My first impression of Gery and Meg’s place was that it smelled of new, the kind of new that only a freshly rebuilt home could have. That sort of made sense. Several dwellings had been washed away in the flood, and I had fished Meg out of the river. What I had not expected was to find Meg holding a tiny little nibble. A two-year-old-boy sort of nibble. I had certainly not fished that out of the water half a year ago.

Adopted?

Already rescued before I arrived?

Maybe Gery had gotten the kid out before his wife?

I had no time to dwell on it. “Ari, come take care of your little brother!” Meg hollered in the general direction of a door in the back of the room as she dumped a spoon in a bowl on the table. “We’ve got guests.”

A little snack of a girl, with a radiant gremlin aura of mushrooms and garlic, poked her head through the doorway. The thing was a measly seven or eight years old with a mane of strawberry blonde curls. She sized me up in that slightly bashful way that young kids do before walking up to her mom and taking her brother in an awkward, almost upside-down hold.

“Is she the demon lady?” the little girl asked, looking up at her mom while wrangling the wailing and writhing tangle of limbs that was her brother.

“Ari!” Meg scolded.

“Looks more like a demon girl than a demon lady to me,” the little gremlin continued unapologetically, pouting in my direction for good measure.

I… what? Just? How?

I hate kids.

Gery interrupted the uncomfortable, rather one-sided, embarrassing, child-like innocence-filled insults the little gremlin was throwing my way by handing me a small handful of silver coins he scooped off the table. While I accepted those, Meg ushered the two kids out of the room, apologizing profusely.

“Sorry about that. She’s… well… you’re kind of the talk of the town, Child,” Meg apologized when she returned.

Child?

“It is fine, Meg, she is just a kid,” I accepted the apology.

Meg had carried in a large stick, held in the crook of her arm, and a small bundle of clothes. Crouching down in front of me she offered me those clothes. “Anyway, you should try this on. I think it might be sort of your size… with a little bit of adjustment.”

I blinked at those words, trying to comprehend them. It was so hard to focus with her kneeling in front of me, presenting her neck. My teeth ached in longing. I opened my mouth, licked my lips, yanked the bundle of cloth out of her arms, and backpedaled towards the door, hissing.

Don’t… just offer your neck to me like that!

Meg herself startled back from my unexpected aggression. Seeing her reel back I snapped my mouth shut and held up a hand in apology.

Did I just hiss at her?

I was way out of it if I was hissing at people.

Hissing bad girl!

Yet another reason that I needed to get out of here as fast as I could. I needed to turn this disaster around. I needed to come up with a valid reason for hissing at her that wasn’t hunger.

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What could I use? What could I use?

Frantically I searched for an out. Yet with the hunger and everything that came with it even my lies didn’t come as naturally.

Wait… girl… child?

She’d called me child. They’d all been treating me as a kid. I had let it slide yesterday, but now, we were putting a stop to it. Right now.

“Meg. I am not a child. I am 24, so I would appreciate it if everyone could stop addressing me like a little kid,” I stated bluntly.

I got blank stares from both Meg and Gery.

Did I really just say 24?

Should have taken something a little more believable, like 14.

Or 16.

I can pass as 16.

Maybe?

If I really try, I totally can. Really. Just not today, disheveled as I look.

But I can. I so can.

“My body… ages differently?” I tried to offer in a desperate attempt to save the situation. Meg opened her mouth, hesitated on her reply. Gery was about to interject. Meg shushed him.

“Right. Certainly Dear,” she eventually consented to my explanation with a strained smile. Gery nodded curtly as if to confirm his wife’s words.

Right. Good.

Not good.

They did not believe me. I suppressed an urge to stamp my foot and put them in their place. Acting out like that would only make me look even more childish. Salvaging this conversation looked close to hopeless as it was. No need for me to make it worse.

I got what I came for, money and clothes. It was time to steer this wreck of a conversation in a different direction, namely me leaving. “Thanks,” I mumbled, lightly waving the bundle of clothes in my arms up and down to indicate what I was giving thanks for, then I turned to the door and gave them a resolute, “I’m leaving.”

“Wait!” Meg called after me.

Oh, come on!

I glanced back at her. She was holding that weird stick out to me. I had my hand on the door. I could pull it open and leave, ignore this latest attempt at stalling me. But I had already halted my exit to look at her.

“I was thinking I could maybe tailor those to fit,” Meg continued, gesturing her stick at the bundle in my arms. “Or make you something new, maybe fix that hole in your shoulder?”

It’s a measuring stick.

She carried that in with her, planned this all along.

I stared at her incredulously, then turned that stare into a fierce glare. “No! All of those take days, and I am leaving right now.”

“Why? Leave now?” Meg questioned. “The room in the bunkhouse is taken care of for the next couple of days at least.”

What?

Did everyone in this village somehow arrange for me to stay here longer behind my back?

I was almost beginning to think that I really had rested for a day and a night. There was no way these people could be this industrious in just a couple of hours. To my relief, Gery was looking at his wife just as stupefied as I felt right now. He scratched the back of his neck and grinned at me sheepishly. Whatever this mad plan was, it appeared that he might not have been involved with it.

“Meg… I…” I started carefully. Then I sighed and stopped keeping the exasperation out of my voice. “Do you know what happens to people that get accused of being a vampire?”

“It can’t be that bad…” she sputtered.

I scowled even harder. Any second now I’d get a "but we’re not like that". Did I really need to remind her of last night, about leaving me standing in a river for well over fifteen minutes while they figured out if they were going to kill me or not.

Is this some kind of demented way to make amends?

“We’re not all like that?” she continued, her words tapering off into a whispered question at the end. The questioning tone was a start at least. It hopefully meant she was aware by now that she couldn’t speak for the entire town.

I didn’t deign to give her a reply, merely kept up my grim-faced mask.

“Fine. Go!” Meg finally relented. “But at least have the decency to stop by Uncle Tare. His wife wants to thank you.”

Decency. Really?

That’s the new angle?

“I will.” I nodded curtly. I would be dropping by, not because of decency, but because I realized I had left my medical supplies there. Without the mention of Uncle Tare I probably would have forgotten them.

“Maybe at least change into those clothes before you go out?” Sensing a new opening Meg gestured at the clothes in my arms. “You’re… not really presentable right now.”

Fuming, I glared, dumped the outfit she’d handed me on the nearest non-ground surface I could find.

Fine. You win!

I capitulate. Make me your bloody dress-up doll.

Being nice to these people had been the biggest mistake of my life. I began untying the buckles on my gambeson.

“I’ll… um… be in the other room,” Gery stammered, pointing to the open doorway.

I glared some more at Gery’s hasty retreat.

Aaahaha… he’s as prude as he is innocent.