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Yoko stood in the dark hospital room, listening to the thrumming and ticking of machinery and straining to make out the pulse of the girl buried underneath them.
The fact the task was difficult was disturbing in itself—vampire senses were perfectly honed to capture the faintest of heartbeats. Even in a crowded room, Yoko could close her eyes and find the familiar rhythm of someone's heart under the distractions. They were unique like fingerprints, and she'd come to recognize and appreciate the subtleties of each. The faint artificial tick of Professor Callaway's pacemaker. Enid's hyperactive werewolf metabolism fast and frantic. The way Divina's pulse would spike when Yoko ghosted her fingers on the siren's skin.
Wednesday's heartbeat had been extraordinary—bold, methodical, and utterly unchanging. Steady enough to set your watch to. But now she was lying on a hospital bed, hooked up to a ventilator and an array of monitors and God knows what else, and the sound was just wrong. Fragile, inconsistent, hovering somewhere between life and death.
Thrown through a second floor window by an enraged Hyde while investigating an asylum after hours. It was such a Wednesday thing to happen. As chance would have it, Yoko and Divina had only returned to Nevermore the morning following the incident, met by a campus abuzz with theories and gossip. They'd been on a nine-week cultural exchange program to Japan, something the new principal had been touting as one of his great institutional triumphs, and were eventually given a rundown of what they'd missed by a tearful, traumatized Enid.
That had been two weeks ago. The days since then had fallen into a pattern. Enid seemed lost and dazed without her roommate/bestie and frequently had to be excused from classes, which the faculty seemed unusually accommodating to. Yoko suspected the hand of the Addams family to have been at work. Certainly, Wednesday's mother had some pull with the obsequious toad of a principal. After classes, either Yoko or Divina accompanied Enid to Jericho General and stayed until the end of visiting hours.
It had been after another such visit, on day fifteen after their return, that Divina had spoken words that, unbeknownst to either girl at the time, would reshape their futures entirely. She'd just gotten back from another night at the hospital, and the two of them had been comfortably tangled together on Divina's bed, taking advantage of the room's other supposed occupant being away on family business. It had been an uncomfortable, heavy silence, until...
"She's getting worse."
"Enid?"
"Wednesday. I stepped out of the room for a bit and some of the doctors were talking in the corridor. They didn't even notice me."
"What did they say?"
"Something about progression of damage, tissue necrosis, worsening seizures." She'd paused for a breath then and wiggled herself tighter into Yoko's arms, desperate for the comfort of connection. "They don't think she's ever coming out of the coma."
"Oh fuck."
"They made it sound like there's nothing they could do, but they're letting Enid and the family live in hope anyway. Waiting for a miracle."
"I don't think an Addams gives a damn about what's possible," Yoko had said. "She's down bad for Enid in her own creepy way, and she's not going to let something as stupid as human frailty stopping her from getting her girl."
Divina had drifted to uneasy sleep after that point, but Yoko had stayed awake, troubled by a thought that became an idea, and then, a plan. It was a stupid plan, and a dangerous one, and did not afford her the luxury of not getting caught.
There was one truth that vampires, especially the old, powerful and unimaginative sort, loved to repeat to the point of exhaustion. Blood was life. Vampires thirsted for blood to keep themselves alive, and could bestow the gift of their blood to keep someone else alive.
The crimson sacrament. Forbidden. Reviled. Fascinating. Possible.
Yeah. Not a great plan. Especially considering who she’d be doing it for.
But there she was. On day seventeen of Wednesday's stay at Jericho General, Yoko Tanaka stood in the corner of a room in the neurology ward, having just evaded two security guards and the night nurse responsible for that corridor. The hospital's cameras were a joke compared to the much more expensive system at her family's townhouse that she'd become an expert at evading, but she expected traces of her incursion would be found once the footage was reviewed.
Yoko felt the edges of the capped syringe in her pocket. It had been almost trivial to lift it from the phlebotomist's office during lunch break. The hard part had been to stop fidgeting with it ever since. She had every right to be nervous, considering the taboo she was about to break.
Every vampire starts off homeschooled. The families had always insisted on this, in order to make sure their fledglings were well versed in the tenets their species lived by before they went out into the world and either embarrassed or endangered their parents and kin. Yoko had been taught by a series of tutors and family members how to manage her hunger and how to exist among warmbloods she was almost sure to outlive by several decades. She'd never been a particularly good student—considering she ended up in love with a siren. But the last such lesson, delivered by her stern uncle Daigo, had been one she'd taken to heart and never intended to disobey.
Until now.
Daigo had taught Yoko about the power of her family's blood to transform, and the temptation to use it. It was a living thing, her blood, and once awakened by feeding, it hungered to spread, to infect, to devour. Sharing the gift of her blood to turn someone, however, was taboo, unthinkable. Vampires were apex predators, Daigo had explained, and unless they kept themselves in check, the warmbloods and other outcasts were sure to rise up and do it for them. As such, the only accepted means of making new vampires was birthing and raising children, something Yoko had always been sure would never, ever apply to herself. No having kids, and no siring new vampires through the sacrament. Easy rules to adhere to.
Until now.
Yoko had not told Divina what she was about to do. She wished she had. While she was reasonably certain there'd be time to explain herself afterward, and that maybe the siren would understand like she always did, there were no absolutes. Yoko fully expected to be summoned in front of that joke of a principal, and interrogated by either the head of her house, Miss Venturi, or maybe even a member of the vampire council if her transgression was deemed severe enough. Was it worth the risk? She might still have been able to sneak back out without being discovered and make her way back to the campus before anyone noticed she was AWOL. She could save her relationship, save her place at Nevermore...
... and Wednesday Addams would almost certainly die.
Damn it.
Conscious of just how much time she'd already wasted, Yoko got to work. The process was simple enough. She needed to taste enough of Wednesday's blood in order to awaken the hunger in her own, then infect the girl with it. That's what the syringe was for.
Wednesday's pale hands rested on top of the covers, eerily pale and porcelainlike in the hospital's night-time lighting. Yoko's eyes fixated on them as she crossed the floor to her bedside. She carefully picked up the pale right arm, careful not to disrupt the ventilator hoses and wires running across the bed. Wednesday felt cool, the quiver of her pulse weak and thready on her wrist. Yoko bent down until her lips brushed against the soft skin and paused for a second. One more deep breath before the plunge.
Yoko had sometimes idly fantasized and wondered how it would feel like to feed on her girlfriend. She'd never told Div that, she didn't want to make things too weird, after she'd witnessed some of her peers having their relationships disintegrate that way. It was just idle curiosity, nothing more. Faced with the real thing felt both better and worse than those imaginings. She felt her fangs extend and her hearing attune to the faint pulse of rushing blood. The rest of the room faded out into nothingness. In that instant there was only Yoko and her prey. Letting out that final breath, sounding more like a moan, she felt her fangs slice into Wednesday's artery.
The first taste was indescribable. Yoko was used to bagged blood and the traditional cuisine of her family that were both designed to quell the cravings all vampires felt, but they'd done nothing to prepare her for the rush she felt when Wednesday's blood crossed her lips. It was better than anything she'd ever tasted, better than any sex she'd ever had, every kind of pleasure rolled into one. She could feel her own heartbeat spiking as heat rushed through her veins and made her knees buckle. She felt hot, vibrant, alive. Every inch of her skin felt flushed and all the colors of the room were painfully hypersaturated. Everything was just more.
For one terrifying, wonderful second, Yoko could not remember she was supposed to stop, or anything else apart from the brain-melting pleasure the taste of blood gave her. Then, sudden as summer lightning, a quiet twitch of Wednesday’s unconscious form underneath her jolted her back to her senses enough to break the spell.
Yoko recoiled as if stung, her heart pounding heavily.
She screwed her eyes shut and tried to force herself to calm down. The imprint of the excruciating/exhilarating moment when she'd had been ready to fully drain Wednesday just for the thrill of it felt heavy and raw. In that moment, Yoko had understood why her family banned its younger members from live feeding entirely. Trying to focus on the memory of Divina's enchanting eyes, something that usually sufficed to calm and focus her, only barely eclipsed the intoxicating bloodlust.
Reading about vampiric blood-bonding, either in her home library or at Nevermore, had done little to prepare Yoko for the reality of it. It was like a new axis of attraction had opened inside her. It wasn't romantic and it wasn't sexual, and yet it felt intertwined with both. Yoko had never thought of Wednesday Addams as attractive before, but now she'd had a taste of her, she already hungered for more.
Focus!
Still cradling Wednesday's arm, Yoko pulled back slowly, her eyes fixed on the marks left by her fangs. The bleeding had already mostly stopped, the enzymes in her saliva busy at work ensuring her prey would not bleed out. The remaining smears of blood on the girl's pale skin were distractingly bright. Unable to stop herself, the intoxicated vampire ran her tongue over them, aching for one more taste.
Had it not been for a sound of movement outside the door, Yoko wasn't sure she could have snapped herself out of the trance.
Someone was coming!
With only seconds to spare, Yoko dropped Wednesday's hand back on the covers and withdrew behind the curtain in the far corner of the room. As far as hiding places went, it would never have survived daytime scrutiny, so she hoped the nurse would not fully turn on the lights. Right after she got in position, she could hear the door swing open and the telltale squeak of soft shoes on the vinyl floortiles. Yoko held her breath as she listened to the nurse move to Wednesday's bedside. The monitoring equipment gave a few beeps as the data they'd collected was consulted.
Feeding on Wednesday must have set off enough of a change in her vital signs to trigger an alert at the nurses' workstation, Yoko realized, cursing her own shortsightedness. She could only pray the nurse was not alarmed enough to conduct a more thorough examination or, even worse, escalate the matter. The signs of recent vampire feeding would be readily apparent to a keen-eyed observer. Seconds stretched towards infinity with Yoko being too anxious to even more a muscle but desperate to expend some of the feverish energy that had suffused her body ever since the feeding.
The nurse muttered to himself and walked around the bed again, judging by the squeal of his shoes on the floor and the slight metallic jingle of the bed itself being jostled. Whatever he'd found, did not seem to merit immediate alarm, but he kept hovering about for another few minutes before finally withdrawing again.
Emerging from behind the curtain Yoko let out a sigh of relief. The fact she hadn't been caught seemed downright miraculous, but perhaps the universe had decided to smile on her crazy plan.
Still, there was no time to waste. Now that the nurse had already been alerted once, even the slightest disturbance would no doubt result in a stronger response. Her odds of escaping undetected had diminished considerably.
Yoko gnawed her lip absent-mindedly. Her fangs stubbornly refused to retract as she felt the thrum of a restless energy in her soul. The first step of her plan had been accomplished. Her blood was well and truly awake, and she could feel the stirring of the second of those two great hungers all of vampire culture had evolved to contain. The urge to spread the infection. Every beat of her normally sluggish heart spread another pulse of heat through her body, as if her blood itself was on fire, and earning for a cold thing to set alight.
She pulled out the purloined syringe and discarded the cap. Taking her own blood was not something she'd ever had to do, but she understood the principle well enough. The traditional way to do what she was attempting would have been for the participant to be anointed to be drinking the blood themselves, but those ancient rituals had never intended to be used on someone unconscious on a ventilator. Lining the tip of the needle with the vein on her own forearm, Yoko hoped her improvisation would remain just as effective, and deliver Wednesday the miracle she needed.
Historically, blood-bonding and the anointing of new vampires had been used by the European covens as a political tool and their ultimate bargaining chip. The ill and the injured, if they were wealthy enough, petitioned the families for a chance to join their ranks, buying themselves a future by taking the crimson sacrament, further increasing the covens' power and influence. Some books Yoko had read also hinted of darker practices, of unscrupulous vampires coercing the desperate into bondage with the promise of anointment, only to drain and brutalize them instead.
Just another reason the council would probably crucify her for what she was about to do, Yoko thought as the tip of the needle finally found its mark. There was no pain as she depressed the plunger and watched her blood fill the chamber of the syringe, her nerves still thrumming with post-feeding euphoria. It didn't take much time at all to finish the blood draw. Just a few drops, that's all it would take.
Yoko had watched enough hospital dramas to know what she was looking for as her gaze mentally untangled and made sense of the loom of medical devices hooked up to Wednesday's body. Central line catheter. Express pathway directly into the heart. Administered there, Yoko's blood would course through the body in seconds. Irrevocably. No takebacks.
"I really hope this is your miracle," she whispered.
She inserted the needle into the catheter and pressed the plunger. A second ticked past. Then another. Then, suddenly, a violent contraction of muscles ripped through Wednesday's body and every single monitoring instrument lit up, setting off a cacophony of alarms. In the same instant, Yoko bolted out the door and down the corridor. Behind her there was a shout or exclamation of surprise, but whether it was aimed at her or Wednesday’s vital signs, which would have been going haywire at that moment, she did not know.
Rushing past the main bank of elevators, almost certainly locked down, Yoko set her sights instead on the emergency stairwell at the end of the corridor. She slammed into the door, worked the latch and flung herself down the stairs with reckless abandon. She landed awkwardly, but there was still no pain at all, so she just pushed off the far wall and kept going. There were definitely voices behind her now, shouts and exclamations of anger and surprise, but her brain did not even attempt to process what was being said. It was all irrelevant—the only thing that mattered were the stairs under her feet.
Before she knew it, Yoko reached the ground floor and pushed out the final door that stood between herself and freedom. The parking lot beyond was quiet and streaked by rain, but she could see commotion and flashing lights coming from the direction of the emergency room entrance, a hundred yards to her left. Her hearing fixated on the rapid staccato of footprints getting closer.
They were trying to cut her off!
Drawing on strength she did not she possessed, fueled by the euphoria of blood, Yoko turned and ran across the asphalt, beyond the glow of streetlights, until the darkness of Jericho swallowed her whole.
Yoko arrived at the Nevermore parking lot fifteen minutes later, still uncaught, unpursued. For her illicit excursion, she'd purloined Coach Vlad's moped, a choice born out of both practicality and chaotic whimsy. She left it back where she'd taken it from, next to the gardener's shed. There was no point in trying to hide her tracks that well—discovery was inevitable—but being tidy never hurt anyone.
Stopping in the shadow of the outer wall, Yoko glanced at the clock on her phone. 4:17 AM. Still hours to go until dawn, and the judgment that was sure to accompany it.
She could have tried sneaking back to the dorm, but Miss Venturi could be an annoyingly light sleeper—like most vampires she rested more as an aesthetic than a necessity. And there was still one thing Yoko wanted to do before she needed to face the institutional consequences of her actions. Her fingers danced on the phone screen, tapping out a message.
YoBats: @DeepDivin' SOS come to the Nightshades archive ASAP as soon as your see this like right the fuck now
Divina was unlikely to wake up to the sounds of the message arriving, but she would always check her phone first thing when she woke up. Yoko therefore slipped back into the school without any great hurry. The window of the dance studio, which she'd used to make her way out earlier, remained conveniently unlatched. From there it was only a short distance to the statue that marked the entrance of the Nightshades' library and meeting chamber.
Nobody saw her. Yoko could make out the sound of a creaking hinge or the sound of heavy steps, but they were all way off in the distance. As a determined rulebreaker and a member of a secret society of other determined rulebreakers, she knew most of Nevermore's night-time routines by heart. The staff patrols heavily favored the boys' dormitories, a fact whose fundamental unfairness was always decried by Xavier and Kent. Hooray for historic sexism.
Standing opposite the statue of Edgar Allan Poe, familiar enough to be unthreatening even in the darkness, Yoko could feel the high she'd been experiencing for more than an hour finally start to ebb. Finally at something approaching rest following the panic of her flight, her body started to feel some of the deferred aches and pains from that journey. After opening the passage below with two clicks of her fingers, Yoko slipped into the staircase and descended.
There were a few reading chairs around the walls, for those rare occasions someone, usually Bianca, used the library for some actual studying. Yoko collapsed into the nearest one.
Had it worked?
Or had she doomed Wednesday instead?
The voice of reason inside her head piped in, pointing out that if what Divina had overheard was correct, Wednesday was likely doomed already. The voice sounded irritatingly like Bianca Barclay that day. Yoko hated it.
Yoko had been be so lost in her thoughts—or had she actually nodded off?—that the sound of the secret door mechanism activating again startled her quite badly. The jolt of adrenaline that followed was an alien sensation, she could feel her body was still operating weirdly even though it had been hours since that terrible/sublime taste of blood.
Soft, hurried steps down the stairs.
"Yo-yo? Where are you?"
"Here!" Yoko croaked, her voice feeling like she hadn't used it in ages.
Divina came rushing in, her uniform slightly askew from getting dressed in a hurry. Her eyes found Yoko at once and she hurried to her girlfriend's side.
"What is it? What's the matt—" she started, sputtering as she reached Yoko.
The siren's keen eyes swept all over Yoko's face, taking in all the telltale signs of a recently-fed vampire. Flushed skin, excessively dilated pupils, engorged fangs.
"What did you do!?"
The tone was more shocked than angry, but Yoko still recoiled from it with a shudder that felt foreign to her. Divina didn't ask for permission but wrapped her arms around her instantly. The comfort in the touch, at least, remained safe and familiar. To Yoko's relief, the euphoria she'd felt from her feeding had not displaced or dimmed the fire of her love in the slightest, quite the opposite.
"You're way too warm, Yo-yo," Divina purred, running her fingers across skin that had become almost unbearably sensitive, forcing Yoko to bite back a moan.
You need to tell her. Now.
The words came out in awkward lumps, as if stuck together with treacle.
"I... I did it to save her. Wednesday." Pause for breath, then a disjointed rush. "I gave her mine. Blood. My blood. Her blood. I tasted it, D. I had to. To make it work."
Divina's hands grasped the sides of her face, decisive but not bereft of kindness.
"What the fuck?! Honey, you know I love you, but what the actual fuck are you saying? Start over, okay?"
So she did. Starting from the thought that became an idea that became a plan, on the night Divina had told her of Wednesday's grim, worsening prognosis. Yoko explained how she'd snuck out of her dorm, stolen Vlad's moped, and infiltrated the hospital. Her voice quivered a little as she described the sensation of feeding on Wednesday, the shameful not-quite-arousal of feeling her body becoming saturated with pure, undiluted life for the first time. It wasn't exactly a confession of infidelity, except in all the ways it was.
The story wound its way through the events of the night, until it ended with an explanation of Yoko's return to Nevermore, and her decision to hide out in the secret library. When it was all said and done, Yoko felt emotionally drained, the last of the blood-euphoria completely gone now. Not able to meet the unswerving gaze of her beloved, she instead focused on her hands, clasped in her lap. They just silently existed together for a moment, the vampire slumped in her chair and the siren knelt next to her, still touching, still connected.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Not an accusation, an inquiry. But not a soft one.
Yoko sighed.
"I wanted to, but... This isn't like sneaking bats into Miss Venturi's office, Div. I broke actual laws tonight. And the vampire council's probably going to want to make an example of me too. So I made sure that when they ask you, you'll be able to say you had no prior knowledge of my actions. Anything to keep my angelfish out of prison," she added, looking up at Divina with a faint, fragile smile.
The hardness around Divina's eyes loosened slightly. Yoko knew she wasn't out of the doghouse yet, but it was a start.
"But why risk it all?" she asked, with the air of someone who knew the answer already.
"Enid."
Divina nodded. The text chain between the three of them had followed the recent rift between Enid and Wednesday in real time, timezones permitting. Enid's intensity of emotion about her roommate had been palpable, even across the globe. Yoko had privately suggested broaching the topic that maybe there was more there than just regular roomie feelings, but Divina had shot it down at the time, thinking that it was a discussion best had face-to-face and not over a laggy group chat.
"The two of you were the first friends I made when I came here. And if I hadn't done anything to try to help Wednesday and spare Enid the heartbreak, I know I would have spent the rest of my days regretting it."
The words came easier now, more like they normally did when Div and her were together.
"I'm sorry," she added, taking the siren's hand and bringing it to her lips for a kiss. "I wish there'd been a better way."
Divina smiled at that, a proper smile, the smile Yoko had fallen in love with.
"That's just life. We don't always get the happy ending we deserve. But maybe sometimes, there's miracles."
Yoko lunged forward in her chair until her lips could reach Divina's. The kiss felt nothing like how feeding on Wednesday had been. It was like comparing champaigne with rocket fuel. It was a prayer, and a promise.
It took a while for them to separate, Yoko's frantic hands having thoroughly disheveled Divina's uniform and un-combed hair in the interim.
"Now what?" the siren asked.
"I walk my ass to the principal's office to make a statement. I don't think I can run from this."
"Whatever happens, we'll face it together. Partners in crime."
Yoko let out a quiet little sigh.
"It's a deal."
"And if you ever try biting someone else without permission, I'll grab a pair of pliers and turn those pretty fangs into a necklace."
Some of the implications buried in that sentence, and the smile on Divina’s face when she said it, set off a faint, excited buzzing in Yoko's brain, but examining them would have to wait. She had a date with consequences lined up.
"Deal."
"Though maybe it's not me who you should be worrying about. Imagine what Enid's going to do when she realizes that you technically kissed Wednesday before she did."
Both of them laughed. The tension wasn’t gone, but they could at least pretend for the moment that Enid Sinclair’s gay self-discovery and subsequent freakout were the most troubling black cloud in their joint horizon.
"I love you."
Yoko punctuated the simple declaration with another quick kiss.
"Ready to face the music?"
"Consequences can wait for just a little longer."
Yoko stood in the principal’s office with her uniform pristine and her sunglasses back on her face. Divina had insisted that they make a detour to the dormitory for a change of clothes, likening it to a knight donning their best armor before heading off to battle. The suggestion had prompted a bit of teasing about the siren’s obsessive love of history documentaries, but now she was standing in the lion’s den, as it were, Yoko drew some comfort from it. Divina was staying outside in the corridor, at Yoko’s insistence to drive home the notion that she had acted alone and without informing anyone else of her intentions.
She had just finished delivering her second account of the events of the night. It had been less detailed than the version she’d given to Divina, tailored to her audience. No mention of Enid’s intense and complicated friendship to Wednesday had been made, which did leave the question of her motive feeling a bit vague, but Yoko was prepared to defend the notion that she’d acted without anyone else’s influence down to the wire.
Two faculty members were present, plus an entirely insignificant, non-offensive secretary hovering something in the background keeping notes. The first, nominally conducting the interview, was Barry Dort the principal, who Yoko considered a living, breathing version of the ”How do you do, fellow kids?” meme, a man so staggeringly false and insincere that Yoko was sure he had been designed entirely by a committee of middle-aged white men. His expression throughout Yoko’s entire confession had been one of carefully manufactured authoritative glowering, which he had neither the stature nor the chin for. He’d been entirely silent after the start of the proceedings, as if making any sort of comment was beneath him.
The other occupant of the room, currently trying to skewer Yoko through her own set of sunglasses, was Callisto Venturi, the house mistress of Cordelia Hall and the most senior vampire on the staff. Dort had sent for her after Yoko had been admitted to his office, and she’d barged into the room in a thunderous mood.
Yoko had never gotten along that well with Miss Venturi. The formidable house mistress had pegged her, quite correctly, as a potential troublemaker from day one. In addition to her general delinquent tendencies, the distaste was in no small part because Yoko associated so freely with non-vampires, a practice that while not actively discouraged, was hardly considered proper. Close associations and dating between vampires and either normies or other outcasts always carried the risk of illicit blood-bonding when teenage hormones surged uncontrollably. Consensual fangplay between vampires was at least safe, though considered a bit tasteless by the older generations.
Being summoned to the principal's office because Yoko had actually crossed a line and bitten someone was something Venturi had been waiting for. What had seemed to have caught her quite unawares, and consequently made her quite angry (as everything unexpected tended to do when you were a narcissistic control freak) was that it had not been Divina whose blood had proven irresistible. Faced with an event that did not fit in her preconceived notions, Venturi had leapt at the chance to interrogate the perpetrator. She'd poked and prodded the timeline Yoko had provided, asked her to repeat parts of it over and over again, all the while glowering as if the heat of her utter disdain could melt through two sets of sunglasses and scorch Yoko's retinas to ash.
"Why Addams?" she finally drawled, in a voice that was all arsenic and velvet. "Are we really supposed to believe this... utter fairy tale of misplaced devotion? It's well known your choice of peers is rather exuberant, but to throw your future away like this is beyond even the level of irresponsibility I thought you capable of."
"Wednesday Addams risked her life to save this school. The least I could do was to risk my tuition to save her in return," Yoko replied, drawing herself up to stand just a little straighter.
"Now, while it is certainly that true Miss Addams—" the smarmy voice of the principal started, but it was drowned out by the outburst that erupted.
"Tuition?! Is that what you think is at stake here, you stupid girl?" Venturi snapped, her rage making her blind to the breach of etiquette
The house mistress had been standing next to the principal's chair behind the desk, but the defiance in Yoko's words made her walk around it to close the distance between them. She'd raised a hand and for a moment Yoko was sure she was about to be slapped in the face. She could tell the idea was at least being given some serious consideration, before the trembling arm moved to point at her accusingly instead.
"This isn't some childish prank anymore. You knowingly performed the sacrament, and to make it worse, on an unconsenting victim!"
"She was dying... ma'am," Yoko replied, softening the blow ever so slightly with the the honorific, but leaving enough pause to make a point.
"People die every day," Venturi shot back, causing Dort to try to lift his hands and attempt to rein the emotions of the discussion in with some conciliatory noises, but neither vampire was in any mood to pay him any attention. "The entire reason vampires continue to survive is that we maintain control over the hunger and the blood. Even if it causes us pain. Even if people die. We cannot go around turning warmbloods, at the risk of shattering that fragile peace. You'd know that if you bothered to pay the least bit of attention in your classes instead of doting on that siren pet of yours."
Yoko could feel her fangs lengthening, not in hunger, but pure unadulterated rage. She was already likely being expelled for feeding on Wednesday, so adding assault on a teacher to the list would hardly make a difference. Her anger felt like a spring that had been slowly compressed and was about to explode. At that point, however, Barry Dort made another attempt at leadership and authority.
"Let's, um, take a step back for a moment. Your depth of feeling has been noted, Callisto," he mumbled, not making eye contact with either woman but looking towards his secretary, who had been obligingly tapping away at their laptop. in the far corner. "As for administrative consequences—"
"This is a a matter for the New York council now, principal," Venturi cut in again, turning her attention towards Dort with enough intensity that Yoko could see Dort sink backwards. "I'm sure they will want to send a representative immediately, to conduct a formal interrogation and decide on appropriate punishment."
Yoko did not like the relish in Venturi's voice when it formed those last two words. She turned back towards her, moving closer and speaking softer, but with actual malice in her tone now.
"Have you ever seen a vampire get ritually defanged, Miss Tanaka? It really is a deplorable sight. They never do heal properly afterwards, I'm afraid. And who knows, the Addamses might petition for a pound of flesh of their own. As far as families go, they are quite eccentric and severe when it comes to repaying injuries and insults."
"Well, I've no doubt the board of trustees will happily follow the vampire council's, ahem, wisdom in the matter, given the magnanimous support rendered to yours truly over the last... you know" Dort rambled, not paying Venturi's words any attention. "I'll make the calls. I assume Miss Tanaka's family will want to secure legal representation."
He then addressed the secretary.
"Perkins! Could you show Miss Tanaka to my sitting room? She needs to kept sequestered during the inquiry."
The man snapped his laptop closed with the weary sigh of the put-upon underling.
"It's, um, Parker, sir," he said, but Dort had already lost interest, instead rummaging for something in a desk drawer.
Despite the mounting dread threatening to overwhelm her, Yoko felt almost like laughing at just how blatantly unfit the principal was. The whole scene had acquired an air of unreality, like bad comedy, and in the middle of it all, smiling beatifically like a woman on the cusp of fulfilling her heart's desires, Callisto Venturi was having the time of her life.
"This way, miss," Perkins/Parker said, before leading her to the side door that led to the principal's private chambers.
Yoko had never visited the principal's sitting room during Larissa Weems' tenure, but she could tell Barry Dort had started remodelling, and then given up. Classical paintings and antique furniture were at war with tacky pop-art and contemporary brushed steel. One wall held a massive framed art print of a lion wearing a crown, printed in a palette of eyewatering neon colors. The fireplace and a trio of chairs in front of it had, thankfully, escaped the stupefying effect of the current tenant's appalling taste. After being shown in by the principal's secretary, it was there that Yoko had chosen to sit, facing the door and as far away from it as possible.
His task completed, Perkins/Parker left for a while, but then returned with some meager refreshments in the form of a bottle of coke and half a packet of crackers. Yoko left them on the side table untouched. Instead, she pulled up her feet onto the spacious, lushly cushioned seat, and sank to its embrace and her own thoughts.
There was no telling how long she'd have to wait. If the council reacted half as seriously as Venturi seemed to think they would, it might not be very long at all. Then there was the question of who would be sent. Yoko had met council enforcers and representatives before, mostly at big, formal family events. They tended to be lawyers in expensive suits, sometimes accompanied by gangsters-for-hire with names like "Vincenzo Eight-Fingers" and "Vigo the Mauler". The more expensive the suit, the bigger trouble anyone meeting it was usually in, her father had told her after one such party.
Yoko wondered which suit would be walking out the door to greet her in a few hours. She also wondered whether Divina was still sitting outside the door to the principal's office waiting for news about her. And most of all, she wondered whether Wednesday had woken up. Yoko hoped she had, and that she'd be allowed to see her, if only briefly to apologize. She couldn't imagine how it'd feel to wake up in a body that no longer obeyed you quite the same way, and with a new, nigh-insatiable appetite. Yoko had it easy, she'd been born a vampire, but Wednesday would have no such defense. She'd need someone to help her through the transition—hopefully someone one better than that judgmental old hag Venturi. It would not be easy, but Wednesday Addams was not someone afraid of impossibilities. And at least she was alive.
If it had worked. Neither Dort or Venturi had mentioned knowing anything about Wednesday's current condition, and Yoko had felt too terrified to ask about her. As long as she didn't, she could pretend that everything had gone off without a hitch, that any of the consequences that would fall on her would be worth it.
There was a literal elephant in the room. It was a hideous rhinestone-encrusted conversation piece that sat in one corner, where it had undoubtlessly spurred exactly zero conversations. Yoko found her eyes bouncing off it repeatedly—in a room full of aesthetic offenses, it stood apart as the undisputed frontrunner. Similarly difficult to consider was any notion of Yoko's own future. Venturi's talk of defanging was not an empty threat, Yoko knew unfortunates who'd been subjected to such a fate did exist at the fringes of vampire society, ritualistically barred from communion with their brethren but still subject to a thirst for blood which they were now far less able to slake.
What would her family think? Would she be cut off from her accounts and resources? Would her parents still hug her when they saw her next, or would she already be some kind of marked pariah by that point?
Back in the Nightshades library, when it had just been her and Divina, it had been easy to imagine a version of the future where she maybe just got expelled, but still together with her girlfriend. Because of course she would survive everything. Looking into Divina's eyes, no other outcome had even seemed imaginable. A universe that had gifted her with such beauty could simply not be so cruel as to take it away from her. But now, by herself in that ghastly room decorated by a man with more money than taste, Yoko found it far harder to believe in miracles.
The room around her seemed so very cold now. Yoko had always been unusually drawn to heat, a strange trait for a vampire, and one that must have on some level drawn her to Enid and Divina, who both had so much warmth to give. She wrapped her arms around herself, wishing the fireplace was lit. She wasn't sure at which point she started to cry, but once she noticed, the tears only intensified. Please let it have worked.
Minutes ticked away into hours until she suddenly became aware of a commotion in the adjoining room, and impressions of three voices drifting in through the thick door. One was loud and boisterous, one soft and commanding, and the last one, thin and apologetic, clearly belonged to the harried Perkins/Parker.
"You don't understand, I can't just—" the latter tried, continuing an argument that seemed to have been going on for a while.
"Nonsense! We have every right to interview her, given the circumstances," said the loud and boisterous voice.
"You have already been extremely accommodating, I shall make a note of it to the board," the soft and commanding voice joined in, just outside the door to the study. "Provided you open this door this instant."
This argument appeared to have been persuasive, and Yoko could hear the rattling of a key in the lock, before the door swung open and three people entered the room. Two strangers and the secretary who seemed to have decided that someone putting a good word about him with the board went further than obeying the instructions he'd been given. The strangers both wore black, a short man in a well-tailored suit and a tall, statuesque woman in an elegant dress. Her eyes found Yoko instantly, while those of her companion seemed content to take in various hideous details of Dort's taste in interior design.
Brown eyes, Yoko realized. No glasses, no hint of red in them at all. So these two weren't from the council. Which meant...
Oh no. No no no.
"Thank you, Mr. Parker," the woman said without moving her gaze away from Yoko. "Please give us the room."
Parker seemed to be all out of arguments to make, so he just withdrew back to the outer room, closing the door behind him.
"Miss Tanaka?" the woman continued in that soft but compelling voice. "I believe we've not had the pleasure. I'm Morticia Addams, and this is my husband, Gomez."
Wednesday's parents.
"'m sorry," Yoko gasped, the first thought that came to her mind.
Her voice sounded so much younger than it should have. So much more fragile. That would not do. Thinking back to those knights of Divina's, she uncurled her legs, used the heels of her palms to wipe spilled tears from her cheecks, and drew herself back to her full height. Time to be brave.
"Is she...?" she started.
The expression on Morticia Addams' face had been hard to read, but Yoko could tell the effect her words had made, an instant shift into something soft and caring.
"Oh dear child, didn't they tell you?" she exclaimed, closing the distance from the door to the fireplace, and sitting down on one of the chairs near Yoko. "My little scorpion was discharged a little over an hour ago. With any luck, she's already back at Ophelia Hall, resting in her room. She did protest, but I believe Miss Sinclair can be quite persistent."
Yoko let out a breath that loosened the thorns of worry coiled around her heart. Enid had her Wednesday again. The horrible apparition she had seen in the hospital room had been banished. The suffering in her future, the loss of her fangs and the disgrace, it’d all be worth it, at least a little. Yoko raised her chin and smiled a sad little smile.
”If Wednesday is out of danger, I accept the council’s judgement, come what may.”
”Admirable courage, dear girl,” Gomez Addams cut in, pausing for the first time his perusal of Principal Dort’s questionable decorations. ”But quite misplaced.”
”We do not accept the council’s judgement in the matter,” his wife continued. ”Or the principal’s intention of having you expelled.”
”I don’t understand.”
”The helpful Mr. Parker provided us with the transcript of your confession. We know what you did. We know… some of why you did it,” she continued delicately, and with a coy smile that suggested she was leaving something significant unsaid. ”Finally, we know the opinion of Callisto Venturi about your academic and personal prospects. The latter can be safely disregarded. We’re inclined to extend our influence to make sure Miss Venturi’s employment at Nevermore does not outlast the next 12 hours.”
”You broke the rules with boldness and conviction,” Gomez continued, slipping into the last armchair by the fireplace holding an enormous glass of brandy he seemed to have conjured from thin air, ”and you did so to save the life of an Addams, heedless of the consequences. It was a stroke of either heroism or madness, and the family celebrates both.”
”But what about the council? I performed the crimson sacrament, they’re not going to let that go.”
Gomez Addams chuckled and sipped from the glass. The contents did not seem to meet his approval, but he still swallowed another mouthful before responding.
”As your lawyer as of five minutes ago, my advice is to let me worry about the council. This is not my first time crossing swords with them.”
Yoko’s head was spinning. She’d gone from the slough of despond to the giddy highlands of promise and uncertainty in the matter of a few minutes, swept along by the implacable influence of the Addams family.
For the second time, voices came in from the adjoining room, but this time it wasn’t Perkins/Parker that was arguing with someone, but rather two, higher voices that Yoko knew well enough to make her heart race, as well as the murmur of a third one, quiet almost below the threshold of hearing. After a few moments, the door slammed open again, and Divina rushed to her side, tackling her into a heated embrace that took her breath away. Yoko’s perception narrowed to the familiar rhythm of her beloved’s heartbeat and the touch of her lips on hers. Heaven.
”Oh, my little tarantula, bedrest was expressly mandated,” Gomez said with a voice almost choked with tenderness.
”I’m perfectly fine,” said something closer to a breath than a voice.
Yoko’s blood ran cold as her senses, momentarily overwhelmed by the presence of Divina in her arms, began to work again and recognized the familiar cadences of two heartbeats. Enid Sinclair’s reassuring rapid flutter. The steady metronome of Wednesday Addams. Not the wavering, unsteady tick she’d heard in the hospital room, but the unchanging beat she’d grown accustomed to. Tearing her eyes and attention from Divina with great difficulty, Yoko looked towards the door.
There she was. Back in her uniform as if nothing untoward had ever happened, but gently leaning on the shoulder of a worried-yet-giddy Enid. Braids retied, bangs flawless. But Yoko could see the changes. Skin that had formerly been simply pale was now like porcelain, so flawlessly white she wondered if it would glimmer like a snowbank in the sun. The eyes captivated her, as they were sure to do anyone who’d ever stare into them. They had been dark and mysterious before, but now they glowed like rubies, two fathomless, incarnadine oceans. And they were fixed on her.
Wednesday Addams. Fledgling vampire. Barely well enough to stand, but still glaring holes into her soul.
”Tanaka. I believe we need to have… a chat.”