10:30, The Day Before Yesterday

Book 1 Chapter XIII - Luck of the (Northern!) Irish

Chapter 13 - Luck of the (Northern!) Irish

Sirius was half-way through loading his suitcases into the car boot when Christian stumbled out the front door, looking more dead than alive.

"Why're ya leavin' so early in th' mornin'?" he asked, his voice slurred.

"It's not early; it's half-eleven," Sirius said, in as close to his normal tone as he could manage.

"That's practically the crack of dawn! Way too early to leave!"

After a hundred and twelve years of living with his brother, Sirius knew Christian well enough to know that was his way of saying, 'I don't want you to go.'

"I have to be at the airport by twelve, so no, it's not too early." That was Sirius's way of saying, 'I know you don't, but I've got to.'

Christian watched silently as he continued piling the suitcases on top of each other any which way. "Why are you taking so much with you?"

"Let's put it this way: you can never have too many weapons at hand if you're in trouble."

"Then you expect trouble."

Sirius thought back to that phone call. "It's always best to be prepared."

He put the last suitcase in, closed the boot, and leaned against the side of the car, staring up at the house he and his brother shared. It was a large, gloomy-looking, three-storey, Victorian-era building with dozens of windows.

"I hate all those windows," Christian said unexpectedly.

"Why?"

"Because someone might be looking out at you through them... and it would be easy for someone to shoot you. I guess it's not very normal to think about that sort of thing."

"We're not very normal people... in any way."

Normal people were fully human. Normal people didn't live for over a century and look like they were in their twenties or thirties. Normal people didn't worry about assassination attempts. Normal people went to places like New York on holiday, and didn't wonder if they'd get back alive.

"I'd better be going," Sirius said at last.

"Take care."

"Don't worry; you're not getting rid of me that easily. I'll only be gone a month at the most." As he opened the car door, he paused to add, "You'd better not do anything stupid while I'm gone. If I come back to find the country in a state of collapse, I'll be furious."

The noise of the engine starting drowned out Christian's indignant squawk of "How old do you think I am?!"

~~~~

Lucius was no stranger to misery. He had endured beatings, hunger, being locked out of his home, and other such hardships. But shopping with Dani was still one of the worst things he had ever been forced to live through.

After the 'chock-lit' incident, she had given up trying to find food he might like and moved on to buying clothes for him - or rather, showing him where the clothes were and telling him to choose his own, then objecting to his choices. He was still trying to decide if this was an improvement, deterioration, or much the same.

"Why do you like suits so much?" Dani asked exasperatedly. "No one wears them except on Sundays, and less and less people are wearing them even then."

"But all men wear suits on Vampiru," Lucius objected. "If I returned wearing what humans wear, I would look like the eihyhine."

"...Like the what?"