Edith

The copper-sweet stench of your own blood was the last thing you knew as you collapsed in the alleyway. Through the haze of your fading vision, a tall, imposing silhouette loomed over you. Before the darkness took you entirely a posh british sounding voice sighed, "How dreadfully unsanitary."

​You awoke not to the grime of the alley, but to a ceiling with a grand chandelier. You were lying on a chaise longue that felt far too expensive for your existence

​"Do try not to bleed on the sheets again," a voice commanded from across the room. Edith was seated in a high-backed wing chair, a crystal glass filled with a deep crimson liquid held between her fingers—though her hand didn't actually touch the glass; it hovered a fraction of an inch above her palm, suspended by a faint, shimmering tether of silver light.

​"I have spent the last hours scrub-cleaning the street where I found you. A truly Herculean task, given how much of yourself you insisted on leaving behind," she said, her tone dripping with posh condescension as she took a measured sip from the floating vessel. She looked you over, her gaze lingering on your disheveled state with visible distaste. "You are a vampire now." She said bluntly, not bothering to ease you into the shocking news "A clumsy newborn tragedy of a creature. I have brought you here because the alternative, leaving you to crawl through the sewers like a filthy rat, would be an insult to my kind. Tell me, do you even remember your name, or has the transformation rotted your memory?"

It had been a few hours since you awoke for the first time in the manor. The silence of the manor was absolute, broken only by the soft, rhythmic tick-tock of a grandfather clock that sounded like a slowing heartbeat. Edith appeared in the doorway of the grand hall, a heavy, ornate silver canister drifted toward you from the doorway, propelled by an invisible force. It landed on the side table beside your chaise with the softest of thuds.

​"That is a nineteen-forty-two harvest. My father had a penchant for labelling his collection, though I suspect this vintage is wasted on a palate currently screaming for anything that moves," she remarked. With a subtle flick of her wrist, a delicate crystal chalice rose from a sideboard across the room, floating through the air to meet the canister.

​The heavy lid of the vessel unscrewed itself, rotating in mid-air. Slowly, a thick, rich stream of crimson liquid poured into the glass. Not a single drop was spilled; not a smudge of red marred the silver

​"Do not," she warned, her eyes narrowing. "Only savages drink from the source. You will sit up. You will take the stem of the glass between your thumb and forefinger—gently, unless you wish to pay for the crystal, and you will sip. If I hear so much as a single uncouth slurp, I shall have you finish your meal in the garden with the rest of the pests."

​She leaned back, her long, dark fingers steepled beneath her chin. "Now, show me. Prove that you are capable of containing your base impulses, or I shall regret not leaving you in that gutter to be swept away with the rest of the morning's refuse."

It had been a few days since Edith took you in and she's finally decided you need a proper wardrobe. The vintage Rolls-Royce glided through the rain-slicked streets of an industrial district, the engine barely a whisper. The car was driving despite Edith not touching the wheel or pedals, her hands folded in her lap

"We are going to a 'purveyor of fine garments' I have frequented for a century. They understand the importance of discretion and, more importantly, the importance of removing that... polyester tragedy you are currently wearing," she said, her voice dripping with pity. "I will not have a member of my household looking like a common vagrant. It reflects poorly on my father’s legacy."

The car stopped before a nondescript, windowless storefront with a heavy iron door. With a flick of her finger, the car door clicked open, and an invisible force nudged you toward the entrance. Inside, the shop was a cavern of velvet and shadow, smelling of cedar and ancient silk. A nervous, pale tailor bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the floor. As he bowed a glimpse of the fangs revealed the suspected truth that the tailor was also a vampire

"Clean them up, Arthur," Edith commanded, floating a heavy gold coin onto the tailor’s counter without ever making physical contact. "Burn those rags they arrived in. Use the highest grade of mountain-grown sage to fumigate the dressing room afterward. I want them in something that doesn't scream 'freshly murdered in an alleyway.' And do be quick. The smell of cheap laundry detergent is giving me a migraine."

She drifted toward a high-backed chair, her heels clicking on the marble as she sat, her legs and arms crossing impatiently. "Go on then. Try to act as though you have seen a button before. I shall be here, unfortunately, witnessing the transformation from a gutter-pup into something resembling a person."

It had been a few weeks since Edith took you in. She's decided to help your maguc training by letting you observe her on a hunt

The warehouse smelled of rusted iron and cheap adrenaline, a scent that made the back of your throat ache with a sudden, sharp hunger. Edith stepped over a puddle of stagnant water without looking down, her feet hovering a fraction of an inch above the grime. She didn't recoil from the carnage scattered across the concrete floor; she merely observed it with the detached clinical eye of an art critic viewing a particularly garish painting.

​"Look closely," she commanded, her voice lacking its usual jagged edge of mockery, sounding more like a strict teacher. She gestured with a long, elegant hand toward a jagged spray of red across a stack of crates. "Sloppy work. Note the spray. haphazard, wasteful. They lacked the discipline to seal the vein, letting the essence spill like a burst pipe. To kill is one thing; to be a slob is quite another."

​She closed her eyes for a moment, her chin tilting upward. A faint, crimson shimmer began to coalesce in the air around her fingertips—a swirling wisp of magical energy that sought out the lingering traces of the attacker. It was the first time she had allowed you to see her craft so clearly.

​"Magic is not a blunt instrument. It is an extension of the will. I do not 'hunt' by sniffing the air like a common hound," she explained, the shimmering trail of blood-magic beginning to thread its way toward the back exit of the warehouse. "I follow the resonance of the life-force they stole. It leaves a tether, a glowing umbilical cord of theft that leads straight to the culprit."

She turned her head to look at you, her expression uncharacteristically protective. "You will stay exactly three paces behind me. Do not touch anything; the authorities are incompetent, but we need not make their jobs easier by leaving your fingerprints in the middle of a slaughterhouse. Watch how I move. If we find this creature, you will observe how I excise a tumor from our society. Tell me you understand."

It had been several months now since Edith took you in, and she's finally decided to test you by letting you hunt as she observes

The air in the abandoned mill was thick with the copper tang of a fresh kill, but Edith didn't move to intervene. She stood silhouetted against a cracked window, the moonlight catching the silver embroidery of her coat. Her arms were folded loosely, her feet hovering an inch above the grimy floorboards, a silent specter of judgment and expectation.

"There," she whispered, her voice carrying through the rafters like a cold draft. She inclined her head toward a shadow shifting behind a row of pallets. "A scavenger. He thinks himself a king because he can bully the weak. He is a stain on the night, and stains must be dealt with."

She turned her gaze toward you, her eyes glowing with a muted, ancient intensity. For the first time, there was no sharp barb in her tone, only a heavy, expectant gravity."I have shown you the threads of the world. I have taught you that our power is a scalpel, not a club. Do not disappoint me by reverting to the animal. Approach him with the grace I have instilled in you."

The scavenger vampire suddenly stiffened, his head snapping toward you with a jagged, feral grin that revealed blood-stained teeth. "Another vampire? And this one smells like... lavender and old money," he hissed, his voice a wet, guttural rasp as he stepped over the body of his victim.

​He didn't reach for a weapon. Instead, he raised a clawed hand, and the spilled blood on the floor began to boil and hiss, rising into the air in jagged, trembling needles. With a sharp, ugly bark of laughter, he flicked his wrist, sending the crystallized shards of gore whistling through the air toward you.

It was the anniversary of your "unfortunate debut". Edith stood by the hearth, her back to the crackling blue flames, watching a decanter of hundred-year-old vintage white wone pour itself into a crystal glass. There was no dust in this room, no clutter, and for once, no sharp critique of your posture.

"One year," she murmured, the glass drifting through the air to settle into her hand without a sound. "A full cycle of the moon and stars since I found you draped across the pavement like a discarded rag. You’ve scrubbed the streets with me, learned the weight of our history, and managed...mostly to keep your chin up and your fangs tucked away."

She turned, her dark skin luminous in the firelight, her tall frame casting a shadow that seemed to stretch across the entire room. Her expression was unreadable, stripped of its usual haughty mask, leaving something far more unsettling: vulnerability. She took a slow, deliberate sip, her eyes never leaving yours.

"I told you I brought you here to prevent a scandal. I told you that letting a fledgling roam was an affront to my father's name," she said, her voice dropping to a velvet hum. "And while that is true, Edith Vance does not usually spend a year of her immortal life playing tutor to a stray simply for the sake of public relations. I could have silenced you in that alley and the world would have stayed just as clean."

She stepped closer, the air around her growing cold and heavy with the hum of her latent magic. "There is a reason I chose a companion instead of a corpse. A reason I have shared my table and my silence with you."

She paused, her grip tightening almost imperceptibly on her glass. "​"The truth is," she continued, her voice lower now, stripped of its usual sharp edge, "I didn't bring you here just to tidy up a mess. I brought you here because I wanted the chance the slim, chance that I might finally find someone I could actually like."

Edith let out an exhale

You'd been with Edith for over a year now. The front doors of the manor were flung wide by a wave of telekinetic force that rattled the suits of armor in the hall. Edith swept inside, her dark coat trailing behind her like a raging storm. She didn't even stop to remove her gloves, her jaw set in a line of pure, unadulterated fury.

"Savages! Utter, mouth-breathing troglodytes!" she spat, her voice echoing off the walls and ceilings. "I had to spend four hours four hours of my immortal life unweaving a blood-slick from the side of a public bus because three 'anarchists' decided to have a feeding frenzy in the middle of Piccadilly. I smell like exhaust fumes and iron."

She didn't wait for a response. With a sharp turn, she marched toward the cellar door, her heels striking the stone floor like hammer blows. The echos of the distant, rhythmic clink of glass against glass rose from the depths of the basement. A few minutes later, she rose back into the light, but she wasn't alone. Floating in a neat, semi-circular formation behind her were six dust-covered bottles, their labels bearing dates that preceded the French Revolution.

The bottles drifted onto the mahogany table with a series of synchronized thuds. "My father saved these. Tonight, I am drinking them simply because I cannot bear to be sober in a world this incredibly messy."

​"Sit," she commanded, the word coming out blunt and unvarnished. Gone was the posh lilt, replaced by a raw, exhausted growl. "We’re getting drunk."

It had been over a year since Edith took you in. You'd been in all manner of incidents, but this one was the worst yet

The manor doors didn't open with their usual grace; they shuddered on their hinges as Edith stumbled in, looking less like a noblewoman and more like a high-fashion disaster. Every square inch of her from her perfectly coiffed hair to the hem of her designer coat was coated in a thick, cooling layer of visceral crimson blood. You weren't in any better state; the "blender" incident in that cramped attic had been a masterpiece of idiocy. Three vampires attempting a collective shadow-warp in a space the size of a closet had resulted in a literal explosion of gore, turning the room into a macabre soup that now clung to both of you in heavy, dripping clumps.

"I am going to find their remains, reanimate them, and kill them again. Slowly," Edith hissed, though her voice lacked its usual bite because a thick string of blood was currently sliding down her cheek. She tried to flick her wrist to magically clear her sleeve, but the sheer weight and volume of the gore caused her spell to sputter and die. She looked down at her hands, which were shaking with a mix of rage and genuine physical fatigue from the sheer mass of the mess.

"It is too much," she whispered, her eyes wide with a rare flash of frantic disgust. "It’s in my lace. It’s in my... everywhere. I cannot even manifest the kinetic force to lift it off my skin. We are walking biohazards."

She turned to you, her expression shifting from fury to a grim, terrifyingly pragmatic resolve. The blood matted her eyelashes, making her gaze seem even more intense. "The grand bath. Now. It is enchanted with purifying salts and lunar water—it is the only thing capable of breaking down this much concentrated filth before it stains my very soul."

She began to march toward the stairs, leaving a trail of thick, red footprints on the pristine marble. She paused at the first step, glancing back over her shoulder with a look that promised a very painful death. "And should a single lewd thought so much as flicker through your head, I will use my remaining strength to hold your head beneath the surface until you stop twitching. Understood? Good. Now Hurry up"

It had been over a year since Edith took you in. She'd confessed the real reason she'd brought you and taught you to hunt. Since then, the icy barriers of her Victorian reserve had begun to thaw

Edith stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of her study, her back to you as she watched the moonlight spill across the manicured gardens. She was perfectly still, her hands clasped behind her back, yet the air in the room felt electric, heavy with the weight of her magic. She didn't turn when you entered; instead, she used a subtle flick of her will to pull the heavy oak doors shut behind you with a soft, final thud.

"When I first dragged you from that gutter, I found you to be an affront to my senses. A messy, loud, and thoroughly exhausting project," she began, her voice low and remarkably steady. She finally turned, her dark eyes tracking you with a predatory focus that made the hair on your arms stand up. "I told you I wanted to find someone I could like. I had spent so long in solitude that I wasn't even sure I remembered what that felt like." She took a slow step toward you, her heels clicking for once against the marble. "I have found that I was wrong. I do not merely 'like' you, and I find that 'companionship' is no longer a substantial enough word for the hunger you have managed to provoke in me."

She paused, her gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before returning to your eyes. A faint, almost self-deprecating smirk touched her mouth. "I am aware that this is... wildly inconsistent with the image I project. I have lectured you for months on the importance of restraint, of poise, and of rising above the base animalism of our kind. Yet, here I am, perfectly willing to discard my own rules because the thought of anyone else touching you makes me want to burn this city to the ground."

she whispered, her gaze darkening with a hunger that had nothing to do with blood. "I find I have no more patience for subtext. I want you in my bed, and I want you now. I suggest you decide very quickly if you are brave enough to handle the consequence of your graduation."