This was probably one of the rare mornings that I woke relatively early but naturally. I was quite cosy and comfortable in my bed, with Domino still asleep at the bottom keeping my feet warm. There was something else beside me keeping me warm. Duncan was still fast asleep, clinging on to me and nuzzling in to my hair; a little bit too close to my neck but I trusted Duncan not to sleep bite me or something. I wasn’t sure what woke me up, but there was a weird background noise coming from the other end of the hallway that seemed to permeate through the gaps in the doors.

‘Uhm, morning Maddie.’ I heard Duncan mumble as he squeezed my waist a little, lifting his head up seeming a tad confused. I had to admit, he looked adorable when he just woke. His hair was all over the place, sticking out on all angles and his eyes were still heavy. Vampires weren’t really morning creatures of course, but Duncan always had a hard time waking up early. He did love his sleep that’s for sure.

I looked at Duncan as he squinted, as if he was trying to concentrate on listening to something; probably whatever that odd noise was I could just about hear.

‘Oh God your Aunt and Arne are at it again.’ He grumbled as he buried his face in to his pillow.

‘Ow ew.’ I instinctively retorted. ‘Are they always that loud that even I can just about hear them?’

‘Sometimes they’re even louder.’

‘O...kay then.’ I didn’t know what to say to that. My mind was on other things at the moment and I didn’t really want to think any more, about my Aunt and Arne going to town on each other in the loudest way possible. Well, it must mean that Auntie M is back to normal.

‘Right I’m getting up.’ I announced as I lurched up to get out of bed.

‘Nope. Five more minutes.’ Duncan tugged me back down and pulled me closer to him, shoving his face back in to my hair and the base of my neck. I had decided he was the laziest vampire ever. In fact, I didn’t even know any humans who napped and slept and loved being tucked up in bed as much as Duncan did. I resigned myself to this extra five minutes in bed.

The five minutes had turned in to an extra half hour, as I had fell back to sleep for a little while. I had stirred as Duncan had finally decided to wake up properly and had sat himself up in bed.

‘Morning, for real this time.’ He grinned at me.

‘Y’know,’ I started as I rolled over and propped myself up on my elbow. ‘I’ve never known anyone sleep like you do.’

‘I like being in bed, it’s my favourite place.’ Duncan replied as he flipped over on to his side, cradling his head in his hand and moving some of my hair away from my face with his free one. Never mind moving that one bit of hair, I really needed to run a brush and some straighteners through the now tangled mess on my head, as my braid had come undone at some point when I was sleeping.

Duncan and I were still in pretty close proximity, so of course we started to drift toward each other. For a good morning kiss of course. Our lips had just barely grazed together when my Aunt rudely interrupted via the good old brain phone.

‘Morning kiddo, breakfast is ready in ten!’

‘Oh Jesus Christ that woman.’ I said as I scrunched my eyes together and pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘Breakfast is nearly ready.’ I rolled back over to get out of bed but Duncan just pulled me back again and stole a kiss. He was being awfully cute today. I kissed him back a few times before he finally let me go with a grin. I ran in to the bathroom, did what I needed to do and threw some clothes on, not forgetting to put a little bit of make up on to make myself look a little more human. I could have used glamour to sort my face out, but I was reserving that for my hair. Or maybe not, I did have a spare five minutes.

I decided on a bit of glamour for my hair, figuring I would take much longer if I just did it myself. I concentrated a little bit of my magic in to my hands and ran them over my head and through my hair, right through to the ends; smoothing my hair as I passed the magic over. Not satisfied with just straight, smooth hair; I ran my hands through again, grasping my hair in to two sections and leaving two perfect Dutch braids. Satisfied with how I looked in the mirror, I went and scratched Domino on the head to wake him up.

‘Come on little guy, breakfast.’

He woke instantly at the mention of breakfast and dove off my bed, his cute little voice sounding in my head; “Yay! Breakfast!”

Duncan was still squirming about in my bed, not really wanting to get up and start the day.

‘I’ll be down shortly.’ He said as he ran a hand through his messy hair. Honestly, he looked quite tempting, shirtless and sleepy. But no, I was not ready to jump back in to bed with him and do whatever my Aunt was doing with Arne, so damn noisily this morning. I really did not mind sharing a bed with Duncan at all, as it was nice just being that close to someone when you were sleeping. Having someone in that absolutely enormous bed, also didn’t make it feel as vast or as lonely either. Sure Domino liked sleeping on my bed, but he was a tiny kitten.

I entered the kitchen to find my Aunt and Arne making breakfast. I could smell sausages, bacon, fried mushrooms, plum tomatoes and toast. They were making a full English breakfast.

‘Hey kiddo, how many eggs do you want?’ Auntie M asked me as she held one up in her hand.

‘Morning, um. I’ll have two please.’

She cracked four in to a frying pan, lifted the lid on the hot plate on the Aga cooker then laid the frying pan on top. Arne was busy assembling everything on plates for us, three rashers of bacon, three sausages, a mound of fried mushrooms, plum tomatoes on the side, two triangles of buttered toast and I had a small dish of baked beans to go with my breakfast too. A minute later and my Aunt had slid two perfectly fried eggs on to each of our plates.

‘Dig in, you’ll need the energy today.’ She said as she popped the yolks on her eggs with the sharp edge of her toast.

‘We’re going looking for what’s under the school today?’ I asked. I had started with my sausages first. Lincolnshire sausages, my favourite.

‘Yep. Some of our Coven are coming to help, some of Arne’s clan, Daniel, some of his coven and a few of their aligned wolves. So there’s gonna be quite a few of us.’ My Aunt continued. I’m not sure if I was looking forward to this or not and I wasn’t sure if there was or wasn’t going to be any drama, or some kind of territorial pissing match going on between all the factions. But I pushed those thoughts out of my head, because we were doing something important today. We were trying to find out what the hell was going on underneath the school and I was betting, that the kidnapper and killer Bruce, was tied to it also.

After an awesome breakfast, Auntie M instructed me to go and put on the warmest clothes I had; as we’d be combing the woods and grounds around the school for quite a while. It was currently three degrees Celsius outside at the moment so of course I was going to get rugged up. My Aunt had practically thrown herself in to a pile of warm clothing and come out looking somewhat stylish. She was wearing thermal base layers, a jumper, a hoodie and a thick coat over that. But she had thermal leggings on under her jeans and a thick pair of thermal socks on with her winter hiking boots. All of this was topped off with a thick woolly hat and gloves. She told me that she hated wearing this much clothing and never even wore this much back up North; where it was twice as cold. I literally shuddered at the thought, but Northerners were made of tougher stuff.

I came back downstairs after throwing on nearly every single item of clothing I had with me. I felt like the Michelin Man, I felt like I could barely move with everything I had on. But it would keep me warm and that was the main thing. Arne and Duncan were completely fine in what they were wearing; the odd jumper, jeans and some kind of jacket. Vampires didn’t feel the cold per se, but they would always go for warmth if they had the choice.

We were all meeting at a strange clearing some distance away from where our coven met. Our coven met on completely different land to where the school was and so did the coven than Mr Evans and Liam belonged to. Arne and Duncan had done their weird vampire flying mist thing to get there whilst I teleported over with my Aunt. A few people were there already; my cousins Molly and Macy, Mai and even Deirdre had showed up and were doing the typical welcoming witch coven business, of setting up a bonfire to warm yourself against and a trestle table full of lovely hot drinks and biscuits. We even had another member of the coven joining us; Belinda. A nice lady in her late forties, who had been away for a while after having a hip replacement surgery and had just completed her rehab physiotherapy a few weeks ago.

All of Arne’s clan was here too; Arne and Duncan of course, Iris, Luca, Constance and Darius, Sascha and there were some other members of the clan who were present at my initiation, but had been away travelling since then. Irish cousins Orla and Cian who were turned in their thirties just after the Irish potato famine. And there was the oldest vampire physically in Arne’s clan, Lenni from Finland who was made in his late fifties, just after the first world war.

I stood with my coven and vampire friends as we waited for the warlocks and their wolf friends to turn up. We didn’t have long to wait, but their numbers weren’t great. Mr Evans was here with Liam, Adrian, Ralph and Evan. I didn’t see Martin or Sajid so they probably weren’t coming. There were however a load of new faces, I knew they must be the werewolves that the warlock coven were allied with. Plus there was a strange scent coming from them, not quite wet dog like I had smelt before on Liam or Mr Evans. In fact, they smelt relatively normal.