It was dark. Obviously. I couldn’t do anything when it was too bright after all.

But this time, it was especially dark. Thick, dark curtains blocked off most sunlight and only the reflected rays from the ground did illuminate the room somewhat. It was three days after we burned down the whole mansion and honestly, not much has happened since then.

We moved to the servant`s quarters, a rather simple house a few hundred metres away from the mansion and that was basically all. Sure, I did fool around quite a bit and I even went to the city in the cover of the night, but that was really it.

For once, there was calm in my life and I could spend my day leisurely inside the bed, just like I always dreamt to do … it was so boring. We burnt down every book together with the whole mansion and as such, I couldn’t do anything during the day. Especially rude was that most of the rooms here had windows without curtains, rendering me completely useless during the day. The only thing that kept me alive were the things I spent my hard-earned money of the military on.

Around noon, I heard Mary and Tom in front of the door. It was the first time they were coming together lately. I hated that so much, dealing with Tom during these last days was already a hassle enough as he was burning to take further action.

And how much I hated that none of these doors had any locks. None! Just one would be enough and I could lock both of them away forever, but none? As such, I was forced to deal with them … over and over again.

“Mary, you really shouldn’t go in there right now.” Tom already visited me during the night and let´s say that it didn’t work out too well for him. I covered by a fine, comfy blanket, rolled over to my side and stared at the door. A few seconds after I drew the blanket over my head, the door was opened and closed swiftly.

“Lucinda?” asked Mary in the darkness.

“Not here.” I growled underneath my blanket and pulled my two dearest items closer to me.

“Okaaay. What have you been up to lately? After I saw you cleaning the house furiously on the first night, I barely noticed you. We are already rebuilding the mansion and hiring a few maids … do you want to take part in that?” She asked, concerned about my well-being as I didn’t leave this room too often.

“Alright … I guess I do that.” I said completely demotivated and lifted up my upper body in an attempt to sit upright. The blanket slowly but surely slid down from my head, and then from my naked shoulders.

My reactions during the day were similar to a dead cat, if I wasn’t already on high alert. Thus, it came very surprisingly as Mary threw herself on the bed and tackled me onto the mattress again to block everything from Tom´s view.

“Uhuuu.” I lamented as my head hurt quite a bit by her actions.

“Lucinda, are you naked underneath this blanket?” She asked and only let me go as I stopped struggling.

“Aye … didn’t have money for a nightgown ….” I said and demonstratively aired the space beneath the blanket.

“You were paid handsomely for your activities in the army though?” Well, in fact, my payment was much larger than initially thought, but it still wasn’t enough to buy all the things I needed.

“I spent it all on silk, feathers and a few other things. I needed a nice pillow to sleep on. Look.” I pushed the human-sized pillow I was hugging earlier upwards and proudly showed a bit of it to Mary. I obviously let Tom gather the materials, but I did the rest of the work. Her expression turned sour, even though I hoped she would be happy that I could sew.

“You spent everything on a pillow?” She said in disbelieve. Was it this uncommon to desire the greatest pillow in the history of pillows? I mean, the normal human spent around eight hours sleeping on this thing, so there was no reason not to increase the quality of it.

“Not everything … here, I made cookies with the rest.” I presented her a bowl, half-filled with sweet, delicious cookies. She reached into the bowl with her hand, but before she grabbed one, I stopped her. “You shouldn’t eat a whole cookie though … try a tenth of one, they really hit hard.”

“You put drugs in them? Fascinating.” Tom said and eyed the cookies with respect. If he knew what I used as ingredients for my cooking adventures in purgatory …

“Fascinating?! She spends her whole money on a pillow and drugs. Additionally, she isn’t even remotely worried that she is naked in the same room with a grown man! Lucinda, why aren’t you at least wearing any underwear?” Mary asked, a bit upset about my behaviour.

“Don’t know where they are …” I pointed out. Sometime on the second day when I ate a few too many cookies, I completely lost the overview of what was where not that it had anything to do with drugs …

“What did I expect from a drugged vampire … and you Tom, what´s up with this lecherous smile?” She said towards Tom who stood suspiciously close to the curtains, judging by the direction she was talking to. I growled threateningly, but he just smiled in return.

“You still don’t understand Tom, do you? Should I show you what´s up with him?” I asked with a blank expression and lifted my upper body up a second time. Before I could get far though, she already pressed on my chest again and forced me to lay down again.

“No, you don’t.  I absolutely forbid you from standing up until he is out of the room. Tom, if you would be so kind.” Tom didn’t even move at all, just like I expected. Sometimes, I needed to punish him for this unruly side of his, but that would have to wait until a bit later.

“Mum …” I groaned. “Just leave us alone. There is nothing he didn’t see already, although I have to admit his strange fascination with me since I turned Arthur is indeed a bit worrying …”

“A bit worrying? Lucinda, do you even know how he looks at you right now?” I turned my head towards Tom, a bit bored and already knowing what I would find. Just as I expected, he looked at the part of my shoulders that weren’t completely covered by the blanket, thirsting for my blood as if it was some kind of treasure.

“Hmm … he´s in love.” I claimed and turned away from him once more to look at the ceiling above me.

“In love?” Asked Mary, immensely surprised by my claim.

“Oh mum, the love you feel is completely different from what he goes through right now. Just once, he wants to turn this relationship we are having around and force me to do what he says. Isn´t that admirable? How can I refuse this love, how can I not show him what awaits him if he succeeds and motivate him further to strive for his goals? Mary, he isn’t desiring my body … well that apparently as well since he saw me with Arthur, he is desiring my blood.” I explained and closed my eyes right in the beginning, just a few seconds before the room was flooded with light. For some reason, Tom didn’t want Mary to know about his desires at all. Either it was too embarrassing or he didn’t want Mary to look at him with disgust, but she needed to know the truth in my opinion. After all, there was nothing wrong with trying to gain the upper hand in a relationship or desiring to become a vampire, at least in my opinion.

“I forbid you from ever using my biggest weakness against me as sloppily as this. At least formulate a plan beforehand.” I said and noticed how the light receded once again. It was a badly done attempt to interrupt me and I honestly expected more from him.

“Why are you really here, Mary? You aren’t here to inquire about our fucked up relationship, are you? And neither are you here to admonish me because I am taking a few drugs, so what is it.” I asked. I knew why Tom was here as he was supposed to tell me what´s going on in the wider world, but I didn’t know the reason Mary came here.

“I am here because …” Just as she finally wanted to reveal her reason for coming here, she switched back to the original topic as if there was something left to say. “… Lucinda, you are a terrible excuse of an intelligent being. You are doing drugs because you aren’t happy with your life, you are manipulating Tom´s feelings so much that he doesn´t even know where his desires stem from.”

I laughed at her completely wrong understanding of me and what I am trying to do here. It was so incredibly entertaining to see how she failed to understand everything. Still giggling, I gave her a push in the right direction.

“Mum, do you really think I am taking drugs because of my pitiful existence, or because I want to get high? Oh, mum, I am only taking them to distract myself from this freaking thirst that plagues me since I last drank blood three days ago. And Tom? I have nothing to do with his desire to seek out the darkness, let alone his twisted love for me.” I explained and hugged my lovely pillow once more.

She closed her eyes as she failed to view my every action as evil once more. Wondering how long she would be continuing like this until she gave up, I watched how her brows furrowed, apparently deep in thought. With a hard to read expression that switched between dissatisfaction and denial, she stood up from the bed and left the room while I stared at her in wonder.

After the door closed again and the darkness returned to the room, I sat up while making sure I was wrapped into the blanket.

“Well … Tom, do you want a cookie?” I asked and pushed the bowl in his direction.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to die of an overdose.” He stated and shook his head.

“What? Ah, there aren’t any drugs in these …” I said and bit into one of them. Truly, they were perfect, but getting high from them was an impossible task.

“You lied?” He asked, not too surprised about the revelation.

“Hmm … wanted to see how she would react.” I explained and threw a few more cookies into my mouth. Now, Tom was equally eager to eat some of these as he finally got a taste for great cookies.

“And? Are you satisfied?” He asked.

“No … except this was the reaction of a concerned mother. She won´t be able to keep the act she has to do in public up for too long. Someday, she will slip up and everyone will know the truth.” And that alone was worrisome. The potential damage she could do just by failing once was immense. Either we found a way to mitigate the damage, or we made sure that it never happened in the first place.

“And, what´s your solution? Training her to act perfectly? Manipulate her emotions until she sees you as your real daughter?” None of these actions made much sense in my opinion. No matter how much I explained to her how to act, she would fail the moment her emotions got the better of her. And manipulating her emotions would certainly work, but if I made one mistake, it could cost us everything.

“No … have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, it is us who needs to change? No, you probably didn’t ... Mary isn’t like us and she, like many others, will view us in a bad light forever if we don’t shut our depravity away when we are around her. Let´s try to act normal for now … that means acting like a butler for you and like a nine-year-old idiot for me … yeah … no. In any case, if we start to behave more normal, maybe she will open her heart to us eventually and see us in a better light.”

“So we are manipulating her emotions.” He concluded swiftly.

“No, Tom. That wouldn’t be normal.”