How Not to Vampire - Season 1

13. Everything You Know is a Lie

Pro-tip for Vampires #1: Read the goddamn manual. You'll thank me later.

The little girl with the unruly hair was driving me crazy. She was all the way across the diner at a booth with her family and had made several failed attempts to climb over the back of the booth, while her besieged father absent-mindedly reached to haul her down. The fact that he was attempting to talk to the waitress while the girl's little brother repeatedly stabbed the menu and yelled "and fries" at every chance, was a testament to the man's patience. It served only to irritate the shit out me at the pure normal-ness of the scene. It was so fucking normal, the kind of normal that I was no longer part of, because hello? Vampire?

"Don't you know it's rude to stare?" Claude asked as he placed the final jam packet in his customary wall of jam.

"I'm not staring," I rebutted, "I'm using my mental powers to make that little girl's head explode."

Claude threw a packet of jam at me, and I glared at him instead.

"So, I guess we can rule out mental powers?" he asked, finger hovering over the screen of his phone. He had created an actual spreadsheet of vampire powers organized by psychic, physical, and sexual. When had he even had time to do all of that?

"You don't know that," I grumbled and turned to glower at Claude, fingers to my temples.

There was an awkward silence where absolutely anything failed to happen.

"What are you doing now?"

"Trying to set you on fire. With my brain!" I intoned in what I thought was a pretty good mystic-sounding voice, worthy of the seediest of fortune-tellers with neon signs in their windows and their own YouTube channels.

"So, no compulsion, no pyrokinesis, no telekinesis--"

My hand flicked out and destroyed the wall of jam bricks. I used my hands to mimic an explosion, complete with sound effects.

"Fwoosh! Ka-boom!"

"Big no to telekinesis," Claude said drily. "I swear, you've got to be the worst vampire I've ever met."

"I'm the only vampire you've ever met."

"You and Louise."

"Point taken."

Our waiter swooped in to deposit two cups and a pot of coffee onto the table and was gone before I could properly register his presence. I poured a cup while Claude fiddled around with something on the seat next to him.

The little girl bouncing on the thick red leather seats of the booth caught my attention, and I turned my full glare back on her. My mom would have murdered me if I had even thought about acting that way in a restaurant when I was a kid, and this little girl had the nerve to be this awake so late in the evening.

I turned back to Claude. "I should really call Mom--"

Claude chose that moment to shove a submarine-sandwich-sized ornate gold crucifix into my face. From up close, the cross looked like it had cost a fortune, and it was pretty nice as crosses go. The crucified Jesus was a masterclass of detail, the pain and anguish on his face designed to make the viewer as guilty as possible, because, hey: this is what you did to me you motherfuckers! It looked well-used, the tarnish only showing in certain areas, the rest of the surface polished probably from continual rubbing and handling.

"Did you steal that from a church?" I asked Claude as I dropped the spoon onto the table. I tentatively poked at the crucifix as if it might bite.

Claude didn't even bother to look guilty. "I was in a rush, okay? I had to improvise. Now stop admiring the damn thing and ignite, or turn to dust, or at least flinch. Come on. Flinch? For me?" Claude flourished the crucifix again. "Aha!"