I couldn't tell Claude about Beatrice.

I tried. I mean I really really tried, but every time I opened my mouth to do it, I always ended up talking about something else, anything else at all.

That left me really confused the first couple of times it happened. I should have been glad to see that she was alive and okay, but instead, there was just this unmistakable dread that sent a spike of panic and terror right into my heart.

It may have had something to do with the fact that she was wearing a very stylish black eyepatch over her left eye; her eye should have healed by now, so what the fuck was going on there?

Maybe it was how she just stood there looking right at me, not waving, not smiling, just making sure that I saw her. Making sure that I knew that she saw me.

I had backed away from the window, wondering why I was reacting the way I was. Why did I feel like I was being hunted?

I slowly crept back to the window, heart pounding, talking myself into a state of calm that wasn't fooling even me. I peeked out and yup, she was still there, looking right at me—

I backed away from the window and noped the fuck out of there. In case you're wondering what that means, that mainly consisted of me backing away going "Nope, nope, nope! Never doing that again."

The first thing I had to do was to tell Claude that Beatrice was there and that I had a feeling deep in my gut that she was coming for me and we were all in danger and—

"I'm really craving a Cinnabon right now," I said calmly, instead of yelling my warning. I casually slid onto one of the stools next to the kitchen island, my body completely betraying everything my mind was telling it to do. What the fuck?  "What do you guys think?"

What the fuck was I doing?

Claude gave me a look of concern.

"Everything okay with you dude?"

No! Noting is okay and everything is fucked! We have to get the fuck out of here now!

That's what I wanted to say. Really it was.

"Nah, I'm just craving something sweet. And warm. And Cinnbonny."

Ronnie glanced up from her computer but never stopped typing.

"I'm so not going on a Cinnabon run if that is what you're hinting at."

"Since you're here," Claude said. "We're trying to create a profile on your girlfriend Beatrice, but all of the information on her is gone."

"What he's not saying is that it was there an hour ago."

"Madame Vera gave us a very detailed history, lots of notes about her, but Ronnie can't seem to find it anymore for some reason."

Ronnie flipped him off and resumed her furious staring at her screen and occasional typing and clicking, her mouth pursed tightly.

Claude turned to me, clearly in project management mode. The SmartBoard was full of profiles behind him, including one of Harry. There were three question marks representing the Gentlemen, but up on top, right next to a photo of Louise was a big black empty box labelled "Beatrice".

"Maybe you can help? Tell us everything you know about her while Ronnie finds out how she got hacked."

"I didn't get hacked," Ronnie muttered furiously, "I do the hacking!"

"She totally got hacked," Claude stage-whispered to me. "You don't happen to have any photos of her, do you?"

It struck me, at that very moment that, no: I didn't have any photos of Beatrice, not a single one. There had never been an urge to take photos, which should have struck me as odd, but it had just never occurred to me at all. Beatrice had sucked me into her world and I had gone along with it and fallen in line with her behaviours, one of which had never been about documenting the moment. Plus we were having sex all the time and those don't make for the best photos. I had a ton of photos of me and Jaime because photos are what happen in a relationship, but with Beatrice, it had never been a thought.

I opened my mouth to say all of that, or an approximation of it, oh and by the way, Beatrice is coming for me and we have to run!

"No, Beatrice isn't the type to take photos. I got nothing," I aid, as if I wasn't freaking out. What the fuck was wrong with my brain-to-mouth connection?

Fucking hell! I had been glammered.

This thought came all at once, a heavy realization that I was completely and thoroughly fucked. I had seen Beatrice glammer other people and their transformation had been radical, and there had been that time in my kitchen that she had tried glammer me, but I had spotted it easily enough... hadn't I? I had managed to resist it, right?

I looked at Claude, wanting to tell him that it was worse than I had thought, wanting to scream that I had been glammered, wanted to tell him anything and everything, but my body wasn't even showing the panic and utter mania I was going through. I realized that to outward appeances, I was as cool as a cucumber.

I picked up a pen and grabbed a pad of paper from Ronnie. I very clearly and carefully wrote: Beatrice is outside. I'm freaking out and I think she glammered me.

I read it to myself, twice, just to make sure, then slid the note over to Ronnie with a sense of triumph that faded as I watched her read the note. She gave me a very definite "are you fucking kidding me" look.

"'Cinnabon is great, Cinnabon is yummy, now get some Cinnabon for my fucking tummy.'" Ronnie read. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Claude was watching me carefully and I could see his mind racing.

"Dude?" he asked cautiously. This was code for: Is everything okay? You're freaking me the fuck out man.

I raised an eyebrow and responded in the traditional manner: "Dude." Code for what I hoped came across as: No, everything is not okay and I need you to see that and help me, can you please see that?

"Dude..." Claude responded with a little exasperation. Code for: What the hell was that? I didn't get any of that.

There are about twenty ways you can use the word dude, something that Claude and I had perfected as teenagers and that had annoyed Ronnie to no end. Apparently, she had thought we had been doing it only to annoy her or that it was just a phase. Now there were were still at it ten years later.

"Dude!" I reiterated. Everything is fucked. There is a man on the inside and it's me!

Ronnie had had enough. She slammed her hand down on the counter before Claude could respond.

"If either of you says 'dude' one more time, I swear I'm going to throw a chair out the nearest window."

"I gotta hit the bathroom," I said, and escaped away down the corridor, trying to remember where the bathroom was.

"We're going to talk about Beatrice when you get back," Claude called after me.

"Sure thing!" My traitorous mouth replied.

I didn't go to the bathroom. I ended up in my bedroom again and snuck up to the window, paranoid as fuck, sure that Beatrice would still be there. I was pissed off, or rather, telling myself that I should be pissed off, but my internal panic wasn't translating into action.

I slowly poked my head into the window...

Beatrice was gone. It was just an empty window where she had once stood. For a moment I felt relief, before immediately realizing that there was nothing good about that.

I wondered how long this state of being, whatever it was, would last before I returned to normal. I wondered if I would even remember that I had been glammered, would remember what Beatrice had done to me. Would I remember how she had invaded my mind and made me not want to talk about her with Claude. How long had I been like this anyway? Under her control? Was anything of the past couple of weeks even real? Had my developing feelings for her been a complete lie, a subtle manipulation on her part, a proof of her power that she could make any person, woman or man fall in love with her?

There was a moment of queasiness and guilt as I wondered if this was how I had affected all of the women I had slept with over the past months, if this was how they had felt after. Had they even realised I had glammered them even if neither of us had known it was happening? Or was this something else?

I needed to deperately believe for my own sanity that it was something else completely, but there was this doubt that was going to always be there. Glammering came naturally to vampires,. It was just something that we did, but it was something that Beatrice had practised and made it into a very effective weapon.

Daemien had used it to make himself invisible to my family. Louise was able to take over other people and use them to spy for her. And Beatrice, with just a look and a word, she was able to make other people and vampires into her loyal servants, willing to die for her. Is that what she had done to me?

Fuck!

How could I made it stop?

How fucking powerful was she anyway?

"Bob, did you order a pizza?" Claude called out, breaking into my self-imposed freak-put session. "Dude is on his way up. He says he brought Cinnamon sticks, so I know it had to be you."

Panic set in as this information hit my brain, and I knew, just knew that it was just a diversion, something sneaky and that Beatrice was behind it. I ran down the corridor and into the kitchen, but Ronnie was already walking towards the foyer door, a couple of twenty dollar bills in hand. There was a dark figure outside the door, just a shape behind the frosty glass and I knew, just knew that it would be Beatrice, either posing as or accompanying the pizza dude.

Instead of calling out to Ronnie like I intended, I turned to Claude.

"There are no mirrors in here. Have you noticed that?"

"You know there are mirrors in the bedrooms, right? And the bathrooms."

"But not out here, not like in my mom's house."

Holy shit! I had actually said the thing that I wanted to say.

Claude paused as if wondering where this conversation was going. I glanced back at Ronnie, who had just reached the door and was turning the handle, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

I don't know why I said it but it seemed like the best thing at the time.

"Well, I guess you don't need mirrors, since you can't be glammered." I said the last part extra loud for the people in the back.

Ronnie opened the door and the pizza dude smiled back at her, his best customer service smile and attitude on display. Nobody else was in the foyer with him—

Claude flipped a switch and the Vampire Glass (TM) above the foyer slid up. Full strength sunlight flooded the foyer in an instant, the kind of sunlight that would burn any vampire who happened to be caught inside, especially if they were glammering everyone in the room to make it seem like they were invisible.

The kind of glammering that Beatrice might be capable of.

Am I making it obvious enough yet what I'm trying to say? Oh yeah? Good.

I watched dumbfounded, as Ronnie paid for the pizza and failed to be killed by any vampires, or anybody else for that matter. Claude waited until the pizza dude was back in the elevator and the doors had shut before flipping the switch for the security glass to close.

"Bob, what the fuck is going on?"

I turned to Claude and said the only words I could while I screamed inside my head.

"Nothing Claude. Nothing at all."

#####AUTHOR'S NOTE####

Uh oh...

soundtrack: Limp Bizkit - "Break Stuff"