The Witch's Heart [The Little Vampire]

chapter 4

Elspeth strokes her hand with her fingertips where Gregory had touched it. It's chilled where Gregory's skin had met her own.

She looks over to the young vampire snoozing in her desk chair, his trench coat and yellow and black vest slung over the back of it, and feels sorrow clench in her stomach for him. As if he had felt her eyes on him, Gregory slowly opens his eyes.

"Gregory?"

"Hm?" He makes a noise to acknowledge her but closes his eyes again.

"What happens to you if your family gets the amulet?" Elspeth asks. "Are you going to stay a vampire?"

"I don't know. The entire clan will become humans, if I stay it'll be a lonely existence. It would be nice to be a human again, I suppose." He says, a thoughtful lilt to his voice.

"Do you become human right away? How will you reenter society if your identities are from so long ago?"

Gregory opens his eyes again, "curious today, are we not?"

Elspeth rolls her eyes, "so what happens?"

"All of these are important questions that I wish I knew the answers to." Gregory replies. "If I were to be honest, that is the most frightening part, not knowing."

Elspeth nods, "The oldest and strongest kind of fear is-"

"Fear of the unknown." Gregory finishes for her, a small smile playing at his lips. "H.P. Lovecraft."

"You know Lovecraft?" Elpeth asks, surprised. She'd assumed that, being a vampire for probably more than 300 years, he would've been in hiding and wouldn't know much literature from after he was turned.

"My family was aristocratic when we were humans, so i was a scholar with a large thirst for knowledge back then. After our family was turned, that did not change. In times when I could not handle being with my family, I would hide in libraries." Gregory explains. "I discovered Lovecraft after someone left a collection of his works out at night."

Elspeth goes over to her bookshelf and pulls an H.P. Lovecraft collection book out, "I have all of them. Which one is your favorite?"

Gregory walks over to her. He stands so close that she can feel the fabric of his grey shirt brushing against her fingers as she grips the book between them. Her heart speeds up and Elspeth is sure Gregory can hear it with his vampire hearing. If he does hear it, he shows no sign of it.

He looks down at the book in her hands, "The Alchemist." His eyes meet Elspeth's as he slips it out of her grip slowly, his fingers brushing against hers. Immediately, her now free hand clutches at the tiger eye around her neck, needing it to clear her head.

"That's my favorite, too." She finally says when she calms.

"I'm not surprised," Gregory says as he opens the book. He looks at her over the rim of the book, a playful glint in his eyes, "little witch."

"Hey!" Elspeth grabs a pillow off the end of her bed and throws it at him. "I'm not that little!" But she laughs anyway.