Another week passed, and Eric and I had made no progress on our "Stop Theodore From Becoming A Thrall" project.

"Why don't we--" I began. We were sitting in the lounge room, eating chocolate sorbet and blood and trying to figure out what we hadn't tried yet.

"If your next suggestion involves assaulting, blackmailing, or any other illegal activity, I'm saying no."

"We've tried asking nicely," I said.

"And we got a nice, though unhelpful, response. If we escalate the situation we'll evoke a not-nice, unhelpful response."

"You seem very afraid of vampires for a vampire," I observed.

"I'm a bit low down on the food chain," Eric muttered. I could imagine that. Eric looked somewhere between ten and fourteen years old if you imagined him without the goth makeup, so presumably around that age was when he got turned into a vampire. I would imagine that the other vampires laughed at him for being stuck in puberty forever. I wasn't going to say that to him, though.

"You can't be that far down, you got that fancy letter in the mail yesterday," I said, picking the gold-edged card up from the table.

"Oh, everyone gets one of those. It's an invitation to the latest charity ball. It's super boring."

"It says there is a fair?" I asked, reading the invitation.

"It's not a real fair, it's just a few tournaments and games," Eric said.

"It says here--I've got it!"

"What?"

"It says the sabre duels for the festival will be till first blood," I said.

"So we convince a powerful duellist to help us?" Eric asked, confused.

"No, look, I'm going to go, and compete in the tournament. and when I win one, I'll eat the blood off the blade and voila! I'm cured."

"You don't have an invitation," Eric observed.

"You have a "plus one" spot," I said.

"That's supposed to go to my partner!"

"But you don't have a partner," I pointed out.

"Yes, well, but--"

"Come on, Eric," I pleaded. Eric sighed.

"All right," he said.

"Yes!"

"Just one question."

'Yes?"

"Do you actually know how to use a sabre?" Eric asked me.

"Er..."

"Thought not," he said, and sighed again. "Fine. I'll teach you."

As a child, I and some of the other kids from the town near us had played duelling, which mainly consisted of finding some good straight sticks and whacking each other with them. Apparently, actual duelling is a bit different from that.

"At least you don't have a bad flinch reflex," Eric said. He had taken me to a sparring range that was at the back of a 24 hour gym. "You've done some sort of martial art before, haven't you?"

"My uncle taught me. Mainly unarmed."

"I can tell," Eric sighed. "You've gone to the wrong stance again."

I adjusted my feet.

"All right. Do you remember the counter for the straight cut?"

He brought his sword down slowly. I did the counter.

"You know, this isn't the worst idea you've had," Eric said, doing the cut again. "But it does depend on you actually winning a fight. And you've got me as a teacher, and I'm pretty bad at it. Maybe we should ask one of my friends to help?"

"Eric, I've met your friends, remember? What are the odds that they'll try to prevent us doing this, because of some kind of moral objection they make up on the spot?"

Eric was silent.

"Worst case scenario, I lose all my matches, and have to stab a vampire on my way out."

"The," Eric warned. I shrugged.

"I won't," I said. I was lying, though. I was having an awful time trying to learn from Eric, because half the time when he directed me to do something, I'd go into thrall mode and do what he said, and then promptly forget it. I couldn't keep on like this. I was drawing a line at the ball. That was when I was going to get some vampire blood, and break this thrallish curse. No matter what.

Apparently, boots aren't suitable for going to a ball in. No, not even good boots. My aunt would approve, but I was a bit annoyed at Eric as I followed him into the fancy hotel the vampires had booked.

"My feet hurt already. How am I supposed to duel in these?" I whispered to him.

"Shh," Eric said, walking across the marble floor to a table covered with pieces of paper. He found one to put down your name for the duels, and he wrote mine down as "The (Eric's Plus One)".

"Did you want to go in any of the other games?" Eric asked.

"You mean like the competitive poetry? Nah, I'm good," I said. When I was a kid, some American movie or other became really popular at my school, and we were inspired to conduct rap battles at recess for six months or so. I was not going to embarrass myself like that again, thank you very much. I still remember my friends wincing at each of my rhymes.

The dining room had a rich red carpet that absorbed sound and gave the place a dim, hushed atmosphere. Vampires are solitary hunters and therefore solitary feeders, but those that used to be human still liked drinking blood as a group. There was a few tables set up with fancy glasses and crystal topped wine carafes, presumably filled with a fancier version of whatever Ot was. A couple of Eric's friends were at one of the tables, but he avoided them. There wasn't any human food available, though I thought I could smell oranges from somewhere. It made me homesick.

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"Have you thought about my offer?" Rayleigh asked, coming up to us. He looked even more snooty than the last time I saw him. I didn't even know that was possible.

"I'm still weighing my options," I told him. If I failed to sabre or knife a vampire tonight, Rayleigh would probably be the last guy on my list, though.

We sat through the poetry competition, which brought back bad memories for me, and the darts throwing competition, which was actually pretty interesting. Then it came to the duelling.

"Damn it," Eric hissed, as we looked at the board.

"Why is only one other person competing?" I asked.

"He must have put his name down just after yours, and scared everyone away," Eric said.

"Is he a good duellist?" I asked.

"The best." Eric looked seriously freaked.

"You know this guy?"

"Yeah."

"Want to elaborate?"

"No."

"All right," I sighed. "Wish me luck." I stepped up to the duelling square taped out on the floor.

"Don't kill him, Mellif!" someone called out. The vampire I was duelling, an old creepy looking guy with an old military style posture, smiled without showing his teeth.

"Win this, The," Eric called out to me, and I went into thrall-mode and don't even know what happened next. When I asked Eric later, it actually sounded like a pretty cool duel. My opponent, Melif, started by testing my reactions, which I responded to with the normal counters Eric had tried to teach me. I then went on the offensive, which turned out to be a mistake, because this guy was super fast. He then came at me with a straight thrust, and I figure my non-thralled training took over then, because I ducked under the blade, bringing mine up to slash Melif's arm. That's when I came back to reality.

"And the match goes to The, with the youthful knees!" the adjudicator said. I took a shaky breath. An assistant came to take the blade from me, and I wiped the glint of red onto my hand before giving it to him. I saw Reyleigh suddenly realise what I was doing, and smirked as I sucked the blood from my hand. I saw Monique in the crowd, too. She had the grace to look amused.

"Congratulations," Melif said to me in a dry voice.

"Thanks," I said.

They then presented me with my prize, an orange. A blood orange, from the smell. I figured it was a vampire joke.

"You can have it, I get enough at home," I said to Eric, passing it over. I saw him hand it over to Melif a little while later, head bowed.

Eric insisted we stay around for the competitive acrobatics, to be polite, and it was pretty cool. Then we went home.

"Do you think it worked?" I asked him, as we sat in the lounge room, eating sorbet and blood.

"It should have," Eric said.

"Quick, tell me to do something," I said.

"Go buy me a video game," Eric said.

"Nah," I said, and laughed. There wasn't even a hint of compulsion left.

At that point, we heard a knock on the door. Eric and I looked at each other.

"It's not a vampire out for revenge, is it?" I asked.

"Hope not," Eric said. The knock came again. "I'll get it."

Eric went to open the door, then leaped back with a yelp.

"Back, foul witch!"

"Ew, a vampire!"

I went to see what was going on. Apple was standing in the doorway, fingers pinching her nose and waving ineffectually at Eric. Eric was hovering upside down from the ceiling, waving ineffectually back. I had no idea he could do that.

"Calm down, you two," I said.

"Ah, whatsyourface," Apple said, turning her attention to me. "I felt bad about how unhelpful the fortune was, so I did some research. Apparently Theodore Appelion is the heir to the Appelion orchards, where they grow Appelion blood oranges, the only non-blood food that vampires can eat. They're worth their weight in gold in vampire circles."

"You mean instead of all this rigmarole, I could have just gone home, got a bucket of oranges, and bribed the vampires instead?!"

"Wait, so you're Theodore Appelion?" Apple said, sounding shocked.

"What?" Eric said from the ceiling.

I heard a bird start calling. Dawn was near.

"I don't want her in the house while I'm asleep," Eric said, backing away, still on the ceiling, and going into his room.

"Let me in and I'll hex him for you," Apple said to me.

"I heard that," Eric's muffled voice came from behind his closed door.

"I've had a long night, and I want to go to bed. Sorry," I said to Apple. "Thanks for the information, I guess."

"I'll give it to you for half price. So you only owe me--"

I closed the door, and went to bed.