KATARINA: VAMPIRE (SLAY/LOV)ER

Part X - Vampirist Manifesto

At this point Katarina and Jasmine were pretty good friends. Well, the hang-out-together-in-school type of good friends. That would be changing soon.

The sun had not yet risen, Katarina's alarm yet to signal the time to awaken, but she received a message.

Bzzt bzzt.

Half-conscious Kat shuffled around in bed and rolled over. "Ugh, who texts this early in the morning," she mumbled face down in the pillow. She took a deep breath in and stretched, lengthening her entire body while rubbing the sleep out of one eye with her hand before reaching over to her phone.

Jasmine: Hey sorry to text you so early. I won't be at school today, but afterwards can you meet me at the public library?

"Weird," she thought. "Why the library? Whatever, I could use some normal in my life."

Sure thing! :You

Jasmine: Yay! Thanks!

Kat always felt like she needed to be extra bubbly over text but had an inkling that Jasmine was genuinely so. Phone still in hand she rolled over, pulled her blanket over her head, and drifted back to sleep.

* * *

Kat could see the library down the road. Its olden gothic architecture stood out amongst the more modern buildings which flanked the library's left and right. At three stories tall it wasn't very impressive from the outside, but inside it was fairly nice. Kat hadn't been here in a long time as she never had a reason to.

"Jasmine never said why she wanted to meet here. Probably to work on a project for school or something."

She parked her car on the road across the street, waiting for an opportune moment to cross the road, and hustled over to the library. Eyeing the stairs leading to the library entrance, then peeking down at her phone at the last message she received:

Jasmine: I'm on the third floor in the newspaper archive section.

"Stairs and more stairs," the thought. "Let's do this."

She opened the large double doors leading into the library. An old crotchety looking librarian peeked up at Kat then looked back at her work. To the left there was a large corridor with giant windows that went straight from ground level to the ceiling of the building; perfect for letting in natural reading light. A lot of people were taking advantage of that, sitting at tables that lined the corridor. To the right was rows and rows of bookshelves. Kat realized this place was way bigger than she remembered and had no idea how to get to the newspaper archive.

"Hi, excuse me ma'am," said Kat as she approached the librarian.

The librarian had tight knit curly grey hair with violet cat eye framed glasses, pearl earrings with a matching pearl necklace, and a washed-out yellow sweater. Barely taking her eyes off the papers she was shuffling. "Yes?"

"I was wondering how to get to the newspaper archive," she said, trying to seem as nice and respectful as possible.

The old lady squinted her eyes as Kat. "Go halfway down, turn right, then left, then there will be two staircases," she responded coldly, pausing for a breath. "take the one on the left and it'll take you to the third floor, then go all the way down the hall, then the newspaper archive will be on your right."

"Thanks!" Kat replied trying to commit the instructions to memory, but realizing she'll probably aimlessly wander a bit to find it.

"As of the past few years, ever since darned technology took over, nobody ever goes up there," she paused giving Kat a questioning look. "You're the second person to ask for directions there recently – don't go causing any trouble."