Pro-tip for Vampires #1: Read the goddamn manual. You'll thank me later.

The little girl with the unruly hair was driving me crazy. She was all the way across the diner at a booth with her family and had made several failed attempts to climb over the back of the booth, while her besieged father absent-mindedly reached to haul her down. The fact that he was attempting to talk to the waitress while the girl's little brother repeatedly stabbed the menu and yelled "and fries" at every chance, was a testament to the man's patience. It served only to irritate the shit out me at the pure normal-ness of the scene. It was so fucking normal, the kind of normal that I was no longer part of, because hello? Vampire?

"Don't you know it's rude to stare?" Claude asked as he placed the final jam packet in his customary wall of jam.

"I'm not staring," I rebutted, "I'm using my mental powers to make that little girl's head explode."

Claude threw a packet of jam at me, and I glared at him instead.

"So, I guess we can rule out mental powers?" he asked, finger hovering over the screen of his phone. He had created an actual spreadsheet of vampire powers organized by psychic, physical, and sexual. When had he even had time to do all of that?

"You don't know that," I grumbled and turned to glower at Claude, fingers to my temples.

There was an awkward silence where absolutely anything failed to happen.

"What are you doing now?"

"Trying to set you on fire. With my brain!" I intoned in what I thought was a pretty good mystic-sounding voice, worthy of the seediest of fortune-tellers with neon signs in their windows and their own YouTube channels.

"So, no compulsion, no pyrokinesis, no telekinesis--"

My hand flicked out and destroyed the wall of jam bricks. I used my hands to mimic an explosion, complete with sound effects.

"Fwoosh! Ka-boom!"

"Big no to telekinesis," Claude said drily. "I swear, you've got to be the worst vampire I've ever met."

"I'm the only vampire you've ever met."

"You and Louise."

"Point taken."

Our waiter swooped in to deposit two cups and a pot of coffee onto the table and was gone before I could properly register his presence. I poured a cup while Claude fiddled around with something on the seat next to him.

The little girl bouncing on the thick red leather seats of the booth caught my attention, and I turned my full glare back on her. My mom would have murdered me if I had even thought about acting that way in a restaurant when I was a kid, and this little girl had the nerve to be this awake so late in the evening.

I turned back to Claude. "I should really call Mom--"

Claude chose that moment to shove a submarine-sandwich-sized ornate gold crucifix into my face. From up close, the cross looked like it had cost a fortune, and it was pretty nice as crosses go. The crucified Jesus was a masterclass of detail, the pain and anguish on his face designed to make the viewer as guilty as possible, because, hey: this is what you did to me you motherfuckers! It looked well-used, the tarnish only showing in certain areas, the rest of the surface polished probably from continual rubbing and handling.

"Did you steal that from a church?" I asked Claude as I dropped the spoon onto the table. I tentatively poked at the crucifix as if it might bite.

Claude didn't even bother to look guilty. "I was in a rush, okay? I had to improvise. Now stop admiring the damn thing and ignite, or turn to dust, or at least flinch. Come on. Flinch? For me?" Claude flourished the crucifix again. "Aha!"

"Seriously, dude?"

"Ya think? Now begone foul demon!"

I slapped the crucifix aside, not sure if I should be hurt or annoyed. Settling for annoyed, I picked up my coffee.

"That was a dick move, dude," I chided him. "Not cool."

"Sorry, I got caught up in the moment." This time Claude flushed red with embarrassment and set the cross down on the table next to the black leather briefcase he had brought in with him. Come to think of it, he had pulled the cross out of the same case as well—

I frowned at him. "Dude--"

Claude produced a simple silver Star of David from the briefcase and confirmed my worst suspicions, it was filled with pilfered religious paraphernalia. I glared at him, unimpressed, and grabbed a packet of sugar.

"I'm suddenly having the urge to bite someone," I glowered and hesitated. Wait, had I already added sugar?

Claude deflated."So nothing then?"

"Not even a tingle."

I was torn between adding the sugar or just risking drinking the coffee without sugar. Choices, choices. Goddammit, Claude. I tore open three packets and poured them into the coffee.

"I just want you to know how much you're ruining this for me," Claude grumbled as he rummaged through the case with both hands. "I don't think any of these are going to work either." He emptied a number of velvet bags onto the table, different religious totems and carvings tumbling out with a clatter.

"Did you rob a museum or something?" I asked, amazed at the sheer number.

"Something like that. Don't ask, and just roll with it, okay? There's been a lot of strange jobs recently, and this haul was from one of them. The client is coming for them tomorrow."

I picked up a couple of the totems and examined them. There was a little carving of the Hindu elephant-headed god, whatever his name was, and that one was heavy despite the small size.

"Wow, man, some of these look really old. At least I think they look old, but what the hell do I know?"

"Only the best for you, pal," Claude said. "Pity none of them seems to work on you. If Louise were here, we wouldn't have to be doing this."

"She should have left an instruction manual," I sighed. "That would have been useful. I don't even know how to make my damn fangs come back out. I've been trying, and I got nada. Nothing. Ne fucking rien. All I got out of the big vampire transformation were fucking scary eyes and a dumb suit."

"Dumb Armani suit," Claude rolled his eyes at me, and I looked down in disbelief. The fabric was pretty damn nice on closer examination.

"Well, damn. At least Louise had good taste." I felt remarkably stupid for not putting on the pants and choosing my jeans instead. The last suit I had owned had been off the rack from the Men's Wearhouse and had cost me the grand total of $150 on sale. This Armani suit jacket was a perfect fit, and my sleeves popped exactly like James Bond's.

"No luck reaching her phone?" I asked.

Claude shook his head. "Not yet. She'll show up soon though, and then we can all have a nice long chat about vampires and lying to people, and how she is a vampire and didn't tell us... you know: normal shit like that."

Something had been bothering me, and I spoke slowly, trying to find the right words.

"Maybe she isn't a vampire?"

Claude gave me his best "what the fuck are you saying, and why are you talking to me?" expression. It's hard to explain what it looks like, but trust me: when you see it, you recognize it.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I rushed on before he could say anything to break my emerging thoughts. "Just hear me out. None of the religious symbols work on me, so maybe I'm not actually a vampire? Maybe I'm something else?"

"Dude. Fangs?" Claude pointed at his teeth.

"Dude. Mirrors." I pointed at our reflection in the glass window next to us where we were both visible. "I can see my reflection."

"Don't be a dumbass. You can't break the basic laws of physics. That mirror thing was always bullshit anyway. Probably made up by a vampire. I know if I was a vampire, I'd definitely not want people knowing how to pick me out of a supernatural line-up."

"Or defeat me," I muttered. I mulled that for a moment. "You might be onto something there. The best way to hide the truth is to cover it in bullshit. And even if somebody managed to get it exactly right, who the hell would even know? It would just be so much pop-culture that it eventually becomes myth."

"If you're any kind of traditional vampire, you would've been outta here like your ass was on fire, not just sitting there drinking your coffee."

"I'm not actually drinking it yet. Some idiot keeps interrupting me by shoving religious symbols in my face."

Claude wryly held up a Yin and Yang, and I scowled.

"Oh look," I said dryly, "the idiot's back."

Ba-dum-dum! Claude drummed a short rhythm on the table with his fingers to underscore the point with a flourish. "Everything the movies and books told us about vampires is a lie," he said triumphantly.

"What about the stake in the heart?" I challenged him, but I was distracted by Jimmy the waiter making his way over to our table with our food.

"Dude, that shit works on everybody. Most of the ways to kill vampires would work just as well on humans." Claude pulled out his phone and swiped to bring up a screen. "Over a hundred sites on vampires and none of them agree on the lore."

"A vampire should write a blog. Call it: 'How to Vampire' or some shit like that."

Jimmy laid out the food and departed but I was already digging in to feed my protesting stomach. Flavour exploded in my mouth like a series of orgasmic fireworks, and I just kept shovelling in the food.

Goddamn! Had bacon always tasted this good? I mean I know it's always been good, but this was some next-level bacon Jimmy had brought out to us. Definitely worth an extra tip.

Claude watched me and shook his head. I didn't care what he thought because: bacon!

It was when Claude poured Tabasco sauce over his eggs that I stopped shoving food into my face-hole, my nose already itching from the moment he had opened the bottle. For a few seconds, a sneeze threatened. The urge to vomit came back rather strongly, and I found myself shutting down my nostrils in defence and just breathing through my mouth. Damn, why hadn't I ever noticed just how toxic the smell of Tabasco was?

"Your Tabasco sauce is seriously fucking with me, dude."

My voice came out all cracked and hoarse, and I coughed, surprising both Claude and myself. My breath caught in my throat and my chest constricted as if an invisible gorilla had decided to love me and squeeze me and call me George.

Fucking Tabasco.

Claude looked from me down to his eggs swimming in Tabasco, and in one movement, he threw a napkin over his eggs, grabbed the plate, and walked it over to the counter, but more importantly, away from me. The gorilla eased up a little, allowing me to get enough air to fumble a glass of water to my mouth.

Claude returned, concern written across his face.

"So Tabasco has more effect on you than any of the religious symbols," he said.

I drained my water and slammed the glass onto the table.

"Let's not do that again, shall we?" I said, and Claude nodded, but I could tell he was filing that information away for later.

I grabbed my coffee and took a huge gulp, not caring that it was still hot, just wanting something to wash away the feel of Tabasco. My throat was raw, as if someone was in the act of scraping my throat with a belt sander.

Flavour overwhelmed my taste buds, but it wasn't like the orgasmic fireworks from the bacon, this was more like a blast of lightning, napalm lit on fire and coursing through my veins with a wicked glee--

Everything went white, as deep in my brain synapses fired and then fired again and again and again and again—

It was all a fog to me, and somewhere I could hear a faint scream, but I was too high to care.

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