You discover, ironically, that Salem is haunted. In a mundane way: too many memories on too many street corners.
After you have sold his things (except the video-game console, because that was her advice and also fuck him too), and after all the questions from Internal Affairs about the things you didn't know until that last night, you decide to close the book on Halloween Town. You move inland, in with your cousin in Worcester at least to start. You find a job waitressing at the university faculty club—another nametag job, but the customers are generally a polite lot, the uniform actually looks snappy from the right angles, the rest of the staff are fine for smalltalk... Snow arrives in December, and the trees around town are done up with lights, and winter is good for a while.
By the start of February, the novelty of snow has worn off. You find yourself wishing that Christmas could have been rescheduled a month later, to when the magic is dying and people really need a holiday.
You realize that Valentine's Day impends.
There haven't been any men in your life since your sack-of-shit husband was forcibly exited from it. No women, either. You wonder if he has ruined them, if she has spoiled you for them.
You try reading some steamy stuff. All that time hanging out with witchy and crystal-energy girls in Salem, and you've heard a few things. Nothing sounds like what you'd be into. And then you imagine her putting you through them, and the feeling on your skin is damnably electric.
You dither for days. You know how you will decide in the end.
You call Daria and Jane.
Daria picks up on the second ring. "Violet?" She sounds only slightly surprised, but then again her voice never did vary far from that controlled tone that night in October...
"Hello." Your voice is more breathy and unsteady than you'd like, by a wide margin. "How are you?" Inane, inane, why say that of all things?
"Undeath is cool. How's life?"
Somehow her total lack of fazedness helps balance you.
"I've been... fine. A good life. A normal life." You pause. All the one-liners you've ever heard in TV movies spin through your head, and you say, "I need a vacation."
"Hold on," you think you hear a smile in Daria's voice, "let me fetch Jane." Her volume modulates, in that way that sounds like she is speaking more loudly farther from the phone. "Hey, Jane!"
The next thing you hear is a circular saw, you're pretty sure. And then Jane's shout over that: "Hold on! Creative process!"
Then Daria: "It's Violet!"
The saw power shuts off, and there is a clunking, and then the phone must be transferred, or perhaps they are holding it between them while standing very close, because Jane's voice is suddenly proximate indeed. "Hi hi hi there, my malenky devotchka."
And now the spinal thrill makes all your feelings undeniable, and there is nothing to stop you. "I was wondering if you—you two—had plans for Valentine's Day."
"Valentine's?" Jane repeats. "No."
Daria inserts, "Not plans as such."
"Would you like to come visit me?"
"We'd be charmed! Wouldn't we, Daria? You'll have to forgive my GF here, she likes to think she's above such things. Just because she can fly, I suppose. But even she could use a break sometimes."
You say, "I wasn't just thinking about a movie night."
"And we don't eat popcorn," Jane says. It sounds like the offer that it is. "What do you have in mind?"
It comes out in a harsh expulsion of breath. "Everything," you tell her. You inhale again, deeply. "Everything you gave me before, and more. I have it all in mind, and it's crowding out my mind."
There is a pause, and Daria has taken the phone again. "You'll have to forgive my GF. She's a bit discombobulated at the moment."
Daria somehow keeps you level for the rest of the call. She asks things like what you think is the nicest hotel in town, if there's a place you like that does good carry-out, maybe Vietnamese or Thai, medications and known allergies, favorite romantic music.
"'Lullaby' by The Cure," Jane suggests by way of a yell from somewhere farther from the phone. "Shirley Bassey singing 'Goldfinger'!"
Daria sighs. "See what I have to put up with?"
"Honestly," you admit, "if she's game for it, I can... I can see myself liking it."
Daria's level tone softens by a measure. "Yeah, I get that."
It is the tail edge of sunset, and you are waiting in the lobby of the hotel you had picked as the nicest in town. You are watching the elevators, figuring that they'd be coming from that way since they'd said when they'd arrive, and then you hear Jane's laugh—her low, rich chuckle—from behind you. You turn, and they are suddenly here, carrying drunken noodles and Thai iced tea and a slice of cheesecake with strawberry sauce.
"Hello again," Daria says.
"Hello again," Jane echoes, checking you out with the same motions of eyes and blue-tinted sunglasses as she had the first time you met. It is comfortingly familiar to an odd degree.
Jane takes your right hand in both of hers. "You still hungry? Because I am famished." It is at once a double-check that you are still interested and also incredibly corny. You look over to Daria, who is carrying the human food, and she rolls her eyes and punctuates that with a Mona Lisa smile. You are both incredibly into all the extra that Jane is, and there's nothing you can do about that, except follow when she tilts her head towards the elevators and says, "Come on."
The elevator is fast enough that you feel your stomach rise a bit when it stops. Daria keeps rising. Her Doc Martens are well off the floor, and her eyes are level with Jane's and a bit above yours. Her unflinching deadpan expression sells the joke, and you laugh.
It's the most calm you have been in days.
Daria is, as Jane said, very good at arranging things. They have a suite. Daria unpacks dinner onto the table while Jane removes your coat and takes you into her arms.
She asks, "You said kissing is within your limits, right?"
The request for confirmation makes the act sound special. It makes you feel valued. "Yes," you reassure her.
She is at first cool to the touch, like a lover who after all has just come in from February in Massachusetts, perhaps more deeply so than winter alone would manage, and then she leans back a bit and you see the glow take root behind her shades, and she approaches again and you feel her turn warm for you.
She opens a little distance. "So within my limits you wouldn't believe," you say.
With her left hand, she slides her spectacles off. They drop from her fingers. Instead of falling, they float on the air to Daria, who catches them with her left hand while her right holds a teakettle under the tap.
You realize that you have been invited into the middle of a relationship that is, among everything else, domestic.
"I suppose I'm lucky," Jane says, leading you further into the suite. "I always did get strange feelings about Elizabeth Dehner in that Star Trek episode."
"I know a woman," you offer to the conversation, "who had her sexual awakening from Jessica Rabbit."
Daria says, "I hope she found someone who made her laugh."
You haven't been treated to dinner in a long time. Daria vanishes into the next room and returns wearing a classic Little Black Dress. Jane is in sweater and slacks, a combination of black and crimson that echoes your last time together without repeating it in full.
Daria drinks tea, you remember, and it turns out that Jane agrees with a can of double-chocolate stout. They each have a bar of what seems to be high-end baker's chocolate. When she catches you looking, Jane lets her fangs out to snap off a piece.
"I do feel odd," you admit, "eating more than everyone else at the table."
Daria deadpans, "Waiting for the second course."
You get a wave of butterflies, and then Jane is laughing while she chews. "I swear," she says upon swallowing, "sometimes it was like dating the world's weirdest vegan. With vampy senses, dead meat is just off, you know? And nobody wants their date to feel vaguely queasy whenever you go out. We must have tried every vegetarian place in Boston. With me being the glutton every time."
Daria can tell that you have a question.
"I remember she said you... turned her," you say. "I didn't know you had dated before that."
"It's hard to say when we started," Daria replies. "And there were complications along the way."
Jane takes a swig of her stout and uses the can to describe a circle in the air. "We always had something strange," she says. "We were always perfect for each other—"
Daria interposes, "With all the confusion that that implies."
Jane leans back. "What my best girl here hasn't yet admitted is that she's already grateful to you just for inviting us out here, because she's such a writer that she can't help but get a kick out of riding a Commuter Rail line all the way."
Daria sips her hot tea. "What my darkly-gifted best girl hasn't yet admitted is that she's such an artist that she spent the entire trip here wondering how you'd look by candlelight." She snaps her fingers. The candles you had barely noticed because they blended into how-a-table-centerpiece-looks all light up. "Aren't I nice?" The flames play, just noticeably, on Jane's chain collar.
You only have a few bites of cheesecake left. Looking down at them on your plate, you say, "I guess we need to talk about things. Don't we?"
"Nervous?" Jane asks. She is trying not to grin. "Bet I was much more."
"At the risk of alluding to the lore," Daria says, "you invited us. We're here because you want. So: What do you want, and with whom?"
Your eyes go to Jane. You realize how obvious you are being. "Sorry," you say, looking down again.
"Absolutely no offense," Jane chortles.
"Maybe I have a type," you mumble.
"Or maybe," Jane says, "you can pick up on how she boffs me because I need it."
Daria looks over her teacup at Jane and you in turn. "We have got to find a more eloquent way of expressing that."
Jane brushes the remark aside. "Elegance is for tailors."
You realize that the auburn-haired being beside you at the dinner table is not particularly concerned with sex as humans understand it, but is very interested in providing everything that Jane needs.
"Whatever you want from me," says Daria, "she'd get a rise out of that, and so I'd be amenable. But you didn't ask us all the way to the end of the train line just for amenable, did you?"
Jane is watching you, her elbows on the table. Along with everything else, she is an artist who scrutinizes the play of candlelight upon your features. You recognize what you need, how long you've needed it, how there's only one way to say what you have been missing.
"I want to make love," you tell her.
Jane's eyes flare blue-white.
Her voice drops into her throat and spreads through your chest. "And after that?"
You speak quietly but firmly. "Drink from me." Then, because you are sitting alone with two of the darkly-gifted undead, who could leave you an exsanguinated husk or take you off the board in ways you probably haven't even imagined, and you need to assert yourself, you look to Daria and surprise her. "Both of you."
Jane is beside you inhumanly fast. She offers her hand, and you take it. As soon as you stand, she sweeps you off your feet and carries you with inhuman strength.
You feel yourself hit the mattress of the king-size bed, and you push yourself upward to meet her in a kiss that is mostly horizontal.
She must have been incredible even as a human. Her legs alone would have been heartbreaking.
Now the force within her muscles is something beyond athletic. Life as you have known it was displaced, clearing the way for her soul to provide its own animation.
You arch and clutch the bedclothes and grip her waist with your thighs and send inarticulate fingers over her back and under her shirt and then her hands intercept yours and pin them to the mattress and she pins all of you with a kiss, and the next moment your vision works at all you are staring up into the burning sapphires of her irises, and her hands have come to a trembling stop at the collar of the nicest date-night blouse you own.
Daria is beside the two of you, her head propped up by an elbow. Her top leg is a little elevated and bent at the knee, so that the toe of that boot is playing with the laces of the other. You discover that you have never seen an inhuman degree of fondness before. Along with everything else that is happening, the woman she loves is getting something she wants very much.
Daria whispers, "I think she wants to rip all your clothes off." She leans a little closer. "And you'd make me very happy if the feeling were mutual."
Held by inhuman strength in every respect, you take in all the air you can. "Mutual," you agree.
Jane's fingers take prisoners.
You're here from months of isolation, of perfunctory jilling-off sessions and even more perfunctory fucking prior to that. There's no way you can last long, and you don't, climaxing on her tongue and around her fingers.
As conscious function slowly returns to your muscles, you feel hands take yours, one of them cooler than the other. You open your eyes to see Jane and Daria sitting upright and kissing over you. Jane is pouring gratitude into her true love. When their lips finally separate, Jane progresses to planting hers against Daria's forehead. Their hands on yours start to go loose... and then tighten again.
"I feel weird," you say.
Jane moves to stretch her athletic frame out beside your body. Gently, she brushes your hair out of your eyes. "Don't," she says. She turns her whisper salacious to say, "I have no complaints."
"Women," you mumble. "Multiple. Undead."
"First time?" Daria asks in her monotone.
This gets a laugh out of you. Tired and confused, but a laugh for sure.
Jane nuzzles into your shoulder and caresses along your jawline. Then she looks up when you look down, and the glow is faded but definitely still present.
"I want to try something," you say.
You find that your strength returns as you use it, somehow. You lift yourself to sit facing Daria. "Kissing is within your limits, right?" you ask.
You don't try to go as deeply as with Jane, just letting auburn hair fall against you, then separating to draw more air than you thought you would need.
"If you want to stop here," Daria tells you, "you'll have gotten out your frustrations, and you'll have made her very happy."
You put a deliberately incredulous tone on. "Who said anything about stopping here? I asked to make love, and for you to drink my blood. I don't think we've even started that menu."
"Interesting perspective," Jane says, from her supine position on the bed.
This time you find yourself able to be tender. You explore Jane as much as she explores you. Together you discover that when you work her up to a new wave of excitement, she clutches Daria in a spasm of pure need, and Daria melts under the pressure, and being able to help one of them provide that to the other fills you with a warmth that makes you want to explore Jane along new angles....
The fact that Daria can disregard gravity when she wants turns out quite convenient for making herself available to Jane whichever way the two of you are oriented.
Your second climax hits with your head in Daria's lap, all three of you linked in a chain that closes upon itself and shuts out the world.
A few minutes later, Jane fetches you a glass of water that you down without caring about spilling. "Thanks," you say.
"Now," Jane asks, "don't you think it's about time we got Daria out of that dress?"
You're punch-drunk on post-orgasmic glow. "I guess the next step can get messy," you answer.
Jane gazes levelly at her best girl with one eyebrow raised.
You feel Daria slide aside from behind you. She stands by the bed and steps out of her dress with no artfulness at all... a fact that her leaving her glasses and boots on rather more than makes up for.
She returns to the bed and takes Jane's face between her hands. "Du sang, enfin?" she asks.
The iris-glow is so very back. "Oui, Maîtresse."
Jane lifts you again and follows Daria to the glass- and marble-walled shower. It is luxuriantly appointed and would be a fun place to do what humans do, you think, before the thought of what Jane is about to do pushes that notion aside.
Both of them have their fangs out, you realize. Daria eases you back against the marble-tiled wall and takes your hand. One firm squeeze, and then she guides Jane's head down to your bare thigh. "Arrête-toi," she instructs. To you, she says, "Hold here, where I do, and pull back when I do." She interlocks her fingers with yours behind Jane's head, gripping tightly into that perfectly dark hair.
"Qu'un coup," Daria says.
"Oui, Maîtresse." And Jane bites down.
First a sting, then the heat, then the pain, then the rush—
Daria pulls, and this makes your own hand pull too, and Jane's fangs slide out of you. You have seen what drinking does to them, the elemental satisfaction that it brings. You have seen Daria hold Jane to a single taste at a time, what being subject to that will does to Jane. And now you are doing that to Jane, with Daria, using your own body.
And now Daria has brought Jane into a kiss, is taking your blood out of Jane's mouth, is forcing a vampire to release the elemental sustenance.
Jane quakes with submissive delight.
Daria casts an appraising eye over you. You make a little inviting wave with your fingers. And she guides Jane down to your bare thigh again.
This time the rush blends with the pain. Daria tugs on Jane's hair, and you barely remember to do the same, your hand is basically following along with Daria's by now, and you watch Daria take your blood from Jane's mouth again. You feel light-headed for more than one reason.
"Les yeux ouverts, chérie," Daria instructs, and Jane lifts her eyelids to reveal the blue-white heat.
"Maîtresse, oui, Maîtresse."
"She's been a good girl, don't you think?" It takes a moment for you to realize that Daria is asking you. "Drinking just what we let her, sharing what she's given. I think she deserves a reward."
Jane wobbles on her knees, braces herself against the glass shower wall. She looks like a woman who has unlocked multiple levels of new dreams coming true.
Daria leans in close to you while keeping one hand on Jane's shoulder to steady her. "I want to let her drain you to unconsciousness," she says. "You won't be able to stop her. Leave all that to me. I'll hold you through the process, if you'd like." The Mona Lisa smile returns. "It's the first thing I did to her after we admitted we'd been in love."
A thought floats dizzily through your brain. "Can we have music?"
It's another moment in the night when you have managed to surprise Daria. Eyebrow lift, then smooth retreat that accelerates to superhuman speed, then headphones over your ears.
It's another moment in the night when Daria has made you laugh. You nod agreement to everything. Daria slides you forward, embraces you tightly from behind, and tilts your neck to the side.
Jane bites down when Björk hits the chorus and declares that all is full of love.
You are vaguely disappointed to find that Daria has put her dress back on when you awaken. She is floating about the hotel suite, legs idly bent back at the knees, cleaning up the remains of dinner and generally sorting things. Something that sounds like a Bach piano piece you can't identify is playing softly on speakers near your head. You feel a pressure in the crook of your arm.
" 's this what they call aftercare?" you ask.
Daria floats up to your side. "This is lactated Ringer's. And you had supplemental oxygen while you were asleep."
Jane is stretched out in bed beside you. It is much easier to be relaxed when she is only wearing her choker now that she has your blood inside her. "My first time," she says softly, "I passed out after not much more than your typical donation. Turns out she drank long and slow. You held on like I only managed after practice." She brushes your hair and slides the pad of her thumb across your knuckles. "She got very good at this kind of thing."
"Orange juice?" Daria offers you a glass. Jane helps you sit up. "Not too fast."
While you are sipping, she breaks off a piece of dark chocolate and hands it to Jane. Then she snaps another and offers it to you.
"Thanks," you say. "For both. For everything." You fall back onto the pillows that Jane has plumped beneath you, so that you're halfway elevated. More than that is still too much for you to sustain.
Jane says, "The absolute best way to revive me was for me to take some of her blood. But that wasn't something we discussed for tonight."
"I don't think I could ever be ready for that," you say.
"You had the choice to be here tonight," Daria says, settling herself cross-legged so that you are between her and Jane. "I did not have the choice to be turned. And she..."
"We discovered I didn't have the choice, either," says Jane. "Oh, we could pick the date, and the toppings on my last pizza." You discern that this last part means more to them than the words alone might indicate. "But there was no way she couldn't eventually share the dark gift. Not as long as we were in love. It wasn't just that I would grow old and she wouldn't. It wouldn't be fair that I would be an artist stuck with my senses and not hers. I couldn't help but be jealous. She couldn't help but hurt at the idea of depriving me. Maybe that doesn't make any sense to you, but..."
"Maybe it's not my place to understand it all," you tell her. "But I think I can see that you couldn't be apart."
She brushes her lips into your temple.
One question arises, and you push it out of the way in favor of another. "So, this thing you have, with the... obedience, and all that. Is that a vampire thing?"
Daria replies, "That's a my-girlfriend-is-a-freak thing. But I mean that in a good way, my love."
The women on either side of you have clearly been ribbing each other since they were human.
Jane adds, "It's not because she's the one who turned me, or anything like that."
"And does she actually... control you? Like, with mind powers?"
Jane chuckles a bit. "It's actually me who got the compulsion powers in the vampire lottery. Notice how she is always the one controlling fire? How I do it with my feet on the floor?"
Daria follows up: "Reading thoughts, and even transmitting messages, is different from implanting feelings or fogging out a person's willpower. So what Jane and I do..."
"It's more like hypnotism?" you suggest. "It works on her because she wants it?"
"I think mesmerism sounds more evocative," Daria says. "More gothic, in the Carmilla sense. But yes. With the bonus that I can hear exactly how well it works while we're doing it, and I can beam an induction straight into that weird brain of hers if we want."
"The only straight thing about either of us," says Jane. "Hey," she adds, perking up a bit, which makes for an interesting view. "What kind of girl are you that your first thought runs to erotic hypnosis?"
You try to assemble an explanation. "Salem," you say, "lot of witchy types, New Age, crystal energies, if they're into something weird that'll come up eventually. And," you swallow, "I did some reading after the last time we met. To try and figure out exactly what weird things I might be into." There doesn't seem to be much point in holding back. "I can't say that the idea did very much for me. It all seemed to be about trancing yourself out to become a perfect doll for men, and—"
Jane interrupts, "Who wants to be more attractive to men than they absolutely have to?"
Daria mutters, "Trying to imagine you saying that in high school..."
"And the track listings on the hypnosis CD's were all, like, 'IQ reduction', and..."
Daria says, "IQ is a social construct for eugenicist purposes."
Jane whispers in your ear, "Try holding that thought in your head and staying aroused."
Daria reaches over you to caress Jane's bare shoulder. "It's not that uncommon," she says, "for people who are driven and creative and forceful to want to set it all aside sometimes and just slow down for a while."
Says Jane, "I trust her with helping me to shut it all off, when I need to."
"And you?" you ask Daria. "Is the writer less driven and creative than the artist?"
Daria shrugs almost imperceptibly. "I get to do that for her. To be doing that to the exclusion of everything else. That's how I set it all aside."
"Plus, I look great in high heels."
Daria breaks off another piece of chocolate for each of you.
It's hard to put off the question any longer, and you decide not to try. "Am I ruined now?"
"Hrmmm?" Jane asks. Daria waits for you to elaborate.
"I have never, ever, had an experience like tonight before. I think that's pretty obvious. Where do I go from here?"
"This was what you needed tonight," Daria says. "That doesn't mean it's the only thing you'll need forever."
Jane remarks, "You can actually still get attracted to men who walk past on the street. That's more than she ever could. And who's to say what floats your boat for relationship stuff outside of bed? There's no real reason you'd be like us in that regard, any more than you're lifestyle-compatible with any random anybody. Right?"
"Right," you say.
Daria leans back in a long stretch for such a petite girl. She hangs her head off the edge of the bed and lets her hair cascade down. "And who's to say how much distance the sunlight will make between us, until it happens?"
"Who's to say?" you agree.
Thinking of the sunlight leads your attention to the curtained windows. Something about the quality of the light around the edges of the curtains catches your attention. "Is it snowing?"
Daria floats over you, touches down at the window, brushes the curtain aside a fraction and takes a peek. "So it is."
A bandage fixed securely over your IV injection site, Jane wrapped in a blanket together beside you, Daria penning in her notebook, the three of you gradually finish the chocolate and watch the snow and wait for the sunrise.
It is a week later when you get a box in the mail. The first thing you find inside is a CD that has evidently been burned on a computer, and the second thing is a note. The note is attached to the top of another, smaller, more expensive-looking box.
Dear Violet,
Find a quiet place, where you will not be interrupted for an hour, and where you feel safe. It will not work unless you truly do feel safe; of that much we are sure. A bed or an armchair will do, or a hammock, I suppose. Put on your headphones and turn off the lights. Get ready to count backwards from ten. You can always think of sunlight to wake up. Jane says that the stiletto heels help with going under, but we know that she's a trifle odd, don't we?
She is confident that she knows your size.
Just press play.
As ever, Daria.