Work Text:
When Kate wakes up to rustling in her living room, she automatically assumes it’s Louis, her cat. Usually, noises in her home come from her apparently ironically named cat. Cat with the name of her father’s boyfriend’s ex-husband. But no, Louis is curled up on the pillow opposite her, soundly asleep. Which means there’s only one thing that could possibly be in her living room. Just waiting for her to get up.
Kate gets up. Thank god she wears a hoodie and sweatpants to bed. No one’s going to catch her in a state of undress. She slips on her Crocs and exits her room, leaving the door open a crack so Louis can get through if he wants to. Not that he will, he hates her dad and Armand. She figures it’s something to do with vampires.
When she flips on the light, Armand is sitting on her couch, reading through the proposals on her coffee table. His iPad is open next to him, playing some sort of YouTube video. “You know those are classified, right?”
“Then don’t tell anyone I read them.”
“Okay, wise ass.” Kate heads to the kitchen, pulling out her pack of cigarettes. She takes two out. Instead of putting the pack back in the drawer she’s hidden it in, she drops it in her sweatpants pocket. “Care for a smoke?”
“Always, Kate.” Armand stands, takes the cigarette from her. The two of them head out to the balcony. It’s a mirror of their first conversation alone. Kate leaning against the railing, flicking open a lighter. But she’s less agonized now. She doesn’t face out over the city, instead facing the glass doors and the inside of her shitty apartment. Armand makes himself at home in one of the wire chairs and takes the lighter from her.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. It’s become a little habit. About two times a month, Kate wakes up and Armand is in her living room. Sometimes he’s watching YouTube video essays on two times speed. Sometimes he’s reading her books. Sometimes he’s reading classified documents. She offers him a cigarette. He takes it.
She knows it’s stupid. She still isn’t happy with her dad. She still thinks back to her childhood, to months spent with him. She’s got drafts of speeches on her desk, speeches a speech writer will go over. Someone always goes over her work before she sends it out now.
Anyways, she doesn’t need to be hanging out with her father’s vampire boyfriend. Especially when her dad’s vampire boyfriend has made it very clear that he doesn’t like humans. He doesn’t really see them as anything more than she sees, like, cats. She’s like a cat to him. But he’s a breath of fresh air every time he breaks into her apartment. Which is probably a troubling assessment of Kate’s life.
She takes a long breath in, feeling the smoke in her lungs. She’s completely failed at quitting smoking. She knows it’s bad for her. She should probably switch to vaping, at least. But despite the fact she’s completely addicted to the nicotine, there’s more reasons she likes smoking. Like the soft burn it provides. And the smell, which is odd.
“Is that why you have a speech about hypocrisy sitting on your coffee table?” Armand asks.
Kate taps her ash away on the railing. “Stay out of my head. But, yeah. I tightened anti-smoking laws, since, you know, it’s absolutely terrible for you. Unfortunately, I’ve been smoking through a pack every time I see you, and sometimes when you’re not around. Someone’s going to catch a picture at some point and then I’ll have to explain myself.”
“You should quit.”
“Blame your boyfriend for my relapse.” Kate breathes out a cloud of smoke. “Can vampires get cancer?”
“No. But we shouldn’t drink diseased blood.”
“So you can keep smoking all you want.”
Armand inclines his head. “I had stopped. Louis and I were smoking, but then when they started speaking about the health risks, he insisted on stopping. He said it would help keep up appearances.”
Kate reads him. “You didn’t agree.” He shakes his head. “Why did you do it?”
“He asked,” Armand says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like he would have done anything Louis asked for. Maybe he would. Kate doesn’t know the inner workings of this ancient vampire’s mind. And she never will.
“Well, I wish someone would ask me to quit smoking.” She tests the water. She wants to know something. What does he asked even mean? Kink shit? It kind of sounds like it means kink shit. And if Armand says nothing about himself, Aimee, or her father, then it’s probably kink shit.
“Perhaps you have to be that for yourself.”
Definitely kink shit. Which, okay. She didn’t need to know that about her dad’s boyfriend. Or her dad. Does that carry over?
“Please stop thinking about that.”
“I can think about what I want. Stop reading my mind, this is on you.”
Armand’s face betrays only a little humor. That’s still more humor than it ever betrays, though. He takes another long drag of the cigarette. Well, he’s not listening to Louis anymore. Weird relationship, at least with what Kate can gather.
“Does your ex husband still talk to you?”
“Me? No, he does not. He’s angry with me.”
Kate wonders, not even on purpose, if it’s deserved.
“I… suppose so. Your father would say it is. Louis would say it is. It is. I did something that… It was quite terrible. I should not have done so. But, as Daniel and Louis are close, they speak.” Armand takes a long drag of the cigarette, holding in the smoke before blowing it into the cool night air. “It’s an odd thing, Kate Molloy, to have your former lover and current lover be close friends.”
“Can’t relate.”
“Ah, yes. You abandoned romantic relationships after being careless and rude to two girlfriends in favor of your work.”
“Jesus Christ, dude. You’re rooting around in my hippocampus now? You wanna talk about my ruined relationships? Start with your ‘lover’.”
“I am aware of Daniel’s previous issues in romantic relationships and married life.”
“And raising kids.”
“And with his children, as you are so intent on remembering.”
“Yeah, well, I’m one of the children.” She’s got a duty to remember how shit Daniel was, just in case everyone else has forgotten. Just in case her brain decides to try to trick her into thinking her problems come from nowhere. “He doesn’t get to just leave behind being a shitty dad because he kills people now.”
“You have a rather crude view of vampirism.”
“Do you kill people?”
Armand pauses. He takes another drag of the cigarette. It’s answer enough that Kate doesn’t even need the small, “Well, yes,” he gives.
Kate’s almost jealous. She needs to be strict about it. She needs to remind herself that vampirism is killing people, eating people, watching all your loved ones die. She needs to remind herself that it’s a curse. Or else she worries she’s going to throw herself at Armand’s feet, begging.
“I wouldn’t give it to you.”
Kate glares at him. “Fuck off!”
Armand blinks. “Do you want me to go?”
Kate tosses the stub of her cigarette onto the ground and stomps it out with the heel of her Croc. she buries her face in her hands. “No, no. Stay. I don’t really have other friends.”
“You have Aimee. And Salim, and Alexander.”
“Aimee’s my sister, I can’t always be honest with Sal, and Lex lives in Michigan. So, I’m consigned to my dad’s five hundred year old boyfriend who kills and eats people and doesn’t particularly like humans. And who’s no good at gossip. At least Aimee, Sal, and Lex know how to gossip.”
“I can gossip,” Armand says primly.
“Sure you can. Do you talk to people who aren’t me, my dad, and people you’re killing?” Wow, Kate has really become rapidly desensitized to this eating people thing. She’s pretty sure it should have taken her longer to be alright with it.
“Your father’s editor has drawn hasty conclusions about him and I.”
“Everyone is drawing hasty conclusions about you guys.”
Kate had started her friendship with Armand assuming he was oblivious to what the implications were when he introduced himself as Daniel’s assistant or helper. She’d assumed he was trying to help him in the face of being accused of inappropriate relationships with much younger men.
Kate head realized rather quickly that Armand was doing no such thing. She’d realized that he actually found it very, very funny. He knew that he was making the situation so much worse by saying he was an assistant. He knew that it was clear he and Daniel were fucking and wanted to see how people reacted to adding more scandal to the mix.
Somewhere in his life, Kate’s father had become oblivious, or love really is blind, because Kate’s pretty sure he still thinks Armand is trying to help.
“I took your suggestion and said I was your father’s student.” Kate snorts. That had been her suggestion, because it was one hundred times worse, and no one was checking how many classes her father had taught. “She was oddly intrigued by the concept.”
Kate wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”
“I think Daniel is becoming aware.”
“Shame. It’s hilarious. I mean, it made me want to scream, but that’s my father. Did you know he’s getting cancelled on Twitter? Do you know what Twitter is? Do you know much about the internet?”
“I have learned. I have a Twitter account. I’m well aware of the drama surrounding Daniel.”
“Have you added to it?”
“Yes.”
Kate laughs, fully this time. She moves from leaning against the balcony to sitting in the chair right next to Armand. There’s only a small round table between them, unadorned minus an ashtray. Armand taps a bit of ash into it. “You should follow me.”
“I have already. I follow you, Aimee, your father, and Lestat. I leave comments on his posts.” Kate assumes this means he’s cyberbullying Lestat. Whoever Lestat is. “Louis’ lover.”
“Ah. The rebound.”
“No, I was the rebound for Lestat.”
“Seventy-seven year rebound?” Kate whistles through her teeth. “My dad’s only lasted four years and then he cheated on her for heroin.”
“You hold a lot of bitterness towards your father.”
“Okay, no shit. We’ve talked about this.” Kate takes out the cigarette pack from her pocket and pulls another out. “I thought our relationship wasn’t going to be defined by him.” She places the cigarette between his teeth and finishes her thought muffled. “That’s what you said, right?” The flame flares up and catches the end of the cigarette. She tucks it away.
“Alright, I concede. This isn’t about your father.”
On the surface, at least. She knows it is, inherently, about her father. Without his influence, they wouldn’t be here. Daniel brought them together. Daniel keeps Armand from just draining Kate when she’s not an interesting human anymore. Surely that’ll come soon. Armand will fuck off and she’ll stop waking up to him in her apartment.
Well. Her cat will be glad.
“Show me your arm,” Armand asks. She’s too surprised to complain or protest. She just turns her arm palm up and pulls the sleeve of her hoodie up. Armand’s sharp, white nails reach out, and the pads of his fingers press into a small light skinned spot in the middle of her forearm. “What is this?”
“Vitiligo,” Kate says. “I don’t have much of it. Focal vitiligo is what it’s called. Only on my arms. Usually it grows and spreads out, but it never happened to me. My Mom had it too. Not a lot either. Almost none on her face. On her lip, but no one noticed it because lips are lighter and she wore lipstick.” Almost unconsciously, Kate sets down her cigarette and presses her thumb to the middle of her bottom lip, right where Alice’s skin was lighter. Then it comes up and brushes her eyebrow. “And her eyebrow. It made it half-blonde. She hated it. I liked it. It reminded me that she wasn’t perfect. And other places. Mainly under her clothes or places she could cover with foundation. When she lost her hair, we found out there was a patch on the back of her head.” Kate chuckles to herself.
“A connection between you two.”
“My grandpa had it all over. It looked like a mask on his face. I don’t know how we missed having it all over.” She moves her hand over the spot on her exposed arm, swiping her thumb over it. “I considered getting a tattoo for her, but I’m never going to get a tattoo for a person.”
“Endlessly self sufficient, Kate?”
“More like I hate being disappointed. Can vampires get tattoos?”
“They fade very quickly.”
Kate picks her cigarette back up out of the ashtray. She takes another drag. “I was really in love with this girl once. Mary. It ended poorly, my fault. She had this thing about tattoos, a kink or something. Before I broke up with her, she begged me to buy a tattoo gun and put my name on her.”
“Did you?”
“Fuck no. I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”
Armand gazes out across rooftops. Below them, three drunk men are singing Sweet Caroline and shoving each other in the middle of the road. “I would have.”
“Yeah, well, anyone dating my dad now has got to be fucked up.” Kate’s brain catches up after she speaks. “Shit. Sorry, man.”
Armand’s mouth twitches in a half smile. “You are very much like him.”
“Unfortunately.”
“I love your father very much.”
“I would say your loss, but I’m not interested in having you kill me.”
“Your father would kill me in return.” Kate scoffs. Sure, he might say that. But her dad is head over heels with Armand. He wouldn’t be killing him for something as inconsequential as his daughter. “I had a hand in the death of my last lover’s child. I would not repeat that.”
“Jesus Christ. You killed Louis’ kid?”
“I could erase your mind and let this never be brought up again.”
“Uh, please don’t. I won’t make you talk about it if you don’t wanna, but c’mon. Is that… is that who you compared me to? The one you said I was like?”
Armand lets a beat wait. Kate anticipates missing a chunk of this night tomorrow. But then Armand is nodding slightly. “Her name was Claudia.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I am not the one to tell her story. It should be her. Or you could read Daniel’s book.”
Kate sighs, letting her head fall back. “So, I fucked Mary over real bad, you know? I didn’t do any of what she cared about, fucked another girl when Mary was solo in a concert, and then cared more about my college applications. Worst thing I did was blame her during the breakup. Now, that’s not killing someone, but I still feel guilty as hell. I mean, horrid shit, Dad level shit. So I was talking to my therapist, and she told me that I needed to talk about Mary. Not what I did, about Mary herself. I don’t know why. Made me feel more like shit in the moment. But after that session, I stopped blaming myself to punish myself and started processing that I needed to make amends or whatever.”
“You’re telling me to talk about Claudia. But I did not love her.”
“Well, I’m not reading the damn book, and I’m not hunting down your ex-husband. And she’s dead. Just the basics. You can’t compare me to someone and then not tell me anything about them. I still need to figure out if it’s an insult or compliment.”
“She was… well, she was Louis’ daughter. He found her when she was fourteen, dying in a fire that Louis blamed himself for. He begged Lestat to change her.”
“And Lestat is Louis’ husband at the time, you were the rebound, they’re back together?”
“Yes,” Armand confirms through gritted teeth.
“Got it.”
Armand takes a steadying drag of his cigarette. “She was happy, I believe. There’s plenty of evidence to it in her first four years, spread out in her diaries. When you don’t know what growing up requires, it may be easy to miss that it isn’t happening. Until she turned eighteen and came to the realization that she was still stuck as a child when her mind grew.”
“Sounds horrible.”
“It was. She became restless. She befriended a human boy and fell in love with him.”
“Did he think she was a child?”
“At first. She dispelled him of the notion.”
“Did they…” Kate trails off. The thought disgusts her, the idea of a child’s body. But it was held by an adult. But still. “Did he?”
“They began.” Armand looks like each word hurts to speak. “But being a vampire makes lust difficult. It gets mixed with the thirst for blood. Loving another vampire makes this rather easy, after all, we can bleed as much as we want. However, it’s much more complicated with a mortal. Louis worked around it by biting himself, but Claudia was young and unaware. She drained the boy before they could even reach a moment of intercourse.”
“Jesus.”
“He was dead. He had to be burned. Lestat did the honor, forcing Claudia to watch.”
“Jesus.”
“Her prose is beautiful. I believe it made your father very uncomfortable. He sympathized deeply with Claudia. As I said, lacking a reference picture, your young face was what he pictured.”
“Making up for his mistakes by feeling bad for another little girl in my place. Figures.”
“It was guilt, Kate.”
“It was years too late, Armand.” Kate scoffs. She almost doesn’t want to hear more. But she has to. She has to give this girl a place she clearly isn’t getting. She wants to let Claudia hang in the air between them, to give whatever ghost this girl has a chance to shine. “Louis let this happen?”
“I don’t think there’s a good father anywhere in this story.”
“You’re including my dad, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“You are full of bitterness at what your father has done. So was she. She truly was Lestat’s daughter, but she was so angry at his doing. She pretended she wouldn’t eat, then snuck out and eulogized the dying words of all her prey.”
“Damn. Cold. Do you remember any?”
“Plenty. I have favorites. One of them begged her to save his dog. Another thanked her. I find that one confusing. But I think of her favorite, the first thing anyone said when she killed them. You aren’t a girl, you’re a devil. She liked that.”
Kate thinks of the boy she fought with because he called her a dyke. She remembers him telling her she wasn’t a girl for the crime of being loud, Black, and lesbian. She wonders what it’s like to embrace that. “What did she do?”
“She left. She got caught and Lestat said she was a mistake, so she left them.”
“What about Louis?”
“Do you think your mom is innocent?”
No. There’s still plenty of bitterness left over for Alice. Miles better than Daniel, but Kate still has her qualms with her mother. And she’s sure that if Alice had never left Daniel, the bitterness would grow.
“See?” Armand can’t meet Kate’s eye. She worries about where they’re approaching in the story. When do they reach it? When does he confess his crimes into the night? What will happen then? Will she forgive him like her father, turning her back on a Black girl like her? Or will she scorn him for it, ruining one of her only friendships and possibly what remains of her relationship with Daniel?
“Am I allowed to wish that she got away and found people for her?”
“You’re always allowed to hope,” Armand says, and he sounds uncannily similar to her father. “But this is the past.”
“And the past is set in stone. Do you come in soon?”
“No. She came back home–”
“Hey, hey, no. Something happened.” Armand gives her a look. Like she’s stupid and won’t miss a piece of a story being gone. “She wouldn’t have gone home so easily.” She can’t picture herself running to her father, and he did so much less. “What made her?”
“It’s a hard story.”
“Dude, I’m making you tell me the life story of someone you murdered. This is all a hard story. Did, I don’t know, vampire hunters get her?”
“No, another vampire. He…” Armand looks down at the flame eating through his cigarette. “He captured her. Kept her under the floorboards and raped her when he saw fit.”
“Fuck,” Kate breathes.
“When she got free, she went home. Louis and Lestat fought, and he was badly injured.” Kate, who’s been solidly trying not to look at Armand, looks at him. He looks hurt at the thought of Louis injured by Lestat. He must have loved him. Despite whatever Armand had done, he must have loved Louis. “I did.”
Kate doesn’t even tell him to stop looking at her thoughts.
“He took Lestat back, of course. Claudia hated it, but she got to set the rules. Sister instead of daughter. Lestat had to leave his lover – he didn’t. They lived together for a while, half peacefully.”
“What did they do to her?”
“She made to leave. Lestat stopped her. She made her decision after that. She was going to kill him.”
Kate hums. She drops her cigarette, burnt down to the filter, into the ashtray. “Deserved, I think. Obviously it doesn’t take, but he deserves it.”
“It did not take. They nearly succeeded, but Louis had a moment of weakness in love.”
“Bet you wish he had one of those for you too, hmm?” Kate says, because she has decided to say fuck it and poke at Armand. She should be allowed to poke at her friends. And he is her friend, at least until the end of this conversation.
“Yes.”
“Damn. Wasn’t really expecting you to admit it. I sort of expected another dodgy answer. Okay, lemme guess. Louis and Claudia fled and met you.”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“First, they spent some time in Romania and neighboring countries, the war ending as they did. They looked for other vampires, which Claudia was very passionate about. She wanted to find vampires that… well, she didn’t really like Louis at that point, didn’t like Lestat, nor liked her captor.”
“Did they? I mean, you, obviously. But not-you vampires?”
“One in Romania. She killed herself, upset Claudia. Louis took her to Paris after with the promise of them having a good life together. Him and her is how he relayed it. Just the two of them.”
Kate thinks about her father saying he’ll pick her up from school next time and that she’s the most important thing. “Let me guess, she fell for it?”
The way Armand looks at Kate tells her that he knows she would too. And she would too, if Daniel sat her down and told her it was just them now. That he would care about her now. That she came first. Him and her. Her and him.
She would have taken it too if Daniel had ever pretended she was the priority. Held fast to it and swallowed it until he proved her wrong. And then been hurt twice over.
She pushes back her own thoughts and feelings, pretends that she doesn’t know Armand was just sifting through them like a curious child. “That’s where you met him?”
“He did not come and meet our coven, which was terrible etiquette–”
“So you have a type. Skip the you and your ex stuff, I really don’t care.”
Armand chuckles, without humor. “Time passed, they lied about who they were, Louis and I began a romance, and Claudia joined the coven.”
“Cool, cool. Tell me about her and the coven.”
“She wanted a vampire community. Louis found the blood and murder offputting. He only ate humans for Claudia. She felt she didn’t get to know everything. So, we accepted her into the Théâtre des Vampires. She enjoyed getting to be a killer without judgement from her father.”
“Jesus.”
“You have to remember, we are killers. We can’t stop it. To her, Louis’ disgust felt like a suppression of her nature.”
“No, yeah, I get it. I mean, I’m no killer, but my dad takes down politicians for a living.”
“Your father has always been proud of your career.”
“Don’t lie to me, continue the story. Theatre? What? Hamlet but vampires every night?”
“Small shows, what you’d call arthouse nonsense, full of dark humor. We pretended to be vampires and the mortals ate it up.” Sometimes, Armand says phrases, and Kate doesn’t think they’re his. She thinks someone else said them and he picked them up. “The final act, we’d release a human onto stage and eat them. The audience, of course, believed it was all a show. And who was going to miss some German tourist? They all hated Germans.”
Kate swallows back her disgust. She’s probably heard worse in her time in politics. What was it, visiting a prison and learning each of the horrors right before having her milquetoast prison reform bills shot down? Standing in front of a cop with skin much paler than hers and hearing him be pardoned for shooting a Black kid thirty years her junior? Trying to get that one board member fired for raping his assistant and failing? And those are the things she’s been vocal about. How much has she let slide?
“The world is evil, Kate. We aren’t good, there’s no denying it, your father would make me regret it. But there is plenty of evil much worse than us. Nazis had just left Paris. Were a few murders so terrible?”
She’s pretty sure few is being generous. She’s also pretty sure it’s quite bad, actually.
“Have your convictions,” Armand sighs. She realizes they’re chain smoking through a packet of cigarettes. She’s going to die of lung cancer soon at this rate. She can’t bring herself to care. Armand looks at her with sympathy. She hates that. He doesn’t say it, she doesn’t know if it’s him or the fabrications of her own brain, but she swears she hears that accent saying, ever her father’s daughter.
“Was Claudia in a show?” she asks, more to distract herself.
“It was called My Baby Loves Windows.”
“Crazy question, but did she play the baby?” Kate deadpans.
“Yes.”
“You know, I’m sympathizing more and more with her, and I fully support her decision to kill Lestat. I think she should do you next.”
“I did not treat her well as the coven’s maître. I was losing my grip on the coven, and to enforce that I had power, I took it out on her. She didn’t enjoy playing the child, took to the stage with no enthusiasm, no passion. I made her wear the dress every day.”
“Back up. They called you master?”
“It’s typical for covens–”
“Maître? Was it a sex thing?”
“No,” Armand says in the way that conveys that it wasn’t a sex thing for the coven but was totally a sex thing in other places.
Jesus, does her dad call him maître? Or vice versa? Which is worse?
“It doesn’t enter the bedroom with me and your father.”
“I don’t need you getting into my head, asshole. Tell me she got some sort of happiness while this was going on, or I’m going to invent time travel and go back in time to protect her.”
“I–”
“It’s an elaborate figure of speech,” Kate clarifies, even though she doesn’t think it’s a common one at all.
“She did find happiness. Temporarily. Unfortunately, it also set into motion some of the events leading to her death. She met a dressmaker, Madeleine. She and Madeleine started to talk, Madeleine making her a dress, much better than the babydoll one we’d forced onto her.”
“She was gay?”
“She never defined herself, but she and Madeleine were in romantic love, yes.”
“This just gets worse. Is Madeleine around? Can I talk to her about Claudia?” The silence is suspicious. “Did you also kill Madeleine?”
“She knew–”
“Oh, god.”
“Her choice–”
“Nope. Don’t wanna hear it.”
Armand's back stiffens. Then, he snaps, “I don’t know why you want to hear any of this. Your father’s book… or, if you truly wanted, he could summon Louis for you. Anyone. Why– why must I repeat my mistakes for the ears of a girl who can never truly understand? For your acceptance? For some idea of repentance, of penance, of atonement I can never reach? The things I have done are too evil and I am not the Christian you are used to.”
Kate stares at him. And then she starts with the last thing he said. “This is really not a religious thing. Like yeah, amends, I guess, and I’m in AA, but it’s not about that. It’s not even really about you. It’s about that fact that when I keep being compared to a Black girl who died, I want to know whether it’s an insult or a compliment. Especially when my dad’s boyfriend killed her out of some spite thing about his partners’ children, you know? Yeah, I could read the book. But primary sources are important. And I don’t wanna meet Louis.”
“I have done terrible things.”
“I know.”
“Things your father hasn’t forgiven me for. Things Louis could never forgive me for, even for seventy years.”
“Okay.”
“To tell you, someone with the limited view on morals only humans have–”
“I just want to know about her. I want to hear about her. You can lie. I know you like to lie, so you can lie. You can tell me how you were forced, or knew nothing, or they threatened you. You can blame whoever you want. I just want to give Claudia a send off.”
“You think she didn’t get one?”
“I think she deserves someone to mourn her.”
“Plenty of people who have read the book mourn her, why do you have to?”
“I know she’s real. I know she’s like me. And I am sitting with a man who knew her, and all I want to know is a quarter of the truth.”
“I orchestrated her trial!” Armand snaps. “It’s in the book. I timed down how to make her suffer onstage, in front of an audience that thought it was a sham. I brought her abuser back, the love of my companion’s life and let him take the blame to protect myself. I let my coven kill her and Louis, and I wasn’t even the one to save Louis.” His jaw tenses. He doesn’t look at Kate. His eyes stay fixed on the moon. His cigarette burns down to his fingertips.
“You put her on trial?”
Armand stands, moving to lean on the railing, back to her like that makes him more sympathetic and vulnerable. “For the murder of Lestat and his lover. Lestat told his story, almost all lies, and I let him. I helped him. The coven had written the script, but I was too afraid of losing Louis and the coven, so I directed her demise and what was supposed to be his, because it was easier to lose him this way. Lestat lied about them being violent and dangerous, and the audience cheered as Claudia died, Madeleine in her arms.”
Kate’s body moves before she even registers it. She’s always been violent, always reacting with actions instead of words. It took high school and almost ruining her chances at a career to work her way out of that. But there’s a roaring flash. Heat boiling in her stomach and forcing bile up her throat. Her hands shake. He can’t think.
She grabs Armand’s skinny shoulders and pushes him over the railing.
It’s three in the morning, no one’s around. The CCTV in this area is bad, always has been, she chose it that way to protect her addictions. The outside security cameras don’t even work. No one’s going to notice a body dropping from the sky. Not that it was really premeditated.
There’s a crack against the ground. Kate looks over the balcony at Armand splayed on the pavement. Carefully, she extinguishes her cigarette. She leaves the balcony, grabs her keys, leaves the apartment. She gets in the elevator and watches the numbers go down till she’s on the ground floor.
“Hey, Kate,” the night guard says, a young man who’s overeager. “There was a big thump outside, I was about to go check–”
“Don’t worry,” Kate says, “I accidentally dropped something off my balcony.” It’s the kind of casual cruelty she managed to get from her dad. “Thanks for telling me though, it would really suck if I walked out to a body.”
He chuckles awkwardly. “Okay, well, tell me if you need help getting it back up there.”
“Nah, I’m gonna take it to my car. Thanks, though.”
Kate slips out the doors, walking a little to the left till she comes on Armand. He’s moved now, forcing himself onto his back instead of his stomach. Kate prods at his ribcage with the toe of her Crocs. He winces. Broken, probably. She wonders how long vampires take to heal.
“Not so quickly as you’d think.”
“Well, that was part of my point.” Kate studies him. She finds herself feeling a bit of pity at those large brown eyes. His head seems fine, other than a small trickle of blood leaking from his nose and forehead. “Did you let me do that? I know you could have stopped me if you wanted.”
“I wasn’t aware of your intentions until you were pushing me. Your mind was blank.”
“Can you fly?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Your anger was deserved.”
“So you let me break your ribs?” Armand shrugs. “Cool, so you’re telling Dad that when you tell him how you got hurt. Don’t go blaming me for all of it.” Kate extends a hand. Armand looks at it doubtfully.
“Where are you going to have me go?”
“Uh, my apartment? I’m not leaving you on the pavement injured. I pushed you from a seventh floor balcony. We’re not even, but we’re even enough for tonight. You can crash at my place, or get home however you get here quickly.”
“Do you have plans to push me off something again?”
“Next time I might just shoot you, except I helped tighten gun laws, so maybe not.”
“I need to call Daniel.”
“Can you come in first? That annoying night guard who’s like twelve is going to get worried if I’m out here for too long.” Kate wriggles her fingers. Armand seizes her hand and lets her help him to his feet. He stands in front of her, orange eyes fixed on her plain brown ones.
“I regret it.”
“For her, or for Louis and my dad?” Armand blinks owlishly. “Okay, come in, we’ve got to call Dad.”
“I may need a hand.”
Armand is taller than Kate, but she’s not too short, so she lets him loop an arm around her shoulders. She helps steady him as they head into her building. The night guard stares at them as she heads to the elevator.
“He’s fine. He’s drunk. He got in a fight.”
“Yeah, okay.” The night guard, who she cannot remember the name of for the life of her, pauses awkwardly. “Aren’t you a… a, I mean, a–”
“Lesbian? Yeah. He’s not mine. He’s my dad’s boyfriend.” The elevator doors open, and Kate hauls Armand inside before she has to talk to the guard any more. She hits the door close button and then releases Armand to lean against the wall.
The numbers move on the little display. Armand stares at them.
“Does she have a grave?” Kate asks after a beat of silence.
“No.”
“Oh.” Foolishly, she had wanted to leave flowers. “Are you going to sleep on the couch?”
“I don’t need as much sleep as you.”
“Clearly, because this has completely screwed me for tomorrow. You owe me a coffee. Two coffees. But you should, because you need to recover from your fall.”
The elevator doors open. The walk to her apartment is short, and Kate is pulling out her phone and kicking her Crocs off before the door’s even fully closed. She locks it as the phone rings. The screen reads Daniel Molloy, because she’d changed it out of spite years ago and never bothered to change it back.
Daniel answers the phone with: “Is someone dead?”
“Jesus, no.” Kate helps Armand sit on the couch before flipping the phone call to speaker. “I wouldn’t be calling you if someone died. I’d be calling the cops.”
“You don’t like cops.”
“I also don’t like death? There are situations in which it’s completely unfortunately necessary. Better me, public figure, than someone else. Also, we’re getting sidetracked.”
“Yeah, why are you calling? It’s what, four a.m. for you? Is Armand keeping you up?”
“You know he’s been visiting?”
“Yeah, he likes making friends and then when I’m busy he can’t stand to be neglected. He’s listening in, you know.”
“Yeah, you’re on speaker.” Do her and her dad really say yeah this much? “So, here’s the thing. I pushed your boytoy off a balcony.”
“What?”
“Pretty self explanatory.”
“He let you do that?”
“Okay, good, I wasn’t looking forwards to the lecture. I’m glad you’ve realized I couldn’t have done that without him giving half permission. Someone didn’t have–” she targets this at Armand with a glare “to hit the ground.”
“He hit the ground?”
“Dad, you’re better than this. Just journalistically. Take the information in. I pushed Armand off a seventh story balcony, he let me, and he hit the ground. I think some of his ribs are broken? Obviously I can’t take him to a doctor, since he’s dead.”
“What did he do?”
Before Kate can answer, Armand cuts in. “She insisted I tell her about Claudia. For the obvious reasons, the story made her upset.”
“So you pushed him off a balcony?” Daniel’s tinny voice comes loudly through the phone speaker.
“He’s immortal!” Kate protests. “He can survive it! He’s fine! He’s on the couch on his iPad– Armand, stop watching that damn video essay YouTuber.” Armand swipes off the app. When Kate turns away, she hears him pull it back up.
“No, no, it was deserved. I can’t say I wasn’t any angrier about how Claudia was treated.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not psychoanalyze your grief and pity for her. I’ve been compared to her enough. Couple years too late. Can you pick your boytoy up tomorrow night? I’ve got too much work to be awake at nights too.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there by tomorrow night.”
“Cool, thanks.” Kate goes to hang up the phone before Daniel says:
“Katie, wait.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m proud of you.”
Kate hangs up on him. She holds the phone in her hand, staring at the wall. She knows Armand is behind her, orange eyes boring into her skull. She knows he’s listening in to her every thought. But she’s only human. And humans can’t turn off hurt or their brains.
The first time Daniel has ever told her he’s proud of her. The first time her dad has ever told her he’s proud of her. And it’s not about her career, or her writing, or the fact that she’s fought past everything he’s given her. It’s about the fact she pushed his damn boyfriend off a balcony.
“That’s not what it’s about,” Armand says. “It’s about you standing up for yourself.”
“Shut the hell up. You can’t even read his mind. Go to sleep.” Kate switches off the light and goes to her room. She kicks her Crocs off and flops onto her bed, disturbing Louis. He meows indignantly. If she’s lucky, she can grab two hours of sleep.
But when is Kate lucky?
The next morning, she gets ready to leave. Armand lazes on her couch. “Kate,” he calls to her before she heads to the door. She pauses, the most attention she’ll give him. “If I could take it back… I would. If I could give you some sort of satisfactory explanation, I would. If I could defend myself, I would. But you know I can’t, and I’m giving you the truth.”
“Are you?”
“As much as I can.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been lied to enough.”
Kate scoffs, refuses to believe him, and heads to work. She leaves him laying on the couch.