“How are things going?”

The message was simple enough. Sofia didn’t know how to reply. It had been days since the bar, since texting Jackie last.

Now Jackie had reached out.

“Fine, how are you feeling?” Sofia replied eventually.

“Still healing, staying with Albert.”

It was good to know Jackie was safe. Texting her was the opposite of space. Sofia couldn't stop herself. Calling Jackie was even more so the opposite of space.

“Hey,” Jackie answered.

“Hey,” Sofia said.

Neither of them said anything, neither of them had anything to say. But it was good to hear Jackie’s voice.

“How are things with your family?” Jackie eventually asked.

“It’s… nice, I had to skip out on two family dinners but I think they’ve given up by now,” Sofia offered.

“Suggest like hotdogs or something, then just eat hotdogs,” Jackie suggested with a chuckle.

“Eugh, gross,” Sofia winced. “It’s been fine though, mom opens the bakery early so she’s gone most of the day. Dad works security shifts overnight.”

“Sounds… lonely,” Jackie offered hesitantly.

“A little,” Sofia replied. “Eloise and I are trying to organize some stuff but… nothing is really happening.”

“Have you gone hunting?” Jackie asked, the eagerness was clear in her voice.

“I ate a biker and I now have 10,000$ hidden in one of my drawers,” Sofia retorted with a chuckle.

“Holy shit,” Jackie replied.

“Look it up, it’s been all over the news and by that I mean the local newspaper,” Sofia snorted. “Also you should see the car Eloise drives around, fully black windows and diplomatic plates.”

“How the hell does she pull that off? She must have the backing of an ambassador or something,” Jackie puzzled.

“Maybe, I don’t think she legally exists though. Considering… I don’t know,” Sofia sighed. “Do you want to be a vampire?”

Jackie was silent for a long time, Sofia checked to make sure she hadn’t hung up. Sofia had been trying to figure out how to ask the question. She didn’t know what she wanted Jackie’s answer to be, she didn’t like either option.

“No,” Jackie eventually replied.

Sofia let that sink in, it was probably for the best.

“If Eloise had given you a choice… would you have accepted?” Jackie asked.

Sofia chuckled, “Sofia the optimistic college first year wouldn’t have.”

“But you would now,” Jackie finished for her. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Encouraging you,” Jackie clarified. “It was just... cool as fuck at first. Then you needed to feed and I just thought… maybe someone could actually see me. No one ever talks about killing, and soldiers never do it for the right reason. I think if people knew what it was like there would be a lot more killers, the satisfaction of hurting someone that deserves it, the thrill of the kill. I know how fucked up it sounds but.. if anyone could understand…”

“I do,” Sofia replied with a nervous laugh, “maybe more than you.”

“Hmm,” Jackie replied pensively. “I think I’m already fucked up enough without being a vampire.”

“Eloise said the blood bond might eventually brainwash you, make you addicted to me,” Sofia said, changing the subject. She didn’t know what to say because it wasn’t far off from what she had been thinking.

Jackie snorted, “I already feel like I’m addicted to you. That’s why you astutely called a break.”

Sofia swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t… Love shouldn’t eat away at us. I called a break because we were bad for each other.”

“Right,” Jackie replied weakly. “I… look, I don’t care if the blood bond somehow makes me love you more. I-I want you in my life too, I want to be yours.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Sofia liked that answer, she really did. But it did remind her of something. “Does the idea of being brainwashed by me turn you on?”

“W… What?” Jackie muttered.

“Eloise can read minds,” Sofia pointed out.

“Uh… it doesn’t… not turn me on I guess,” Jackie offered awkwardly.

Sofia was pretty sure Jackie was flustered. Finally, it wasn’t her making a fool of herself.

“Sorry,” Sofia offered with a chuckle. “You’re just… kinky.”

“Okay, is that… bad?” Jackie’s frown was practically audible.

“No, no, sorry,” Sofia quickly replied. “I… I don’t even know where I’m going with this.”

Somehow Sofia was the one getting embarrassed again. She tried to organize her thoughts.

“You… you were upset because I was too… sweet. This conversation isn’t remotely necessary right but… do you want me to hurt you, to boss you around?” Sofia asked with a wince. What the actual fuck was she doing?

Jackie took a deep breath. “I… yeah. I… my ex was into hypnokink but we kept things pretty light, he was never really into… more.”

Sofia swallowed, her mouth felt dry. “W-What would you want?”

“Uhhh, I mean, we really don’t need to be talking about this right now,” Jackie retorted, sounding just as lost as Sofia felt.

“Of course, um…” Sofia took a deep breath. “It’s not like we even got to normal sex let alone… anything kinkier.”

Jackie laughed awkwardly. “Y-Yeah, uh. I should get going. But… it was really nice to talk to you.”

“Same,” Sofia smiled. “Uh, good luck with… things. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” Jackie smiled. “I-I love you.”

“Love you too,” Sofia replied as she hung up.

She lay back on her bed feeling… fluttery. Nervous but happy. What a weird fucking conversation after nearly a week of silence.

“Hey, I know we haven’t talked since breaking up but do you wish theoretically I would dominate you in bed?” Sofia snickered to herself. “Fuck me.”

Then again, talking was good. Communication was needed. There was a reason things hadn’t worked and the kinks needed to be ironed out. As much as she and Jackie both needed to get their shit together separately they also needed to collectively do it. To figure out what they wanted and what they didn’t, and how they could make it work.

Sofia had never considered herself kinky but… now her imagination was running a little too wild. She bit her lip, she was going to have to do some research.

----------------------------------------

“I understand the appeal of cryptically informing me where to be and when,” Eloise began, looking around the old quarry as she closed the car door behind her. “But what are we doing here?”

Sofia grinned. How the tables had turned. She kicked at the gravel and took a deep breath, willing herself to get lighter and change to mist.

White plumes streaked off Sofia’s body. Eloise didn’t react but Sofia liked to imagine her eyes had gone wide in surprise.

Then Eloise smirked… and exploded.

It wasn’t an explosion of gore and blood, nor the comical poof of a cartoon. It happened so fast Sofia didn’t even entirely understand what she had seen. One moment Eloise was standing there, the next Sofia was surrounded by fog and Eloise was nowhere to be seen.

“Show off,” Sofia grumbled, then stopped herself from breathing. Had she just inhaled part of Eloise? How the fuck did that work?

“I’m impressed,” Eloise offered from right behind her, Sofia jumped in surprise and glared at her. “You figured all that out on your own.”

Sofia couldn’t hold back a small smile, she was proud of herself. In a world without answers or reason, her own discoveries were an achievement.

“Thanks, now I just need you to teach me how to go from vaguely misty to exploding into fog,” Sofia replied.

Eloise hummed. “I suppose the advice of just shifting more is not helpful.”

“No, obviously not,” Sofia sighed.

“What is your current process? How do you get… misty?” Eloise asked, wiping off a large carved slab of rock to sit on.

“Visualization I guess, I just take a minute and imagine and feel my body getting lighter and… misty, then it does,” Sofia offered.

“Well, you’ve seen the full change, so try visualizing that,” Eloise suggested.

Sofia nodded and closed her eyes. Imagining herself getting lighter and lighter until she popped into a cloud of fog. She knew it wasn’t working, she could feel her glasses on her face, the jacket on her shoulders, her hair on her neck.

“Don’t stop,” Eloise commanded, sensing her hesitation. “It’s working.”

Sofia smothered the urge to peek, unable to come up with a way to imagine the situation more. The only thing she could think of was letting go of the physical, letting herself not be Sofia, not a person wearing things but a magic mist carrying them along.

Then with the release of pressure, Sofia didn’t feel anything anymore. Or she did but… totally differently.

“I forgot how silly that looks,” Eloise chuckled from… below her.

Sofia couldn’t see, how she could hear and feel was beyond her. It was like her consciousness had been attached to a new body. One quickly being carried away by the wind.

She tried to move but she had no muscles. She encouraged herself towards Eloise, willing her body to drift in that direction. She was fairly sure it was working… a little.

She could feel the quarry below her. The gravel and large rocks, something spiky and long, the texture different, maybe a branch? She didn’t feel like she could with a body, these were entirely new senses she was going to need to master. Because of course it couldn’t be easy.

Sofia turned her attention back to materializing in her body. She could feel her body slowly condensing and becoming more dense as she compressed. Then after a sensation that Sofia could only imagine that water felt as it went down a drain she blinked back into being in her body.

“What the fuck,” she muttered, inspecting herself to make sure everything had worked. She had moved a little, not so much flying as driving. She would need much more practice but. “Holy fuck.”

Eloise chuckled.

“What else can we do?” Sofia asked eagerly.

“We grow with age but it varies. I couldn’t do that until I was much older, I also assume it varies by bloodline,” Eloise offered, not really providing an answer.

“What can you do?” Sofia asked desperately.

“Come now, darling, let me keep some secrets,” Eloise smirked.

Sofia grumbled in annoyance. “Information is power, remember? We need to start collecting information.”

“I’ll begin keeping a journal,” Eloise offered.

Sofia sighed, closed her eyes and focused on turning into fog again.

They worked well through the night, Sofia getting used to the process of shifting, as Eloise called it. Being fog never seemed to get less weird, though, like with her heightened senses she was getting the hang of it.

Once comfortable shifting back and forth she moved onto moving around as fog. That part was far trickier. How did you move as something that wasn’t even technically alive. Letting herself be carried by the wind was the easiest but also gave her no input on the matter.

Weirdly ascending and descending was far easier, she was already used to controlling her density while running to her benefit. That could be done to drift up or down. She could already see the problem of being totally lost in the air without the ability to see. She stuck close to the ground.

“Life hack,” Eloise offered, vortexing back into her physical form through what Sofia could only describe as a mini tornado. “Try shifting only parts of you at a time,” Eloise explained, holding out an arm which promptly vanished into mist.

Sofia had no luck with that. Partial shifting was too advanced for now. She couldn’t turn into fog and maintain a physical form at the same time. Except she had already been doing that when running. By dawn, she was as tired and irritated as she was proud of herself.

“We should be getting you home before your parents are the wiser,” Eloise said as they returned to the car.

Sofia sighed, “I really don’t know what to do about them.”

“If you want a relationship with them I would tell them,” Eloise offered.

“Wait really?” Sofia frowned.

“Humans may be oblivious but they will notice the distance, they will notice how different you are and your keeping of secrets will only worsen that.”

“Your advice… is to tell them?” Sofia repeated with disbelief.

Eloise considered that for a second. “Perhaps not everything, perhaps the bare minimum actually. Tell them enough that you don’t have to hide, but not so much that they still love you.”

“That’s… I don’t think I can do that,” Sofia sighed. That seemed like… a terrible idea. It could go so fucking badly.

“I presume you already came out of the closet, coming out of the coffin might be more challenging,” Eloise smiled, clearly pleased with herself.

Sofia groaned and climbed into the car.