Uncharming

"For somebody who simply organized a slaying, you're sort of overreacting."

Overreacting? In the recent twenty-four hours, I'd had to withstand virgins, terrifying vampires, killing, indictment, and embarrassment in front of my beloved novelist.

I certainly didn't reckon coming home to a calm lodgings was too ample to solicit for. Rather, I found three interlopers. Three interlopers who were moreover my pals, mind you, but that didn't alter the principle of the issue.

Normally, none of them discerned why I was so troubled. "You're intruding my privacy! And I didn't murder

anybody. Why does everyone keep assuming that?" "Because you explained yourself you were going to," clarified

Brad. The imp reclined on my love seat, his comfortable stance demonstrating I might certainly be the one in his residence. "I learned it from Jake."

Over from him, our colleague Cody offered me a generous smile. He was especially immature for a vampire and recollected me of the lad brother I'd never had. "Don't bother. He had it succeeding. We stand by you all the way."

"But I didn't—"

"Is that our prominent hostess I hear?" yelled Peter from the restroom. A moment later, he emerged in the balcony. "You look pretty snazzy for an unlawful mastermind."

"I'm not—" My statements perished on my lips as I caught view of him. For a moment, all intentions of slaying and lodgings intrusion blanked out of my psyche. "For God's sake, Peter. What occurred to your hair?"

He self-consciously rode a hand over the harsh, half-inch claws encircling his head. I couldn't even visualize how much styling commodity it must have seized to disobey the laws of physics like that.

Painfully, the tips of the claws were white-blond, standing out boldly against his normally gray hair color. "Someone I labor with assisted me with it."

"Someone who dislikes you?"

Peter frowned. "You are the most uncharming succubus I've ever met."

"I guess the claws actually, um, bring out the pattern of your eyebrows," offered Cody diplomatically. "They just take…some getting used to."

I jerked my head. I liked Peter and Cody. They were the only vampires I'd ever been friends with, but that didn't make them any less striving.

Between Peter's numerous neuroses and Cody's persistent optimism, I periodically felt like the upright man—er, woman—on a sitcom.

"A ton of getting used to," I mumbled, pulling up a barstool from my kitchen.

"You're one to speak," returned Peter. "You and your wings and strap getup."

My maw declined, and I swiveled an incredulous peek on Brad. He rapidly seal the Victoria's Secret directory he'd been leafing through.

"Katharina—"

"You explained you weren't going to confide! You plugged your lips and everything!"

"I, uh…it simply kind of slid out."

"Did you truly have horns?" asked Peter.

"All right, that's it. I need you all out of here now." I pointed at the door. "I've been through sufficient today without you three putting in to it."

"You haven't actually notified us about grabbing the contract out on Guane." Cody's puppy-dog stares glanced at me pleadingly. "We're perishing to know."

"Well, Guane's the one who technically performed the dying," singled out Peter in an undertone.

"Watch the snide statements," advised Brad. "You might be next."

I half anticipated steam to spill from my ears. "For the last time, I did not exterminate Guane! Jake believes me, okay?"

Cody looked competent. "But you did jeopardize him…" "Yes. And from what I remember, so have all of you at some

period or another. This is only a co-occurence. I didn't have anything to do with it, and…" Something abruptly transpired to me. "Why does everyone keep mumbling stuff like 'arranged his casualty' or 'got somebody to kill him'? Why aren't you saying that I did it myself?"

"Wait…you simply explained you didn't."

Peter twirled his sights at Cody before confronting me, the older vampire's mood turning severe. Of course, "serious" implies all kinds of things when paired with a hairstyle like his. "No one's saying you perpetrated it because you couldn't have."

"Especially in those shoes." Brad shook toward my heels.

"I respect your total lack of belief in my capacities, but isn't it possible I could have, I don't infer, taken him by surprise? Hypothetically, I mean."

Peter smirked. "It wouldn't have mattered. Minor immortals can't slay one another." Glimpsing my astounded look, he put in, "How can you not realize that? After living as long as you have?"

Taunting braided his expressions. There had constantly been an implicit mystery between Peter and me pertaining which of us was the aged of the mortals-turned-immortals in our small circle.

Neither of us would plainly acknowledge our age, so we'd never certainly inferred who had the most centuries.

One dusk, after a bottle of tequila, we'd began fiddling a "Do you recall when…" manner of game. We'd only gotten back as far as the Industrial Revolution before blacking out.

"Because no one's ever attempted to slay me. So what, are you mumbling all those turf battles vampires have are for nothing?"

"Well, not for nothing," he said. "We inflict some pretty amazing havoc, believe me. But no, no one ever perishes. With all the province conflicts, there'd be relatively few of us left if we could annihilate each other."

I remained quiet, swiveling this prophecy over in my head. "Then how do—" I abruptly remembered what Jake had confided me. "They get slaughtered by vampire hunters."

Peter nodded.

"What's the deal with them?" I inquired. "Jake wouldn't elaborate."

Brad was equally enthusiastic. "You mean like that one girl on TV? The hot blonde?"

"This is going to be a lengthy night." Peter offered us both scathing peeks. "You all require some serious Vampires 101. I don't presume you're getting on to offer us anything to drink, Katharina?"

I fluttered an anxious hand toward the kitchen. "Get whatever you need. I wish to know about vampire hunters." Peter strolled out of my living room, shrieking when he

almost plunged over one of the numerous heaps of books I had sitting around. I made a cognitive note to acquire a modern bookshelf. Frowning, he studied my virtually bare refrigerator with objection.

"You certainly need to work on your hosting skills." "Peter—"

"Now, I keep heeding tales about that additional succubus… the one in Missoula. What's her name again?"

"Donna," offered Brad.

"Yeah, Donna. She hurls tremendous celebrations, I hear. Gets them catered. Entices everyone."

"If you dudes prefer to party with all ten people in Montana, then you're welcome to shift there. Now stop exhausting time."

Disregarding me, Peter eyed the red carnations I'd purchased the other dusk. I'd lay them in a vase near the kitchen sink. "Who brought you flowers?"

"No one."

"You brought yourself flowers?" inquired Cody, his mouthpiece quaking with empathy.

"No, I only bought them. It's not the same. I didn't—look. Why are we conversing about this when there's an apparent vampire killer on the slack? Are you two in danger?"

Peter ultimately opted for water but hurled beers to Brad and Cody. "Nope."

"We aren't?" Cody appeared shocked to comprehend this. His meager years as a vampire virtually earned him an infant compared to the rest of us. Peter was educating him "the trade," so to talk.

"Vampire hunters are just special mortals born with the proficiency to cause actual destruction to vampires. Mortals in common can't stroke us, of course.

Don't interrogate me how or why this all works; there's no strategy as far as I can say. Most so-called vampire hunters go through life without even acknowledging they have this ability.

The ones who do occasionally suppose to make a livelihood out of it. They jerk like this from time to time, picking off the periodic vampire, bringing about a general nuisance of themselves until some ambitious vampire or demon takes them out."

"'Nuisance'?" inquired Cody incredulously. "Even after Guane? Aren't you the slightest bit nervous about this person reaching after you? After us?"

"No," mumbled Peter. "I am not."

I shared Cody's confusion. "Why not?"

"Because this person, whoever he or she is, is an entire amateur." Peter glanced over at Brad and me. "What did Jake say about Guane's death?"

Deciding I wanted a drink myself, I looted my kitchen liquor cabinet and created a vodka gimlet. "He needed to realize if I performed it."

Peter made a dismissive indication. "No, about how he died."

Brad grimaced, seemingly striving to chunk together the logic afoot. "He explained that Guane had been found dead—with a stake through his heart."

"There. You see?"

Peter glanced at us expectantly. We all glimpsed back, baffled.

"I don't get it," I ultimately let out.

Peter sighed, also looking utterly aggravate. "If you are a mortal who has the semi-divine proficiency to slay a vampire, it doesn't fucking matter how you accomplish it. You can employ a gun, a knife, a candlestick, or whatever.

The stake through the heart stuff is hearsay. If an ordinary mortal does it to a vampire, it won't do a damned thing except actually piss the vampire off.

We only heed about it when a vampire hunter does it, so it holds up some outstanding superstitious attraction, when certainly, it just like that egg thing on the equinoxes."

"What?" Brad peeked completely lost.