Happy Twenty-One

Kelsey Webb stepped up to the bar with a cheeky grin at the owner of the Roadhouse. She had been careful to scrape off the bottom of her hiking boots, but the rest of her gave clear evidence that she had yet to clean up after her most recent hunt. Her baby-blue eyes flashed brightly through the dust on her face from getting thrown onto her back in the warehouse. Her lanky frame was covered with equally sooty blue jeans, blue camisole, and a light jacket.

The other woman gave her a doubtful onceover and then nodded shortly.

"See you haven't gotten yourself killed yet."

"Been a long time, Ellen. Two beers, if you please."

"Ah! Young lady, what have I told you about me serving minors?"

"No longer! Jenny turned twenty-one yesterday!"

"Well, I'll be! And, Kelsey, here I remember refusing you service like it was yesterday."

"Yeah," the twenty-four-year-old chuckled, leaning against the bar and looking at her sister, who was busy trying to find their next hunt on her laptop next to the window.

Jenny had changed a lot since they sped off from their home after their parents' murder. So had Kelsey, but Jen had changed way more compared to back then. She was still wiry, but she was a lot stronger, had better instincts, and was handy with pretty much any weapon she could get her hands on. The sweet, smiling complexion Kelsey always found so endearing had aged and become clouded with the watchfulness of a born hunter. She still somehow managed to always have a smile ready, and it always brought a sort of childlike joy with it, but her mind didn't work the same. She could turn off her emotions too easily, and it concerned Kelsey to not know where those emotions went.

"You've been huntin' together for – what? – five years now? She seems to have settled into it nicely."

"Considering she didn't choose it," Kelsey muttered, turning again to look at the motherly bartender. "Sure, she'll stop to smell the roses, but pretty much all she does is look for another hunt."

"You two are perfect for this lifestyle; don't get me wrong. You don't have any family connections to be used against you."

Kelsey sensed the impending 'but', so she stepped in.

"She doesn't bother making connections 'cause she knows she'll get hurt. Even when we were kids and not moving around all the time, she was more content alone. At first, I was just impressed by how resilient she was when our parents died; but it's not just her being tough. It's like she has a switch on her emotions that she can just shut off. It's gotten worse since that guy back in Arizona three years ago. He hunted with us for a while and I thought they were having a good thing going. She opened up for a bit, but, the second he turned his back on us, her shell snapped shut even tighter. She didn't embrace the life; she jumped in headfirst."

"Could be a good thing for a hunter. In moderation. But you're not worried about it just for her sake."

"If some monster gets me, I obviously want her to be okay." She grabbed her beers with a grim smirk. "But I'd like to know she'd shed maybe a few tears. I may be the older one, but it honestly seems like she's the one taking the lead now."

A moment later, Kelsey handed one of the beers to her sister, who swiftly turned her laptop around so she could see the search results.

"Got a couple of probable ghost sightings, both in South Dakota."

"That's actually a state?" the older girl joked, clicking on a few of the links.

Jenny leaned back in her seat with an amused laugh and took a swig of her beer.

April 4, 2003

"House is abandoned, so we don't need to worry about collateral."

Kelsey handed several small bags of salt to her sister and grabbed the shotgun before closing the trunk.

"I can't believe we didn't hear about this one sooner. It's too obvious."

"At least it was an easy drive from our last job."

The women used their flashlights to scope out the house as they picked the lock and started setting up for a ghost fight. The country house had been abandoned a few years ago after the couple kept finding their windows and doors locked, things moving on their own, etc. The body of the ghost – some creeper who had killed all of his girlfriends in the 1930s – had been cremated, but he apparently had a habit of putting some of his hair in the pages of his journal every year. The last owners of the house said they had found the journal in a drawer in the master bedroom. If they destroyed that, the ghost would leave. That was the dream, anyway.

It was likely to be a pretty normal de-ghosting job. If the ghost revealed itself before they headed up the stairs, Kelsey would provide a distraction and Jennifer would go find the journal.

"Yep. Ghost activity," the older one confirmed, pocketing her EMF scanner and setting down the gun to help with the salt circle. "How's it feel to be twenty-one?" she asked to pass the time.

"Not really different."

Jenny suddenly started chuckling for no apparent reason.

"What?"

The younger woman looked up a grin, brushing the salt dust from her fingerless gloves.

"Just remembering how you were the one who woke up with the killer hangover."

"Shut up," Kelsey warned, stopping to point an accusing finger at her sibling. "We agreed to never mention it."

"You agreed to never mention," she teased, smugly straightening her tasseled beanie hat. A split second later, she dropped the smile and snatched up the shotgun. The ghost was right behind the other hunter. "Kelsey, down!"

The other brunette obeyed, just in time for a blast of salt to zap over her head.

"Great. Now, where did it go?"

"You're welcome," grumbled the twenty-one-year-old as she reloaded. "So, we're dealing with a ghost."

"That obvious, huh? Just shut up and go find this guy's journal, Jenny. I'll try to keep this idiot entertained."

"Yup."

Tossing the gun to Kelsey, Jennifer grabbed a bag of salt from their pile in the corner and bolted up the stairs.

"All right, Drew," the remaining girl shouted, trying to get the ghost's attention. "Come at me!"

The apparition appeared off to her left and she quickly blew it away. She waited another minute, ready to fire again.

"Where are you," she muttered under her breath.

There was the sound of breaking glass and she shot blinding, cursing herself the second her finger pulled the trigger. But then the ghost of Drew Carny appeared one last time, screeching his way into oblivion. And he was gone.

But what broke the glass? A sharp, exploding pain at the base of her neck answered that question. Having not had the chance to reload, she hit the thing behind her as hard as possible with the butt of her weapon. Once. Twice. Three times.

More windows were broken as the figure suddenly disappeared and Kelsey was restrained by three others. The gun was wrested from her fingers and her belt knife disappeared.

"Kelsey!" she heard Jennifer call with a shaking voice.

Kelsey wanted to respond, but the blood pouring from her neck and the effort of trying to keep three vampires at bay was quickly exhausting her.

"Kelsey!" the voice cried, more desperate.

Tired of her resistance, one of the vampires landed a blow to the young woman's face and she went down. His fangs were all too prominent in the moonlight filtering into the room.

Another window broke upstairs and there was a thump on the porch roof. Jen.

Kelsey tried to stem the flow of blood, but it just kept coming. The room started flickering in and out of existence. The vamp that bit her reappeared at the bottom of the stairs and one of the others shot outside. She thought she remembered killing off his nest, the same ones that killed her parents. Apparently, she had missed one.

She could just make out Jennifer's silhouette outside in the marshy lawn. The other hunter quickly surveyed her surroundings, noted the useless car and vampires everywhere, and bolted down the drive. She had nothing to stay for – logically, Kelsey should have been dead by now.

"Run, Jenny," the brunette whispered, feeling the blood begin to pool around her knees. "Run."

"Where'd she go?" the lead vamp asked after a moment as the others reached the driveway.

Jenny had disappeared into thin air. Kelsey's last conscious thought was that at least her sister got away.