Nightwatch Ch. 01: A New Home

"Hi!" She spoke to the receptionist. "We're Suzanna and Moriah Branson. This is Luca. We called for an appointment with Mrs. Dillinger?"

"Yes, she should just be a few minutes. Please take a seat in our lobby."

"Thank you!"

We sat in the clinical space awkwardly,

Luca was very nervous. I saw an ant crawling on the low table in front of us.

"Luca, come here." He came over to me. I took the ant on my finger, and showed it to him. "Do you like bugs?"

"Yeah. That's just an ant though."

"No, this girl is a superhero."

He furrowed his dark eyebrows at my statement.

"She can carry 50 times her own weight, and some parts of her body can even withstand thousands of times her weight and still survive.

"It's possible that, without ants, the earth would just die out."

"What?" He exclaimed.

"Yeah! They do so much, and they keep the world turning."

He took her from my hand to look at her closely.

"Everything and everyone is important, Luca, no matter how small they are." My hand rested on his shoulder.

He looked in my eyes, then went back to looking at the ant as he sat down.

Suzie made eye contact with me and smiled softly.

We were escorted to a windowless room, and I was thankful, remembering the earlier bite from the sun -- hiss. I noticed Luca transferred his ant to his shoulder as we walked.

"Hi! Welcome, Bransons! Sorry for the delay! We've been overwhelmed this summer with cases."

"No worries at all."

"So! This is Luca! Nice to meet you, Luca!"

"Hi." He said shyly from his seat between Suzie and I.

"How are you?"

"Okay."

"All right. You look good! You're very tall!"

He smiled a bit at that, then straightened up.

"Moriah and Suzanna have told me you're a very brave young man, and you walked all the way from the caravans to their house."

"It's a castle!" He exclaimed excitedly now. "I saw it from the road and I went up to look at it!"

"Wow!"

"They gave me food and clothes and read me stories!"

"That is great! I have a question though, do you remember your aunt's name?"

"Lola." He answered easily. The social worker jotted it down, but I privately thought it wouldn't be much help since it sounded like a made up nickname.

"Great! Good memory! What about your mom? Do you remember her name?"

"Uh--" he floundered. "Tuh-something."

The woman wrote it down just the same.

"Great! Is it okay if I talk to Suzanna and Moriah for a few minutes?"

"Okay."

"I'll show you where we have our Legos."

She went with him and came back a minute later. I panicked at not having him by my side.

"He'll be okay with one of our caretakers for a few minutes."

"Isn't he the sweetest?" Suzie gushed at her.

The woman chuckled. "Yes, he seems very polite for someone who's only lived with carnival people."

"He was used to clean up after the animals." I said darkly.

"We can look into their labor practices further and shut them down if we find child or even animal abuse."

"Good." I agreed.

"The question I have for you both, though, is what are you willing to do for Luca?"

"Excuse me?" I prompted.

"Like I said, we are overworked and our caseload is growing exponentially every year. If you were to drop him off with us we'd have to place him into foster care with some family that has at least five other children."

"Oh no!" Suzie exclaimed.

"It's pretty bad right now." She admitted. "So he can enter foster care or you could foster him temporarily. It's clear he's already taken to you. You'd just need to do some background checks and an inspection of your home -- or castle, I should say." She smiled warmly.

"Uh -- how long would we foster him for?" I was determined to play devil's advocate and only think about his benefit.

"Until we find someone looking to adopt who becomes interested in him."

I looked at Suzie. I didn't need to ask her what she wanted, it was all over her face. This seemed like our only option, seeing as I didn't want Luca to get lost in the system.

"What is the process for adoption?"

The woman's eyebrows went up. "Well, a probationary six months and home inspections. A regular counseling session with a child psychologist. You'd need to prove financial responsibility. If you start the process now, you may be able to start the probationary period within the month."

I gulped. That was fast.

"And -- uh -- if we fostered him... is there a lot of adoptions for boys his age?"

"Sometimes. It depends... every year is different. It may take a few months or it might never happen and you would end up fostering him indefinitely until he's eighteen."

I nodded. She wasn't saying anything I wasn't prepared for, but I didn't like this system. I supposed it provided children with the basics, a roof over their head, food, and clothes. But it was still lacking. The uncertainty alone was enough to drive one crazy.

"Can we talk it over, please? We need some time to consider what's best for him."

"Of course. I'll give you a minute, if you'd like, and go check on him."

"That'd be great."

She left us in her office. I breathed mindfully while Suzie stood and came over to grip my hand. We sat in silence for a minute. Both of us knew the pros and cons. I was hesitant to adopt him because I was still sure there was someone better. A human couple that could be a part of his life with no restrictions.

The more Mrs. Dillinger spoke though, the bleaker his situation seemed.

"Mor, it wasn't a coincidence he ended up in our flower bed."

"He's not a cabbage patch kid, darling. He's a complete soul."

"That needs our help."

"I'm leaning towards yes."

She squealed with abandon.

"Could we just foster him for a month or two though, just in case? What if we're depriving him of his destiny by moving too quickly?" I tried to explain my opinion.

"I thought you didn't believe in fate and destiny." She teased.

"Well, I'd rather that exist than make a horrible decision out of over-confidence."

She leaned over to smack a kiss on my cheek. "You're cute. Okay, we can foster him for a few months, but you know my opinion."

"Yes. You've been very clear on your position." I chuckled. "We're going to have to tell him before we adopt him, though. He's young but he's old enough to decide to be placed in foster care if he doesn't want to live with vampires." I said bitterly.

"Okay!"

I shook my head at her easy expression.

The woman asked him privately if he wanted us to be his foster parents, and he readily agreed.

We filled out the paperwork, leaving with the adoption application as well so we could take a look at it. Our home inspection was in about a week, then we drove home -- er -- yes, home.

We stopped to get a happy meal from McDonalds. The cashier looked at us funny in the Escalade with dark sunglasses and covered up as we were.

Luca was worth the awkwardness though and exulted at his first experience with the red happy meal box, playing with the tinker toy as he munched on chicken nuggets.

We sat with him in the parlor again, later that day. "Luca, you can stay here as long as you need to. But if someone wants you to be part of their family too, then wouldn't you want to at least meet them to see if they're nice?"

He frowned at my words. "Why would I do that? I like you."

We looked at each other, and it was Suzie's turn to speak.

"We like you too, honey! But before you couldn't really choose, could you? At the carnival?"

"No."

"Now you can!"

"Okay, I choose you."

We both smiled at him. I spoke next. "We'll always be around to take care of you, Luca. You're a really cool kid. We're just letting you know that there may be other people who might want to ask you to be part of their family, too. And if that happens, don't you think we should be nice to them? Maybe they're sad because they want someone as awesome as you in their family and they've been lonely."

He looked down, probably understanding what loneliness meant.

"We'll just be nice to them, right?" I pressed.

"Okay."

"Okay." I agreed. "Now, I have no idea how to cook chicken. So can you help me, please?"

He grinned, and came over to stand in front of us. "It's so easy, Mor! Come on! I'll show you."

He dragged me by the hand to the kitchen, and Suzie helped us to chop vegetables for dinner.

That was the most fun we've had for centuries and my dead heart melted little by little.

----

The following morning, I strolled through the foyer, the paper in my hand and simultaneously thinking that we needed to enroll Luca in school immediately.

I heard his heartbeat from the top of the stairs, but it took a minute to register.

"Mor! Look at me!"

I looked up hazily to see him on the outside of the banister and leaning forward to drop onto the floor to the hard wood. I speeded to position myself to catch him, the paper falling from my hand and scattering everywhere.

I adjusted my arms to cushion his fall and dropped down quickly so he wouldn't get whiplash.

"Luca!"

He seemed dazed and frightened.

"Why would you do that? You could have broken something!" I set him down.

"I wanted to fly, too."

"What's up?" Suzie rounded the corner and approached us.

"Luca threw himself off the stairs because he wanted to fly." I looked at her significantly.

"Oh my." She looked him over herself, checking for injuries.

"I was able to catch him. Because I was here." What little blood I had in my body turned even colder than it usually was.

"Luca, honey. Go make yourself a chocolate milk and get a cookie. We'll join you in a second." She dismissed him to speak with me.

"Okay!" He went off to the kitchen.

I kept an ear on him so he wouldn't try anything dangerous again.

"That was terrifying." I said, already emotionally exhausted.

She gripped my hand firmly.

"Should we tell him now?" I asked her nervously.

"I guess we have to tell him sometime. Maybe it would be best now before he tries to jump off the roof."

"Geez, we haven't even been parents for a week, and he almost broke his head open."

She chuckled, seemingly over-confident in my abilities to stop Luca from falling to his death. It was a good thing I didn't sleep...

We went to the kitchen to find him munching on cookies, happily -- as though he hadn't almost died moments ago in the foyer.

He smiled when he saw us.

She went to his side immediately to put an arm around him.

I resented her sweet nature, knowing that I'd have to pick her broken soul up when he abandoned us. I sat down smoothly on one side of the island.

"Luca, since you are living here, you need to know who we are." I cut straight to the point. "You need to know what we are if you want to live with us."

"You mean why you can fly?"

"Yes." I said simply.

"Okay," he said easily as he took another bite of a chocolate chip cookie.

"We won't ever get old, Suzie and I. A person bit us in the neck and put in a type of poison in our -- body." I faltered a bit. I wasn't ashamed of who I was, but I hadn't explained it to a child for a while. "Now, we don't eat food. We just drink human blood to stay alive. We're both very, very old. Older than the oldest person you've ever met."

"So, you're vampires?" he asked excitedly.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"Yes," Suzie repeated after me.

"Cool!" he exulted.

I smirked at his innocence.

"If anyone knew what we were, most likely they would say we wouldn't be good parents for you," I tried to clarify.

"Why?" He furrowed his brow.

"Lots of reasons, darling." Suzie finally started to help me. "People could say that if we got hungry, we might hurt you for your blood. They could say that since we aren't human, we couldn't teach you to be nice to other people."

"Oh." His eyes went down to his plate. "But you're nicer than the people at the carnival," he countered.

"Thank you." Suzie's hand ran down the back of his head.

"Thank you," I repeated. "But this means that it's your choice if you want to stay here, Luca. We don't even go out during the day, so you would have to stay in here so we could take care of you every day. We're only able to go out with you when the sun goes down."

"What about when we went to see Mrs. Dillinger?" he argued.

"We need to wear a lot of clothes and use umbrellas. Even drive a special car with dark windows so the sun won't hit us so much. It's uncomfortable for us."

"How old are you?"

I looked at Suzie. Despite her living for eons, she was still self-conscious about her age. It was humorous to me but I never let on for fear of inciting her anger.

"Could you think of what it would be like to live twenty years, Luca?" She asked him.

"Yes." He smiled at her.

"What about fifty?" she pressed.

"Like Mama Bones!"

"Right. What about a hundred?"

He paused at that and frowned. "They would be wrinkly and have white hair."

"What about two hundred?" she asked yet again.

He looked at her and shook his head.

"We're a lot older than that." I finished for her.

"Oh." He thought seriously as he took a sip of his chocolate milk. "Would you have to drink my blood?"

"No. Never." I said firmly.

"Okay! I still want to live with you."

I smiled lopsidedly. "Luca, that also means that whatever we can do, you can't. We're vampires. You are human. You can't fly, darling; but you can do a lot of things we can't, like be in the sun!"

"Why can't I fly?" he asked petulantly.

"No one can fly, Luca. Sometimes we don't like being vampires." She was brutally honest with him, so he would understand. "Please don't try to fly again, honey. You can't. And if you try, you'll hurt yourself."

"If I hadn't been there today, Luca, you would have broken something really badly." I reiterated.

"Like dead?" He asked with wide eyes.

I nodded. "We want you to live a long time. So you have to be more careful than you were today. Do you understand?"

He nodded.

"Okay." I relaxed my posture finally. "Is there anything you want to ask us?"

"What happens if you are out in the sun?"

"It hurts and we could die."

"Wow." His eyes widened in fear. "Are you really strong like the vampires on TV?"

"Yes." I smiled.

"Cool. Will I be a vampire when I grow up?"

"No." I said simply. There was a lot of explanation behind my answer but better he didn't glorify our lifestyle and tried to forge his own path first. He was much too young to make an immortal decision. "It's not contagious. You are a human and will get tall and become a human man."

"How tall?" He asked excitedly.

"I don't know! I guess we'll have to see, won't we?" I leaned in to ruffle his hair while his dimples got more pronounced in his wide grin. "So no more trying to fly, pinky promise?" I held my pinky out.

He looked at my hand and frowned. "What's that?"

"Hold your little finger out."

He did.

"When you hold your little finger with someone and promise something, it becomes a most solemn vow. Something you shouldn't break because you like the other person and because you are a good, honest person yourself. So, do you, Luca, promise to stop trying to fly and be careful not to break something?"

I looked seriously in his eyes and he carefully extended his own finger to link with mine.

"I promise."

"I pinky promise." I corrected him.

"I pinky promise." He repeated as we shook.

"Good! Now, I think we have a football around here. Let me see if I can find it."

Suzie looked at me warmly as I stood and left the kitchen.

--

A couple of weeks into his first foray into school found us at the grocery store. I'd done some research, but also tried to learn what Luca liked to eat as well.

He skipped around me as he chatted with Suzie about different meals and dropped random things in the cart.

I agreed with most of them and added more vegetables, confidently thinking I could cook artichokes like the website said to do.

We got to the register with Luca jumping up and down. I felt someone approach me from behind, eventually feeling a sharp tap on my shoulder.

"Excuse me."

I turned to smile at the person, but immediately dropped my smile as I took in her eccentric look. Her hair was frazzled, her eyes were unnaturally blank and opaque, her hand bolted to grip my forearm in a hawk-hold, and she was standing too close.

"Yes?" I frowned.

"Do you have Luca in your home?" She asked with a yellow smile and blotchy gum line.

"Luca?" I frowned some more, making eye contact with Suzie and gesturing lightly to the exit. She took Luca by the hand and escaped though the front door.

"The boy." Her blank eyes stared at me.

"Let me go." I said quietly. Her fingers unclenched, then I looked at her face. "Leave this town." I pressed all the hypnosis into the command I could. Her eyes were just as blank and her smile remained stiff, my powers were clearly having no effect. "Who are you?"

She grinned just as blankly as I stared at the vibrating bone necklace across her sharp collarbones.

"You and your wife are special, aren't you?" Her voice dropped into an unsettling tone. She clutched my wrist again, where my pulse point would be.

"Fuck off." I shook my hand away from her grip then smiled to the cashier. "Hi! Good evening! Yes card, thank you!"

I packed everything up in our car and kept a close eye on the woman who was now standing outside the store, staring at us.

"I think we got everything." I said in an even tone.

"The butter, too?" Luca asked.

"Yes. Unsalted butter made from grass-fed milk." I confirmed.

"Cool!" He said happily from the second seat.

I buckled myself, then looked worriedly at Suzie. She'd known what was going on but, Luca (thankfully) had no idea what was happening.

After dinner, Luca went to go take a shower. Suzie and I locked up the castle while speaking in nervous whispers about the creepy woman. She was surely part of Luca's past, and I didn't like it. As much as I'd advocated to have him placed with human parents... the woman was supernatural. She clearly did not care about Luca's interests; I got a horrible feeling from her. No. He was not going back to wherever he came from. That wasn't an option. If he went to human parents, we wouldn't be able to protect him anymore.

He was our son now, whether I'd come to terms with it or not. I'd skin whatever and whoever tried to hurt him with no questions asked.

Suzie and I were speaking rapidly in the parlor when we heard Luca come downstairs.

We held hands as he came into the fire-lit room.

"You saw Mama Bones." He stated immediately.

I nodded. "That was her?"

He nodded, fidgeting near the corner of the couch.

"Do they want you back?"

"Yeah, I think so." He frowned.

I gulped. "Do you -- want to go back?"

He looked at me sharply. "No!"

I let out a breath. "Okay. You don't have to. Stay." I looked at him. "With us."

His eyes watered. Suzie stood and pulled him into the couch. He cried all night and we couldn't get any more information out of him. He was -- too broken. We just held him tightly, and repeated our promises to protect him.

Time passed with no further incidents, and I didn't feel any other dangers, thankfully. I started fencing with him and self-defense training. Just in case. It was October as he focused on school. Halloween was almost around the corner and he was starting to get excited to celebrate the day with us.

I started making circuits around our home in the dead of night, looking for more information about this elusive carnival or the woman with no success.

My dead heart was full, uneasy, and determined; all at the same time.