Teeth

Guest-part 3

 "Honestly... I was kind of expecting more fuss." She frowns at me suspiciously. "Your shoes are in my car. Use a different pair."

"I want my shoes back. And my coat." My father's coat was my father's coat, and I wasn't prepared to give up on it.

"...Refreshingly honest and yet so amazingly..." She searched for a word and seemed to be having trouble finding it, but I was prepared to guess it was rude.

"The coat is sentimental, the shoes are because the only other pair of shoes in the house are sandals. Third the only thing I know is that your friend got mugged, I got tangled up in it and now I'm... not... dead. And not dead is a good start to sticking my head in the sand and pretending the only vampires I have ever seen are on a movie screen. I'm not anyone's help, and until last night, no one has ever tried to kill me, and I'm not clear still why they'd start now save that you say they're going to."  I paused in my angry, slightly shaky outburst to add."The stuff that isn't ruined. Anyway. Hell I'm surprised I don't have police in here. Why aren't there police here? There have got to be some kind of cameras, or someone who saw something..."

 Someone apparently smarter than me, if they'd been there at all, who'd put their head down and pretended to see nothing.

That and she'd fairly well implied she hadn't done much, if anything, to the bodies.

"Oh they'll investigate."

"You sound like this is somehow not a problem for you. Why is this not a problem? I mean off hand... kinda sounds like a goddamn problem." This wasn't ok. I wasn't sure I wanted to be involved with people, even remotely, for whom five or six -eviscerated corpses- were not a problem.

"It's only a problem in that it's going to attract the attention of people like the ones I'm worried about already. The police will probably be duly horrified, and then pass off the case, with great gratitude, to the 'special agents' who will swoop in to investigate and clean up the mess."

"...You have got to be pulling my leg."

"You're ok with magically fast healing and blood drinking people but not with that? I thought you people absolutely devoured that sort of 'secret agency' nonsense.  Seriously get your ridiculous footwear and come with me. We've been sitting ducks for most of the night and I don't feel like sitting here waiting any longer to see who comes looking for you. Lily can handle herself, you couldn't even scare off an pack of working class gargoyles."

I kind of want to argue with her, or at least double check that gargoyles is more of a descriptive term than something else I need to worry about.

"...I'll... " I start, and instead of finishing I put my coffee on the table and go back to my room to get stuff. I've never kept a lot of clothing. I blame the way I left home. Like I feel like the people I don't want in my life might show up at my door and demand back into my life, and I'll have to pack up and leave it again. Arguably, I wasn't wrong, just maybe not about the source.

I hiss through my teeth in frustration, grab an dark green backpack from the back of the closet and, just in case, stuff a pair of jeans, a river driver shirt, underclothes and socks into it, and then a second pair of socks, and put it over my shoulder. Always pack more socks than you think you need, or that's been my experience. I don't have another winter coat, but I have a light windbreaker, and I shrug that on and put the backpack over it, and wiggle my feet into my sandals, glad I never liked the kind with the little bit between your toes, because that would make this worse than just a bad fashion choice.

No shower, no coffee, no shave, no shoes, no favorite coat, no normal.

But not dead.

I wished I had a picture of my dad to put in the backpack, but I didn't. He'd never been big on having his photo taken anyway, and anything there was was probably in an album in my mother's attic.