Chapter Text
The former room of the former Baby Colin Robinson was lit brightly with burnt-down, stubby candles placed haphazardly around the room and a modern lighting rig set up behind the camera, which was pointing at the red race car bed.
The Guide floated into the room, apologizing as she took a lav from the sound engineer and readied herself for the interview. "So, so sorry I'm late, but, as you know, things have been insane around here, what with my wraiths still stuck in Florida, and Guill-"
"Can you hold on to that for a second?" The producer interrupted, leading her to the foot of the bed. "Sit here, and we'll be ready for you in a minute." The Guide nodded and took a seat. She absent-mindedly fiddled with her skirts while the crew went through their last-minute checks.
"Ok, we are ready to roll. Can you tell us what happened today at sunset?"
"Can do." She clasped her fingerless-gloved hands in her lap, cleared her throat, and addressed the camera. "Things are bad around here. I mean, worse than usual!" Leaning slightly forward, she stared down the lens with wide eyes. "Laszlo had to call a Secret Meeting!"
~♪~
Laszlo held the curtained doorway to the fancy room and waved his hand, ushering his invited guests inside. In that hand, he clutched a folded piece of paper with the handwritten word " Vampires " visible behind his ringed fingers. His attempt at a calm and reassuring presence was an absolute failure. If anything, his strained features and almost feral-looking eyes added to the uneasy feeling in the air.
"Sorry for the early hour, but we haven't a moment to spare, and this needs to be dealt with now ."
Unnerved by Laszlo's vibe, Nadja (holding her literal self-possessed Dolly), The Guide, and Colin Robinson all filed into the fancy room, nervously glancing at the camera as they went.
Laszlo tried to smile at the camera as the crew followed him in, but it didn't quite land.
~♪~
The Guide shook her head with disdain. "He called the meeting to discuss that horrible little letter."
~♪~
The vampires were seated around Laszlo, who stood in the Meeting Leadership Position (by the fireplace) and cleared his throat.
"I found this-" he began, shaking the paper at them for emphasis, "in the foyer mere minutes ago, and I thought we should all be prepared before Nandor awakens. It is a letter from Gizmo."
Nadja groaned and sank into her chair. Laszlo gave his wife a slight, knowing smile. "My darling, I don't want to do this either, but we can't just ignore it."
"We could try," suggested Dolly. The haunted doll sat alone on the sofa cushions and polished a miniature switchblade with her ruffled sleeve. Nobody knew when she had got it or where, but they knew better than to ask.
Laszlo ignored her as he unfolded the letter with a flourish and read it aloud.
" Vampires - I've taken care of everything everyone has asked of me, and now it's my turn to take care of myself. Remember to discreetly dispose of your corpses- "
"Who the fuck does he think he is?" Nadja scoffed. She had sunk so low in the chair that her face was barely visible over the multitude of ruffles on her bodice.
"Someone who doesn't have to dispose of corpses, I would guess," offered The Guide, sitting prim and proper in the chair next to hers.
" -and I'll be in touch soon. Not about cleaning up corpses. I don't do that anymore. "
"I have contractors starting work on the house next Monday," interjected Colin Robinson with a raised hand. He was perched on the arm of the sofa, giving Dolly a broad - and probably wise - berth. "They will be here basically every day for the next several weeks. How the frickity-frack will we keep this place clean without our familiar-not-a-familiar-bodyguard there to clean up our messes?"
Laszlo closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself.
" Cleaning supplies are under the kitchen sink. "
The bitching was immediate. The nightwalkers hated this, so very loudly hated this. Nadja fell out of her chair in anger and landed somewhere in her petticoats with a muffled "Μαλάκας".
Colin Robinson, however, seemed oddly pleased. He procured a notepad from inside his jacket, uncapped a pen with his mouth, and started drawing up a household chore chart. "Ok, so, it makes sense to divide the house into quadrants , and each of you will-"
Laszlo stepped forward and slapped the pen and paper out of his hands. " No ," he reprimanded as if speaking to a mischievous puppy, not his energy vampire housemate.
Colin Robinson simply folded his hands on his lap and looked at Laszlo, amusement in his glowing blue eyes. "I wasn't even trying to drain you, but I can see how everyone's fear of personal responsibility could-"
Nadja and The Guide cut him off with " Fuck off! " and " But I like responsibility, " respectively.
" Please , can we get back to the task at hand?" Laszlo gave them all a withering glare before he continued reading the letter.
" Don't mix ammonium and bleach unless you want to kill the documentary crew- "
~♪~
"Laszlo is shit at Secret Meetings," ranted The Guide. "I mean, he invited me, and I don’t even live here! He has no idea what it takes to hold a really juicy secret from everybody!"
"Well, it's not like we had any chance of keeping the bespoke secret a secret."
The monotone of Colin Robinson's comment startled The Guide and the camera crew alike. Four heads (plus one camera) all whipped around and found him lurking in the doorway, holding a sizable stack of House & Garden magazines from the 1970s.
"True," mumbled The Guide, annoyed at his interruption. It was so rare for the documentary to ask her for a solo interview!
Colin Robinson continued his exposition for the documentary crew. "As it turns out, Nandor already knew his little buddy had moved out."
The Guide's arms flailed in frustration as she stood to leave, checking Colin Robinson with her shoulder as she passed. "Great! You've got this interview covered, so I'm going to check in with the Vampiric Council of Central Florida, see if they've finalised travel arrangements for the wraiths."
"Wait, before you go, did you finish sanitizing the cell in the... basement?" His voice trailed off as he watched her walk away. Then, miffed, he turned to the camera and frowned. "They don't respect my quadrant-based cleaning gameplan, do they?"
~♪~
"And look, he's signed it 'G'." Laszlo held the paper up to the room as proof. "Just 'G'. It's insulting. The boy won't shut up about 'respect' and 'using his proper name' and all that horseshit, but then he signs his bloody farewell address with one single letter?"
Colin Robinson leaned forward and squinted at the letter. "Looks like G-Man left a postscript, Laszlo?" Before Laszlo could check, the Secret Meeting was gatecrashed by the one vampire who he very intentionally had not invited.
Nandor burst into the fancy room, startling swears out of his housemates. He ignored their apparent overreaction to his entrance, made a bee-line to the nearest clump of candles, and began plucking them from their stands, still lit.
"OH HELLO NANDOR GOOD EVENING TO YOU," shrieked the Guide in what she clearly thought was a casual tone. "WHAT BRINGS YOU TO THESE CANDLES?"
"The candles in my crypt are all burnt out. It's important to stay on top of these things," Nandor lectured as he attempted to add a ninth candle to his collection, dropping three in the process. He grimaced and squatted down to collect the fallen candles while Nadja scooched away from the uncontained flames. Her lacy ruffles and proximity made for a potentially dangerous situation.
"Plus," added Nandor as he stood up, nine candles in hand, "we no longer have an employee to do all this shit instead. There is a letter in the foyer if you didn't know already." The others poorly feigned their surprise at this news, but Nandor didn't seem to notice. His unfocused eyes landed on the fireplace as he addressed the room.
"We need to hire a new familiar, and maybe this time, we can hire someone who commutes to work instead of taking over our storage rooms." He nodded decisively, turned with a swoop of his robes, and exited through the curtained doorway from whence he came, all the while clutching the candles with both hands like it was a fiery bouquet.
Laszlo slumps onto the sofa next to Dolly, deflated and blinking in utter confusion. "Ηλίθιος! Good job, Laszlo," she spat and jumped off of the sofa while flipping him the double bird. "What a productive Secret Meeting, really top-notch work. Γαμώ τη μάνα σου..." She was still mumbling curses as she waddled out of the fancy room.
"He must have awakened before sunset… I'm not sure what we do now. How does one even find a commuter familiar?" Laszlo turned to The Guide, who sighed in resignation. Why did this shit always fall on her?
"I will see to it that you have a new familiar by the end of the week, though it may be tricky to-"
"Fuck that!" hissed Nadja, arms crossed and moping on the floor. "New familiars are more trouble than they're worth. Why can't we just find the boy and hypnotise him to come clean?"
Colin Robinson raised his hand. "Ok, but first, did Gizmo write a postscript or not? I'm honestly dying to know."
"It appears as though he did," said Laszlo, inspecting the paper. "It says: ' P.S. I'm immune to vampire hypnosis, so don't even try.' "
"Well," groaned Nadja as she fully starfished in her spot on the floor, "There goes my idea."
♪ Norma Tangea - You're Dead ♪
Don't sing if you want to live long
They have no use for your song
You're dead, you're dead, you're dead
You're dead and out of this world
Now your hope and compassion is gone
You sold out your dream to the world
Stay dead, stay dead, stay dead
You're dead and out of this world
Guillermo had thought about - well, fantasized about the day he would be made a vampire for many, many years. Of course, details changed and shifted over the years, but he was pretty sure he had never imagined himself bribing an acquaintance with money he had stolen from his housemates ( ex-housemates , he reminded himself), and he certainly never imagined it would happen in the back room of a convenience store. But, hey, c’est la vie - well, c’est la mort .
"You're gonna make me a vampire."
Derek's brows furrowed, confused. "I'm gonna what?"
Guillermo stole a quick look at the camera. Didn't vampires have superpowered hearing? He repeated himself, just in case. "Make me a vampire."
"Out of what, money-based papier-mâché?" He gestured at the stacks in the unzipped bag.
"No, like biting, trading blood, you know?" He mimed biting someone and was pleased when Derek started nodding slowly with comprehension.
"Ok, this some kind of revenge thing? Like, you have an old high school bully whose life you want to ruin by turning them?"
Jesus H. Christ. " No , dude, I want you to tu-"
They were saved from this endless cycle of questioning by the sound of footsteps approaching the stockroom. Derek surprised Guillermo with competence by zipping up the bag and lobbing it to the back of the top shelf; meanwhile, Guillermo's hand moved instinctively to his side, hovering over a stake hidden in his jacket.
The man who walked in wasn't a vampire (his hand relaxed), but Derek's human and, as he would later explain, very shitty boss.
"Yo, Derek? Hakeem is still sick, and Paulie isn't answering his goddamn phone, so I need you up front." The vampire reflexively hissed at the holy curse, but his boss was eyeing Guillermo and his motley camera crew with disdain and missed Derek's odd reaction. "I also need you to not bring random fucking people in the back, alright? Anything from our stock room goes missing, it's on you."
"Oh, yeah yeah yeah, for sure, Nate, so sorry about that-" Derek sputtered at the ground, avoiding Nate's increasingly hostile gaze.
"Na- than ." He tapped his name tag for emphasis, but the scratched-up letters looked closer to spelling Nalnar than Nathan . "Not Nate. Get your ass behind the register in five minutes, or else." He gave the room one last glare before stalking away.
"So, that's my very shitty boss," Derek explained as he hovered to retrieve the black bag from the top shelf. Vampiric powers didn't amaze Guillermo quite as much as they had at the start of this journey, but something in his gut fluttered at the realization that those powers would soon be his, too. It was more nauseating than pleasant. Nerves, probably.
Derek tossed the bag to Guillermo without warning, almost knocking him over with his poorly-controlled vampiric strength. "Here’s your bag. My shift ends, like, an hour before sunrise," he explained as he started for the door. "Nate'll probably trespass you if you hang out in the store much longer, but I can meet you at the bus stop right outside after work?"
"Wait, this should only take, like, a minute, and Nathan gave you five," countered Guillermo with a somewhat desperate edge to his voice. "Plus, with this, you won't even need-"
Derek waved him off. "He says five minutes but means thirty seconds. Come on, he'll absolutely have my ass if I leave you back here, and I can't afford to lose this job."
"But the bag is for you..." he trailed off as Derek slipped through the doorway, gesturing for the humans to follow. Guillermo glanced at the camera with a familiar pain etched on his face. "Ok then. I can wait a little while longer..."
The secret room under Nandor's crypt held a mere fraction of the treasure it had before. An absurd number of lit candles were scattered across the room, yet it felt darker without the piles of gold and glittering jewels in every corner.
“Can you tell us what happened with him?”
"He left. What else is there to say?" Nandor's highly casual tone was undercut by the general dishevelment of his appearance. The armor he donned for the interview desperately needed a good polish, and the hair that wasn't hidden under his helmet was mussed and unkempt. He seemed ready for a mid-tier renaissance faire and not at all like the feared warlord of Al-Qolnidarnian legend.
"Can you rephrase that, please?"
He gritted his teeth. "The human left. He moved on, greener pastures, and all that bullshit." He waved his hand dismissively, fooling literally no one. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to... go..." Nandor trailed off lamely, unsure of the efficacy of his excuse. Nevertheless, he dematerialised into vapor and escaped up through the open trap door.
~♪~
Nadja and Laszlo were sitting on separate poofs in their updated crypt-slash-walk-in-closet. Certain things had changed since the initial remodel; most notably, a mixture of deep red and black curtains were draped over the closet walls, hiding the vampires' clothing. It wasn't a terrible way to cover up the blindingly white built-ins, but the curtains didn't fit the space well enough to cover everything.
"It's all a bit queer, really," Nadja began. "Nandor isn't nearly as piss-baby emotional regarding Gizmo's departure as we assumed he would be."
"Well, my darling, you know what they say about making assumptions," Laszlo quipped.
"No, I don't."
"It makes an ass out of you!" He laughed heartily, slapping his knee.
Nadja groaned, head in her hands. "Colin Robinson has had a horrible influence on Laszlo's sense of 'humour'."
Laszlo's face fell from a grin to a glower. "It's true what my good lady wife says - not the slander about my impeccable sense of humour, but about Nandor's attitude thus far. This isn't the first time Gizmo has quit-"
"- definitely not the first time-"
"-the boy loves to storm out of here all high and mighty-"
"-he's addicted to the drama-"
"-and so is Nandor, always whinging and whining whenever he goes-"
"-but this time? Nothing! The man is acting like he never existed in the first place-"
"-fucking hypocrite always scolded me for the exact same behaviour-"
"-so it makes us think there's more to this than meets the eye," finished Nadja with a toothy grimace.
"What do you think is going on?" the producer prodded. The couple shared a look, unsure how to respond.
"We have our theories," Laszlo finally answered, turning back to the camera. "But only time will tell."
~♪~
Colin Robinson stood in the foyer, perfectly framed by the two vine-covered winding staircases. Four buckets were on the floor next to him, each filled to the brim with the standard familiar tools of the trade - cleaning products, bone saws, tarps, the usual.
"It's always a pain in the ass when Señior de la Cruz, or as I like to call him, 'Mister of the Cross', uh, leaves."
His Spanish sounded … incorrect.
"Before, we'd just get a scab in here to do our dirty work until he was back on duty, but, well, it turns out our house has a bit of a - to quote Joan Jett, a 'bad reputation' in the area." He shrugged mildly, the picture of pure nonchalance. Like he doesn't give a damn about their bad reputation.
"So all that shit falls on us til The Guide finds us a new permanent hire. And I mean literally . These raccoons, man. More acrobatic than you'd think."
He took a moment to look up at the chandelier with disgust.
"But, to answer your original question," he said, returning to the interview, "Yes, they eventually agreed to follow my lead with this cleaning project. It's ideal for me. I'm more what you call 'middle management' material than 'scraping raccoon semen off the ceiling' material."
A tense staring contest was taking place in the fancy room between Nandor and a bucket of cleaning supplies. It started seventeen minutes ago when Colin Robinson decided to force the nightwalkers to clean the house themselves while he micro-managed from afar. He assigned each of them an area of the house, gave them a bucket of cleaning products, and told them to "go nuts with it".
Nandor sat across from his bucket, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, narrowed eyes locked in on the offending spray bottles. He probably looked as pathetic as he felt.
But he had every right to feel this way! Colin Robinson was exceedingly unreasonable today. Yes, the place was fairly filthy (why was there dried candle wax on the rug?), and yes, they couldn't exactly let the human construction crew in the house with dead bodies strewn about, but he couldn't possibly expect them to clean it all up. He couldn't possibly expect Nandor to clean, period! That job was for a familiar, and it was not Nandor's fault they no longer had one.
It was not Nandor's fault that they did not have one anymore. So - he would take care of his own corpses and his own messes, and that was that. He would not let Colin Robinson turn Nandor the fucking Relentless into anyone's familiar.
With renewed resolve, he headed out of the room to find Colin Robinson and left the cleaning bucket behind on the sofa to celebrate its victory. Even though it didn't win, technically. Nandor removed himself from the competition, which was a completely different thing, which meant that Nandor was not a sore loser for hissing as he went.
~♪~
Considering he was a master hunter long before he was made a vampire, it took Nandor an embarrassing amount of time before he tracked Colin Robinson down. Maybe Colin Robinson was proficient at the art of camouflage, and Nandor had never noticed until now. Maybe he's just not used to Adult Colin Robinson back in the house with his beige suits and angular glasses. Or, maybe it took him twenty minutes to find Colin Robinson because Colin Robinson wasn't even in their damn house.
Nandor was rifling through the kitchen cabinets as if the daywalker could be hiding behind the cloudy glasses and chipped mugs when he heard raised voices from outside. He carefully opened the kitchen window and flew out in bat-form; but for all his caution, Nandor did not see the swinging shovel until it was too late to dodge. He was cut out of the sky with a resounding crack and gracelessly fell into the koi pond.
"See?? This is why the Whitby 7981 Steel Utility Shovel is a far superior shovel to your Andersson 3810 Round-Point Digging Shovel bullshit. The way that-"
"-Sorry, but you're blaming the Andersson 3810 Round-Point Digging Shovel for your lack of spatial awareness? What's next, Randy Johnson blames Rawlings for the dove's untimely demise by mixing their quality product with his devastating fastball?"
"Fuck- ing guys !" yelled Nandor, bedraggled human-form dripping with water, as he brushed pond scum off his robe and stumbled his way out of the pond. "Why would you do that?"
"I didn't do it on purpose, you twat," Laszlo spat. He held a modern shiny shovel, like a soldier carrying a musket resting on his shoulders. "Colin Robinson was disparaging my gardening skills and refusing to let me use my preferred choice of tool-"
"- because you're not gardening ," Colin Robinson cut in, more heat in his voice than Nandor has ever heard from the man. "You're supposed to be digging a mass grave so we have somewhere to put our pile of corpses!"
Oh, that would explain why Laszlo is out here playing with his gardening tools in … whatever month this was, definitely not one of the springtime ones where Laszlo would have a garden to tend. And it would explain why the men were sniping at each other. Laszlo may have assaulted him with a shovel, but Colin Robinson was the real menace for giving them chores.
"But fine, whatever, I'll just sit here and watch you use inefficient tools and outdated digging techniques, see if I care." Colin Robinson threw his hands in melodramatic defeat and went to sit on an unfolded lawn chair set up next to the shallow pre-grave Laszlo had started.
"Sorry about the spade to the head, old chap." Nandor winced in pain when Laszlo gave him a pat on the shoulder. He murmured an acknowledgement before brushing past him towards Colin Robinson, who was sorting a pile of magazines, probably in chronological order.
"Colin Robinson, I wanted to let you know that I will not be participating in this cleaning bullshit of yours."
Colin Robinson continued to fiddle with the magazines. He didn't even look at Nandor when he was speaking. Maybe he didn't hear him?
"So, I will give the cleaning bucket back to you, and you can take my qua- quars? Quanda?"
"I think he called it a 'quandary'," Laszlo said as he shoveled approximately five cubic centimeters of soil with exaggerated effort and wiped non-existent sweat off his brow.
"It's 'quadrant'," Colin Robinson clarified. He tore a page from the magazine featuring a particularly artichoke-y coloured kitchen and stashed it in a technicolor pocket folder.
Nandor sensed that perhaps he wasn't taking this seriously. "Yes, this 'quad-rants' plan where we do all the cleaning. I will not play along anymore! It is demeaning and stupid, and it's not even my fault the house is dirty!"
Colin Robinson closed the folder and finally looked up at him. "You absolutely are responsible for some of the mess, and - Nandor, you know that cleaning the house is your responsibility and yours alone, right?"
"How the dickens is it my responsibility?" Nandor tore his eyes away from the frankly adorable tie-dye puppies that frolicked on the folder's cover and looked at his housemate with genuine confusion. "I'm not a fucking familiar."
“You were the fucking familiar’s master,” countered Colin Robinson, who sounded… off. "Gizmo was your familiar, and you were his master, so by the transitive property, the cleaning has been your responsibility for the last thirteen years as well." He was not a naturally emotive being, but there was an odd undercurrent to his voice, one of ... Sadness? Regret?
Preoccupied with whatever it was, Colin Robinson removed his glasses and rubbed them with his sleeve. Laszlo inefficiently shoveled dirt. Nandor picked at his cuticles and felt the eyes of the documentary crew spying on him from wherever they were hiding. No one spoke for a while.
Colin Robinson finished cleaning his glasses and gingerly replaced them on his face before he rose and walked over to stand by Nandor.
"This isn't exactly easy for me to say as an energy vampire, but I have to be real with you, Nandor. I know I can't force you to do shit. I just thought you could use a distraction today. Something else to focus on."
"Why would I need a distraction today?" Nandor asked icily, and his voice cracked on "today". Betrayed by his own voice. Couldn't one damn thing go right for him today?
He just stared at him with that absurd sympathetic face of his, and Nandor had a horrible, horrible realization. That undefined emotion wasn’t sorrow or regret. It was pity .
Laszlo had stopped working long ago and leaned on his shovel to watch their conversation from afar. The lens of Greg's camera glinted in the moonlight from behind Nadja's vaginal topiary, where he hid with the rest of the camera crew.
Nandor did not lose to the bucket of supplies, but as he hissed and escaped in bat form, he had to admit that he may have just lost to Colin Robinson.