Chapter Text
Don’t cry Hollis. Don’t cry. No one else here is crying. You don’t have waterproof mascara. Just a few more minutes. Your Dad is filming this. You can do it.
Laura anxiously shifted the yellow tassel on her graduation cap and swished the sleeves of her slightly too-big gown, whispering the words as quietly as she could. Usually the mantra was repeated for different circumstances: watching an emotional film in the cinema, seeing a three-legged puppy in the park, finding an old photo which brings up unforgettable but painful memories. But this was different. It wasn’t a documentary at the end of her Netflix list about captive whales, and it wasn’t a photo of a smiling brunette showcasing a baby to the camera. It was her graduation, and she was summa cum laude, and if she cried it would prove everyone who told her she couldn’t and wouldn’t make it correct.
Hollis wasn’t too far down the register, so Laura knew she should be focusing on the speech she would soon be delivering to hundreds of people. But reminiscing about her past seemed much more fitting for the day of high emotions (although it really wouldn’t help with the whole no-crying thing).
The last time she was this nervous to go on stage, she was in kindergarten. The school held an annual play where each student would dress up as what they wanted to be when they were older, walk across the stage, and proudly announce it into an outdated microphone. Her mother helped her make hers; a rather Sherlock-esque outfit, equipped with a magnifying glass and all. Four-year-old legs wobbled to the centre of the stage, and a voice sweet enough to give cavities spoke her well-practised phrase: ‘My name is Laura Eileen Hollis and I am going to be a reporter in Silas City!’
Everyone knew exactly where she was talking about. Silas City was famous to millenials, infamous to the older generations who still wished for the ‘good old days’ back. It was the first mass area to introduce legislation that allowed all creatures to coexist without restriction: restaurants could hire centaurs and fae, vixens could run for mayor, and even humans - the runt of the population who somehow managed to survive amidst species which could eradicate them with a click of their fingers - could find a home there.
However, no one really expected them to. Sure, Silas was introducing innovative technology which made the assimilation easier each day, but no one pretended it was a perfect haven. It may have been centuries since the world was a savage jungle, with every species looking out only for themselves, but prejudices still ruled the world. To be an apex predator announcing a desire to move to Silas made you seem hungry and on the hunt for fresh blood.
Being a human wanting to do that made you stupid and reckless.
The audience couldn’t seem to control their condescending laughter, even to spare the heart of a little girl with a big dream. Her classmates joined in after the show, and little Laura couldn’t comprehend why the tallest kid in their year (who insisted he descended from Bigfoot) was applauded for his same dream of being a reporter, whilst she was rushed off stage by the teacher wearing a stern frown and sad eyes.
Her mother hid the costume at the back of the attic that night.
The day after the play, Laura had been at the playground with her father. When he turned away to take a call, she took the opportunity to slip away, finding a group of classmates playing behind the trees with some older boys.
“Oh, look who it is! The little human who wants to be a reporter in the city of monsters! How long are we betting she’ll last, boys?” The voice was mocking but juvenile enough for little Laura to have the courage to scoff at the words; it wasn’t the first time she’d heard someone voicing their opinions on what certain people could and couldn’t do a little too loudly for her liking, and even at her young age she was getting pretty tired of people putting her in a box.
Before she could throw a well-crafted retort at him, the boy’s younger sister pushed past him, grabbing Laura’s hand, her pigtails swinging in an act of undying defiance. “Leave her alone, Theo! I think it’s cool that Laura wants to go to Silas. At least she isn’t mean like you!”
Clearly that wasn’t the right thing to say, even if Mona’s well-meaning words continued to make Laura’s heart swell each time she thought back to them. Theo threw his younger sister to the side and grabbed Laura by the collar of her shirt, lifting her so her toes brushed the floor with the ease of indifference. “I’m not scared of a human kindergartner,” he snarled, and pulled the tiny preschooler towards his open mouth.
Laura still remembered the feeling of two ivory incisions in her throat, of blood trickling down her clavicle, of her scream stopping in her throat, unable to come out. Shock and fear and pain paralysed her body, and she was sure she would die in that moment - after all, all she knew about vampires was that they were the villains of every book and show and film, and once they bit a human, they never wanted to stop.
Fortunately, Mona was one of the good vampires. Her screams were piercing, alerting every parent in the main area of the park, and Theo sped off with his friends before anyone could catch him in the act. Hearing confused voices and an oncoming confused crowd, Mona crouched down next to Laura where Theo had tossed her on the floor. “I still think you’re cool,” she whispered, her face forlorn, before tiptoeing away back to the shadows, just before Laura’s dad ran to the scene.
Once he understood what had happened, her father (her tired, doting father, who was convinced his daughter was attracted - no, addicted - to danger at the ripe age of four) began to drill self-preservation into her with a militant precision. He monitored the friends she made at school, enrolled her in as many human-only extracurricular activities as possible, and would have moved the whole family out of town that very night, had his wife not persuaded him otherwise. Sherman only became more aware over the years of his daughter’s knack for getting into trouble, and although she was just as good at getting herself out of it, Sherman would have done anything to cocoon her in a tight, unbreakable bundle of safety.
Back in the present, Laura felt a slight tug on the neck of her gown. Quickly realising everyone was staring at her, and that her name was being repeated in the microphone, Laura quickly bounced up the stairs to the stage, skidding to a stop in front of the Dean. “Sorry!” she winced, shaking his hand enthusiastically, powering through the minor embarrassment.
“Thank you for joining us, Miss Hollis! Laura here will be starting an internship at world-renowned newspaper The Silas Voice this summer in the wonderful city of Silas! We’re all very proud of her, including everyone involved in the creature inclusion programme, who are beyond excited at its apparent fruitful results.”
Laura smiled at that and took her seat at the back of the stage. The next few moments went somewhat in a blur; she delivered her speech as if she hadn’t practiced it for two hours the night before to the point where it had lost all meaning, and she smiled for countless pictures with her dad, and she said heartfelt goodbyes to people she truly would miss - goodbyes which were identical to the ones she gave to the people she was happy to leave behind.
Two weeks later, with a large polka-dotted suitcase in hand and an overflowing backpack slung around her, Laura hugged her dad without whispering her often-spoken mantra: she let herself cry, and even took the bag of ‘essentials’ he packed her (despite her protests that bear spray really wouldn’t do much against vampires, not that she needed protection against vampires, because really, Dad, the act of one vampire almost twenty years ago does not define the acts of the species! ).
The train began to depart the station, and although Laura’s heart broke at the idea of leaving the town she found herself in (of leaving the town she lost her mother in), she didn’t regret her decision to follow the dreams of a bold four-year-old girl either.
Because she made it. She was a human, and maybe she was naive and too headstrong and overly ambitious. But Silas wouldn’t mind about any of that; Silas was where she was going to make the world a better place.
* * *
Laura hated the world.
When she first got to Silas, she loved everything. The graffiti on the walls, the vendors on the street, the fact that the supermarkets and clothes shops were stocked for everyone . She loved that when she got to her apartment (one of the cheapest and grottiest in the city) there were creaky floorboards and woodlice crawling across the walls and suspicious stains on the table and only two plug sockets and neighbours determined to blow her eardrums with their music taste. She loved that everything was peeling off and nothing like home at all. She especially loved the fact that she could live off of corn fructose syrup and fizzy drinks guilt-free.
But then she had her first day at work.
It wasn’t like she expected to be given her own office and immediately asked to write a front-page story with solely her name on the byline. Whilst Laura loved to dance in the realm of faint possibilities, she knew well enough not to base reality off of it. The Silas Voice was possibly the most respected newspaper in the country, and even getting to write a small puff piece within her first month there - even working in the same building as its founder, Lola Perry - would be an honour.
Honestly, she hadn’t set the bar high at all. But it was not reached. Hell, it wasn’t even scraped. The bar was looked at, inspected, and put a few notches higher.
Not knowing this, Laura bounced up to the front desk, beaming as she stood on her tiptoes at the person behind it - they looked like an alchemist of some sort, and their badge read the name LaFontaine in twirling green calligraphy. “Hi! I was wondering if you could tell me where --”
“Let me interrupt you right there -- I’m no receptionist. I dropped something...slightly dangerous around here somewhere and was hoping to find it,” LaFontaine murmured as they ducked below the desk, only the tips of their gravity-defying ginger hair showing above the table’s surface. When they finally emerged, glowing orb in hand, their eyes widened and their attention was finally placed on Laura. “Hey! You’re the new intern right? Heard you’re human - pretty ballsy move moving to Silas. I’m guessing you want to see Perry, I’ll take you to her office since this--,” their own words were interrupted to wiggle the orb uncomfortably close to Laura’s face, “technically belongs to her anyway. Come on, follow me. What’s your name again?”
Despite the rapid fire of Lafontaine’s questions and comments, Laura’s smile didn’t decrease; in fact, the two seemed to be running on the same wavelength, both chatting as if they were childhood friends rather than colleagues who met a few minutes ago.
“So, this is her. No need to be scared or anything; Perr might be the boss, but she’s also a softie. She’ll probably offer you brownies before you even sit down.”
Lafontaine wasn’t wrong - Lola Perry was a warm and comforting mixture of bouncing curls, homemade treats, and incredibly inspiring work ethic. Her office was spotless (making Laura somewhat ashamed of the state of the room she had been occupying for merely two days), her brownies were absolutely divine (she had always been told that witches made the best cooks), and her smile just as enchanting as the alchemist’s had been. After a few minutes of chatting about Laura’s journey and how she’s finding the move to a metropolitan city, Perry nodded her head towards a large binder sitting next to her computer monitor. Laura turned her attention towards it, eyes scanning the visible pages showcasing a picture of a young brunette.
“So, Laura. I’m sure you’ve heard about the fourteen girls who have gone missing these last few months. The police gave up a few weeks ago; they had no leads, and the only connection was that all of them were predators of some kind, from a siren to a poltergeist. You know how it goes,” she fell silent, her eyes losing their connection to Laura’s as she looked down at her binder, eyes sad and regretful.
Just as fast as the storm clouded over her, it snapped away, and Perry sat up straight once more. “ The Silas Voice has a history of breaking open cold cases - providing new leads, occasionally even solving some ourselves. We’ve dedicated as much as our staff to this as possible. Everyone is working extremely hard, hence the unusual silence around here.”
Laura was practically buzzing in her seat; her expectations were being completely beaten. She couldn’t believe that Perry was about to let her help on an open case, just as mysterious and life-dependent as she always hoped for.
“Which is why your main task around here will be supporting them. I’m sorry -- I know it’s probably not what you dreamed of when you moved here, and I know you have very impressive academic credentials. But we can’t put an intern on this, no matter how short staffed. Our photographer, Danny, is going to give you a quick tour of the office, and then I’m sure the team would absolutely love a round of coffee. The machine’s in the supply room on the ground floor.”
Don’t stop smiling Hollis. Don’t look disappointed. No one else would be disappointed. You should be grateful just to be here. Hang on for a few more minutes. You need to make a good impression for Perry. You can do it.
Laura’s mantra was loud and clear, but it was so much harder to act just as enthusiastic as before. “Uh, yeah, sure, that sounds great. I won’t let you down, boss!” she grinned (not reaching her eyes, but credible enough for a practical stranger) and stood up from her chair, giving a little salute which she immediately regretted, before setting off to find the photographer.
* * *
The supply room was dark, and cold, and likely hadn’t been visited since the last intern had left. The coffee machine, it turned out, needed an eternity and a half just to get the water boiling, and Laura had to precariously balance herself on top of a chair and two boxes of old newspapers in order to reach the cupboard where the rest of the styrofoam cups were being held.
Danny was just as nice as Laf and Perry had been. Her mood had been somewhat dampened since her tasks were described to her, but Danny helped elevate it slightly with an incredibly detailed tour and words of encouragement when she immediately analysed Laura’s face: “Perry give you coffee duty, huh? Don’t sweat it; we all did the same thing when we first started here. You’d think she could use magic or something to just, make it happen, right?”
But then Danny had to leave - something about finishing editing the pictures for tomorrow’s and the next day’s articles before her full moon-related absence - and Laura was left alone with her disappointment and doubts.
Sprawled out on the same chair she climbed on earlier as the second cup of coffee began to fill, Laura just about heard the buzz of her phone over the loud rumbling of the archaic machine on the corner table. Grabbing it, she straightened up quickly before accepting the Facetime request, quickly plastering a strained smile back on her face.
“Hey dad! How have you been? I miss you.”
They exchanged pleasantries for a while, and Laura let herself tune out slightly as her dad detailed what every one of her classmates had been up to in the two and a half days since she left her hometown. It was only when she got up to put on the next cup of coffee that she heard her dad release a little breath - a common sound in her house which usually meant ‘ oh, thank god she isn’t in danger ’.
“You’re on coffee duty! Oh Laura, honey, that’s so great. I’ve been so scared that you’d be off fighting vampires or tackling ghouls or stalking centaurs - don’t give me that look, Laura, I know Mr and Mr Greenwood from down the road are lovely, but centaurs can give a mean kick. Look, I love you, and you know I’m proud that you’re pursuing this journalism thing, but if you had just told me months ago how safe it would be, I wouldn’t have lost so much hair!”
He continued like that for a while, not noticing his daughter’s face fall. Laura loved her dad, and she really did miss him, but his encouragement to enjoy her suffocatingly safe situation wasn’t entirely helpful. She pretended to hear a knock at the door and gave her dad a quick goodbye, tucking her phone back in her jean pocket with a sigh as she went to get the next cup to fill with black coffee.
As she walked over to the windowsill where she badly balanced the reusable cups (a towering mess bound to end in calamity), she caught sight of a wisp of brown hair and porcelain skin in the corner of her eye, and abandoned her task in lieu of looking at the girl outside of the room’s sole window.
Though slacking off on her first day wasn’t exactly very typical of her behaviour, Laura couldn’t bring herself to berate it when the girl was just so attractive . She seemed to be roughly Laura’s age, though the two hardly shared many qualities - the stranger’s dark curls and pale complexion were an opposite to Laura’s mousy hair and tanned skin, and her hands were stuffed in the pockets of a sleeveless denim jacket, worn atop of a faded band tee-shirt and holy Hermione, leather trousers .
Just as Laura was about to abandon her creepy post, another girl materialised in a cloud of black smoke right in front of the other: significantly older and extremely well dressed, the newcomer in the alley was wearing a sequined orange gown, her straight black hair and dark skin accenting the colour in a way that completely epitomised and embodied the word couture. The two women smiled at each other - a smile which signalled recognition and history and a complex but irrevocable dynamic - and woah, Hollis, no need to analyse innocent strangers in an alleyway .
She looked over her shoulder at the coffee machine - her nemesis - and back at the two strangers outside, just catching the moment the older one passed the other a handful of plastic bags of -
Wait. Those were donation bags. Blood donation bags. Bags of warm, red, probably human blood.
They were vampires.
* * *
With each step she took, Laura begged herself to just stop and reevaluate her decision making. She was three days into her move to a more-accepting, diverse city, and already she was making as many stereotypes as her father. Hell, at this rate she would be carrying the bear spray around with her just in case she came across any vampiric gangs -- which, first of all, really didn’t seem like the most suitable weapon against the undead.
And speaking of vampires - Laura had, at least, eventually managed to stop herself from spying on the two (beautiful) strangers from the basement window. Unfortunately, she had replaced that with exiting the building and making her way to the alleyway the window faced, positioning herself behind some large dumpster bins so that she wouldn’t be spotted.
It wasn’t that she thought there was criminal activity going on: to assume so just because they were vampires would simply be wrong. But seeing them hand each other bags of blood in an alleyway -- that just couldn’t be a normal, legal activity. Blood, for starters, had to be purchased from a bank by legitimate means, and certainly not shadily traded in a dark corner of an empty street.
(Okay, maybe the corner wasn’t dark at all, because it was daytime, and the street was actually rather full of people considering it was the middle of a workday, but the situation stood out nonetheless.)
Okay, focus Hollis. This will definitely be the most interesting thing that’s going to happen today, unless someone chokes on their coffee and you have to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre or something .
“--I swear next time I’ll be more on top of things, Mattie, but -- well, you know what its like to have mother cut you off.”
“No thanks needed, Kitty. Any chance to get away from the board is a chance I’ll--”
Laura was forced out of her thoughts about how perfectly fitting the smooth voice was for the gorgeous brunette when her whole body was consumed by goosebumps. The second woman (Mattie, apparently) was looking right in her direction. Laura crouched lower, if possible, refusing to breath and hoping the supernatural abilities of the two didn’t include hearing her loud, pounding pulse.
Mattie turned back towards the other as she asked what was wrong, shaking off the question with a dismissive hand gesture. “I’ve got to get going, Kitty. Don’t wait so long to ask for help next time.”
Just as she had appeared, the vampire left once more in a cloud of black smoke, leaving behind remnants of dust and a small pop sound. Laura sighed in relief, grateful at having dodged that close call, and also really happy that she finally got to watch the super cool apparating gift which she’d definitely been jealous of since she finished the Harry Potter series.
She pushed herself up off the floor, wiping the dirt from her jeans and reaching into her back pocket for her phone to check the time, when she felt a cool hand encircle her wrist. Spinning around, hair whipping her neck and free hand ready to deliver a sharp hit to the assailant’s throat, Laura saw who it was.
Making direct eye contact with the girl she had been creeping on for the last ten minutes should have made her heighten her guard (she was a shady vampire, after all, despite how overwhelmingly attractive she was), but instead it made her do the opposite. Both arms relaxed, and whilst her eyes remained sharply attuned to the other’s (Kitty’s?) face, the rest of her body dismissed any signs of danger.
“Cutie, if you’re going to stalk girls in alleyways, you really need to learn to be more subtle about it,” the woman drawled, hazel eyes flicking up and down to assess the small girl in front of her. “Wouldn’t want to run into any trouble now, would we?”
Despite the numerous smart and quick-witted responses ready to fire off her tongue, Laura (for once) was reduced to a speechless state; she managed to remove her wrist from the girl’s grasp, and after a few minutes of regaining her thoughts - time the vampire took merely to smirk at the effect she had on her spy - Laura managed to remember how to form words. “Well, maybe if you weren’t being so suspiciously sneaky right outside my window, I wouldn’t have to come and investigate, would I,” she spoke strongly, chin held high and back straightening in a futile effort to eradicate the one or two inches which the girl had above her.
All she got in return for her efforts was a quick and well-practiced eye roll, before the girl in leather turned around and began to walk away. Seemingly feeling the way Laura’s eyes followed every step, she turned around and smirked once more, speaking the words “ hope I don’t see you around, sweetheart ” before turning around the corner of the wall.
Laura cursed under her breath, finally diverting her attention back to her phone. Seeing the company email-alert from LaFontaine asking where their ‘much needed life elixir’ was, she made her way back into the building, and back to the coffee machine.
If her eyes continued to drift to the window in hopes of seeing the girl again over the next few minutes, there would be no witness to prove it.