It was sunny outside today. Colin was working on his drawing of his roommates, trying to decide which background color would be most appropriate for his strange little crew. The sun's glare on the monitor was affecting the colors, so he drew the blinds closed. Most of the rest of the office - the ones lucky enough to be seated next to a window - had drawn their blinds closed, as well. The office never looked right when the sun was out, painted in overpowering yellows and oranges. It clashed with the light grays of the cubicle walls and the mud brown of the carpet.

When Colin peeked around his desk and looked down the corridor of cubicles, he saw nothing but the grays and muted blues he usually did, with one exception. One cubicle was lit up, a block of intense yellow light shining out of it. Someone hadn't closed their blinds.

He looked at the carpet, analyzing this person's silhouette cast against it. He noted the frizziness of the hair, snorted, and went back to his drawing. Of course it was her. He couldn't imagine someone like her, all smiles and warm feelings and understanding, drawing the blinds.

Well - she wasn't all warm feelings. There was that darkness he sensed she carried with her, tucked away neatly behind everything else. It slipped through occasionally, when she told her half-truths about what she'd done over the weekend or how she'd managed to gain another injury of some sort. Or whenever she gave him a ride home and had to brave looking at the "spooky" Edwardian mansion he called home.

He'd invited her in once, when the weather was dangerous and she'd graciously offered to drive him home like he knew she would. He'd checked the weather the week before, knew the storm was coming, and had Guillermo deep clean the foyer, sitting room, and wherever else he thought she might be interested in going. "No traces of blood, viscera, or any other bodily fluids," he'd told him. "I want this place spotless. No spooky shit."

Guillermo had smiled in that half exasperated/half defeated way he did and told him that just wasn't possible. Decades of blood and gore had seeped into the carpets, the walls, the floorboards. If he wanted a clean house he never should have invited vampires to live with him.

Then Laszlo had walked in. He asked what the hell they were talking about and Guillermo explained, pointing at all the stains riddled across the floors. Laszlo had listened, feigning disinterest, but Colin sensed a growing suspicion within him. He looked at Colin, one eyebrow raised. Colin thought he saw a small smirk on his face, but it was gone before he could be sure it was there in the first place.

Laszlo barked at Guillermo to do as Colin Robinson asked, and would you clean out my and Nadja's coffins while you're at it, they're getting dusty. Then he'd clapped Colin on the back, whispered in his ear that he knew he had it in him, then left.

Out of a fearful respect for Laszlo, Guillermo had gone to work. He muttered things like "not your freakin' familiar" and "maybe if you weren't so messy…," going silent whenever Laszlo or one of the other blood vampires got within earshot. He didn't bother censoring himself for Colin. Guillermo knew he didn't care.

When he'd finished, the place looked… better. Guillermo had been right, of course, you could never fully rid the place of its stains, but it was a great improvement. The cobwebs were gone along with the spiders that made them. Many of the stains had been covered by strategic rug placement and whatever "spooky" stuff was left was much less noticeable. Yes, it was much more human-friendly.

They had been sitting in her car parked outside his house when he'd invited her in, something modern and slow playing on the radio.

He'd tried to be casual about it. "Uh, you want to come inside for a bit? The storm's still pretty bad to be driving in. We could wait it out. Forty-seven percent of weather-related crashes happen during rain."

Her eyes looked through him and straight at the house. She'd attempted to smile politely, but her knuckles had gone white on the steering wheel and her jaw was clenched. He turned his head and looked at his house, trying to see whatever awful thing it was she must be seeing to make her feel so frightened. He saw nothing but a house that was perhaps a little imposing and some inappropriately shaped topiaries in front of it.

"I appreciate it, but I think I'll be okay. It's not that long a drive back to my place."

He hated it. Hated the fear, the rejection, all of it. He didn't want her to be afraid of his house - he was an energy vampire and he was always adapting in a changing world and the only constants were his house and his friends, and he'd had the house a lot longer than the friends. There had never been an invisible wall in his house's doorway because it was his and he was always welcome. He wanted her to feel welcome, too. Not this nausea-inducing fear. He was sick of everyone around him being afraid. Literally, he felt ill. He couldn't stop his friends from fearing the Baron, but he'd hoped he could at least make her feel more at ease than they did.

Joan looked at expectantly. He'd been quiet too long. He was supposed to have stepped out of the car by now, but he hadn't and now the vibes were awkward. That was nice, at least.

She forced her fingers to relax from their death grip. She tried evening out her breathing, too, but that intense, scrabbling urgency was still coiled around her.

"Maybe another time," she gently said. Her energy wobbled like it always did when she lied. He kind of wished he couldn't notice it.

"Yeah, maybe another time. My place is pretty dirty, anyway."

He pulled the inner door handle and made to leave. She smiled a little, that worried crease between her brows making an appearance again. "Gotta sweep the cobwebs, huh?"

He chuckled hollowly. "Yeah, something like that."

And then he'd gone in, looked at the newly-cleaned foyer, and kicked at one of the rugs until the corner flipped and revealed a dark red stain spread across the hardwood. He considered it for a few minutes, standing silently in the foyer with an empty briefcase in his hand. Then he just sighed, kicked the corner of the rug back over, and went to bed.

That had been a few weeks ago. There had not been any bad weather since then, not enough to warrant getting a ride home, thankfully. Lots of cloudy days, but no rain. Today was the first day in a long time that the sun had come out totally unobscured. The forecast said it was going to be nothing but sun for the next week or so. He'd have to warn his roommates to be extra careful around the boarded-up windows, just to be safe.

Colin had finally settled on choosing a tan color for the background of his drawing when he overheard laughter coming from Joan's cubicle. He peeked his head around again and saw Joe standing beside her desk making conversation. He held one of his hands up to his eyes to block out the sun. He motioned toward the window with his other hand - the blinds, probably. He made a "close" motion. The sunlight streaming into her cubicle dimmed a little. She must have closed the blinds a little.

He dropped his hand and said something, then there was more laughter. Colin considered moving in closer and eavesdropping from behind the water cooler. And then he thought that that was a lot of effort when he knew he could just ask Joan about it on their break, so he went back to his drawing. He occasionally heard their laughter from across the room, trying to ignore it as best he could.

Eventually Joe left, passing Colin on his way back to his desk. He nodded once at Colin, an easy smile on his face as a dim excitement swept around him in lazy circles. Colin chanced one more glance at Joan's cubicle and noticed that it had returned to its original brightness. She'd fully opened the blinds the moment Joe left. He huffed a laugh.

When break time rolled around, Joan walked to his desk, pulling a chair from a nearby unclaimed cubicle and setting it across from him. Sometimes they took their break at his desk, usually when Joan wasn't in the mood to grab coffee. Occasionally the break room would be too full and Joan would suggest leaving, but everyone usually dispersed at their arrival and it wasn't an issue.

Colin mindlessly clicked his mouse on nothing. "What were you and Joe-"

"Are you going to Charlie's tonight?"

Surprised, he turned toward her. A brief burst of bashful energy appeared. She hadn't meant to interrupt him.

"What?"

She huffed. "So they didn't tell you either, huh?"

There it was yet again, that easy sympathy she felt for him. And some for herself, too. She felt camaraderie with him - a commonality she found comforting. Colin didn't get it, but it was nice to see, anyway.

She swiveled her chair a little. "Charlie's. It's a bar not far from the freeway. Everyone's going out for drinks after work. Joe just invited me. You want to come?"

He'd never been invited to drinks after work before. He knew his coworkers usually went out for drinks every couple months or so, but he'd never been able to figure out which bar it was they went to. They were usually very careful to not mention any specific details about their plans around him, not since he'd crashed a trivia night they attended once. So much delicious frustration when he got every answer correct. Nobody liked a know-it-all. Especially not one that insisted on expanding upon every answer with more useless facts.

Joan leaned a little closer, a gentle smile tugging at her lips. "I can drive. I'll take it slow on the corners, too, so you don't get carsick."

Right. His "carsickness." He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten "carsick" with her. His latest rides with her had been pleasant up until the end, when she inevitably panicked at the sight of his house. He was still miles away from learning to enjoy her cheerful energies, if that was even possible, but he could manage a close proximity with her easily now.

"You always take it slow on the corners," he finally responded.

A blip of self-doubt appeared around her. "So… is that a no, or …?"

He blinked. "Oh, yeah, obviously I'm going. I've heard Derek's a happy drunk. I wouldn't want to miss that."

She laughed. "Derek? Well, I'll believe it when I see it."

Then she glanced at his monitor and the warm energy she always wore around her fell away. In its place was something darker. Colder. That same darkness he saw whenever she drove him home, whenever she lied. A pit formed in Colin's stomach. He struggled to identify the emotions, they flicked by so quickly. Revulsion? Resentment? Under normal circumstances these would be pleasant to drain, but coming from Joan this was disturbing. Where was her joy? Where was the bright aura he'd finally grown accustomed to?

Then she exhaled and all that darkness collapsed into itself, seemingly smothered by the light energy she usually had. It was intentional. She was willing the darkness away.

She still smiled, but there was a hard edge to it. "Who are they?"

He hesitated to answer, practically struck dumb. "My, uh, my roommates. That's Laszlo, Nadja, Nandor, and, y'know, me."

She nodded a bit, eyes wide. She stared at the drawing longer than he felt comfortable with. "Well, it's a lovely picture. It'll be great framed."

Now he was even more confused. He could sense her hatred for the picture plain as day, simmering beneath the surface, but the air didn't waver. There was no lie in her words. She really did think it was lovely. She also hated it.

Not quite sure how to interpret any of this, Colin simply thanked her. He deleted the tab with his drawing on it and slowly her cheerful demeanor reemerged, but she wasn't there in the moment anymore. Her thoughts were somewhere else, tiptoeing around that darkness she usually kept locked away.

When the break ended and she walked back to her desk, bathed in sunlight, Colin had a terrible feeling that something had irreparably changed. That camaraderie she'd felt with him only a few minutes earlier had been damaged, strained by some force he couldn't even begin to grasp.

He hoped she'd feel like herself again at Charlie's.

Lunch had been quiet. She still smiled politely as they talked, but it was a great effort on her part to make it seem natural. Maybe if he hadn't been an energy vampire, then he'd have been fooled, but he could see just how conflicted she really was. There was some shame, some apprehension, and a growing panic that threatened to engulf her. Her energy was all spikes and hard edges, even though she was desperately trying to stamp it down. He'd never seen her struggle to control her emotions like this before. He didn't know she was even capable of losing control like this.

By the time the workday ended and she was driving them to the bar, she had not managed to recover any of her earlier brightness. If anything, it was worse. There was a tense energy in the air, tinged with something sour and bitter. He rolled down his window but it did nothing to help the bad taste in his mouth. When they'd finally reached the bar he couldn't get out of the car fast enough.

Joan walked into the bar, taking her cloud of uneasy energy with her. Colin followed behind at a distance. Ropes of hostility moved around her in awkward jerks. He was so distracted by the odd, out-of-place emotion that he ran straight into the invisible wall blocking the entrance.

His bones rattled as a voice in him silently screamed, "NOT WELCOME NOT WELCOME NOT WELCOME-"

He jumped back with a yelp. It had been a very, very long time since he'd made the mistake of walking someplace he hadn't been invited into first. The cold shock of it made his teeth chatter as he struggled to pull himself together. He fucking hated that wall.

Joan was startled when she heard his small cry. She turned around and stood there in the entrance stock still, trying to assess what had just happened. He expected her to ask about it, but she made a strange expression he struggled deciphering instead. It was a mix of disappointment and sympathy.

Her voice was flat. "Come on in, Colin."

The wall disappeared, but he still hesitated at the doorway before walking in. Logically he knew the entrance was safe now, but his bones still remembered what had just happened, and his feet weren't cooperating with him. Joan started walking deeper inside. She gestured with her head to follow behind. Braving the doorway, he complied, relieved to walk through with no issue. He brushed his hand against the doorjamb, reassuring himself that he was invited. He was welcome.

When they were finally inside, they were greeted with the sight of a very full bar. A surprising amount of their coworkers had actually shown up, either already seated with their drinks or mingling by the bar counter. Derek and Kim were in a corner together, something conspiratorial in the air surrounding them. Even from here Colin could tell the rumor had been true - Derek really was happier tipsy than sober.

Joe was already seated at a table. He had a half-empty beer bottle next to him. He beckoned them over once he saw them. When Joan took her seat next to him, bright blips of gratitude started flitting around him. They circled around him dizzyingly fast. Colin felt nauseous.

Joan smiled politely at him in greeting, but there wasn't the same warmth there as there usually was. Her mind was still elsewhere - contemplating deep dark thoughts Colin had no hope of discerning. Joe frowned. Even him, the least perceptive person in the office, had somehow noticed Joan's drastic dip in enthusiasm. His happy little blips started to disappear. Well, at least there was some silver lining to Joan's attitude.

Joe began picking at his paper coaster, forming a small pile of paper scraps. "Have either of you been here before?"

Joan shook her head, eyes absently surveying the room.

"Nope," Colin said, popping the 'p' sound, trying to ignore the dejected emotions of the woman next to him. "But maybe that's for the best. Their sign out front said they got a B rating on their health inspection and most of those ratings are inflated to start. I've always considered being a health inspector as an alternative career path. The job security is good and the attention to detail required…"

And then Colin babbled on, watching with satisfaction as Joe's eyes began to droop. This felt right. This was normal. This was something he could focus on, because if he kept having to look at the terrifying mess that was Joan's emotions then he wasn't sure how he'd be able to survive a whole night in her company. He couldn't identify half the things she was feeling, even though he was an expert at identifying negative emotions. He didn't dare give it a closer look, either. He had the sense that doing that would be akin to sticking your hand in a hornet's nest.

Now, ordinarily, whenever Colin was trying to drain someone and Joan happened to be present, she'd either quietly laugh at the situation at hand, or intervene, bringing life back into the conversation before letting him carry on with whatever boring thing he'd decided to drone on about. She never seemed to care too much that he liked bothering people. She never questioned why he did it, just accepted it as one of his "quirks" and moved on. Sometimes she liked hearing his strategies for annoying specific people. Those times were his favorite, when he could share his whole purpose in life with someone without being met with disdain.

But tonight was different. It seemed like the more Colin talked the more the dark cloud around her grew. She watched as Joe blinked slower and slower, leaning deeper into his chair as Colin began explaining the many health and safety protocols one must understand to become a health inspector. Panic overtook her, and she turned toward Colin, eyes wide. For one fleeting moment it felt like they were back in her car sitting outside his house. There was that awful, desperate urgency he could never pin down the source of. She was seeing something terrible again. Except tonight she wasn't looking at his house. She was just looking at him.

Then shame welled up within her, threatening to spill over. She shifted her gaze toward the bartender and let out a breath. "God, I need a drink."

She quickly retreated to the bar. Some of their coworkers - Rob, Susan, and Mary - stepped aside once they saw her. Somehow even here in this crowded space, people were managing to avoid her.

"Is she okay?" Joe asked as he shook himself awake.

"I don't know," Colin said, eyes still trained on Joan. After a few moments of helplessly waving her arm, she'd finally managed to get the bartender's attention. "She's been in a bad mood."

"Bad mood" didn't come close to describing it. It was like she was tying herself into knots and then meticulously untangling herself, just to tie herself into more knots again. The only person he could remember seeing work themselves up this bad before was Guillermo.

Joe nodded sagely, blinking hard. "She was fine this morning when we'd talked."

"I don't know what happened. One minute she's laughing, and then she's looking at me like I just killed her dog."

"What'd you do? Start talking about 'proper dental hygiene' again? You probably offended her."

He shook his head. "No, I've tried offending her before, and it doesn't work. It happened when-"

Colin went silent as Joan headed back toward their table. She had a drink in hand, something fruity and colorful, a contrast to the black mood she was in. It wouldn't cure the great ball of anxiety threatening to tear her apart, but he sensed it had softened some of her edges as she took her seat.

"What are we talking about?"

"Expense reports," Colin said.

She didn't believe him, but she still playfully turned her nose up in distaste. He saw a glimpse of her for a moment, not the depressed copy that had driven him here. "So, when we're at the office you'll talk about anything and everything you can possibly think of, but when we're out at a bar, you want to talk about work?"

Grateful for a return to their normal teasing, Colin smiled. "You're right, I shouldn't be talking about work. How about I talk about the expense reports tomorrow during our scheduled work hours? Or maybe I could recite the employee handbook again?"

"Oh god," she groaned. Her eyes sparkled with humor. "Are you trying to kill me?"

And then, somehow, the brief moment of friendliness was already ruined. There was more horror now, and shame, and even - even heartache, of all things. All those feelings looked wrong on her, like an ill-fitting coat. Unflattering and uncomfortable.

"Joan?" Joe said. "You okay? You look a little pale."

She closed her eyes and let out a breath. Colin watched with fascination as she once again tried to smother the dark. The anxiousness, the fear, the sinister thing he couldn't name. It clawed at her with a frenzy as she desperately tried taming it. This was beyond anything he'd ever seen before. She was fighting herself and losing.

Joe hesitantly reached out a hand, worried by the panicked expression she was making. His hand hovered over Joan's shoulder as he struggled to decide whether comforting her was appropriate or not. Then he looked over at Colin and pulled his hand back. He jerked his chin toward Joan, shooting Colin with a look of expectation. Ah. He wanted him to do something about this.

Colin didn't know a single damn thing about comforting, especially when he couldn't discern what the issue was to start with. It was something to do with his drawing, he knew. That's what had started it all.

Joe kept staring at him, looking at him like he had the power to fix this. He didn't. He didn't know what he was meant to do here. But she was struggling and Joe was refusing to do anything about it, so against his better judgment, he decided to try.

He steeled himself, then drained some of the fear spiraling around her in misshapen ellipses. He'd never drained fear before, thinking it'd taste awful. And he was right, because this tasted like bile. It was spicy and pointy and it sat wrong, like he'd swallowed some bees or something. The dark emotion he couldn't name rumbled in the air ominously, seeming to dare him to take a bite of it. He steered clear of it. He quickly moved on to draining some of her anger. It seemed mostly directed at herself and a little at everything else, tinged with frustrated despair. It was bitter and wet and the taste rhymed with grief.

The drain only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed to work. Joan relaxed slightly. The crease between her brows softened and her posture lost some of its rigidity.

Then she stiffened and a beam of defiance appeared, just as he'd expected it would. She blocked him out like she'd always done in the past, and for the first time ever, he was actually glad to be shut out. Her defiance was bright and strong, stronger than all that other awful shit trying to consume her, even the darkest parts of it, the ones that scared him. He didn't shield his eyes from it; he was proud.

She looked at him with surprise.

"Feel better?" he casually asked.

For a few moments she was silent, then she laughed slightly with disbelief. "You… yes, I do. A little."

"It it a headache, or…?" Joe asked. He'd managed to create a small mountain of torn up paper from the coasters and was now trying to peel the label off of his beer bottle.

"No, no. Nothing like that." She waved her hand dismissively. "Nothing a drink can't fix."

To Colin's lack of surprise, the air wavered with her lie. No drink could fix whatever the hell this was. Even with her recent victory over it, the darkness was coming back.

He'd expected that. Guillermo frequently lost himself in his anxieties, uncertainties, disappointments, and other negative things Colin never bothered looking closer at. And every time Guillermo conquered it, without fail, it would come back. Sometimes Nandor or one of the other blood vampires would stand too close and something hostile would wake up in Guillermo and he'd excuse himself. Sometimes it happened when he toyed with the cross on the necklace he insisted on wearing. And sometimes it happened when he watched the sunset, which had always confused him. Why would anybody ever get angsty watching a sunset?

Some day, Colin knew Guillermo would explode. He'd been a doormat for ten years and it was going to be a disaster when that bundle of negative energies came undone. Colin was eager for that day to come, but he didn't want to see that happen to Joan. She wasn't meant to come apart at the seams like Guillermo inevitably would.

Joe was eager to move on from the uncomfortable situation. He lifted his bottle to clink with Joan's glass, but paused when he looked at Colin.

He frowned. "Colin. Where's your drink? C'mon, we're at a bar, you gotta drink with us."

He didn't like drinking. The only drinks he could stomach were coffee and water and that was only due to decades of building up a tolerance for them. And even then, he only felt comfortable sipping at them. He'd never been able to work up the courage to take a full gulp.

"They probably have coffee, too, Colin," Joan said, the sympathy she usually felt for him returning. It floated uneasily between her anxiety, but it was strong and unwavering.

"No," he said, getting up, "I know exactly what I want."

He had no intentions of actually drinking, but he needed a break from whatever the hell was happening to Joan. He headed toward the bartender and let out a breath, trying to shake off the fear he'd just consumed. Where was it even coming from? What was so disturbing about his drawing that'd send her into a full-blown crisis? It was just him and his roommates. No one else in the office who'd seen it was bothered by it.

He ordered his drink from the bartender and ignored the judgmental look he got for his choice. He waited patiently, watching Joe and Joan chat on the other side of the room. He saw sympathy from Joe, cords of it tentatively moving against Joan's erratic feelings. It did nothing to comfort her.

His spying was interrupted when he felt a hand clap onto his shoulder. He turned and to his surprise, there was Derek, holding a drink.

"So," he said with uncharacteristic cheer, "have you two told HR yet?"

The strangely joyful expression on his face was disconcerting. "What?"

"HR. You're supposed to register all inner-office relationships with HR. It's right there in that manual you memorized."

He didn't have to ask who he was referring to. "We're not dating."

"Really? Because anytime you two are together, it's like the rest of us are third wheels."

"We're just friends. Wait, is - is that why you all avoid her? Because you think I'm dating her?"

Derek leaned against the counter. "I avoid her just as much as I avoid everybody else. Which isn't easy, since she works right next to me."

Colin wasn't ready to go back to the table and brave the violent storm that was Joan's emotional state again, so now was as good a time as any to get to the bottom of things. Especially if Derek was in a good enough mood to enlighten him.

"Yeah, but everybody else takes a step back when she's around like she's diseased. You keep your head to the ground, so you hear things. What does everybody else think of her?"

He sighed then downed half his drink. "She's nice. And sweet. But she's…" He shrugged. "Off. Kind of like you are. That's why you two stick together, right? You're both different."

Colin was an energy vampire - he was inhuman. A predator. A mostly harmless predator in the grand scheme of things, but a predator nonetheless. Joan was human. A human, just like Derek and everyone else in their office. She was not "different." Not in a way that should have mattered to any of them.

"No. No, we're friends because…"

He petered off, just as the bartender returned with his drink. Colin absently accepted the drink, fingers strumming against the glass. Why were they friends?

Derek's brows raised. "Yeah?"

"... Because she decided we were."

Derek snorted. "That's it?"

"No, of course not, there's more to it than that-"

Colin stopped himself. It suddenly dawned on him just how ridiculous this conversation was. Why was he talking to Derek about his relationship with Joan? Especially when she was still sitting in the corner, struggling with emotions he could barely comprehend?

"Why am I talking to you? And why do you suddenly give a shit?"

He grinned. "I don't. But Kim said she'd pay for my next drink if I found out what's going on between you two. Which is nothing apparently."

Colin glanced at Kim, who was trying - and failing - to look inconspicuous as she watched them from the back wall. If this was how bar night usually went, with his coworkers nosing into business that wasn't theirs, then he hadn't been missing out on anything the last few years.

"Don't ask me why she cares," Derek said as he finished his drink. "I think it's some dumb conspiracy bullshit of hers, like usual. Seriously, though, what the hell are you waiting for? If she 'decided' you were friends then she had to have a reason. And she's not stupid, so it must have been a good reason. She likes you. She picked you. So, what, you don't like her?"

Colin narrowed his eyes. He did not like being prodded like this. "You really want that drink, don't you?"

Derek snorted. "I don't think she'll hold up her end of the deal if I come back with nothing."

Colin was about to tell him he was just going to have to pay for his own damn drink and walk away, but instead he said, "I'm not … not interested."

Derek groaned. "Oh, c'mon man, make up your mind. You dated the most pitiful person I've ever met, but this one you're not sure about?"

Evie. He was talking about Evie. Dating her had been easy. They were both the same kind of animal and nothing ever needed to be explained between them. It'd been nice, being understood, up until their relationship had turned parasitic. In hindsight, he should have seen it coming. She was an emotional vampire - she took and she took and she didn't do leftovers. And he was, try as he might not to be, a sentimental vampire. He'd been all too comfortable playing chivalrous and letting her take what she needed. What would that look like, if he dated a human? A human who never expected anything from him but friendship?

Colin's voice was cold. He was upset now, but didn't know why. "This is different. She's my friend. Evie wasn't. "

Deciding that he was sick of this conversation and the turn it had taken, he walked away. He sensed amusement from Derek as he left, but ignored it and took his seat next to Joan.

Joe laughed. "Is that a Shirley Temple you have there?"

Joan ignored him, leaning closer to Colin. Her terrible cloud of doom and gloom invaded his senses unpleasantly. Maybe he shouldn't have been so bothered by it, since negative emotions were his bread and butter, but it still tasted wrong on her.

Joan tried to sound cheerful. "So? Is Derek a happy drunk?"

They both looked over at Derek, who was talking to Kim now. Colin scoffed. "Yeah, he is. And a really annoying one, too."

She chuckled. "Got a taste of your own medicine?"

He took a sip from his Shirley Temple and immediately regretted it. He grimaced. "Yeah, and it sucks."

She laughed again, a full-blown laugh, and it was like sunlight breaking through a storm. He knew this was temporary, that this was just the eye of the storm, but that didn't make him appreciate it any less.

"Okay, c'mon, it's time," Joe said, raising his bottle. Joan raised her glass and so did Colin, each of them clinking their drinks together. He was tempted to ruin the moment and "accidentally" spill his drink all over Joe, but he wasn't willing to risk ruining Joan's short-lived happiness.

The next hour was spent talking. They talked about nothing: office drama, recent movies they'd seen, and whatever else was appropriate to talk about at a bar with your coworkers. Joan would start spiraling deeper into her thoughts and try to play it off, but Colin always noticed. He'd drain her of some of it, and then she'd fight back against him, and her defiance would boost her spirits a bit. And then it'd start again. Spiraling. Draining. Fighting. Repeat. It was exhausting, but Colin didn't know what else he could do. He desperately wanted to ask her what was wrong, what he could do to help, what he'd done wrong, but Joe was here and he was scared of upsetting her further anyway.

An hour and a half went by. He was starving and there was nothing he could do about it. Anytime he tried to drain Joe, Joan would inexplicably get antsy and he'd have to back off. He was making do with the bits and pieces of emotions he was gleaning from her, but they tasted awful and, even worse, weren't filling. It was like he was trying to subsist on nothing but burnt crumbs.

He was about to walk over to Derek and Kim and spill his drink on them instead just to get a rise out of them and have a decent meal when his phone pinged. He sighed when he saw the message.

Vampiric Council Emergency Meeting ASAP (As Soon As Possible): All essential and non-essential members expected to be in attendance. Formal garb not required.

Normally he was glad to attend a council meeting, which were needlessly dull. He didn't attend the regular meetings too often, since he didn't like anything taking him away from roomie time. He was only on the council to start with since the bylaws required a local vampire be a member and energy vampires weren't exactly known for rocking the boat, so he'd been asked to join. This was the first time he'd actually been disappointed to see he had a meeting to go to because

tonight he was with Joan and he still hadn't figured out how to fix her.

He had to go though. Delay too long and they'd start sending the ravens, which would be very difficult to explain to a room full of drunks.

"Hey, Joan? My, uh - book club is having an emergency meeting and I have to go. Could you drop me off there instead of my house?"

"Your book club is having an emergency meeting," she repeated, words dripping with disbelief.

"Yes. We're reading Little Women and someone skipped ahead to when Beth dies. They're inconsolable."

She wanted to laugh, but didn't. She didn't ask him what the truth was - because of course she knew that wasn't the truth - and instead stood and pulled out her car keys.

"Well, Joe, this was nice. Thank you again for inviting us."

He smiled. "Of course. Sorry you didn't get invited earlier. I don't know why everybody's so weird about you guys."

Her expression didn't change, but Colin saw that she felt sad again, hearing that. She looked at Joe's small pile of shredded paper dejectedly. Colin glared at him. She already felt bad enough before, you idiot.

"It's fine. It's not their fault," she said knowingly as she walked toward the door.

He followed her out. The air had gotten colder since they'd first arrived. They walked to her car in silence, her distress still festering right at the surface. When they reached her car he made a drinking motion with his hand.

"Are you good to drive?"

She nodded. "We were there for a while and I didn't drink much. I'm good now. Where exactly is this 'book club' of yours meeting?"

He told her the address and they got in her car. When they finally got going, they didn't speak for a while. There was nothing to listen to but the sound of the air conditioning whistling and their own thoughts, which, considering the circumstances, was a terrible thing. With nothing to distract her she was losing herself again.

Colin intended to break the silence with something normal, but his instinct to make things awkward got the better of him.

"You hated my drawing, didn't you?"

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Her tone was even. Careful. "What are you talking about?"

"Earlier, when you saw my drawing of my roommates. You said you liked it, but you've been upset ever since."

She was quiet for a while before she responded. "I don't hate your drawing. It's complicated."

He sighed. "You hate my drawing, you hate my house…" he muttered.

She stiffened. "I don't hate-" The air wavered.

"You're lying."

She was getting angry now. Good. He preferred her anger to her despair. "How do you know? I didn't even finish."

Because the air moves when you lie. "You have a tell."

"Oh yeah, what's my tell?"

"You don't tell somebody what their tell is, you keep that to yourself so you can keep taking advantage of it."

"Is that what you want to do? Take advantage?" It seemed like she was talking to herself as much as she was to him, the anger turning inward.

"What? No, I just … wanted to know what I did to upset you."

They arrived. She pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car. She turned toward him, the anger ebbing away into guilt and frustration. She looked so tired. Her skin was washed out and her eyes were dull.

"It's not anything you did. But I know too much now and I can't unknow it and it was easy to pretend before but now I can't and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this!"

He didn't say anything. She sounded like him, that day in the sitting room when he'd unloaded on his roommates, overwhelmed and at a crossroads.

She looked away from him. "It's too much," she whispered.

Of course it's too much, he thought. You've always been too much. That's why we're friends. No one else ever has enough of themselves, but you do.

He wanted to tell her. Tell her what he was, that he knew there was something strange haunting her because he could see it, that he'd been trying to cure her of it all night to no avail. He wanted to tell her that he was more strange than whatever this thing tearing her apart was. That if she'd just explain it to him, why she lied so much, why she was so frightened of his house and his drawing and even of him tonight, then he could take it from her, if she'd let him. He'd share the load.

Before he could stop himself, he started talking. "I know it's too much. I can feel it. Joan, I'm-"

He went quiet when he realized she wasn't listening. Her eyes, which had gotten impossibly big, were trained on something behind him. Colin followed her gaze and saw Paul, one of the heads of the vampiric council, walking into the entrance. He'd opted not to wear the ceremonial robes, but he still wore a dark cloak around him. One of his familiars followed him inside.

"Joan?"

It was like he wasn't there. She kept staring at the entrance, her face flushed and her breaths coming in quicker. She was frozen to the spot, stiff as a corpse.

"Joan."

She looked at him and what he saw behind her eyes frightened him. The horrible, horrible urgency had returned in full force. It was wild and hateful and violent. Something in him clicked and he finally found the word he'd been looking for, the name for that terrible, dark thing in her he couldn't name. The undercurrent to it all.

Bloodlust.

He'd never seen it on a human before. He'd only ever seen it on his roommates, and it looked different in them. It was understated, a slightly restless emotion that mostly hid in the background of their other emotions. In Joan it was different. It was all-consuming. She seemed more animal than any of them at that moment. An absurd thought appeared from somewhere deep inside him, and it spoke in the same voice he heard at the bar when he'd tried to walk in uninvited.

Predator.

"Who is that?" she said, her voice lower than he'd ever heard it.

He couldn't speak.

"Is he part of your 'book club'?"

He nodded.

All day she'd been conflicted. Her emotions had been tangled, warring with each other as she desperately tried to reign in what he now knew was bloodlust. The conflict was gone the moment she'd seen Paul. She'd reconciled with herself, made some kind of crucial decision. The fear, the shame, the despair, it had coalesced into one monstrous thing: purpose.

He frantically pulled at the inner door handle, fully prepared to climb out the window if it didn't open. "I-I really need to, uh, get to - get to my book club now."

"Colin?"

Deep into the maelstrom of her emotions he saw a small light flickering. He honed in on it, his life preserver in a raging sea. It was tiny, nearly imperceptible, but even still he could recognize it. It was concern. Concern for him.

"How often do you come to these meetings?" she said, her concern growing. The light flickered again. There was doubt now.

"Not often. They meet every Wednesday." She kept looking at him. "But I only really go to the emergency meetings."

She was relieved. The light snuffed out.

"Good."

He finally got the door open. Normally he'd thank her for the ride or say he'd see her tomorrow, but this time he just left without a word. He walked into the building quickly, his hands shaking. He frantically pressed the elevator button down.

Predator, he thought again.

One stronger than me.