The Misfits of Magic

It's a Scorcher - Part 2

The teenaged vampire sitting across from Gale sat hunched in the chaise lounge chair, her entire body pressed against the back cushion like an amorous dog, if amorous dogs liked to press against seat cushions. Her knees were high against her cheekbones, with only the top of her nose and eyes skulking from behind the gangly protuberances. A vampire Kilroy, her despondent eyes stared at nothing in general, yet somehow found it all lacking and unworthy of her attention.

He suppressed a sigh; this was his first real client and he couldn't afford pickiness. Ever since he had opened the Supernatural Psychology Agency, or S.P.A., he struggled to find clients. There wasn't much demand for a human psychologist specializing in treatment of supernaturals. As far as he knew, he was the first. And only. Ever since the Reemergence, the humans had stayed on their side of the Border and the supernaturals had stayed on theirs. Mostly. Except for hungry vampires.

Gale took a moment to look at his client. She appeared seventeen, not seventy-two. Vampires aged only one year for every fifty, so they kept their youth a little longer than the average human. If the human was cryogenically frozen or, you know, not human.

Her hair was as dark as the insides of his eyelids, a deceptive darkness that didn't have the decency to have an edge so it was hard to know where her hair ended. Her cheeks, what little peeked above her knees were flushed and red, a sure sign that she had fed just before coming to Gale's clinic. Even so, he had his spray bottle of holy water in his lap. At least he thought it was the holy water. He kept his cat spritzer on the same shelf. Either way, if the vampire jumped up on the countertops, he had a weapon to shoo her off. If she wanted to eat him, he had only a fifty percent chance of warding her off.

"So, ah, Cynthia," he started. "Do you know why your parents asked you to come here tonight?"

"Bmch mnfh hthm mph."

"You're talking into your knees," said Gale.

Cynthia sighed, an elaborate teenaged gesture that expressed her utter contempt and aggravation that Gale hadn't understood her and that she needed to repeat herself. She lowered her knees, "Because," she repeated as she managed to imply an eye roll without actually doing it, "they hate me."

"I met with them last night," said Gale. "They expressed a lot of concern. They, ah, care deeply for you."

"Yeah, right."

"You think they, ah, hate you?"

"Why do you do that?" asked Cynthia.

"Do what?"

"Say 'ah' all the time when you speak?"

"Well, ah, I don't know," said Gale, all the sudden unable to not say it. "I suppose it's, ah, what I do when I'm gathering my thoughts."

"Makes me want to bite you. It's annoying."

Gale was unsure how to respond to that, so he said nothing. Cynthia stood and walked around the tiny office, looking at everything on the walls, the shelves, and in the two small bins he kept games in. Gale remained silent as she did so, watching. Her steps were fluid, unlike his own lumbering gait. She didn't walk so much as will the floor to slide underneath her. Her curiosity of human knickknacks was obvious.

She stopped in front of a picture of Gale on the day he had graduated college. In it, he was wearing the obligatory cap and gown, his parents were on each side, with two of his classmates photo bombing the picture in the background. Gale noticed a slight discoloration on the skin of her arms as she picked up the picture. That discoloration would have been severe scarring in a human, and it was the reason she was here tonight.

The picture she held was an opening for discussion. Of all the items in his office, that was the one she had picked up. Gale had no way of knowing this but an ancient form of sympathetic magic, left over from the days when druids bled virgins to help flowers grow, dictated which object was first touched in a room by a stranger. Even had he known, there was nothing to be done for it; the druids were all dead, and as druidic magics go this was one of the more benign.