the maid, who collects the contract, and then gestures for Jimmy to follow him.
The manor’s other hallways are as dark as the one he came in through, with wooden paneling and solid doors. Armor stands with knight’s armor line the spaces in between, and Jimmy’s too busy hugging the opposite wall whenever they pass one to count the doors – in case one of the creepy statues doesn’t like his face or something – but it feels like they must have passed at least ten until they reach the end of the hallway. Here, the smell of carpet cleaner disperses into the sweetness from earlier.
Lifting a hand, the vampire knocks. ‘Sir?’
After a long moment, his brow furrows. He presses the handle and the door swings open, revealing a tiled floor in light gray, separated by metal inlays, and a riot of potted plants. Off the cuff, Jimmy identifies three azalea bushes, four bamboo stalks, a nest of sugar cane and several pots of moth orchids hanging from a grid above their heads. There’s more green beyond, somehow lush and blooming despite the black light illuminating the room.
‘My lord, Mr. Solidarity is here.’
No sound and no movement disturbs the half-dark.
The vampire turns to Jimmy, grabs him by the wrist and yanks him into the room. Jimmy lets out another squeak, but the door falls shut behind him. He dives for the handle, but there is none.
Heart in his throat, he turns on his axis. The sweet smell of the blossoms feels cloying in his nose. Once his eyes adjust, he notices a strange, blue glow coming from behind the flowers. Fighting down the trembling in his muscles, he walks towards it. ‘Hello?’
When he rounds a massive potted palm tree, a balcony emerges beyond, with a railing overlooking an even bigger greenhouse. Everything is full of plants – big ones, small ones, cactus next to winter-blooming crocuses and more, from all parts of the world. In the distance, he hears a fluttering sound, like the rustling of leaves.
And there, by the railing, a rose stalk in his hand, stands the most beautiful man Jimmy’s ever seen.
His hair seems blue in the strange light, ringlets framing his round face. His skin is pale as ivory. He looks up and his eyes shift like the scattered image of a kaleidoscope, fangs glinting in the dark.
‘Hello, Jimmy. I’m Scott.’