3. Are they close with their family? If not, do they have a found family they are close with?
“I--was.” In that simple phrase was a world of regret. Kodi had it all, a happy childhood, a loving family. She grew up in something like paradise.
As much as she might like to pretend that this was the case, even to herself, the teeth in her neck hadn’t punctured holes where there weren’t any before. Her relationship with her family, that previously watertight, unconditional love, had been springing leaks for years. No matter how her dads could email her recipes for family favorites (recipes! When did they ever cook from recipes?) or fixing of it. She had let her dads try and persuade her and cajole her and promise not to make faces at their Nondenominational Winter Holiday Celebrations when the subject of her “police work” came up, none of it was enough.
It never could be, because Kodi had determining she was different from the rest of them, and at some point, she had made the fatal mistake of acting like that made her better. Deciding that it meant that she had to be separate from them.
She felt a phantom ache in her eye-sockets, and the indignity of it all was that she couldn’t even cry.
“Being a vampire made it kinda weird, see,” she said, draping an arm over her office chair and lifting a careless shoulder. “No big deal. My dads have each other over and a bunch of friends and a great home. I saw that my Appa is going back on tour with his queer Bharatanatyam troupe this year.” Not coming to the UK, or at least they weren’t scheduled to do so. “I’m making new friends, new enemies. Family isn’t everything.” Except that Poonkodi, her fathers’ daughter, had been raised to believe that it was, even if her family wasn’t like anyone’s she knew.
An expansive shrug and a flash of fangs in a sardonic smile. “Life goes on!”
11. What was their first kiss like?
“I’ve been told it doesn’t count because I was seven, but it definitely counts when you’re in love, and I was totally in love,” said Kodi with a happy laugh. “Oh, she had these braids with these beads that clacked together, all yellow and pink, and she would always pick dandelions in the playground and let me blow the seeds off! Be still my dead heart.” She pressed a hand over her chest.
“Anyway, so we had a very real wedding on the playground and sealed it with the tiniest little baby kiss. I mean, come on! We were in first grade.” She rolled her eyes with a laugh. “The school called my, you know, two dads to the office to ask them if everything was okay at home. They said everything was great, and their wedding invites must have gotten lost in the mail or something. I wish I’d been there to see my principal’s face.”
Her smile faded slightly. “They weren’t mad. They just made me promise they would be invited to my next wedding.”
There wouldn’t be another wedding, and there wouldn’t be any mail.
