Vampire Blood

Past Crimes

"What happened to your arm?" Chloe asked when the elevator's door closed.

"Bianco broke some glass."

"Did he break it into your arm?" This time it was Hilal who asked, I ignored him.

"Hey, earlier you implied that Lewis might have a target on his back, why would you think that?"

Truth be told, I didn't understand why a highschool teacher without a single penny to his name would be a target of some terrorist hate crime attack, and I know he was broke because I saw his savings books by accident.

Hilal didn't respond, he and Chloe looked at each other before he decided to speak.

"How well do you know him?" I was taken aback by the question, I have only known him for like a month give or take but he seemed harmless enough. Definitely didn't look like someone who would be part of some crime organization, not when he cared so much about grubby teenagers.

"He's a teacher."

"Not a lot I see." He said, leaning back into the elevator wall.

"He changed his name a few years after finishing college." Chloe chimed in. "We had some trouble finding information about him because of that."

"He told me he caused some trouble in highschool and his family kicked him out." I shook it off as if that was a valid reason.

"Some trouble?" Hilal laughed sarcastically.

"He pushed a kid into a pool from a third story window and almost killed him, did he tell you that too?"

"Let me ask you again, how well do you know him? Do you even know his real name?"

I thanked God when the doors opened because I didn't have an answer to those questions and Hilal's face started to look really punchable. We walked the corridors all the way to Milo's room, the kid was there on the bed eating lime jello, with a stinky smile on his face, like any other kid. Bianco was standing next a sitting Agatha and they were both watching in disbelief as Milo took another spoon full of jello into his mouth.

"Where's the nurse? I wanna talk to her first."

Bianco and I made eye contact, he made a sign that, over the years, I learned to recognize as 'come and stay'. It annoyed the living crap out of me the first few times he did it because it felt like he was teaching some new trick to a dog and the dog in question was me. It annoyed me slightly less when I realized it was actual sign language and not just something he made up. The time I asked him about it was when I learned his daughter was deaf, I asked him to teach me more words after that.

"I don't know where she is now." I replied, walking to the security guard in front of Milo's room. "Sophia, they want to speak with her." He glanced between me and the two assholes behind me, uncertain of what to do.

"You can leave Speedy here, he's as good as any other guard dog." Chloe said, to alleviate the man's doubt before leaving.

And as a speaker of true gender equality I felt tempted to punch her as hard as I would punch Hilal for ever letting that nickname purposely slip in front of her, but they were already too far away.

"Miller, come here." Bianco pulled me into the room and I felt some pieces of glass cracking under my shoes when I stepped through the shattered glass on the floor. "Did you do what I told you?"

"Yeah, Bianco, what the fuck happened?"

"I... I don't know yet." Seeing his default stoic expression for emergency cases morph into one of uncertainty sent a special kind of chills that I have only felt once in my life, when I was ten and witnessed my mother overdose for the first time. "What I do know is that that book is more dangerous than a nuclear weapon and she said you gave it to her."