Corinna's dark eyes followed Father Donovan's gestures, landing on each person he pointed out. Becky, ex-White Court thrall. (She'd only heard of the White Court. Didn't know what their deal was past that they'd outlived the Red. But a vampire was a vampire.) And Henry, husband and unwitting blood-bag to a vampire who'd died in his bed.
"Damn," was the first thing that came to mind, and they were in a church so she backpedaled as fast as she could. "Sorry. I mean. Uh. That's terrible. What happened, I mean. Not that they're—"
Cool. Fucking this up already. She turned, hoping to blink an SOS to August or something, but he was gone. Wait, no, there he was, sidling back up with a couple glasses of water in hand. One for Father Donovan, one for Corinna. She looked down into hers like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
August picked up from there, helping Father Donovan in his explanation: there'd been this Fellowship of St. Giles who were, what, good-guy vampires? Who'd also been taken out when the Red Court had gotten nuked, and here at St. Francis they'd taken it upon themselves to continue the Fellowship's mission. The Friends of Giles: Vampire Survivors Anonymous. Huh.
And August told me you did some surviving, alright.
"Mm. Something like that."
Whatever August had told must've been edited, right? Surviving was one thing, but did Becky and Henry have blood on their hands like Corinna did? Doubt it. And she doubted she'd be welcome here at all if August had brought up his attempted murder.
She'd already told August she'd leave if anything felt off. Father Donovan had just given her another out. Part of her, most of her, wanted to take it, to tell them hey this work you're doing is very cool and I wish everybody the best, but I really gotta go. If she stayed, somebody was going to find out what she'd done. Someone here was gonna be a friend-of-a-friend of somebody else Corinna had gotten killed, maybe. Or maybe she was so tainted by everything she'd done that somebody'd look at her and just know.
But there was another, smaller part of her that asked, what if they don't? The past few months had been so fucking quiet and lonely. August had visited here and there, but past him what had human interaction been for her lately? The cashier at the grocery store? The cashier at the liquor store? The maintenance guy at the apartment, one time? A little time around other people might... help. A little. Maybe.
"Okay," she said finally. "Thanks. I've, uh, never really been to Alcoholics Anonymous—" Did he call it that just for a frame of reference, or can he tell how I've been trying to manage all this? "—so uh, what do we do from here?"
