"I don't want to talk about it."

"We just killed a dude."

"We killed a vampire. It's different. I'd really like to talk about anything except that, if you don't mind."

"So you're going to do that thing you always do and shove it way deep down inside and try to pretend it's not happening? Is that what's happening here?"

"It's part of not talking about it, so yeah."

We drove in silence after that, Claude giving me the space I needed to be an asshole and me taking that space to do anything but think about what we had done to Daemien.

No, I didn't want to talk about how Daemien screamed. No, I didn't want to talk about the looks on my family's faces as they all took turns in murdering the sonofabitch. No, I didn't want to think about it, and even now I still don't want to talk about it, so let's shut up about it and pretend that everything is just fine, okay?

Okay.

Claude dropped me off at my shitty basement apartment, and he wanted to say something. I didn't let him. I just walked away and listened for Claude to either try talking to me, or to just drive away.

Fuck.

Ever get that feeling that nothing you do really matters in the vast scheme of things? That everything you've done matters only to you, and nobody else gives a shit if it doesn't affect them directly? I suppose it's the primary human condition, where we question our place in the universe to see if it gives us any meaning, but I usually try not to do that because it's depressing as shit and the last thing anybody needs is a depressed me hanging about.

And yet there I was standing on the side of the road at 3:14 AM, watching my best friend of twenty years drive away, and I was feeling existential as shit. I just felt tired and knew that I'd be soon revisiting Daemien's murder in my dreams.

So that was my state of mind as I entered my apartment.

"Oh, there you are," Beatrice said as she lit a cigarette.

She was sitting at my kitchen table with a mug of half-empty coffee in front of her. I had no idea where she had gotten the mug from since all of mine had been broken one by one over the past couple of months and I had never bothered to swing by the Dollar Store to pick up any new ones. Paper cups from Tim Hortons were good enough for me, and I didn't have to do the washing up. I noticed that there was a brand new Keurig coffee machine on the counter, and that definitely was not mine. It was nice and expensive-looking, so definitely nothing I owned.

I suppose I should have been startled, since Beatrice was the last person I expected to see, especially in my apartment. That whole existentialism mindset kind of fucks with you and you end up not caring about some things as much, so I wasn't as startled as I would have expected to be and was, in fact, more interested in if Beatrice had brought any additional pods for the Keurig.

"Oh hi Beatrice," I said and dropped my keys on the counter. "Is there more coffee?"

Beatrice gave me an unamused look, her brilliant blue vampire eyes expressing her disappointment at my lack of reaction. She pointed to an empty reusable pod next to the Keurig and an opened bag of Starbucks Pike Place Roast. Question answered. Sweet!

"I could be here to kill you, and that's all I get?"

I prepped a weak coffee pod for the machine while I talked to Beatrice. When I say "weak" I mean there was barely an eighth of coffee in the pod, since I didn't want to end up in the Emergency Room again with an instant embolism. It's one of those details they left out of all the vampire mythology: strong coffee and vampires do not go together well. I still didn't know if Coca-Cola was a good substitute.

"If you were here to kill me," I said, way too cocky for my own good, "I'd be already wondering how this knife got in my chest." I made sure to be overly dramatic this time. "Oh, wait! There isn't a knife in my chest, so you're obviously here to get the one you left in my back."

"Smooth Bobbikins. Wait... are you holding a grudge against me? How sweet!"

I slammed a branded plastic novelty cup from a McDonald's Happy Meal (don't judge me, okay?) into the Keurig, smashed the button to turn it on and turned to Beatrice, determined to give her the full force of my anger.

"You left me to die."

"But you didn't die. Well, okay you did, but at least it wasn't something you couldn't come back from."

"I burned! In the sunlight. There was a lot of screaming. From me. Screaming. Ahhhhh. Like that."

The coffee finished pouring, and I grabbed the cup more roughly that was completely necessary. Coffee sloshed up over the side and almost burned my hand.

"I would have thought you were more of a falsetto," Beatrice said, watching me avoid the spill.

"I was just getting warmed up." I sat down and took a cigarette from her pack. "I'm stealing one of your cigarettes."

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't. I quit two years ago. But like they say: there's no such thing as an ex-smoker, just a smoker looking for an excuse."

"Nobody says that."

"I just made it up. Seemed appropriate."

Beatrice let me stew for a moment, and I had time to notice that she'd actually had her hair done. It was braided in some intricate design that pulled her long blonde hair back from her face; almost like she had been auditioning to be an elf in the Lord of the Rings, that's how intricate the braids were. Definitely different and more striking than anything she had worn before.

I looked around the apartment and wondered just how long she had been sitting there waiting for me. It stank of cigarette smoke, and I knew I would be smelling remnants of that smoke on my couch for weeks to come. If there were any clothes strewn about the apartment, then they were also going to stink until I could get to the laundry. This, of course, irritated me to no end, but I just kind of rolled with it. Who smokes more than half a pack of cigarettes in an apartment that's not theirs anyway, I hear you ask? What kind of person does that? May I offer Exhibit-A, otherwise known as Beatrice, also known as the deadliest woman I know, and also known as the kind of woman I tend to try not to be on the wrong side of. I had decided that she was going to be my sworn enemy, but I hadn't got around to telling her yet.

The cigarette pack was half-empty, crushed out filters sitting on a plate in the middle of the table, ready to stink up the place. There was an empty burrito wrapper next to it and a box with three uneaten and soggy fish tacos. Apparently, Beatrice had been there long enough for the food to get cold and to get bored enough to eat her own. What the hell was going on?

"If I said I came to offer you an apology, what would you say to that?"

"I don't know. Is that something you're likely to say? I kinda got the feeling you weren't the type to make apologies."

"I'm not, so this is me playing nice... and I'm already getting bored, so let's drop it."

"So no apology?"

"How about a punch in the teeth instead?"

"Aaaaaaand she's back, ladies and gentlemen!"

Beatrice grinned and took a long drag on her cigarette while giving me a long appraising look. It was as if she was seeing me for the first time, and it was a little disturbing to see Beatrice look at me as if she wasn't considering how best to dispose of my body. I always had considered her usual way of looking at me as a flavour of scorn; it was simply how I was accustomed to Beatrice looking at me. The only other time it had been different was when she had left me to burn in the morning sun, and that time, it had been a lot more disturbing. It had been almost gleeful as if she was waiting for something to happen.

"Dying suits you, Bobbikins. There's definitely something different about you."

There was a brief moment where I flashed back to Daemien's screaming face and the thought of all of that blood as my family murdered the shit out of him, but I shook it off and tried to think of something else, anything else. I didn't want to think about that now. Maybe not ever.

I sat down across from Beatrice and met her gaze instead and shrugged. "Just tired, I guess. Long trip. A lot of driving."

"Yeah, I heard you went out to Montreal."

"Seriously? You guys keeping tabs on me now?"

"You told Madame Vera. It's not exactly a secret." Beatrice looked at me with half-lidded eyes, and I could see a smoky, sultry sexuality to her that was designed to drive men mad. That was one hundred percent the look that is referred to as bedroom eyes, but it was so calculating and--

"Are you trying to glammer me?"

Beatrice looked away and scoffed.

"Did it work?"

"Obviously not!"

"Then I wasn't," she said and exhaled a long plume of smoke that hung in the air like the words of her challenge. She was daring me to call her a liar, to say anything to challenge her. It was almost as if she was looking for a fight.

"What are you even doing here?" I asked, and ground my cigarette out, signalling that the conversation was over. I slowly straightened in my seat, feeling the slight rush of the nicotine, and was then a little disappointed when the brief headiness that generally accompanied a cigarette didn't make an appearance. "It's not like we're even friends or anything."

Beatrice actually looked a little hurt, then a little rejected and vulnerable at my statement, and I wondered if she had any real friends anywhere. It was only momentary, however, and in a second, the fiery, stubborn look was back in her eyes, savagely curb-stomping any hurt feelings that had shown up.

She shoved away from the table and stood up, towering over me. Damn that woman was tall. I'd forgotten that she was six-foot-one, and even when I was on my feet, she was still taller than my five-foot-eleven.

"Maybe I just wanted to come and say sorry for leaving you to burn. Maybe I thought it was a shitty thing to do, no matter how it turned out. Maybe—" Beatrice cut herself off and shook her head.

I finished it for her.

"Maybe you didn't actually say any of that, and I'm still waiting for that punch in the teeth."

Beatrice gave me a very strong middle finger as she strode towards my front door. She stopped and looked back at me with a mixture of impatience and regret.

"You know I called Madame Vera to come and get you, right?"

"That doesn't get you any Brownie points! You STILL LEFT ME TO BURN!"

"Remind me never to save your life again, then!" Beatrice snapped and stormed out. The door slammed behind her, and for a second, I thought she had splintered it.

I considered throwing my cup of coffee at the door but decided it wouldn't have the same impact since it was just a cheap plastic cup. It would only make a pathetic sound that wasn't worth it, plus there would be a mess since I hadn't finished drinking my weak-ass coffee yet, and I'd have to end up cleaning it. I really was not in the mood to do any mopping. Besides, it would have also been not even a little bit melodramatic. Stupid plastic cups had no sense of drama.

I noticed the Keurig still sitting on the counter and felt strangely smug.

"Yay, free coffee machine." A thought hit me. "I'm going to have to get new mugs now..."

A second later, Beatrice burst back into the apartment and locked eyes with me. I glared back and pursed my lips, waiting for her to say something. Of course, she only pursed her lips and waited for me to say something first. Neither of us did, and it just got awkward after a second. It occurred to me that maybe now would be a good time to tell her that I'd decided she was my sworn enemy for abandoning me on the beach. Especially since she had screwed up the apology.

Nothing like that happened. I was too chickenshit to say anything, after all Beatrice was a very dangerous woman, and maybe I was a little harsh. And she had tried to apologize...

Beatrice marched over to the counter and grabbed the Keurig.

"You don't deserve a gift," she said. "Gifts are for my friends!"

"I'll take it as an apology," I suggested, but she was committed.

"Buy your own!" She snarled, but she did slam the door a little less loud than before, so maybe she didn't entirely mean it.

"So much for new cups..."

Welcome back to my life.

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

Chapter 2 continues