Page 38 of Fangs with Benefits

Once I’m safely on the subway towards home, I squeeze shut my eyes, imagining Molly alone on the balcony, goosebumps on her skin from the cold, rejection lacing her features.

Someone bumps my shoulder, startling me, but it’s just a group of people in various states of undress, much like at the party I just escaped from.

‘Good costume, dude,’ a man dressed like a frog says. ‘The teeth look good.’

I cover my teeth with my lips, and nod my thanks. The car shakes, I hold a metal bar for balance, and I think of yellow curls while the train tunnels us further through the city.

Letter from Evangeline Thorne to Elijah Thorne, postmarked 18 October 2026

My dear brother,

Dylan told me where to send my correspondence since you can’t be bothered to pick up a phone and tell your sister that you’ve moved. I would say I’m disappointed, but you never did have a phone in that house, you luddite.

I’m writing to tell you that I’m coming to visit the city. Needing a break from my research and seeing my darling baby brother is just what the doctor ordered.

I hope you’ve been making some new friends in that big loud city. Isn’t it wonderful? A bit overwhelming–all that life–no? I’ve worried about you, E.

Please do write.

I’ll see you soon.

Yours,

Jellie

Chapter 14

Molly

My knee bounces under the table Monday morning as I wait at my desk. I don’t realise I’m biting at a hangnail until I’ve accidentally pulled it. I click my tongue against my teeth and rummage in my desk drawer one-handed until I retrieve a Band-Aid and wrap it around my thumb.

Time to get a grip, Molly.

At the slightest movement from the office door, I snap my gaze to it, but it’s just Kenneth sauntering in, already shaking his blender bottle. I curse under my breath and close my eyes for a moment. I just need to recentre.

Over the weekend I may or may not have had a literal mental breakdown because I got to work an hour early today feeling about 80 per cent sure that Elijah Thorne is a vampire.

Even thinking it makes me feel insane.

But what the hell else am I supposed to think?

It started at the party: the pair of us next to each other on the balcony, then he leaned, or I leaned, and somehow we were kissing. A kiss isn’t a big deal; a kiss is just a kiss.

But that didn’t feel like just a kiss. That felt like—

The kiss felt like magic.

It was like the kisses I read about, the Princess Diaries foot-pop kiss, the kind of kiss that makes you dizzy and drunk on the feel of lips on yours. I don’t know what I thought we were going to do, but I definitely didn’t think that he’d abruptly stop what was shaping up to be the best make out ever.

At first, the sting of rejection was more like a scalding burn, but after sitting with my head in my palms for ten minutes, I finally got too cold and went back inside. I stopped in the bathroom first, certain my lipstick was everywhere, which is when I saw the thin lines of bright red snaking down the side of my neck and collarbone before slipping down my cleavage. The sight startled me, and I reached for a wad of toilet paper. I wiped up the blood, cleaning my chest and neck all the way to the source of the injury: two thin slits.

I hadn’t even felt it happen.

Amid my distress and confusion, someone knocked on the door and I yelled that I’d be just a minute as I scrambled to finish wiping some of the now-dried blood and found a Band-Aid. Devi only had these bright green star-printed ones, which Luke teased looked like I was trying to cover up a hickey. I made my excuses shortly thereafter and spent the whole night stewing, putting pieces together that I wouldn’t let myself believe.

I came to one conclusion. One outlandish, completely impossible conclusion.

I barely slept, trolling through Reddit threads and random forum sites that looked like they were built in the ’90s. I couldn’t find anything conclusive, and the further I looked, the sillier I felt. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became.