Vampire Romance | Trancing Miranda: Chapter 3.2
"Beneath the Buzzing Lights" | CH 3, SC 2
Previously on Trancing Miranda
Miranda and Nick stopped at a diner on the way back from his place. Miranda is annoyed by Nick’s apparent perfection. Because she is autistic, she finds the lights and noise of the diner distracting. She doesn’t want Nick to know she’s fae, but has already slipped up by commenting on his eyes, which are currently glamoured and would appear ordinary to a human.
Beneath the Buzzing Lights
The food came so fast Miranda was pretty sure Sandra had put a rush on it. The lights were still buzzing away overhead, and Miranda was itching to put in the earplugs she wore for work.
They weren’t as good as listening to the ocean, but she could still hear people talk.
She was just about to dig the earplugs out of her backpack when she remembered what Daniel had said the last time she’d pulled them out in public.
That makes you seem particularly autistic, if you were wondering.
Miranda didn’t think she seemed autistic at all. Or ADHD. She thought she seemed like someone who didn’t like most people and didn’t try to pretend that she did. But Daniel was her second cousin, and she had always relied on him for that kind of feedback.
So she left the earplugs in her backpack and soldiered on beneath the buzzing lights, pushing her fries around her plate until irritability won out. “What’s with these places and fluorescent lights?”
The vampire was eating his burger. It was so rare that the bottom of the bun was a pale, soggy pink. “Humans like them.”
“I’m human.”
“Marginally,” he said. “If at all.”
For a minute, Miranda wondered if she’d misheard him. But she was pretty sure she hadn’t.
He put the hamburger down so it could soak up more blood. “You’re fae. You know that, right?”
But that was the wrong question. The real question was, how did he know?
Vampires could barely sense each other coming. They were good at throwing energy around, sure, but they knew next to nothing about reading it.
Except for this one. This one definitely knew something.
“That’s random,” she said, trying for rich-girl-bored and feeling pretty sure she nailed it. She stuffed a French fry into her mouth like nothing was happening and went for the pivot. “So what happened to the Dracula brides?”
“The what?”
“The girls. The three creepy goth-girls.”
“What goth-girls?”
She wondered how he could be so completely oblivious. “The ones hovering around you at the Black Goddess.”
“Oh, right. I don’t know.”
Miranda narrowed her eyes. “Not your type?”
“Not really.”
“Because you like fresh, innocent girls without a mark on them?”
“Sometimes.” He took another bite of his burger. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What about your type? You like half-vamps, right? Ones that are hungry enough to trade?”
The lights seemed louder. It was the vibration. Like something short-circuiting. “Sometimes.”
He gave her a long, level look. “Did you know him?”
It was a crap question. “Of course.”
“What’s his name?”
Like she was too strung-out and desperate to do a basic safety check.
She picked up her chin and gave him a level look back. “Tony Gyari. I asked about him, too, in case you were wondering. I was specifically told he never caused any trouble.”
The vampire did not seem impressed. “Probably not. With an ordinary girl.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning fae blood is like catnip. Meaning most half-vamps are raised by human women. They never learn the code or how to feed safely—which makes them especially dangerous for fae.”
Miranda’s jaw tightened. “And whose fault is that? I mean, who is responsible for the problem in the first place?”
“We are. Obviously. But it’s gone beyond that now. Some half-vamps are reproducing. Outside of vampire territory, our ability to take responsibility the way we used to is—“
She cut him off. “By take responsibility you mean literally take it. As in take the child?”
“In some cases.”
It had been a routing thing once, and it still happened in spite of the laws. Her vampire blood was minimal. But she’d ended up being raised by vampires, anyway. “And you think that’s your right? To do that?”
“I think,” he said evenly, “that swapping with half-vamps is dangerous.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” she said, laying on the sarcasm. “First, I’ve heard.”
He finished off the burger. Giving her time to calm down, probably. “You almost died, Miranda. If I wasn’t there, you would have bled out in ten minutes, maybe less.”
He was right. He’d saved her life. And now he thought she owed him, and he was going to keep hammering the safety thing until she convinced him she was fine.
Miranda looked at a spot on the wall just above his head instead of at him because all the eye contact was starting to get to her. “I was strung out on swap at one point. Past tense. But I still take Vamprax off and on. Like when I’m having a bad day.” Or month. Or year. “I couldn’t find any earlier, so I made a bad call. That’s it. End of story.”
But it wasn’t.
There was more.
The fight with Daniel. Finding out that Julien got early release.
The memories that were pushing every possible button.
“Do you need a doctor?” the vampire asked. “To write a prescription?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you have one? In your back pocket.”
“I might.”
It was a surprisingly nice offer, but Vamprax wasn’t an off-ramp anymore. It was just another road leading in the wrong direction. Reminding her of vampire blood and vampire energy, just enough to make her want it. But never really delivering.
“I’m good.”
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