Edit: I had a whole thing written here but realized it was just excuses. *performs sliding dogeza* Have an unfinished chapter from my other fiction (same world but without Ed and also an event that pushed one of the timelines up a bit) as an apology. The MC is Seth so... perhaps this counts as a side story?

My life as a teenage vampire heartthrob was wrong as expected.

Chp1

Academy City

Seth threw his head out the porthole, flecks of seaspray hissing against his skin as he barfed his half digested bagel into the waves. He desperately gasped for air as he felt a firm hand on his back, pulling him back into the dining room. He could see the sun sparkling against the waves through the porthole and in the early morning light, Seth might even have called it magical… unfortunately, it was very hard to enjoy anything when it felt like his eyes were quite literally on fire. He gasped and he snapped them closed.

“Be a dear and shut that window, would you Stacy?” Father said gruffly from the side. There was a short rustle from what was undoubtedly the page of a newspaper.

“On it!” She trilled cheerfully. Seth heard a wet peck from the side and almost barfed again as he tried to crack open his eyes. Despite usually having less thoughts than a hot air balloon, his mother always seemed to know precisely how to make things even more awkward than they already were - at least for him. There was a short clunk, from where she’d probably closed the thing.

After catching his breath, and from his spot now sprawled across the linoleum, Seth managed to gulp out what he honestly had zero clue hadn’t been done already. “W-why… aren’t you guys calling emergency?” He sucked another breath, flopping weakly on the floor. “I-I think I’m dying.”

There was a short rustle again, like the page of a book. Seth moaned incredulously, it was the newspaper again, wasn’t it.

“Suck it up, son. Stacy, more bacon?”

“Oh you!”

There was a sharp set of clacks from her sandals on the tile but Seth decided to tune out the rest in favor of simply laying there, hand over his eyes, praying for at least a quick death.

“Done yet?”

At first Seth thought he was talking to Mother, but after a few more seconds of slowly figuring out that his eyes didn’t actually hurt nearly so much any more, he managed to crack them open; in order to painfully glare at him of course.

Mother was humming cheerfully to herself as she flipped the bacon and Father had dropped his newspaper for a second so he could take another sip of his coffee.

“What.” He spat. “Was that.”

From the way they were both acting Seth had figured out that they probably knew what was happening. Maybe not so much in Father’s case, but at least Mother would have probably already called the police by now if anything actually bad had happened to him. Was it expired milk in the toast again? She had a track record of using funny ingredients, Seth narrowed his eyes at her as she spun to slip some bacon onto a plate. Though, he’d never actually heard of psychrotrophics causing eye pain before, or face pain for that matter.

“Oh, that?” Father glanced at him from over his newspaper. “Your mother left those bagels out yesterday, don’t think she remembered to change em.”

“What? No!” Seth hastily shook his head. “I meant the the whole…” He flopped his arm up to his face, surprised at the lack of pain. “Ahh! My eyes! It burns! Sort of deal.”

“Oh, that?” Father glanced at him from over his newspaper again. He flipped the page, taking a sip of his coffee. “We’ve got some relatives up in romania. They’re vampires, probably got it from them.”

“I’m sorry Father, could you repeat that?”

“You’re a vampire son.” He put his paper down with a sigh, getting up from his seat, he pecked Mother on the cheek before taking his hat from the hat rack and shrugging on his coat, he was halfway out the door by the time Seth realized he most certainly wanted an elaboration on that. “Don’t worry, it’s a banger.”

Seth gulped, then opened his mouth but the door was already clattering shut behind him. Seth ran a hand through his hair, frowning a little in the process. Despite forgetting to gell it that morning, it felt unnaturally perfect.

“Mother? Did you know about this?”

If this was some elaborate prank, Mother would probably tell him, despite her rather copious amount of flaws, she had never actually lied to him before so if Father was pulling a fast one this would definitely bring it out.

“Of course sweetie!” She pulled a scarf off the rack and Seth had to almost fight her to get it off. It was still summer, and he saw no reason he'd need it. “I thought you already knew! I’m a thrall by the way.”

In his brief moment of surprise she managed to quickly wrap the scarf the rest of the way around his head. She looked at it in satisfaction, patting it on the top a little. “There! Perfect!”

“Is that… is that safe?”

She waved him off with a giggle, twirling around to rummage into a shelf. “Of course it’s safe! It’s nothing like those bodice rippers ya’ll young folk read these days.” She turned back to him, looking down at the small box she’d brought out. She bit her lip. “Not that I think I’d mind that…” She hummed thoughtfully. Though as it was also so incredibly soft Seth was fairly sure he hadn’t been meant to hear it. He closed his eyes with a long suffering yoga breath. He wanted to stick his head in a hole.

She put a hand to her lips as he opened the box. “Think maybe Dusklight vampires.” She nodded to herself. “Yes, Dusklight, shiny, sparkly, oh the girls will just love you.”

“Moooother.” Seth groaned. Despite apparently being a vampire; Mother was definitely still Mother. He wasn’t sure why, but it made him feel a lot better about the whole… apparently being a vampire thing. He squinted down at the contents of the box.

“My old glasses.” She lifted them out of the box and reached up to place them on his face. She clasped her hands. “Oh they're just wonderful!”

Seth snuck a peek at his reflection in the hall mirror. He blinked. “Where’s my reflection?” He reached up to touch his face. Messy black hair, bright green eyes… his mother’s long shock of curly waist length blonde was there, she was turned away but her fluffy pink apron’s bow, tied off over her white sundress was there too. He tilted his head. Just no Seth.

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

A floating flannel, beige slacks, and what appeared to be a large turban with thick black plastic rimmed glasses and with a bit of tape holding them together stared back at him. The arm of the flannel lifted to about halfway to his face as he tried to wave.

Mother turned to look where he was staring. “You learn to control that after a while.”

Seth almost jumped when she promptly disappeared from the mirror, fluffy pink apron and all. He looked down beside himself but she was still there, just smiling up at him now. She straightened out his collar, pushing him out the door. “Now go on! Git!” She made a shoeing motion as he stumbled past the frame.

She pushed his sneakers into his hands, along with a lunchbox. “You’ll be late for your first day!”

Seth was still standing there, rather dumbly after she closed the door. The pier bobbled gently beneath his feet and he could hear a few scattered squawks of some seagulls as they looked quizzically over at him from the deck of their house.

Right. Of course. His first day, how could he have forgotten. Seth hopped into his sneakers as he jogged up the ramp to the main dock… Yeah right, he started banging his fist on the door, “Mother?! I believe you have some explaining to do?!”

The whirr of the vacuum cut out, so did the eighties disco music. In fact, now that he thought about it, if she was an eight hundred old immortal, that would definitely explain her tastes.

The door opened. “Oh! You’re still here.” She pursed her lips. “You know you’re going to be late.”

Seth thrust his foot in the door before she could close it again. “Mother?” He scrambled to squeeze his arms into the gap. She was surprisingly strong for her size. Which, again, would definitely be explained if she was a vampire.

Finally, she seemed to relent with a sigh as the door began to crack and Seth all but stumbled into the foyer. “If you’re late, you're late. No helping that I suppose.”

“What exactly-” Seth said between pants. “-do you mean by vampire? Is that some sort of slang for disease?”

She bent down to untangle her foot from a part of the vacuum cord she’d brought with her. “It’s just like your father said, he’s half Romanian up on his mothers side. Oh you just have to hear the story.” After stepping out of the loop she did a small twirl, looking down at the vacuum dreamily. “It’s like something out of fairytail! A dashing Spanish prince, a wide eyed captive heroine up in a castle.”

Her voice went low and husky. “Senorita… Mi cielito…” His mother fell to the floor and started rolling around. Hugging the vacuum like it was some sort of body pillow. She did a little giggling squeal as she kicked her legs like a swimmer. “So exciting!”

She abruptly stopped, as if realizing he was still there. Then she sat up, smoothing out her skirt as she patted the spot on the shoe step next to her. “Here, your Father tells it so much better but I think I can pull it off.” She patted the step insistently. “Come on!”

On second thought. Seth thought to himself as he slowly shuffled back out the door. “Maybe it’s better if I wait for Father to get home.”

It wasn’t like he was suddenly starving, or dying, or melting under the sun like the wicked witch of the west after all.

Though, judging by her expression… “I said that outloud, didn’t I.”

“Noooo! Baby!” She cried as Seth scrambled back up to the ramp, he turned around and started running. “I can totally do the voices!”

“Sorry mother! But I think I’ll be ok! Look, I think I’m already late!”

A small lightbulb seemed to go off in her head. “Oh, right. You get your rear end to school buster!”

The last thing he saw before turning around again was a cheerful hopping wave as she’d appeared to have gotten her legs stuck in the cord again.

Seth shook his head as he shimmied up the last bit of ramp. It was stuck at an angle between the hulls of a pair of large white yachts as if to create a small artificial corridor. In fact, it was so tight and at an angle that Seth was having a hard time believing it was allowed by the pier regulations.

He narrowed his eyes at the short white and very plastic gangplanks leading down from their neighbors’ boats, then back at their own houseboat’s long, skinny, set of wooden planks and inflatable buoys that seemed to zig zag up to the dock. Father’d parked them illegally again hadn’t he.

He sighed as he ducked into the shade of a megayacht. It was parked opposite to them on the dock and was blocking his view of the city but at the moment he was simply grateful for the bit of shade. He struggled a bit with the scarf as he tried to get it off.

In hindsight, this was probably precisely why he failed to see the sparkly white ballroom dress as it quite literally dropped out of the sky onto him.

“Look out below!”

Seth sputtered out of the bodice, it had gotten somewhat tangled into his scarf, and just in time to see a small white haired girl with brilliant blue eyes jump off the deck of the megayacht. She was backed by the sun like the angel of death he was starting to suspect she might be. She was also dressed in a very familiar looking school uniform.

Since he didn’t want to be standing next to a red splat on the ground Seth stopped his struggling and quickly shuffled over to where he could catch her. She didn’t have very good aim, because he almost tripped over the dress in the process.

There was a soft whump, followed by a long ripping noise. Tentatively, Seth peered over the dress. He had used it as a net, arms raised to the sky, but despite definitely seeing the girl fall into it, his arms were still up there, and he hadn’t felt any drag either. He started sweating a little. There was no way he had missed her.

Gulping, he let the dress fall. Then a small thump echoed out as if something very heavy had hit the dock. It was followed by a small “Ouch.” And Seth let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. She was fine.

“Hey!” A small voice squeaked out. “Where are you going!”

“To school.” Seth replied and he started walking a bit faster. After getting over the initial panic, it had been embarrassingly easy to untangle himself.

There was a light pattering from behind him and Seth hastily wrapped his head in his scarf again as they were about to exit the shade of the yacht and despite the glasses doing a surprisingly good job so far with keeping his eyes cool, the sun had still felt rather prickly on his face, even in the shade.

The pattering intensified and Seth started walking even faster to hopefully send his apparent newly acquired stalker a message but instead it just got even faster. Seth stopped at the edge of the shadow. She’d gotten in front of him.

“Do you need something, miss?” Seth really hoped not. Between his parents and his singular friend, he was very confident he had enough weirdos in his life.

Bowled over and panting, she seemed to laboriously hold up a hand, as if telling him to wait. Seth waited a couple seconds as she gulped down some air. Between her skinny legs, and wispy arms, she didn’t look very athletic either. Though perhaps he shouldn’t have judged. Before today, he hadn’t exactly been a muscle madonna either.

Seth pulled a water bottle out of his shoulder-bag. “Here.”

The girl gasped out a loud “Thank you.” Before greedily swigging it down.

Seth took the opportunity to discreetly tiptoe around her. He was probably already late. But that didn’t mean he had to be more late.

“What!” Seth heard an exclamation behind him. “But you gave me this—” There was a small crinkle as if a water bottle was being crushed. “—Argh!”

Seth jogged a little, slowing down when he came out of the shade so he could take in the city. Sleek futuristic skyscrapers, intermittently spaced by the occasional wind turbine and airship. If he blocked the sun with his hand he could even spot a bit of the skydocks through the clouds as they peeked out of the great tree’s canopy. He wasn’t able to see the Hole though. The iconic and aptly named center of Academy city was blocked by the long sprawling forge factories and small bits of the forest sectors too.

Suddenly he was sent stumbling into a cleat, barely lifting his feet in time to catch himself as something bounced off of him from behind.

“Ow.” The girl was rubbing her forehead again—he seriously needed to get her name—rear on the dock as she glared up at him indignantly. “Why’d you stop?”

So he could learn to avoid her that is. Seth walked back with a sigh and gave her a hand. She smiled brightly as she took it, all but bouncing back to her feet. “I’m Seth. Is there something you’d like me to call you by?” Since she apparently wasn’t going anywhere, he may as well get along with her.

“Elsa! Elsa Valeria Adartvarti! A mouthful, I know.” She brushed back her hair and looked to the side a little so he could see her ear. “But I’m an elf. So I think it just comes with the realestate.” She shyly kicked her foot. “You can just call me Elsa though.”

Suddenly she covered her face with her hands and dropped to the floor, knees to her chin. “Uuuuu.” She whined. Seth noticed the tips of her ears were turning a deep cherry red now. “Bad Elsa!” She whispered. “Too early!”

She peeked up at him between her fingers.