Empire of Vampires ✔️

Chapter Thirty-Five

Marie immediately rushed to her favourite rollie chair once they entered, plopping down on it hard and doing a test spin. She had already made a stop at her dorm to pick up her book and now she opened it up on her lap, ignoring the table that was right next to her.

Andrew flopped down on the bed and James rummaged about in his stationery drawer for some loose sheets of paper to do his workings on.

'I think I have some,' Andrew said, pulling out the compact drawers under his bed. He threw a pile of clothes on to the floor and then pulled out some used writing books. He took out the portraits the twins had done of him and placed them on it, making a little pile on the floor.

'Oooh you still have them!' Marie exclaimed, grabbing both the paintings and looking at them side by side, 'Which one do you like best?'

James's painting was a masterpiece and hers was a comical mess.

'Definitely yours,' Andrew grinned, terrified of giving any other answer to the hyper vampyre.

'Ha! Mine's better,' she yelled as she hopped up to James and whacked him on the head with her painting, 'Better, better, better,' she sang.

'Hush little sister, you'll eventually get better with age and experience.'

'I'm olderrr,' she wailed, flinging herself on to the chair and dramatically rolling away.

'Wait, which one of you is actually older though?' Andrew laughed, handing James the rough paper and shoving the rest of the stuff back into his drawer.

'I am,' they both said at the same time, James saying it factually and Marie yelling it insistently.

'I was born first,' Marie glared at him.

'But she was turned first so I lived longer and got older, whereas she stopped ageing; so technically, I'm older,' James explained.

'Huh.' Andrew drew his brows together in thought as he said to James, 'I guess you are an older age then, if you were still growing while she stayed young.'

'He wasn't STILL GROWING, I turned him on the same night I awoke from the grave!'

'Oh! Then it doesn't count- if you were only turned a few hours later!' Andrew pointed out to a taken aback James, 'Marie's still older because she was born first.'

'YES!' she pumped her fists in the air, spinning towards him with her arms spread out and a huge grin plastered across her face.

'It may have been only a few hours but that's still much longer than eight minutes,' argued James, feeling like he was being totally ganged up on.

Marie just snorted at him. 'Majority wins!' she said, 'We've never had a tie-breaker before.' She smiled sweetly at Andrew who had voted in her favour in a centuries long debate.

They continued with the chemistry homework where they were trying to solve some equations with moles. Andrew was insistent on teaching it to the twins who were begging to just copy off of him.

'You've been alive for hundreds of years, you should know these things,' he said reproachfully.

'I've been doing homework for hundreds of years, it gets monotonous,' James explained, 'I know how to do it but I'd rather spend my time on something else.'

'But the theories keep changing and being proved wrong!' Marie argued, 'And I was never sent to school in my youth so my brain was never allowed to develop.' She looked at him pitifully. 'I had to stay at home and do needlework.'

'But don't you have improved abilities for being able to remember stuff?'

'No! There's like so much stuff to remember when you're so old!' She glared at him. 'It's not like we have superpowers; we're just stronger and can smell stuff from far away.'

'All your senses are improved!'

'Yea yea, little bit.' She sneakily peeked at his homework and started scribbling some stuff down. 'Oooh avocadoes!'

'What? What are you writing about avocadoes?' Andrew asked, amazed.

'She's talking about the Avogadro constant,' James explained, crumpling up his work sheets after copying the answers neatly into his writing book.

'No it's avocado!' she argued, 'Avogadro makes no sense, like, what is an Avogadro.'

'It's named after someone! Anyway, you're supposed to multiply that, you're doing it wrong.' James pointed at her scribbles.

'How would you know,' she rudely replied, 'You think you have all the chemistry knowledge on Ather.'

'I've been getting straight A's for the past one hundred years,' he reminded her.

'That's the only straight thing about you.' 

'I hate you. Like a lot.'

'I was just kidding.' She grinned wickedly.

'Oh right, ha-ha.' He threw the crumpled-up ball of paper at her and it bonked off her chin, landing on the open writing book.

She opened it up and smoothed it out in excitement. O' glorious answers! Feeling too lazy to re-copy the entire thing, she just slipped it into her book, taping it down a little with a small scrap of brown masking tape that she found stuck on the side of the table.

'You can't turn that in!' Andrew exclaimed, aghast at her methods.

'There's nothing wrong with a few crumples now and then, Andrew,' she said indignantly, 'It doesn't make something worth less or lose its value.'

He blinked. 'That's... rather wise- I guess.'

'Yeah, I'm like the wisest.' Marie did a pleased little spin on her rollie chair.

A/N: take a vote on who's actually older and comment right here! ->

I'm going to keep a tally right here ᵔ ◞ ᵔ
Marie - 1
James - 3