Baby Bats

"Poor Mina," Mavis observed.

Johnny gave a nod; the two were watching their daughter playing with her dolls in the hallway unenthusiastically from the doorway, and he couldn't help but agree with this statement. "She's gotta be lonely," He guessed. "I mean, Lucy left, then Lily...and now even Jack's left too. She must be feeling pretty left out."

Her siblings were all grown-up before she was: Lucy was married with a kid already and lived a couple of miles away, Lily - now thirty - also married and living a short distance away, and now Jack had gone as well. Mina was, in short, the only child left.

And she looked miserable about it.

"It sucks that she doesn't have someone to be around," Mavis continued. "I mean, sure, she's been close with a few monsters - but that's the point: Freddie's with Lucy, Damien's with Lily, and most of her friends she makes at the hotel won't be back until the Summer."

"Yeah, but she has her dolls," Johnny pointed out.

His wife just shook her head. "Dolls aren't a living companion."

"Hmm...Hey!" The red-head grinned as an idea formed in his head. "I might have something we can do!"

"And?"

He grinned even wider. "Let's get a puppy, duh! A dog would make her feel way better!"

Mavis bit her lip unsurely. "Yes...but the thing about dogs is that sometimes they freak out around monsters. Remember that time on the beach in Portugal?"

"Oh," Johnny frowned slightly. "Right. But that was a big adult dog; a puppy would be a lot friendlier...plus, if it's a puppy then it could probably get used to...whatever it is about monsters that makes them freak."

"It's a great idea," Mavis assured him. "But maybe if we used a different pet instead? Something...smaller, so that Mina could keep it in her room and look after it herself. Something that she'd love to look after."

And then it hit them both like a freight train.

Mina raised an eyebrow at her parents and crossed her arms. "Are you both feeling okay? You're never this secretive... Ah, come on! Please tell me that you're not having another baby!?"

Johnny gave an awkward cough and put an arm around her; she merely gazed up at him with a stony expression, clutching her headless doll under her arm seriously. "Well, guess it's only right that you know..." He took a deep breath and sent her a happy grin. "We got you a pet!"

Mina's mouth fell open in shock and she dropped her doll. "A what?!"

"A pet," Johnny repeated, bending to pick up the dropped toy.

"Do you want to meet him?" Mavis asked, smiling at Mina. Mina just nodded speechlessly, unable to comprehend what was going on. "Come on, he's waiting in the living room for us."

Neither Johnny or Mavis had had pets growing up - not exactly - and so it was both amusing and heart-warming to see their sixty-one year old daughter reacting to getting a pet of her own.

Mina put her doll on the couch and taking a step closer to the cage in front of her; it was small - but clean, she noted - and the latch was securely in place. She stopped in front of it and got down onto her knees to try and peer into it better: inside was a tiny black bat, rolling around in the cage while flexing its wings, and it opened its eyes drearily at Mina.

"He's beautiful," She cooed in awe, a smile lighting up her face. "Wait...is it a boy?"

"Oh, yeah," Johnny told her, nodding to her. "At least, we think so."

"We found him out in the forest," Mavis continued, looking somewhat sad. "His mother wasn't there, so we had a fly around to see if she was nearby...we found her a few miles away, and she'd been attacked by a wild animal."

"That's horrible," Mina stated, looking shocked. "You poor thing!" She tentatively pushed her finger through the bars of the cage towards the bat; he looked at it for a second before opening his mouth and giving her an affectionate nip with his tiny sharp teeth. "He likes me! Say, lil' fella, do you have a name?"

The bat blinked at her and wrapped his talons around her finger tightly before shutting his eyes.

"That's fine," She assured him. "I'll give you one. How about we name you...Edgar?"

Johnny blanched for a moment. "Edgar? What kind of name is Edgar?"

Mina looked at him over her shoulder icily. "His name, Dad. I'm naming him Edgar after a poet I read about in Grandpa Drac's library because it sounds poetic and dignified." She turned back to her new pet and immediately melted. "How old is Edgar, Mom? Does he still need milk?"

"I'm not a bat expert," Mavis pointed out but decided to hazard a guess anyway. "He can't be any older than a month, so I'd say so."

The young vampire gave a final nod and stood to pick up her cage. "Thank You, guys!" She exclaimed, sending them small smiles. "He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen - I promise that I'll look after him no matter what!"

"So...you like him?" Johnny checked - for him, bats weren't exactly the most normal pets. Then again, having said that, nothing had been particularly 'normal' in the human sense since becoming a monster.

Mina nodded. "Yes, of course. I love him already - don't I, Edgar?"

Edgar gave a small high-pitched noise from his cage in what could possibly have been agreement - it appeared that he was as taken with Mina as she was with him.

"Mom? Edgar's not home yet."

Mavis gave a frown and looked up from her magazine. "Isn't he? It's nearly sunrise - he's got to be tired by now."

Mina - who looked rather tearful and unlike her usual self - shook her head. "No. I let him out tonight first thing so that he could go for his usual fly and hunt some scorpions - he was meant to bring me one back!"

"Well, I'm sure that he's fine," Mavis tried to assure her; although, she was starting to worry just a bit. The bat was Mina's closest thing to a constant best friend, and she dreaded to think what her daughter would do if something happened to the bat.

The young vampire hesitated for a moment. "Mom? Could I not...maybe go for a quick fly? Just to find him-"

"Mina, it's not safe," The older vampire said immediately and firmly, putting down her magazine. "If he gets caught out in the Sun, it's not so bad for him - he'll get upset, sure, but he won't burn...you seem to forget that you've been burnt enough as it is."

Mina felt guilty all of a sudden but tried to shake it off. "But...But Edgar-!"

"He's probably curled up in a tree, sweetie."

Her daughter shook her head again. "What if something's happened to him, Mom? What if he got in a fight, o-or something attacked him? I can't just leave him out there on his own!"

"Well you can't just go out this late in the evening," Mavis retorted, but she appeared to be softening up all the same. "I'll tell you what; if he's not back by tomorrow evening then all of us will go out to look for him. Okay?"

But he didn't turn up the following evening, nor the evening after that; Edgar seemed to have vanished into thin air. Mina was inconsolable when he didn't return, and even more so when any and all searches for her beloved pet showed no results either. It broke Mavis and Johnny's hearts to see her so upset, and they could only hope that Edgar would come home soon.

And then, remarkably, he did.

A week had passed before Edgar flew in one day while they were sleeping; when Mina woke up and saw him perching by the window that night, she had let out an excited yell that woke up her parents from down the hall and nearly terrified her bat to death.

"Where have you been, huh?" Mina cooed, opening the door of his cage and helping him inside. "Don't do that again, Edgar, you scared us so much!"

And everything was normal again - until about five weeks later.

"Hey, Dad. Mom," Mina started, walking into the living room; she was holding Edgar's cage and frowning rather confusedly. "I think something's wrong with him."

"Wrong with him?" Mavis asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mina gave a solemn nod. "He's gotten...fat. And tired and weak. He won't move as much as he used to - he won't even fly around anymore."

Indeed, Edgar did look rather round; he looked like a furry puffed-up baseball, if Johnny said so himself, and it was no wonder that Mina looked rather worried. "Huh," He said simply. "Maybe he's...got...bat flu or...something? Maybe?"

Meanwhile, the cogs in Mavis' head worked at an intense speed as she started to realize just what might be going on. "Johnny?" She asked slowly. "How sure are we that Edgar is a male bat?"

Mina frowned but Johnny's mouth fell open as it reached him too. "No... Edgar can't be a girl-bat... You said he was a boy."

"Well, I only got a quick look," The blue-eyed vampiress defended. "I didn't see you asking about it then."

"Hang on," Mina interrupted, looking somewhat shocked. "Are you saying that...Edgar...?"

It looked like a new arrival was on the way soon.