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It wasn't exactly unusual for any of the three of them to disappear for days on end, but Evanna hadn't been seen in a couple of weeks. Bea and Lucy were starting to get concerned. Bea especially – she'd been pacing, rambling about all the horrible things that might've happened to their girlfriend. Lucy didn't say it aloud, not eager to encourage Bea's spiraling, but her mind echoed her concerns. It had been too long, and the world never seemed to come up short when it came to dangers.
Immortality was a blessing in the sense that, as vampires, they couldn't grow old, but it was the sort of power that tended to attract threats. People were hungry to take power into their own hands, and if they couldn't steal it, they would just kill whoever wielded it. Vampire hunters, wannabe paranormal investigators, and over-enthusiastic conspiracy theorists alike all posed a threat to a vampire on her own – not to mention other vampires. They were especially vicious. Even the sun was an enemy. There were too many variables at hand for Lucy to feel comfortable.
"I think we should look for her," Bea announced, turning a step in their living room. She wrung her hands together as she paced, cracking her knuckles.
Lucy shook her head. "I don't want her to come home looking for help and find that we've up and left."
"So you admit it. You think something's wrong too," she ground out. It'd been a source of tension between the two of them since the number of days without seeing Ev had started to become too many.
"At this point, maybe," Lucy admitted. Beyond her worries, she rather missed Evanna. She loved Bea to death, but she could be… a bit much, at times. There was a reason there were three of them. They worked well together.
"Well, how about I go?" Bea suggested. "And you can stay behind and wait."
She sighed. This conversation was going in a dangerous direction, one that made alarms go off in her mind – she didn't like the idea of both of her girls out there alone, with Lucy left at home with nothing to do but imagine all the trouble they might be stumbling into without her there to mediate. And with them not even together. She'd always been a firm subscriber to the philosophy that vampires were best off in groups. "Alright, maybe we should just–"
There was the sound of the lock clicking, and Lucy jumped to her feet, running towards the door. She wasn't sure if she was expecting Ev or an enemy, preparing for an embrace or baring her fangs. It was a bit of both, really.
Bea was a bit slower to respond, stopping in her tracks but staring blankly at the door for a moment before she herself jumped into action. She made up for it in pure speed and ended up being the first to throw herself into Evanna's arms when she made it through the door. She practically tackled her, in that classic Bea way where you really couldn't tell if she was attacking you or trying to hug you.
Lucy slipped behind them to lock the door before she set her gaze on Ev, protective instinct taking over as she scanned her body for signs of injury. She didn't seem hurt, but she looked tired. Out of the three of them, Ev was usually the only one with a reasonable sleep schedule. She kept them grounded, so Lucy would've been lying if she said she was anything short of alarmed by the sight of her looking so exhausted.
She joined in on the embrace like a mother hen, reaching out to rub her thumb along the bags under Ev's eye. "You look dead on your feet, darling," Lucy muttered, brows furrowed.
"Oh, it's so good to be home," she said, pulling Lucy tightly into a three-way hug.
"What kept you for so long, then?" Bea asked, the frustration from the last couple of weeks seeping into her tone. Lucy was not surprised that it was coming out then that she had been a little hurt by Ev disappearing. She was like that.
Ev sighed, sounding all the more tired, and pulled away from the two of them. "Have you ever… accidentally turned someone?"
Bea blinked slowly as those words sunk in. "Like, into a vampire?"
"No, into a frog. Yes, Bee, into a vampire," she said, though she sounded more exhausted than actually annoyed by the question.
While Bea struggled to deal with the concept, Lucy herself was grappling more with the implications. There had to be an interesting story behind that one. Lucy had been a vampire for a very long time, a few millennia compared to the half a millennia Bea had been around and the half a century Ev held claim to. She had seen a lot of very strange things in that time – witnessed many wars, travelled the world a couple dozen times over, seen what felt like anything one could ever dream of. She'd heard of people accidentally being turned. That didn't make the prospect any less horrifying if it was her and the girls who had to handle it.
"How on Earth did you manage to do that?" Lucy asked, because she couldn't even imagine it. "And who?" There were probably more pertinent questions to be asking in the name of cleaning up the absolute mess Ev had made in her time away, but she couldn't help but blurt out whatever her own curiosity demanded in that instance. Really, she would need a detailed account of the whole story when they sorted everything out properly.
Evanna looked a little bashful at the question. "Well, I met this girl."
Beatrice snorted, and Lucy's brows shot up at that. It wasn't terribly often that Ev went around messing with humans – that was more Bea's sort of thing, really – and it might've been cause for excitement if not for the context. She supposed it was better a lover than an enemy. "And?"
Ev winced in anticipation of the rest of it, moving like she was about to hide her face in her hands. She didn't, though, tried to straighten her posture and act confident despite how majorly she had apparently fucked up. "Well, you know how I like to bite," she said, and it probably didn't sound as confident as she meant it to. Her voice squeaked and went quiet at the last word, hilariously shy for a vampire.
Beatrice grinned. "Oh, we know," she said, certainly not helping the matter of Ev's flustered state with the way she said it. "I'd say we know better than almost anyone…"
Lucy had to admit that she was right about that. Ev really did like to use her teeth, even more than most of the other vampires Lucy had been with. Still, she couldn't imagine Evanna getting so overenthusiastic that she would bite hard enough to turn someone. It was irresponsible. It was dangerous. It just wasn't like Ev. She supposed they all made mistakes, especially a vampire as young as her, but it was a surprise. Not to mention, an absolute trainwreck.
"How is she taking it, then?" Lucy asked, unable to sound anything other than concerned.
Ev grew even more flustered by this question, which should've been a warning. She shook her head slightly, took a step back so she could cross her arms and sort of turtle in on herself. "Well, I… I need your help. It's been a few days and all, but, well…"
"Spit it out," she said sharply.
She sighed. "How do I tell her she's a vampire now?"
"I'm sorry," Bea began, outraged, "It's been how long and you haven't told her? A few days? Has she not figured it out for herself?"
Lucy shook her head, both at Ev for her irresponsibility and at Bea for grossly underestimating how oblivious humans could be. Many vampires forgot about that, once centuries removed from the experience of being truly human themselves.
"Take us to her," Lucy said, readying herself for another day of cleaning up one of her girlfriends' messes.
Jamie hadn't ever had a head cold as bad as the one she had then. It wasn't even a proper head cold – maybe some sort of virus. She didn't even feel well enough to sort out what it was. It really was a strange bunch of symptoms, so she figured it could be a concoction of issues. Bad timing or something.
The sun was just too bright, and she had trouble sleeping at night. She'd messed up her sleep schedule so terribly that she was practically nocturnal, waking up long after she should've been eating dinner and then finally falling asleep once the sun had already risen. She had tried to fix things, but really, the sleeping schedule and the aversion to light weren't the worst of it.
The worst of it was probably the food. She'd tried Italian food on the first day, some leftovers she'd stuck in her fridge the day before, but suddenly there was something in there that made her violently ill. She had no idea what it was, but not being able to stomach her fettuccini alfredo had brought on a whole new type of misery. She'd never had an allergic reaction to anything before, but she was familiar with what a burning mouth and trouble breathing meant.
After that, she'd not had much of an appetite for anything. Or rather, she was craving something, but she'd not been able to place what it was and therefore hadn't been able to indulge. The whole situation had been a source of ongoing distress, what with the nausea and headaches that came with the seemingly self-imposed hunger. She didn't know how to explain it, but she just couldn't eat. It wasn't going to happen. It was more than just things being unappetizing; it was that her body simply refused to let her go through with it. She didn't feel as weak and tired as one probably should after that long with no food, but she certainly didn't feel great.
It had been a blessing to have someone taking care of her. Evanna Rosier – the girl she'd only been seeing for a few weeks – had been staying at her house and taking care of her in the days since she fell ill. Evanna was strange, but Jamie liked her a lot. She was kind and considerate and seemed to know exactly what Jamie needed when it came to her mysterious illness. It was just nice to have someone around.
She was a bit disappointed to wake up as Evanna left the bed, trying to pull her back into the warm covers with her, but Evanna had just said that she needed to go and that she'd be back some hours from them. Said she was going to find an expert. Jamie had no idea what that was about, what sort of expert they needed, but she was happy to listen to whatever the gorgeous and eccentric blonde told her.
The few hours alone had been miserable, though. She was lonely with the whole city asleep and all her friends annoyed with her for cancelled plans and a lack of answers. She missed Evanna, having someone to cuddle up to and complain to about the hunger that seemed to push away food. Things had felt more normal with her there. The vast sense of loneliness at her departure seemed to stretch more than was reasonable.
Jamie tried to answer back the many texts that had been sent to her over the course of the day she had slept through – the How are you? messages that had gotten progressively more concerned as the hours passed and Jamie hadn't said a word. She felt guilty about scaring her friends, but she wasn't a good liar and she didn't know how to assure them that everything was okay. Especially when she wasn't even sure what illness was plaguing her. She hesitated to admit it, but she wasn't all that sure that she was okay.
She ended up leaving most of the messages without a response. She'd explain herself when things turned around and she had an actual meal in her belly.
The rest of the hours without Evanna passed in a haze, spent on the couch feeling like she was slowly deteriorating. Physically, was that what was happening? Was she rotting away? It was starting to genuinely seem like it by that point.
The door unlocked and then opened, which was when Jamie first realized that Evanna had taken the key from the mantle. She probably should've been a bit unnerved by that, given how little she actually knew about Evanna, but Jamie was Jamie and she managed to just find it comforting that there was someone so ready to take care of her. "Evanna?"
"Jamie," she said, striding over to the couch in her heels. "How are you holding up? I brought those experts I told you about."
One of the girls she'd brought with her snorted at the term experts, a woman with messy chestnut hair and the sort of face that scared Jamie with how much trouble it seemed to reflect. She looked like bad news walking and personified, but she flashed Jamie an evil grin. "Beatrice Crouch… Jr. Pleased to meet you." And though she did sound pleased, she also sounded like she was aware of something very funny that Jamie wasn't privy to.
She tried to smile back, but she didn't feel like it was as genuine and welcoming as she would've liked. "Jamie Potter. Lovely to meet you as well."
"Lucy Black," said the other woman, and she didn't sound pleased at all. She sounded annoyed, a little bothered. Jamie was curious about that. "Sorry about this mess that our dear Evanna has gotten you into."
Jamie frowned. "Er, right. And how do you know Evanna, exactly? And what are you experts in?"
Lucy made a little humming sound, assessing the risks and the right way of explaining the situation to her. It was intimidating, but dressed in all black with blood-red lips, Jamie thought it was a sort of intimidation she should like to get used to. Lucy's eyes were narrowed and cold as she said, "We're Evanna's girlfriends, and we're experts in vampirism."
She laughed, pleased to see that the scary girl had a sense of humor about just how scary she was. "Oh, right. Are you med students, then?"
"We're vampires," Evanna said, her voice kind but wracked with guilt. "Lucy doesn't joke about that sort of thing. I didn't mean to bite you so hard, I just–"
She was cut off by Beatrice laughing. The whole vampirism thing must've been that joke Jamie wasn't privy to before. "I really am sorry, Ev, but this is absolutely hilarious. You've got to admit it. You accidentally turned someone because you liked her neck so much. Oh, you baby vamps–"
Evanna seemed genuinely offended at that, her lip curling into a pout that Jamie desperately wanted to kiss. "I'm not a baby vamp. Don't be condescending, Bee, you've done much worse."
Beatrice hummed, looking over to assess Jamie once again. "She really is a pretty little thing. Maybe she can join us." The implication of what Lucy said before, girlfriends, struck Jamie then. The idea was a bit enticing, she had to admit it to herself. But nothing was more enticing then than the prospect of getting better – and then maybe taking a nap for a few centuries.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Lucy muttered, sounding peeved. She pulled something out of her purse – what looked like a blood bag, filled with… blood, actually. It looked like blood.
Jamie should have been horrified. She should've yelled and screamed for them to leave, told them to get the hell out of her apartment and bring their creepy bloodsucker roleplay somewhere else. She knew the blood was real. She could smell it, in a way that she probably should've questioned more than she did. The scent of it made her mouth water, coppery and tangy. "Can I have some of that?" she blurted out, eyes set straight on the bag of blood.
Lucy's lips quirked into a small smile. "You can have as much as you want, darling. Welcome."
Jamie didn't exactly know what that meant, but it sent a thrilling chill down her spine.