A Ghost of a Chance

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Laura groans and sits up, her head pounding. What happened?

She tries to think back to the last thing she remembers.

Mattie and Carm asked me to play bait for them.

The Dean sucked the life out of me.

Carm turned into a vampire.

She was holding me...

And then—nothing.

Wait, no. Not nothing. Something, a bunch of somethings. Small, random bursts of memories that don't make any sense.

She cracks her eyes open but everything is blinding and there's just a lot of yellow, so she closes them again.

"Holy crap, she's awake," a voice next to her exclaims. It's much too loud for her pounding head and Laura groans again.

"Welcome back to the world of the living. Or not-living as the case may have it."

Laura finally blinks her eyes open again slowly. First, she manages to focus on the source of the first voice—Carmilla. And next to her is Mattie.

"Huh?" Laura's own voice sounds foreign to her. She's lying on her side and her head rests in her yellow pillow.

Carmilla averts her gaze, but her hand wraps around Laura's and gives it a gentle squeeze.

"Well, since Carm seems to have lost her ability to talk," Mattie sighs, "you died. The Dean sucked way too much energy out of you and your body just gave up on living."

Laura furrows her eyebrows together. "But... I'm still here?"

"Astute observation. Nice to see death hasn't affected your impeccable detective skills," Mattie remarks dryly, earning a glare from Carmilla. "Anyway, Carm here asked me to do the same spell on you. It required the extra step of separating your soul out from your body before placing it into the ghostly plane, but voila. You're a vampire."

Laura sits bolt upright, making both Carmilla and Mattie jump. "I'm a what?"

Carmilla swallows hard, but decides she owes it to Laura to finally speak. "I asked Mattie to turn you into a vampire," she says softly.

Laura's mouth opens and closes several times without any words coming out. She shakes her head and stammers. "H-How could you take that choice from me?"

Mattie scoffs. "As if. I was the one who wanted to rush it, but Carmilla said not to. She made me ask you in the ghostly plane if this is what you want. And you said yes. It was probably just such a trauma in such a short amount of time that you don't remember the conversation." She gestures at Laura's entire body. "I bet you don't even remember feeding to complete the transformation."

Laura's eyes widen and her throat turns dry. "I fed? On someone?" She clears her throat. "Did I..."

Carmilla shakes her head. "While Mattie was doing the spell and talking to you in the ghostly plane, I ran over to Big Red's house. She was totally willing and came. You fed just enough to finish turning into a vampire. She's fine and went home to sleep it off. Perry's also fine–– well, as fine as she can be–– and LaF is taking care of her."

Laura closes her eyes, trying to digest the entire situation. "I really said it was okay?"

"In no uncertain terms, darling," Mattie answers. "You said that you had just figured out your purpose and that you couldn't imagine not spending at least one lifetime with Carmilla traveling the world, seeing the places she wanted to visit, while you helped out people in need."