Wolshire

Chapter 19

Casper

Going Home

I could hear Victoria playing the piano in my dining room. I tried to open the front door as quietly as possible so as not to interrupt her.

"Having fun tickling the ivories?" I leaned against the doorway and asked her.

She missed a note, "What did you just call it?" She turned around and looked at me.

"Tickling the ivories. Isn't that what everyone calls it?"

She tried to hide her smile. "In my five hundred years, I've heard few things as unusual as that."

The things in the room were moved around, and there were scratch marks driven all along the walls.

I sighed, seeing the carnage. "What happened here?"

She missed another note and stopped playing. "I," she closed my piano, "I was dealing with something."

"What happened?" I asked her again

She shook her head and sped around the room, reorganized everything, and sat back down at the piano.

"I am sorry about the scratch marks, but-" She faltered and couldn't continue with the sentence.

"London?"

Tears formed in her eyes again, and I could see her digging her vampire nails into her hand so they'd stop.

"No, stop." I ran to her side and grabbed onto her hands. I slowly opened her hand, but she'd already broken skin, and dark red blood began seeping out of it. I placed my hand on it, hoping to stop the blood flow. A faint light snuck out from between my fingers.

"What?" I lifted my hand, and the cuts were healed, "Was that me?"

"Well, you know vampires cannot do magic." She had an odd amount of sarcasm in her voice. I looked at my hand that had a few drops of oddly dark blood on them.

"Why is your blood so dark?"

"Have you not seen me bleed before?"

I got up and washed my hands in the sink. "No, I can't recall a time I've seen you bleed."

She sat on the barstool at my island. She had her elbow on the island propped her chin up in her hand. "Well, since the venom that turns us from being human into a vampire is black and normal human blood is - well, red, it makes the blood darker. Vampires are just barely alive. Most of our internal stuff works slower, we never age, we breathe less, and we never need to sleep."

"Scientists must hate vampires."

She scoffed, "You'd be shocked." She whispered, "you'd be shocked" under her breath again. She took a deep breath as if to prove that it still worked.

"Huh?" I was confused as her voice suddenly faded away.

"What?" Victoria asked.

"Nothing." I moved on as if she hadn't said anything.

I opened the fridge and started pulling things out.

"You are quite lanky, but I see you eat so much. All the girls at school are super jealous of boys like you."

"Boys like me? You're the one who's fit just because of supernatural magic."

"Well, the girls at school are not vampires." She smiled at me with a light laugh on her lips.

My phone began violently ringing in my back pocket.

"Jacob?" She asked.

"Yeah." I swiped it open. "Jacob, what's wrong?"