Chapter 5: The Understudy
The house had rhythms.
One week in, I'd learned them all. The vampires rose at dusk, argued through dinner, scattered for hunting or entertainment, and returned before dawn to collapse into their coffins. The daytime hours belonged to the familiars — or in this case, to me, since Guillermo spent most of his days running errands that kept him away from the house.
Away from me, specifically. He'd stopped confronting me directly after that first night. Now he just watched. Catalogued. Built his case file in silence.
I used the quiet to investigate.
The study on the second floor had a desk full of documents that nobody had touched in years. Nandor used it as a hat storage facility. Nadja occasionally left jewelry there that she forgot to retrieve. But underneath the accumulated centuries of clutter, there were files. Council files. Paperwork that the household had accumulated over decades of bureaucratic tangles with vampire governance.
And somewhere in that paperwork was my host body's history.
I searched methodically. Production instincts — you don't find things by looking everywhere at once. You find things by eliminating everywhere it isn't.
Third drawer. Bottom folder. A Council processing form with a photograph paperclipped to the corner.
The face in the photograph was mine now. Pale. Tired. Bitten nails visible in the edge of the frame where they'd made him hold an identification card.
MARCUS WEBB
Familiar Status: TERMINATED
Former Assignment: Brooklyn Coven (Dissolved)
Charges: Theft of Blood Supplies, Unauthorized Resale to Non-Registered Entities
Sentence: Execution by Exsanguination (Commuted to Reassignment per Council Directive 447-B)
I read through the full file. Marcus Webb had been a familiar for three years, assigned to a coven in Brooklyn that had been dissolved six months ago for "internal disputes" — which, in Council language, probably meant someone had killed someone else. When the coven collapsed, Marcus had been caught trying to sell the remaining blood supplies on some kind of supernatural black market.
Petty crime. Desperate crime. The kind of thing you did when your entire support structure vanished and you were trying to survive.
No family listed. No emergency contacts. No one who would miss him.
[QUEST COMPLETE: Discover Host Identity — Marcus Webb]
[Reward: +15 VEP, +1 LOR]
The system notification felt hollow. I'd just learned that I was wearing the face of a dead man nobody cared about, and the universe was giving me experience points for it.
I pinned the photograph inside my supply closet door. Right at eye level.
Marcus Webb. Familiar. Criminal. Nobody's missing person.
I'm sorry I took your face. The least I can do is remember your name.
[+8 VEP: Authentic Emotional Moment]
Noon brought an unexpected visitor.
The doorbell didn't work — I'd noted that in my original inventory — but that didn't stop Sean Rinaldi from hammering on the front door like his life depended on it.
I opened it to find a middle-aged man in a stained undershirt, radiating the particular energy of someone whose day had already gone sideways.
"Finally," he said. "Someone's home. Listen, I got a plumbing situation, and I'm pretty sure it's coming from your side of the property. There's a smell, man. It's bad."
Sean Rinaldi. Neighbor. Frequently hypnotized by the vampires. Has no idea what he's living next to.
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "What kind of smell?"
"Like... death? I don't know. Something died in the pipes, maybe." He peered past me into the house. "Is Nandor around? Or Nadja? I talked to them about this before, but they just kind of... stared at me."
That would be the hypnosis. The vampires' standard solution to neighborly complaints was to make the neighbor forget they had complaints.
"They're not available during the day," I said. "But I can help. Do you want me to call a plumber?"
Sean blinked. This was clearly not the response he'd expected.
"You'd... do that?"
"It's a shared property line. If there's a problem, it affects everyone." I stepped back from the door. "Come in. I'll get you a beer while we figure this out."
Twenty minutes later, Sean Rinaldi was sitting in the kitchen, drinking one of Laszlo's craft beers, explaining the intricacies of Staten Island plumbing while I called a contractor who could investigate the smell.
"You're new here, right?" Sean asked. "I don't remember seeing you before."
"Just started. I'm handling some of the household management."
"Thank god." He took a long drink. "The last guy — Guillermo, right? — he's fine, but he never wants to talk. Just 'yes, I'll tell them' and then nothing happens. You actually seem like a normal person."
The irony was thick enough to taste. I was a dead man wearing a stranger's body, receiving instructions from an interdimensional audience, and Sean thought I was the normal one.
"I try," I said.
[+8 VEP: Civilian Character Development]
[NEW CONTACT: Sean Rinaldi — Neighbor, Potential Asset]
I walked him out after the plumber call was scheduled. He shook my hand at the door like we'd just concluded a business deal.
"Hey, you ever need anything — beer, tools, whatever — I'm right next door. 47C." He grinned. "Nice to finally have someone over here I can talk to."
Asset. Cover. Normal human contact.
I watched him walk back to his house and filed the interaction away. Sean Rinaldi didn't know what he was living next to. But if I ever needed someone who could operate in daylight without supernatural complications, he might be useful.
[+4 VEP: Strategic Planning]
The basement called to me in the late afternoon.
Laszlo had standing instructions: check on Baby Colin every few hours. Make sure the monitor was working. Report anything unusual.
I'd been doing this for a week without incident. Baby Colin slept in his coffin-crib, occasionally made infant noises, and generally behaved like a normal baby who happened to be the reincarnation of an energy vampire with centuries of accumulated memories.
Today was different.
The basement was darker than usual. The single bulb near the stairs flickered in a way that felt intentional rather than electrical. And Baby Colin was sitting upright in his crib, perfectly still, staring at the wall.
No — not the wall. The space next to the wall. Like he was watching something that wasn't there.
"Hey," I said quietly. "Colin."
The infant's head turned. Those eyes — wrong eyes, ancient eyes in a baby's face — fixed on me with an intelligence that made my spine tighten.
His mouth moved. Trying to form words that his infant vocal cords couldn't produce.
[FAMILIAR FEATURE: Cast Assessment in Progress]
[SUBJECT: Colin Robinson (Infant) — Status: Pending. Insufficient Data for Full Evaluation.]
The system was trying to measure him. Trying to calculate his entertainment value, his narrative potential, his usefulness as a supporting character.
Baby Colin kept staring. His mouth moved again.
It almost looked like he was saying I know.
I backed up a step. Then stopped.
He's not a threat. He's a baby. An ancient, terrifying baby, but still a baby. And someone has to be here for him.
I spotted the tax manual Laszlo had left on a nearby shelf. Some kind of joke gift, probably, or genuine reading material for an energy vampire who found tax code fascinating.
"Want me to read to you?"
Baby Colin's expression didn't change. But he stopped trying to form words.
I sat in the chair near his crib, opened the manual to a random page, and started reading aloud.
"arc 7: Deductions for Business Expenses. Section 7.1: Qualifying expenditures include but are not limited to..."
The baby's ancient eyes tracked the movement of my lips. After a few sentences, something in his posture relaxed. The wrongness faded slightly — still there, but softer.
I read for twenty minutes. Tax code, business deductions, depreciation schedules. The kind of content that would bore anyone else to tears.
Baby Colin watched the whole time. By the end, he was lying down, eyes heavy, drifting toward something like sleep.
[+6 VEP: Comedic Juxtaposition — Tax Code as Lullaby]
[+4 VEP: Unusual Character Bond Formed]
I closed the manual and checked the baby monitor. The green light blinked steadily.
He's in there. Whatever Colin Robinson was — whatever he will be again — he's in there, watching and waiting.
And he definitely knows more than he should.
I left the basement and climbed back to the main floor. The sun was starting to set. Soon the vampires would wake, and the house would fill with noise and chaos and centuries of accumulated dysfunction.
For now, though, it was quiet. Just me and a baby who might remember everything, and the slow tick of a system tracking our every interaction.
I checked the baby monitor one last time before heading to bed at 4 AM.
The basement camera showed the nursery in grainy night vision. The coffin-crib. The shelves of books. The small chair where I'd sat reading tax code.
And Baby Colin.
Standing in his crib.
Perfectly still.
Watching the camera with eyes that glowed faintly blue in the infrared.
I stared at the monitor. The image didn't change. Baby Colin didn't move. He just stood there, small hands gripping the crib rail, ancient eyes fixed on the lens like he knew I was watching.
That's not normal. That's not even close to normal.
Footsteps thundered on the stairs. Laszlo burst past my supply closet door, half-dressed, moving faster than I'd ever seen him move outside of bat form. He hit the basement stairs at a run.
I followed.
By the time I reached the nursery, Laszlo was standing over the crib, one hand on Baby Colin's small shoulder. The infant was lying down now, eyes closed, picture of innocent sleep.
"What happened?" I asked.
Laszlo didn't turn around. When he spoke, his voice was different. Stripped of the usual theatrical boom. Just a father — or whatever he was to Colin — scared for his child.
"Nothing," he said. "Go back to bed."
"I saw him on the monitor. He was—"
"I said go back to bed."
I went.
But I looked back once before climbing the stairs. Laszlo was still standing over the crib, perfectly still.
And for the first time since I'd arrived at this house, I'd seen one of the immortal monsters look genuinely afraid.
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