The False Vampire

One Month Later

“Adrienne, you really should stay in bed. You’ve been so sick this past week” Anita stared at me kindly, her fingers trailing down the side of my face. I knew without a doubt that my my face was flushed and sweaty, as Elisa had been continually telling me for the past week. I blamed the cold I was currently harbouring. It’s just a stomach bug. My eyes seemed to mash together. I really had no choice, there was no alternative for me other than that. None that beared thinking about.

I looked up at Anita, at her smiling face. She magicked a wet cloth and placed it on my forehead. With a relieved sigh, I held it closer to my hot skin, revealing in the soothing feeling it provided. Her fingers sparked with blue lights, and before I knew it, she was muttering in that foreign language that all spells were cast in. A tingling feeling shot from my head to toes, and it didn’t take me long to recognise the spell she had used. A sunlight deflection one. It was a temporary spell, but since the demise of my - Jae’s - sun warding amulet, we had resulted to these.

Jae’s warm body slipped underneath the covers next to mine, and with a possessiveness I had only recently realised that he possessed, he pulled me into the heat of his body. Jae seemed to find holding me comforting, and in times like this when I had been ill, it seemed to be the only way to calm him down. Jae groaned and shifted, pressing his face into my hair and inhaling deeply. Light began to trickle from his skin in small shots. I’d also noticed that was what happened when he let his guard down, when he relaxed.

Apparently, when I had initially began to show sicks of being sick, Jae had been calling my parents every day. Hounding them almost. It was only because they were sick of the calls every five minutes that they allowed me to stay with the Purswell’s. I laid there curled on my side, tucked into Jae’s body with his arm holding me against him, Anita watching us still from the doorway. She smiled at me, content, and left. I rolled around, though depriving Jae of the scent of my hair, causing a growl to rumble in his chest. With a laugh that turned to a spluttering cough, I poked him in the stomach.

“I thought only Samuel growled” I laughed lightly, bringing my hands to rest on his chest.

“Samuel is the only one that growls, I rumble.”

“Sure, sure” I rolled my eyes at his gruff tone, recognising his ‘I am superior’ voice. Samuel was a touchy subject with Jae. He wasn’t all that happy that Samuel was my mate. Which ultimately meant, he’d have to share me with him. Elisa had informed me that Folk males tended to be very possessive of their amanchara’s.

“And you’re also the size of my pinkie when in your true form!” Samuels muffled voice echoed from the next room. I had known without a doubt that he was listening, as he always tended to do. It seemed to be his instincts compelling him to. He was also possessive of me, but for differing reasons.

Instincts or not, I am not happy with him listening to us all the time.

I currently had the strangest urge to roll onto my side, snuggle into the covers and huff. I didn’t want to, I knew it would make me appear childish but at that moment I didn’t care. I knew what I wanted to do, and perhaps my petulance was a result of not being allowed to do what I wanted. I could be so spoilt sometimes.

I gave into my desires, just slightly, and allowed that huff to be released as a soft sigh. I reached out to Jae and twirled a lock of dirty blonde hair between my fingers, still slightly damp from his most recent shower. That was another thing I learnt about faeries recently. They had this uncontrollable urge to be clean. Staying at their house, I noticed he had at least two showers a day, sometimes three.

During my musing, I heard the front door slam. A tinkling noise rang out in the air, gentle and delicate though it sounded like it was right in my ear. I knew it was Elisa who approached from the tune. Another sounded, a steady beating like a drum. I didn’t know whose it was. I looked at Jae questioningly.

“It’s Dr Treacle” he seemingly knew what I was going to ask even before the words left my lips. We had become much closer in these past few weeks. I pulled my fingers from his hair and sat up, resting my back against the headboard. A slight burning led my to look down at my hands, seeing the pinkened flesh that graced my fingers in stripes.

I frowned at my fingers, and then the bracelet on my wrist. A newly updated version of the talisman that Jae had given me, it was blessed with a mixture of my and Jae’s blood in a ritual every full moon. But why had it short-circuited now? It was days too early. My frown turned into a scowl, and then I just accepted that we had managed to get a faulty one from Asethia. I had been there twice, but still wanted to go to Erellale. Jae had promised he would take me as soon as I recovered. From the stomach bug.

Dr Treacle opened the door with a flourish, and I knew in her hand where the magical disks that she cherished.

“Right now dear, are you ready for your examination?” I gulped, not wanting to admit what I knew she’d find.