It was night by the time I made it back to the dormitory for Child Detectives. Sexy Dracula was there waiting for me on the doorstep, playing a game of chess against Alexander ManCandy and Sebastian Brood. The two were often found together, supporting Archetypes who could never seem to exist without the other, amalgamated together out of a million romance subplots. Alexander’s hair was blonde, his eyes blue, he stank of money and refined manners, and there was nothing at all offensive or wrong about him other than his total lack of sex appeal. Sebastian Brood on the other hand with his dark hair and *gasp* moustache, not to mention his dark cloak and mysterious past, made even a young black girl written by a white lesbian swoon from sheer palpable testosterone. While conversation with Alexander would bore you and make you feel trapped, suddenly fearing what it would be like to be trapped in a conversation with him forever, Sebastian would at first be off-putting and coarse only to eventually reveal he had some quirk that made his company repellant to everyone but you. If you spoke to him for thirty minutes, you would feel as though he was the only person in the world who had ever understood you. It was hard to remember that every girl felt that way after talking to him.
The pair were playing white to Dracula’s black and they appeared to be losing badly.
I spit my toothpick onto the ground.
“You all set up that game to look smart before I came back?”
Sexy Dracula dismissed me with a wave of his hand.
“We’ll talk later, Aliss.”
Not caring anymore, I stepped up to him.
“Nah, we ain’t doing this. You’re not gonna have some elaborate chess game on the front porch of my home sitting around like you’re posing for cover art and be all ‘We’ll talk later, Aliss.’ You’re like one of those characters who isn’t supposed to care what everybody thinks but then you’re description makes it sound like you spend eight hours in front of the bathroom mirror. You gonna bite my neck? Or turn into some mist and grope me? Go ahead and do it, but you’ll do it now or I’m going to bed.”
Sexy Dracula moved a pawn and took a night, chuckling lowly, his dang shirt open almost all the way down to his navel.
“He never loved you, you know. He didn’t even love her. He never loved anyone more than himself.”
I rolled my eyes so hard.
“You really do have the mind of an obese shut-in. I’m, like, thirteen. He was my friend. You know, friends? The things your readers don’t have?”
Alexander’s mouth dropped open in shock while Sebastian smirked with that cute little moustache of his, and I almost blushed before catching myself. I couldn’t give any of them a moment if I didn’t want to escalate.
“Don’t you go throwing smiles around like candy at the parade! You’re old enough to have a moustache! You’re like a hundred and fifty and you’re out here trying to flirt with a child! If you like to hear me talk back to him ‘cause you’re all against him, how come you’re out here playing chess in the middle of the night?”
“Miss Aliss, I’m afraid you have the wrong idea—“
“Nuh-uh, I’m not playing Sebastian. I watched my best friend die today, so I’m not gonna do the thing where I even accuse you of something, then I slap you, then you say something that makes it sound worse so I slap you again, except you catch my hand and turn the whole thing back around so you’re actually a good person. I’m not gonna fall in love with you no matter how much you try to trick me! I ain’t playing that!”
The stoic pain in his masculine eyebrow put butterflies in the stomach below my broken heart. I hurt so bad that even Sexy Dracula’s furious predator eyes on me didn’t matter so much as my hurt.
“Miss Aliss, if you’ll let me speak, what I’m trying to say is—“
“I said shut it, Sebastian! Not tonight!”
The door behind the three opened and a plump young boy with glasses stood there with red eyes, hiding handkerchief behind his back as he saw.
“Good heavens, Miss Aliss! I feared the worst. Did they warn you?”
Sebastian didn’t have the decency to look smug of self-satisfied, instead he looked sorry for me.
“That’s what we were trying to tell you, Aliss. Harvey is in your Shelf.”
*****
Harvey appeared after the Wizard Boy died. The theory was that all that energy had to go somewhere, and so it had dumped into the ultra conversative Christian knock-off version. One day he’d barely been a wraith, the next Harvey Kettle strolled out of the periphery with a scar on his forehead and a crucifix in one hand.
I’m just leaving it here because I want you to be excited for Harvey Kettle and I just haven’t had a lot of time this week/weekend.