By Saturday afternoon Arran had convinced himself that half of the young vampire population was going to turn up on his doorstep and alert his year group to the existence of the supernatural. Until James arrived to help him set up he had nothing to do but pace and fret. He checked to make sure that the USB dongle that received DHTV signals and all the blood in the house were safely locked in Celyn's attic apartment. As an afterthought he took down any of the family photos that showed the rest not ageing while he  grew, leaving only the very latest up so that the walls didn't look empty.

Even though it was never accessible, he went out and checked that Celyn's garage was locked. All three of the garage doors on the large stable building were secure, they wouldn't budge even after Arran pushed all his weight against them. He pressed his ear to the door, convinced that he could hear the thrumming of machinery inside.

"Hey, Arran!" Arran heard James call out from the driveway. "Sorry man, didn't mean to interrupt you hugging your garage. This place is huge!"

At three stories tall and with a wide main building, Rose House was a once imposing Georgian manner that now sported wide areas of sheer glass. Arran could hardly imagine what it looked like when his mother had first lived here, but from her descriptions it was closed off, dark and lonely. Now with its largely open plan ground floor it was ideal for entertaining, something that Arran hadn't considered before.

"Well observed, James. It is quite big." Arran smiled at his friend, grateful to have a distraction from his worries. "I'll show you around, we'll have to go through my entrance though."

Arran led his friend around the side of the house and to the external door into his bedroom. Despite himself, he felt smug at James' amazed expression. It had been an age since he'd been able to show off his living space to someone new. He stepped further into the room to allow James space to look around and asked "what do you think?"

"Jesus, I think if you put a fridge and an oven in the corner this would be a fully functional house."

"It'd be a very small house."

"Most people don't have two floors to their bedroom. This is insane."

Arran grinned, "wait until you see the rest of the house."

He showed James into the large kitchen and living room and then through to the connecting dining room, explaining that they'd be confined to the bottom floor alone.

"My mum's floor is already locked up, I could keep the spare open if there's not going to be enough space down here."

"Yeah that is not gonna be a problem."

They spent a while rearranging the furniture, pushing the dining table up against the wall and placing all the drinks on there. Arran moved a few of the more vulnerable decorations into his room and came back to James holding a recent picture of Arran and his mother.

"How come you're 18 when your mother is clearly 24?" He sounded like he was joking, but Arran still felt uneasy.

"She's 42."

"That's insane, our mothers can never meet. Mine would never recover."

Arran laughed and made up an excuse about Celyn having a lot of money to spend on beauty products before changing the topic and offering James some food. They still had an hour before the party started and probably two hours before anyone turned up, so they watched some TV while they ate and drank beer.

"So your mum," started James, setting Arran on edge again. "She's clearly a spy, right?"

All things considered, there were worse alibis. It would actually explain a lot about Arran's lifestyle and it wasn't as if he had any hope of pretending that there was nothing strange about his family at all.

"What makes you say that?"

"She's never home, you used to travel all the time, you're apparently insanely rich even though she's a single mother of four. She's gorgeous-"

"That's my mother and she's more than twice your age." Much, much more than twice.

"But she's single, right?" Arran grabbed a pillow from the sofa and threw it directly at James' smirk.

"You're not her type," laughed Arran. "She works for the EU."

"So she is a spy!"

"More like a diplomat, but she can't talk about what she does."

"Do you know?" James sounded impressed.

"Some of it, not everything. But I can't really talk about it either."

"That makes sense," said James, "it's seriously cool though."

James' no nonsense, easy going manner was what Arran valued most in his friend. He had accepted the fact that Arran couldn't explain Celyn's job at face value and though he clearly found it interesting, he wasn't going to pry.

"Actually now that you know, there's something that's worrying me about tonight." It would make sense to warn James about the impending threat of undead gate-crashers.

"Is a swat team going to do a raid the house? Or do you have a fugitive in the garage?"

Presumably, just an arsenal of things that mum wouldn't trust the council with, thought Arran.

"No it's hard to explain. All of the children of these government workers-"

"Spies."

"Very funny. We have our own kind of community, because it's hard to makes friends elsewhere."

"Which is why despite going to the same school for seven years, we only became friends this year?"

"Right. Well we have this Facebook group and I unintentionally put an invite for tonight up there."

"Well that's not really a bad thing, you know them all right?"

"Yeah but I'm probably the most normal out of all of us, there are some really badly adjusted, rich arseholes."

"That doesn't sound like you at all."

"Hilarious. I just mean that you should keep an eye on anyone you don't know, ok? They could be bad news."

"Got it."

Not long before the party was meant to start the doorbell rang, surprising Arran as he was not expecting anyone so early. He opened the door to come face to face with a young vampire named Debayan.

Having been turned at 17, Debayan had spent the last few years building a name for himself as essentially the world's only paranormal DJ. He had a secure website that realised both pre-recorded music and discussion shows. Cree had been on his week in review show "Newsbites" a few times and Arran had followed her to the studio. He was friendly enough with Debayan from those few meetings but certainly hadn't expected him to show up tonight.

"Deb! Hi, I can't believe you're here." He said as he stepped aside to let him in. Debayan walked straight into the house.

"Well I thought I'd come make sure that your playlist is ordered properly as a belated birthday present. Besides I couldn't resist the one chance I'll ever get to know what sound system Celyn Redfern has at home." His eyes found the deceptively sized main speaker against the far wall and he made a bee-line for it. "Oh she does not disappoint, I thought she'd be one for the Bang and Olufsen feel. This is an A9, yeah?"

Arran had no idea.

"Uh yeah it is," he lied, "Deb this is James by the way."

Debayan and James exchanged hellos. For the first vampire to arrive, this was probably the best case scenario. Debayan hadn't been a vampire long in the grand scheme of things so could definitely pull off being a human teenager and when he wasn't obsessing over music and technology he was very easy to talk to. He had a weak but unique power, a type of vocal hypnosis that put anyone who heard his voice at ease. Not very useful in a fight but he had assured Arran before that he exploited it in every way he could.

Maybe this wouldn't be such a disaster after all.

---

Parties in my last year of high school were probably the peek of exciting for me. Winter 2013 I was going to 2-3 a weekend, crashing at least half of them and having sex with my friends in dark conservatories while avoiding my sensible best friend who would try to reign me in (now my partner!). These days exciting comes in the form of new jobs and the like, specifically the new job that I was given on the spot on Friday! As that starts soon I'm going to be actually releasing on a schedule and not every other day (yes this little ramble did have a point) so starting this week, updates will be Monday and Friday. As always please do talk to me about what you like, what you don't or what you had for breakfast in the comments <3