#blind vampire

Angelina leans against the counter and listens idly as they wind through the store, picking up items to make a remark or point something out before setting them down again. They bring the dozens of small scents that people don’t realize they have with them when they pass by the register, and Angelina absentmindedly sorts through them.

Dog, dirt, grass, oil, a bit of blood, the cinnamon-sugar from the churro cart on the corner, fancy soap, detergent, sawdust, nail polish, makeup, hair dye.

The scent of sunshine is still lingering in the shop over the background smells of dusty fabric and old wood, so Angelina can’t pick out some of the more subtle scents.

The man snaps his fingers and one of the women giggles. The other woman has wandered off to the other side of the store.

“Excuse me?” The man asks, voice directed towards Angelina.

“Yes sir?” Angelina tilts her head up so she’s vaguely facing him, automatically pushing her glasses up to make sure they’re covering her eyes.

“This doesn’t have a price tag on it, does that mean it’s free?” He waves something absently in the air – it smells like old paper and ink, so Angelina assumes it’s one of their books.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I have the prices of everything on record here if you can just tell me what the title is…” she trails off, standing to reach the records shelf. She runs her hand gently along the spines until she finds the one with ‘Books for Sale’ stamped along it. She slides it off the shelf while the man chuckles and the woman still standing next to him giggles.

“Sir?” She prompts, propping the book open.

“Can’t you see it?” He drawls, gesturing with the book, “Just look right here. It’s just about the size of your sun-touched head.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Angelina says, not a hint of bitterness in her voice despite the insult, “I’m blind, I can’t see it at all.”

The man goes quiet. The woman goes still. Across the store, Angelina can hear the other woman almost drop the item she’s holding.

“Ah…” The man trails off, seeming unsure how to respond to that. He defaults to pretending it didn’t happen. “It’s, er, it’s called ‘The Facts and Foci of the Fae’.”

“All right, let me look that up.” Angelina chirps, running her fingers down the page. It’s a book she recognizes as having come in not long ago, so it doesn’t take her long to find it.

“That would be eight hundred and fifty American dollars, sir.” Angelina tells him.

“That’s outrageous!” he exclaims, clearly gearing up for a rant on the price of books.

“Oh my goodness, that cheap!?” The woman across the store hurries up to the register, still absently carrying the item she was inspecting, “Adam if you don’t buy that I will!”

“But- it can’t be that expensive.” The man – Adam – protests, turning to her.

“It’s a college-level textbook,” The woman says, exasperated, “that they don’t make anymore, they don’t teach the classes for, and it’s illegal to practice what it teaches. Of course it’s valuable.”

Adam surely would have replied to that if the first women doesn’t finally overcome her shock enough to speak.

“You can’t be blind!” She blurts, shoving her friends out of the way, “Stop lying to us!”

“I assure you, ma’am, I’m not lying.” Angelina says, baffled, “I truly am blind.”

“That’s bull!” The woman snaps, “Blind people can’t run stores!”

“Kathy, leave it!” Adam hisses, a rustling of cloth and a sharp jerk from Kathy suggesting that he grabbed her arm and she pulled violently away.

“No!” Kathy screeches, “You’re lying, you aren’t blind you’re just faking it!”

Angelina’s temper is fraying dangerously fast, and her mind keeps straying to the small container of dried human blood stowed under the counter. She’s in her own place of business, so a transformation isn’t automatically illegal, but short of being actively assaulted she won’t be able to convince the Enforcers it was self-defense.

“I am not lying.” Angelina repeats, teeth gritted, “I’ve been blind since an accident when I was twenty-three.”

“Liar!” Kathy howls. Before Angelina can stop her she lunges across the counter, fingers scrabbling at Angelina’s glasses.

Angelina yelps and automatically tries to fend Kathy off. The woman is unmoved, clawing at Angelina’s face until she has one of the lenses clutched in her talon-like nails. Kathy retreats back to her side of the counter with a self-satisfied ‘humph’, Angelina’s sunglasses in hand.

Angelina has a hand up to cover her face in time to prevent… unfortunate revelations, and she reaches out with the other.

“Please give me my glasses.” She says, as calmly as she can manage. It isn’t very calmly. She can feel the hand over her eyes shaking with rage, and the roof of her mouth aches from holding her fangs up.

“No.” Kathy says smugly, “not until you admit that you aren’t blind.”

“Kathy,” The second woman starts, “I don’t think you should-”

“Nonsense.” Kathy interrupts her, “She shouldn’t be pretending to be blind if she doesn’t want to be called out on her lie, Sophie”

“I am blind!” Angelina protests, pulling her outstretched hand back to hide it as she clenches it into a fist.

“Then you shouldn’t mind showing us your eyes.” Kathy says, “Hiding them just makes you look guilty, you know.”

Something in Angelina snaps, and she retaliats the only way she legally can. She obeys.

Angelina knows – vaguely – what her eyes look like. She’s seen a few vampires that have been sunscarred, and she’s seen her own Transformation Lines on her hands and feet and even in the mirror on her eyes. Sunscarring is tragically beautiful. It’s perfect lines and precise angles frozen in a brand of pain and loss.

Angelina pulls her hands off her eyes and glares – as much as she can glare – through Kathy. She stops resisting her instinctual threat display and let sher mouth drop open and fangs fold down behind her human teeth. The whistling hiss that always accompanied the threat is actually breathing out through her fangs, narrow holes in the bone that allow her to suck blood or inject venom.

Kathy screams. Adam shouts and the book thumps to the ground. Sophie yelps, fumbling the item in her grip again and dropping it for real.

In moments, Kathy is out the door and down the street, letting the chaotic scents of the outside in yet again. The smell of sunlight has only gotten stronger as the sun rose, and it makes every already-tense nerve in Angelina’s body stand on end.

She can hear each person’s individual heartbeats, even her own thumping slower than a human’s in her chest. Adam’s breath comes in erratic stuttering gasps and Sophie is hardly breathing at all. Angelina can practically taste the sunshine in the traces of warmed stone, thriving plant life, and hot tar on the air.

Adam stammers something, tripping over his words, and Angelina automatically turns towards him, hissing erratically. His flow of half-syllables abruptly stops and he follows Kathy out the door.

Sophie is still in the store, and every one of Angelina’s senses is trained to the max. She can’t hardly smell anything, not under the overwhelming scent of sunshine that seems almost all-consuming in her panic. She can’t see, can’t smell, can barely think.

“Hey.” Sophie says, calm and collected, and it slices neatly through the building crescendo of panic crashing through Angelina.

“Hey,” Sophie says again, in the same level voice, “I don’t want to hurt you. I have your glasses if you want them.”

Yes. Angelina does want them. Despite herself, Angelina reaches a tentative hand out, expecting… she doesn’t know what. Instead of some unspecified terrible thing, Sophie deposits the sunglasses in Angelina’s hand. Angelina scrambles to put them on so fast she almost stabs herself in the eye.

“Thahnk yu.” She manages, fangs blundering her speech slightly.

“Of course.” Sophie says, and Angelina can hear the smile in her voice, “I’m sorry about them. I had no idea they would react so… brainlessly, I suppose.”

“I’s fin’e.” Angelina says, trying to muster a smile, “I’ used tu it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have to be!” Sophie snaps, abruptly angry, “No fae should have to be constantly hated like that.”

“I’s fin’e.” Angelina says again, straightening the record book in front of her, “Du yu ‘an’t tu ‘uy that ‘ook?”

“Ah, yes, thank you.” Sophie says, though she doesn’t sound especially willing to let the matter go, “I’ll pay you nine hundred dollars for it.”

“It’s only priced for-” Angelina starts, finally managing to pull her fangs back up to stow along the roof of her mouth.

“I know.” Sophie says, “I figure you deserve it after what Adam and Kathy were up to, anyway. Plus, it’s still an absolute steal at that price.”

“Alright,” Angelina consents, ringing her up with the ease of much practice.

“Also, uh. I was wondering- well.” Sophie clears her throat, and Angelina can tell she looks away from the way her voice changes, “Well, do you know where I could get… more materials like this?”

And just like that it makes sense. The smell of sunshine that hung around the shop when it should have dissipated, Sophie’s strong interest in the book for training wizards, even the way the scent of sunlight surged so strong when Angelina was angry. Sophie is a wizard. She brought the sunlight to the shop, and it spiked when she was frustrated and scared.