The antiquities shop took an entire building, if a tiny one. The first floor contained the shop itself (closed today), and behind it, an office room, the second floor was an apartment where I lived, and the basement floor consisted only of a cramped storage.

I and JJ moved from it to the upper floors, and currently sat in the office—the only place with a computer. I gave him some of my dad’s clothes to wear, but my dad was noticeably taller and wider than JJ, and it showed.

To save myself time and effort, I had opened him a site “Computers for dummies” with a hope that after he learns how to use Google, JJ will do the rest of the work for me. The modern grammar norms puzzled him for a while, but he had caught on quickly when I read several words aloud.

Now he sat with eyes glued to the screen, and I was becoming more and more curious.

“So, vampires and magic and witches exist… What else, JJ? Are werewolves real? What about fairies and stuff?” I asked from my seat nearby.

He looked at me. I didn’t like the hungry shine in them.

“Yes, they are all real, though not all the myths about them are. You are supposed to know all this, ma chèrie… How did it happen that your parents didn’t train you?”

“My parents? Is witchery a hereditary thing?”

JJ nodded and smiled at me, flashing his fangs. I think I caught him glancing at my neck.

“One of your parents or grandparents must’ve been a witch or a witcher. They usually have tightly knitted clans.”

I frowned. My dad certainly didn’t have a magic bone in him, or at least didn’t show me in any way that he did. My mom, though… I think she came from a rich family, one that she abandoned for a reason I didn’t know. But she died from cancer when I was just ten years old. If she was a witch, how could it be? Or was cancer something even magic couldn’t beat?

My dad’s parents never spoke to me about anything magical either, and as for my mom’s parents, I never knew them. The only relative from my mom’s line I’ve ever met was my aunt, and she didn’t come over since I was eighteen.

“Were you, possibly, a bastard child?” JJ asked, hunger in his cat-like eyes abating to leave space for curiosity.

I gave him a scowl. “I so don’t want to even know the answer to this question, JJ.”

He chuckled and returned to reading the guide. The way he carefully pressed the down button to scroll it… He looked so much like my grandma I couldn’t contain my grin.

“So, speaking of myths. How much about vampires is true? What about sunlight? Isn’t it supposed to burn you alive?”

The office had three windows. Some murky, cold daylight fell from behind the thick clouds and through them, but JJ didn’t show any discomfort. Neither when we got there or now.

“It is harmful, but we develop resistance to it with age. I only need to fear direct light on my skin,” JJ said, not turning away from the computer.

“And how old are you?”

He smirked, giving me a sideways glance. “Isn’t it impolite to ask?”

“I’m twenty-one, how old are you?”

JJ gave a small laugh and turned his head towards me. “I like your boldness, ma chèrie, so I will tell you. I was made vampire in year fourteen seventy-four.”

I ignored his flirty smile for the sake of more important things. “Fifteenth century! Damn, you must be the oldest thing in this entire store!”

“I hope you aren’t planning on selling me,” JJ said. His tone was joking, but his eyes were anything but. Good thing I didn’t even think about it.

“I didn’t even think about it,” I repeated aloud, waving my hand at him. “So, what else you vampires do? Besides drinking blood, because I got that.”

I lifted my previously scraped finger in demonstration, only to frown in confusion when I didn’t see any scrape on it. “Huh?”

“Vampires’ saliva thins the blood, but it also helps tissues to mend,” JJ said while I kept dumbly staring at my finger. “So if I were to bite you, ma chèrie, the holes would disappear in a matter of minutes…”

Now he was definitely staring at my neck. I backed away from him and used my long and straight black hair—a complete opposite of JJ’s—to hide my veins from his eyes.

“Ah, ah, ah! No biting me, mister!” I warned him with a shake of my finger. “What if I wore a garlic necklace? Will that deter you?”

“Garlic?” JJ blinked, snapping out of it. “No. I always wondered how humans came up with this silly idea…”

“What about silver? Won’t that burn you?” I only had silver earrings to defend myself with, but there was more of old silver in the store. “Or crosses?”

“Well, silver certainly isn’t nice, but crosses… they mean nothing.” He seemed almost sad about the last part.

I pursed my lips and stood up from my stool. “Alright, I’m gonna go check something,” I said.

If silver worked, then I definitely needed to find as much of it as I could. I planned to do just that, right now, before JJ went amok again.

I was at the office door when a loud knock from the outside made me frown. 

It sounded again, and I realised it was coming from the front door of the store. Who would knock on the door when there was a tablet that clearly said “CLOSED”? Whoever it was, they were insistent enough that I became afraid for the door’s integrity.

“Sit there,” I threw to JJ and rushed out of the office, apprehension growing in me with each step.

The store’s windows were closed with thick and dark mourning curtains, casting the entire room into darkness. I flicked the light switch on and run up to the entrance door. There I paused for a moment before taking a deep breath and unlocking it.

It swung open immediately, letting me see two already familiar people. Both men in their thirties, tall and burly, with unfriendly faces and dressed in dark jackets. One had a bright pink scar on his cheekbone, and another was shaved bald. My worst enemies—the debt collectors.