Page 9 of Fang Fiction

“Oh my god, this is gonna sound so stupid.” She grinned. “Promise you won’t laugh at me?”

“I guess that depends on what the conspiracy is and which side you’re arguing.”

“Okay, so, some people—I’m not saying me necessarily, but some people—think the vampires in Blood Feud really exist.”

“Shut up, no they don’t.” Oscar’s eyes went wide. “You think this? You think this and argue with strangers about it on the internet?!”

“And occasionally write essays about it that go viral and get picked up by BuzzFeed?” Tess flushed with embarrassment—and also a little bit of pride.

“No fucking way.” Oscar guffawed. “Stop talking, I’m googling that immediately.”

“Don’t!” Tess protested playfully. But it gave her a thrill to imagine Oscar reading her work, nodding with pleasure the same way her professors used to when she made a particularly subtle argument.

“You’re right, it would be rude to google at a party,” Oscar agreed. “Give me a preview?”

“Oh, well, basically—myths of vampires have persisted for thousands of years, across all different cultures that had no possible way to communicate with one another. People in ancient India and the Scottish highlands and the Philippines all have their own distinct vampire folklore. Homer even talks about vampires in The Odyssey.”

“No shit, did he really?”

“Yeah!” Tess pushed her hair back and beamed. “So I mean, isn’t it possible the reason these stories are so popular across all different places and time periods is that there’s something about them that’s rooted in truth? Or at least, isn’t it worth considering that they might be?”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.” Oscar laughed, but Tess could tell he was being sincere.

“So if you’re willing to accept the basic premise that vampires could be real, then there’s, like, all this evidence. About the vampires in Blood Feud specifically.”

“Evidence? As in clues?!”

“Enough for an entire Poirot novel.” Tess couldn’t help getting excited—she loved talking about this stuff. “So there are these two characters in the books, Callum and Octavia Yoo, and there were two people really named that in Victorian England, which is where the characters are from too.”

“So you think the author based those characters on the real people?”

“Definitely, but here’s where it gets weird.” Tess dropped her voice for dramatic effect. “They were a really striking pair—they’re British Korean twins and both gorgeous—and people have found photos of them from all different time periods. Victorian England, but then also Paris in the twenties, at an Andy Warhol Factory party in the sixties. They popped up on Facebook in the back of someone’s vacation photos from Jeju Island in Korea in 2006, people went fucking nuts when they found that one. People have found photos of the ‘real’ versions of other characters too, but they’re harder to track. Callum and Octavia are easier because they’re so often together. But then—remember eleven years ago, when there was that fire at that nightclub in Prague, and all those people had bites on their necks, and the authorities thought it must have been some kind of wild animal?”

Oscar nodded. “Sort of.”

“Okay, well, after that, there aren’t any more photos of Callum and Octavia—or any of them, you know? So the theory is that the attack at the nightclub was really vampires, and they were all sent to the Isle as some sort of punishment. And maybe it’s all a total reach and absolute nonsense, but it’s, like, fun, you know? Just to imagine that any of it could be real.”

Oscar gazed at Tess with a sort of wonder.

“What?” she asked, mildly unnerved.

“Nothing, sorry.” He scratched absently at the back of his head. “I just forgot how much fun it is to listen to you talk.”

Someone pushed behind him to get to the kitchen, moving him closer to Tess. He smelled nice, fresh, like soap and cedar.

“Hey,” he said quietly, close enough that he could almost whisper and still be heard.

Tess felt suddenly tense. Was he going to touch her?

But he just nodded toward her empty hands. “You don’t have a drink. Can I get you something?”

“Oh!” she sputtered. “Sure! Sure. Maybe a beer? If they have one? Like in a can? You don’t have to open it, I can open it.”

He gave her a perplexed smile that said something like I’m not sure what your deal is, but I’m interested in finding out.

“One beer in a can, coming right up.”

He disappeared into the kitchen, and Tess exhaled and made her way toward the bathroom. This was going well! Not that she thought it wouldn’t, necessarily, but obviously it could have been super weird to see Joni for the first time in three years. It could have felt like a nightmare to walk into her old apartment, to see her old classmates, to get sucked back into how bad things had gotten in those last weeks before she left the program.