"Slow down," I say.
"Any slower and we might as well walk," Hayden says.
"You're not driving slowly. There are potholes everywhere. If you don't drive carefully, the egg will not be safe."
"I am driving slowly. Besides, it's only an eg—" He stops as soon as he notices the look on my face. Slows down, too.
After a brief silence he says, "So you like kids?"
"Oh my God," I say, rolling my eyes and looking out the window.
"What? I'm just making a conversation."
Fortunately we reach the Hopkin's pub. I get out, open the back door, and carefully take out the basket. Hayden begins, "You can lea-" but stops after I glare at him again.
At the entrance, Hayden is greeted by a huge, scar faced man. His scar looks like claw marks, and it probably is. "Thought you'd left before I came in. Glad you came back," he says to Hayden.
"I wasn't going to leave without saying hi to you, Hopkin," Hayden says.
Hopkin looks at me. "A friend?"
"Yes," Hayden says, "Give us a table at the back."
"You got it, boss."
On our way to the back of this dingy, health hazardous pub, I notice the girls checking out Hayden. Must be nice to be this handsome.
Our table for two is cut off from the rest of the space by a wall, saving us from spying eyes and eavesdropping ears. While Hayden orders us a beer and orange juice, after I told him I don't drink alcohol, I pull back the cover on the egg to check up on it. It's intact and warm. I cover it back and look up to see Hayden smiling at me.
"What?" I angrily ask. What's his problem with the egg?
"What do you mean?" he says, "Why are you getting offended by everything I do?"
"Why do you keep doing things to offend me?"
"How is me smiling offending you?"
"Everything you do is offending."
He shakes his head, and our drinks arrive.
"So what did you want to talk about?"
He takes out from his jacket a pocket-size book and places it on the table in front of me. I immediately recognize it from the familiar illustration of a woman in black hood on the cover.
This is a small size version of a popular children's book, a dark children's book, called, "Yates and Ivana."
"We're not the only odd couple," he says.
I resist a smile after hearing him refer to us as a couple. "This is a children's story, Hayden," I tell him.
He smirks.
"What now?" I ask.
"Can you say my name again?"
I bite my lower lip and lean back, giving my all not to break into a smile. He can't know I'm enjoying this. "Will you stop with your annoying flirts and tell me what this is about?"
"I think they are real," he says, crossing his arms, enlarging his already large biceps.
"The human guy and the vampire girl?" I say. "No. That's not possible."
"Would you've believed we were possible before all this?"
I see where he's coming from, but this is a children's story, and like I said before, a dark children's story, that's used to teach kids what bad things can happen to an inter-racial couple. In a nutshell, Yates and Ivana don't make it.
"What makes you so sure?" I ask, emptying the orange juice and moving the glass to the side.
He takes out a paper from his jacket and unfolds it on the table. It looks like some sort of old certificate — printed paragraphs with spaces in between filled with cursive handwriting in ink — the paper is faded and fragile, and the edges are brown. The words seem to be in latin, I'm not sure. There's an emblem at the top middle, and a stamp at the bottom right that intercepts multiple signatures.
Two of those signatures catch my attention. Although I can't make out the names fully, I see familiar words. I place my finger on one of the signatures.
"That's Ivana," Hayden says.
I trace the handwriting with the tip of my finger. "Ivana Terrence Smith."
"Yes," Hayden says. "And the sign next to it, that's Yates Boldman."
"What is this document?" I ask after noticing the date on one of the paragraphs: 13th, April, 1746.
"It's a marriage certificate," he says, "issued by the Bolrent county — it's a human town, not far from Gaslow Creek — I think they settled down among humans."
