Chapter 5

A few weeks later, Jo was stretched out on the couch, hands behind her head as though she was tanning at the beach. Charlie came from down the hall, wrapping a towel around his damp hair.

“One thousand forty-two,” Jo mumbled.

“What?” Charlie opened the fridge and grabbed two tumblers. He sat beside Jo in his overpriced massage chair and placed one of the tumblers on the ground beside her.

“You were in the shower for one thousand forty-two seconds, and you kinda sound like a male Aretha Franklin.”

“Thanks?” He sipped his drink then nudged Jo’s cup closer to the couch. “Come on, just have a drink.”

Jo sighed. “No, thanks.”

Charlie grumbled, holding his cup out. “Come on, just one sip. That’s all I ask.”

Jo slowly turned her head to the side to look at him. “No, I’m good.”

This was where having a supernatural sibling really sucked. If Jo was his human sibling and she was depressed, she’d still have to get up to pee and eat. If she didn’t, Charlie could take her to a mental health facility for help. But in a family full of vampires, eating and using the restroom wasn’t necessary. She could stay in the same position for years, decaying and turning into a soul-filled statue. It would only take a drop of blood to start up her system again.

Charlie put the cup beside her nose to give her a good whiff. “Come on, Jo. You know you want it.”

Jo slapped the cup to the floor, making it clash and spill all over Charlie’s pants.

He jumped to his feet and stared at his blood-stained khakis. “Dang it, Jo. These are brand new. Do you know how hard it is to get blood stains out?”

“Soap and cold water.”

“What?” He sat on the coffee table and reached for the bottom of her jeans, rolling them up enough to show her gray, lifeless shins. “Do you realize what you’re doing to yourself? You’re turning into a freaking living corpse.”

She chuckled. “I can’t be a living anything if I’m not alive.”

It was worse than he thought. Jo had never admitted she was dead. She hadn’t been able to since she was turned, because admitting she was dead meant admitting she would never die, and that meant never seeing the ones she loved again.

“So, what’s your plan? Let your body desiccate and leave me to binge-watch TV on my own?”

Jo placed a hand on her stomach. “Well, I figured if I do desiccate, when they come to torture us, I’ll be too far gone to care.” She chuckled. “They will have no idea what to do with me.”

She was already too far gone. He had to do what was necessary. He grabbed Jo’s tumbler, took off the top, grabbed her chin, pulled it down, and poured the blood into her mouth.

She shot up and coughed until the blood wasn’t caught in her throat anymore. Then she grabbed Charlie’s shirt and threw him halfway across the room.

“You idiot!” she screamed. “You could’ve killed me.”

Charlie smiled as he got to his feet. “Good, you’re back.” He felt a small twinge in his back as he straightened his spine. He reached around and pulled a long, thin sheet of glass out of his skin. “Dang it, Jo. You broke my favorite mirror.” He shoved the shard into her leg.

“Ow.” She pulled the piece out and examined it. She couldn’t see her reflection. “Is this one of those old mirrors made with silver backing?”

Charlie dragged his trash can across the room and put the larger pieces into it. “Yeah.”

“Why would you have a mirror you can’t see your reflection in?”

“Because girls find it hot.” He winked at Jo, who threw her head back.

“I can’t believe you out yourself to high school girls so they’ll sleep with you.”

Charlie swept the rest of the glass bits into his hand and threw them in the trash before plopping back into his massage chair. “I’m not outing myself, which means something completely different nowadays, by the way. No one believes high school girls when they say they had sex with a vampire.”

Jo tried to ignore her brother’s ideocracy by grabbing the towel from his head and wiping the blood off her shirt.

Charlie pulled at the lever on the side of his chair, making the leg stand splay out. “I cleared any online data of our connection with Wayne, so even if people come looking for us, he should be safe. If you want, we can bring him here, hire a live-in nurse to take care of his medical needs. Just say the word. You know I have plenty of room.”

Jo gave him a sad smile. “Thanks, but I don’t know if transporting him is safe. He’s hooked up to like five different machines and besides, he really likes his nurses.”

Charlie grinned. “Does he still have that young, hot red-headed nurse that checks on him like twenty times a day?”

Jo threw her towel at him. “I’m pretty sure she only does that on days that you're there.”

Charlie leaned back. “Well, then maybe I should visit more often.”

“You’re disgusting.” Jo kicked her feet onto the coffee table and leaned back, taking a sip of blood. “Why do you have so many rooms anyway? Isn’t four bedrooms a lot for a young bachelor?”

Charlie glanced up at the loft. “Well, one’s for me, obviously, and I figured I’d have one for you, so you could stay whenever you wanted…”

Jo waved her hand in dismissal. “That still leaves two empty bedrooms.”

Charlie averted his eyes.

She leaned forward. “Come on. We don’t lie to each other.”

Charlie stood and took the towel to the sink, letting the cold water wash the bright red blood from the white fabric. “I mean…there was this girl.”

Jo followed, grabbing a bag of chips from the cabinet beside him. “A girl?”

He turned off the water and threw the towel in the sink. “Yes, a girl, but it was a long time ago and I totally screwed it up, so it doesn’t matter.” He dried his hands on a paper towel and closed his eyes.

Jo sat at the table and threw her crossed ankles onto the seat beside her. “Tell me about this girl who doesn’t matter.”

He sat across from her and grabbed a chip. “She’s a nurse practitioner. You know I’ve always found women who work in medicine to be extremely attractive.”

It was true; he’d been with women in medicine from doctors to faith healers.

“Yeah, I do recall you telling me about one nurse from when we served in World War II.”

Charlie held out his palms. “She was flirting with me. She told me to pull down my pants. You can’t be more obvious than that.”

“She was trying to give you your immunizations. You were afraid of the needle.”

He huffed. “I don’t know if you remember how long and thick those needles were.” He rubbed the side of his leg. “Sometimes I can still feel it.”

Jo threw a chip at him.

“Anyway, there was this nurse at school for career day. She caught my eye and the next thing I knew, we were making out in the supply closet.”

Jo dropped a chip on her shirt. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. She was making out with a student?”

“No, I told her I was a firefighter. It wasn’t that hard; I have the physique.” He flexed his slightly muscled arm. “Anyway, after we made out, I asked her if she wanted to get coffee sometime and she said she’d love to, so she gave me her number. We went out and I drove her home. That’s when I found out she had a kid.”

Jo finished off the crumbs in the bag and nodded. “I get it. You didn’t want to date someone with a kid. It’s unreliable. She has to put the kid first and you can’t go around having sex all over the kitchen with a kid watching.”

Charlie grabbed the empty chip bag and folded it. “That’s not it. I mean, it was shocking at first, pulling into her driveway and seeing a bunch of toys lying around. It was weird, but not like a bad weird. I don’t know, but it was a feeling I’ve never had before. I knew Cecilia was nervous when I walked her to the door and a teenage babysitter answered holding a toddler who was reaching out, calling her mommy. I could smell her emotions. She thought I was going to run for the hills and that’s exactly what I did.” He crumbled the bag into a ball and tossed it across the room into the trashcan.

Jo took her legs off the chair beside her and put her hands on the table. “Okay, then why buy this house?”

Charlie rubbed his thumbs together.

“Come on, don’t stop now.”

He sighed. “Well, after I ran, I realized that maybe it could work. I’ve been doing this vampire thing for decades; I can control myself. Why not try? So I went back to her place and apologized and like the angel she is, she immediately forgave me. She told me she understood I needed time to wrap my head around everything. So, we started dating.” A grin danced upon his lips. “I even became a firefighter so there wouldn’t be another lie between us. We went strong for months, and I fell in love with her and her kid. We did everything together. A year later, I thought I had found my true love. So I went and bought this house to surprise her. She lived in a dump-ass apartment she’d been planning on leaving anyway. Everything was going great, until a few days before I was planning to show her this house." He scratched the back of his neck. "We were sitting on the couch, drinking wine after we’d put Peter, her son, to bed. We were talking about the future, and I got excited because everything was coming along, but then she mentioned kids.”

Jo sighed, knowing exactly what happened next.

“She’d mentioned how she’d found a grey hair that morning and said if we ever wanted a house full of rug-rats running around, we needed to get started. She had so much hope in her eyes. I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell her…” He inhaled sharply as a tear threatened to roll down his cheek. “I couldn’t tell her I could never have kids because I died over a hundred years ago. I couldn’t tell her I wouldn’t get grey hairs or a dad bod or even look a day older than when we met. I couldn’t tell her how much of a monster I am.” He clenched his fist and hit the table. “So that night, I left.”

Jo leaned across the table and slapped the side of his head. “That is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.”

Charlie stood. “What the hell does that mean?”

Jo pinched the top of her nose. “You’re telling me you had a great, committed relationship with a woman for a year, which you for some reason kept from me, and you gave it all up because you weren’t willing to tell her
your secret. You’ve told hundreds of girls across the country, but you couldn’t tell the one woman you were madly in love with?”

Charlie opened his mouth to respond, but before he said anything, an odd sound echoed from the backyard, as though someone had stepped on a branch.

“Did you hear that?” Charlie asked.

Jo nodded, following him to the window. They surveyed the yard, but even their superior sight couldn’t see what had caused the minor disturbance.

“Probably just a squirrel,” Charlie whispered.

Jo kept her eyes peeled. “Sounded a lot bigger than a squirrel.”

They sidestepped to the back door and poked their heads out.

“Oh, wait,” Jo said, then ran into the master bedroom. She returned with a long wooden bat held tightly in her tiny hands.

“What is that?” Charlie asked.

Jo’s eyes widened as she waved to the backdoor. “To defend ourselves from our attackers. Do you want me to grab you something?”

“No, thank you. I’ll use these.” He smiled and a pair of sharp, pearly white canines descended from his gums.

“Oh.” Jo tossed the bat in the living room.

Charlie cringed. “Not on the hardwood, Jo.”

Jo shut the door behind them and shifted into vampire mode. They cased the yard, clicking their tongues every few seconds to see if they could hear the echo of their intruders. To human ears, the sound would’ve been dismissed as a deer, but Jo and Charlie knew it was something different.

Something that didn’t walk on four legs.

Jo flashed her eyes and got a good look at the yard. It was wide for a townhouse and had soft grass that made Jo realize she was barefoot. She ran her finger along the tall, wooden fence. “Did you really think it was a good
idea to have a bunch of wood surrounding your house? You’re basically giving your attackers free weapons.”

“Jo, please shut up.”

Jo turned to Charlie, who was standing by the shrubs on the right side of the house.

He placed his finger in front of his mouth and waved her over.

“Did you find something?” she mouthed as she sped over.

He nodded to the shrubs and mouthed, “Follow me.”

They walked slowly to the bushes, then yanked them apart to reveal two lanky teenage boys with night vision goggles and belts filled with pencil-sized steaks and water bottles.

“Aw, it’s just two nerds,” Jo said. “You guys got us all scared for nothing.”

The boys screamed.

Charlie covered their mouths. “There are kids in this neighborhood. It’s late. I don’t want you to wake them.”

Jo squatted beside him. “Aww, are they cute?”

“The cutest. Last year, my next door neighbors dressed as the Addams family.”

The teens looked at each other, clearly conflicted about what to do next. As soon as Charlie’s hands left their mouths, they screamed, “Help us, please!”

Charlie placed his hands on their mouths again. “Seriously, do you have no decency? Jo, grab the smaller one.”

Jo crossed her arms. “Why do I have to grab the smaller one? Cause I’m a girl? You think I can’t handle carrying the big one?”

Charlie groaned. “No, because he’s closer. Jeez, Jo, not everything is offensive. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“You’re calling me overdramatic? This coming from the guy who once yelled at a waitress because she put potatoes on your plate.”

“I’m allergic to potatoes!”

“You were when you were alive.”

“Excuse me,” the smaller nerd asked in a tiny voice. “Are you going to drain us of all our blood? If you do, could you do it quickly? And could I go first, because I don’t think I can watch you do that to my friend. You see,
blood makes me squeamish…”

Jo and Charlie’s jaws dropped.

“Wow,” Charlie said. “Is that really what you think of us? That we’re just a couple of blood-sucking assholes?”

“That’s a rude and outdated stereotype,” Jo added.

“I mean, you break into my yard and were going to threaten us with what?” Charlie grabbed one of the stakes. “A freaking pencil?”

The larger nerd gulped. “That’s a stake, sir. In case you tried to kill us…sir.”

“What’s with all this sir crap?” Charlie pointed the stake at the boys. “How old do you think I am?”

“That’s enough,” Jo said. “Let's bring them inside.”

The boys squealed.

“Oh my gosh, not to eat you. To talk, okay?”

They nodded. It’s not like they had much of a choice.

Jo and Charlie lifted the boys by their collars and brought them inside, gently pushing them onto the couch and sitting across from them.

“Now,” Jo said. “What were you doing on my brother’s lawn?”

Neither boy said anything.

Charlie straightened his back, making them flinch.

“Okay, okay,” the smaller boy said. “We were trying to get a picture of the vampires everyone has been talking about—”

“—Which I told him was stupid because vampires cannot show up in photos,” the other boy said with a smug grin.

Charlie crossed his legs. “Actually, that’s not accurate. Vampires couldn’t show up in old photos because the film was made with silver.”

Jo threw her head back. “Charlie, we don’t just tell people that. I can’t believe you made it over a hundred.”

The boys’ eyes widened.

“Wait,” the smaller boy said. “You guys are over a hundred years old?”

Jo crossed her arms. “Yeah, so? That’s actually quite young for a vampire.”

Charlie clapped his hands together. “Anyway, what were you going to do? Take pictures of us doing what? Making tea? Watching Netflix? Who would pay you for that?”

The boys scooted closer together. The tall one said, “We figured we’d wait until you were, like, ya know, doing vampire stuff. Drinking people’s blood, controlling minds—”

Jo laughed. “Controlling minds? Who are we? Dracula?”

The small boy leaned forward. “Do you know Dracula?”

“Sure,” Charlie said with narrow eyes. “Anyway, I’m starving.” He turned to Jo. “Wanna grab a bite?”

Jo shrugged. They picked up the boys and threw them in the back seat of Jo’s four-door jeep.

As they drove, the boys grew more and more anxious. The taller one leaned across the middle seat and whispered, “At least if they do drain us of all our blood, we can haunt your step-mom.”
The boys fist-bumped.

Charlie pulled in front of an old restaurant with a bright neon sign. The tall boy mouthed, “Front,” to the small one.

“What?” he mouthed back.

“Front,” the tall boy shouted, then clapped a hand over his mouth.

Charlie held his hands up. “Of course I parked out front. There are no other customers. It’s not like I parked in a handicapped spot.”

Jo smirked and looked at the shivering boys. “They think the restaurant is a front.”

“What? For drug dealers?” Charlie looked over the console at the boys. “Don’t do drugs, kids. Drugs are not cool or helpful, except for vampires. Jo takes Adderall by the bottle.”

“After twenty or so pills, I start to feel a little calmer, but then poof.” She snapped her fingers. “It’s gone.”

The small boy looked at the restaurant to see a man sweeping the yellow floors. “So, this really is a restaurant?”

“We thought when you said you were hungry, you were going to take us to a warehouse and eat us," the other boy said.

The vampires frowned.

“That’s on us,” Charlie said.

Jo placed her hand on her chest. “I feel bad.”

“We should’ve been more descriptive.”

Jo waved her hand to the neon sign. “This, my friends, is McCheesy’s. They have the best cheese fries in the country. We should know since we spent two years driving around eating different kinds for every meal.” She placed her hand on the tall boy’s shoulder. “Now, I’ll let you two share a bowl of them because they’re kind of big. You think you can eat them by yourself, but no one can.”

Charlie raised his palm. “Except for us.”

Jo slapped it. “Heck yeah.”

They walked into the restaurant and ordered three bowls of cheese fries, then went to the back wall where a framed picture of Charlie and Jo rested on the wall in the middle of various smaller pictures.

Charlie grinned. “We made the wall forty-eight times before the manager stopped letting us put another picture up. Instead, he framed this, and it’s been here ever since.”

They slid into a booth in the back corner and waited until their cheesy fries arrived. Jo was right. The bowls were too big to finish alone. They were long enough to serve large parties. Even the two teenage boys couldn’t finish it off. Halfway through the bowl, they both groaned and stretched, their stomachs protesting any more food.

They waited until both vampires had finished their food before the small one said, “Hey, thanks for the fries and not murdering us, but we were wondering if you were going to let us go or keep us forever?”
The boys cuddled closer as Jo wiped her mouth. “Well, you didn’t come here to hurt us and I admire that. We can’t let you take any pictures because we can’t have word getting out about us. We have family, some of which
are human, and it’s not fair to put them in danger, right?”

The boys nodded.

“Great. You guys seem like two innocent kids who are just interested in the supernatural, and I don’t want to leave you both empty-handed. I’ve decided you can ask us anything you’d like.”

The boys smiled so big it reached their eyes. “That would be awesome,” the small boy said. They turned to each other and nodded. “How did you guys become vampires?”