After my brush with death, pops and my friends decided we needed to celebrate. This might surprise you, but I'm not a party animal. You know that awkward guy who always sits stiffly in corners and doesn't say anything? That's me. Except, now that I'm undead, I sit absolutely still unless I actively move.

People who suffer near-death experiences often change. Some become less hesitant than before, willing to do things they would have previously balked at, because who knows if they'll ever get another chance?

I suppose actual death would change you on a greater scale, but even the reaper can't remove the stick from my arse. Though, if you prod me enough, I may start making working stiff jokes.

Such an interesting saying, a brush with death. I wonder what they'd call my case.

Pops' property is laid out in a fairly straightforward manner. You enter the concrete courtyard, with the barn on the right and the vine-covered fence on the left. No grapes at the moment. I helped pops harvest them a few weeks back.

Behind the fence is his flower garden, from which a narrow path, between the fence and the wall of the house, leads to 'the front of the house'. It's an open area, with a table, chairs and couch, situated between the entrances to the gues rooms and the family rooms.

We're not going inside tonight, though. Pops is probably thinking that I don't want to feel trapped somewhere, after everything, which is nice of him. A table and two benches are brought down from the attic.

Pops hasn't prepared anything-he didn't have time, because he didn't know my situation until this evening. Luckily, Mihai was just itching to try and convert mana into food, so we could eat and talk, rather than fast and talk.

It was Saturday, anyway. Fasting wasn't expected.

'No, no!' Lucian grumbled, waving a clawed hand at at a conjured chicken.

'What, you a vegan now?' Mihai grumbled, brow furrowed in concentration.

'Like hell. Make a raw one, I want to try a trick.'

Those words would have sent most sane people running to somewhere they thought was a safe place. No one left.

'A trick,' Mihai deadpanned. Though he conjured a raw chicken, too. Morbid curiosity, maybe.

'Oh, yes...' Lucian said, then pursed his lips and breathed a thin curtain of flame over it.

I don't know what he expected. Judging from the scowl, probably not carbonized meat on a flaming table.

'Oh, for God's sake...' Pops muttered. Mihai prepared to extinguish the flames, but pops waved him off. Moving his hands over the table, he faithcrafted the flames into harmless smoke. Then, he turned to the zmeu. 'Lucian, enthusiasm is not a substitute for skill.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'That you're awful at cooking. But, don't worry. I'm sure you're great at making charcoal.'

The zmeu grumbled, but gave up on playing chef. With an easy leap, he was on the barn's roof. The roof creaked in a way that made me wince, but held. Considering the two hundred and forty kilos that had just dropped onto it, that was something.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

'I'll stand guard here!' Lucian declared proudly, hands on his hips. 'Look out for hidden enemies.'

'They'll definitely hide once they see his face,' Bianca whispered, busying herself with arranging the drinks.

'Look on the bright side,' Andrei said, apparently feeling entitled to participating in the conversation. 'At least he didn't summon his mace.'

'Yeah,' Alex said, because everyone was feeling talkative tonight. 'Damn thing's a thousand times heavier than him. He'd crash right through the roof. And the floor.'

'It's nice he thought about what a headache that would be for everyone, then decided not to do it,' I said lightly.

'I have a feeling you're being catty,' Bianca said, giving me a thoughtful look.

'It's good to be open about your feelings,' I replied.

She glanced between me and the others. Alex mouthed that he'd explain later.

It was then that the Fourfold arrived. I didn't notice until the dogs started barking, and they only noticed because they were looking straight in her direction.

Pops named his dogs after Biblical figures. Maria was a big Carpathian shepherd. She and Iosif stay in the courtyard. Petru is next to the pig pens, and Pavel sits at the edge of the vegetable patches.

I only know Maria's race. The other three are mutts of some sort or another. Iosif and stocky, black-furred and has a long tail. Petru and Pavel are brothers, both brown-furred, though the former is long-furred, with a short tail, and the latter looks almost shaved, with a tail like a snake.

'Did you forget something?' I asked, turning and standing up to face the agent.

She smiled thinly. I think. 'We are on leave. It is the reason we were able to come here at all. May we stay?'

That sounded uncomfortably close to the way vampires ask to enter homes. 'You may stay in the courtyard for tonight,' I said carefully. She nodded, and came to sit at the table. She looked so human, for a moment, that I almost laughed.

We ate and talked the night away, though the Fourfold didn't eat and mostly listened. We reminisced about how we'd met: Mihai, Alex and I had met in high school. We went to one of Bianca's concerts, back when she was touring the country, with Andrei and Lucian as bodyguards. We bumped into each other after it was done, in the parking lot, and something clicked.

Bianca spoke about her recent trip to the Fae realm. To nobody's surprise, it started out nice and turned into a horror movie at the end. Mihai talked about his wife and twin daughters, and how grateful he was for meetings like this, where he wasn't outnumbered by the other sex. Luci came down from the barn, to complain about his stupid older brothers, with their Navy career and tattoo salon, who always chastised him for acting childish and "perpetuating stereotypes about our kind".

He did the air quotes and everything.

Pops was about to start regaling us with stories about his youth as a monster-hunter, when Andrei cleared his throat.

'I would like to...clear the air,' he said with a constipated look. 'David knows what I'm talking about, so he can leave, if he wants.'

I stood up, and started towards the garden. Was I petty enough to throw out a biting remark as I left?

'Thank you for considering my opinion.'

Apparently, yes.

At the edge of the courtyard proper is another fence, with a door. Past that is a patch of concrete. On the left is the structure that contains the attic and the cellar, and on the right are the pig pens. Beyond that, there's grass and a few trees, the small kitchen building, and the outhouse. And beyond them, the vegetable patches.

I didn't want to walk the garden, though. So, I entered the pens. I've always found the pigs oddly cute. Almost all the pigs, some brown, some pink-white, were sleeping. Almost all, except for one.

Hogge has been in the pens for as long as I can remember, which makes him far older than the average pig can get. He was black and his teeth had never been filed, instead growing into tusks. His beady eyes seemed to glint with amusement, and his snout was permanently curled into something that could have been called a smirk.

Hogge had never shared his pen with another pig. I think they were scared of him.

I remembered when I was five, and pops took me around our home, so I could familiarise myself with the animals. I didn't like Hogge, even when I first met him.

'Hogge doesn't sound like a Romanian name,' I had told pops.

'Because it's not,' he had replied.

Even now, watching Hogge set me on edge. And he was sitting with his back to me.

The Fourfold joined me shortly after I entered the pens. She took one look at the black pig, and her lip curled.

'What a loathsome creature...' she muttered.

'I think he feels the same way about us,' I said, only half-joking.

'We know it does,' the Fourfold replied.

That killed our conversation for a bit. But, like me, it came back.

'Why are you here? Really?' I asked the agent after we went back outside.

'What did you major in, David?' she asked.

I frowned. I doubted ARC didn't have a file on me. Maybe she hadn't read it? 'I majored in parabiology, with a minor in pseudothanatology.'

The study of supernatural beings, and undead in particular. So I could know what I was writing about in my books.

'And how long has it been since you've taught?'

'Five, six years...why?'

'We cannot make any official offer now, since we are not an agent, at the moment.' A corner of her mouth twitched upwards, and I wondered if she was joking. 'But we would advise you to think about becoming an ARC consultant. Supernatural perspectives are always welcome. With your experience, you could even become a psychologist, if you study a few years.'

'Thanks for the offer,' I said. 'But I don't think I'd be comfortable talking to...people like me. For a while. I've worked a few oddjobs since I've returned from the grave, mostly manual labour. They paid well. I think I'll get my papers in order, maybe get back to teaching.'

She nodded. 'We understand.'

'Besides,' I smirked. 'You know how girls get around undead...'

'You are not a vampire, Mr Silva.'

'Oh, it's Mr. Silva now, is it?'

Before we returned to the table, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hogge turn in his pen. For just a moment, his eyes flashed yellow.