Vampirism is, of course, the most socially acceptable magical infection one can contract, provided it’s the sort of vampirism where blood is essentially a metaphor for alcohol; swilled from bottles or poured into snifters or wine glasses, with vampiric blood snobs talking about the bouquet of various blood types. If, on the other hand, you’re the sort of psychic vampire that feeds on the life force of those around them causing their slow decline, well, it’s probably stake and cross time. Assuming that works on you. (It may not.)

The urban fantasyland vampire is so varied in dietary requirements, weaknesses, and nods towards a vague sense of scientific realism that it’s impossible to effectively describe them, other than “Probably feed on humans, somehow. Maybe?” It’s entirely possible that several different types of being have thus been lumped under a single taxonomic classification and more field work is needed to provide each of them with their own entry.

It should be noted that vampires who happen to be protagonists often suffer weaker restrictions than those who are not, though this is not 100 percent the case, of course. Nothing about vampires ever is.

-Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.

Lorraine moved first, with me right after her. I hadn’t really trusted Carrefour from the start and Lorraine...Lorraine probably wanted to fight an undead, probably.

Naturally, we were both disappointed when we got there, and Lawson was unharmed. Louis Carrefour was on the floor, writhing, while Lawson sighed. “I told you there might be a little pain involved.”

“Not like this. My eyes are burning and I don’t even have eyes!”

Lawson looked at us, and reported, “Well, it’s definitely a form of vampirism.” He gestured to a wall chart. It looked like an eye exam at first, only instead of letters, it appeared to be...various holy symbols.

“Why do you even have that?”

“It’s part of the standard screening physical. We do get the occasional vampire client, and we need to know what symbols to avoid deploying in the play. More importantly, it means Louis wasn’t a vampire when we started the play. He would have been exposed to it then and he almost certainly didn’t react like this or it would have been in the notes.”

“So someone did something to his body?”

“Or he had a transformative agent active in his bloodstream that didn’t trigger until after he died, which eliminates a few of the more common vampiric strains.”

Carrefour finally pulled himself back to his feet. “You can stop talking like I'm not here, you know!”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said insincerely. “So why would your family be using you being dead to start a war with House Kathor?”

Both Lawson and Louis said “They’re what?” so closely together and in perfect harmony.

“Yeah. For some reason they held a press conference before they left the neighborhood to say the assassination was a Kathor op and they weren’t holding us or the neighborhood responsible. Which it’s nice to be reassured on that front, but uh...ain’t standard Old Magic MO, you know?”

The cousins exchanged a look. Lawson started, “Is it…”

“Probably.”

Lorraine drawled, “Care to enlighten the rest of us?”

It was Louis who explained. “Our patriarch- all the patriarchs, really, have been trying to cajole the secret of the Kathor’s body thief magic out of them for years. But they don’t keep it written down anywhere and the only one who uses it is their current patriarch, who’s never been willing to let it spread. It’d let them get around one of the few restrictions on the families concentrating all their power in the hands of their oldest mages, since you can’t really -prove that someone’s possessed by an ancient spirit of the family line in a new host- the bloodline connection muddles all that.”

Lawson continued, “And London Carrefour realizes he has an unjustly murdered heir and an infant he could take over with only a bare twinge of guilt, so now’s the time to make a move to try and press them, and then pass down the family leadership to my unexpectedly brilliant cousin.” A pause. “At least, once he’s out of diapers.”

Louis took over again. “And he may think he can get away with not having a war- they’ll try to appeal to the high council for a judgement. What I don’t get is what he’s got that makes him think he’ll be able to pin it on them, if it really was Clara. She’s got no connection to them at all.”

“Yeah, you really kept that one in the family.” Lawson rolled his eyes. “Ordinarily the Council won’t intervene in an intra-family thing.”

I asked, since no one else was, “What is this high council thing, anyway? I don’t usually get this sort of view of how the old magic families work, so I never pictured there being any sort of governing body for you folks.”

The boss is the one who answered that, piping up out of one of the speakers. “They’re an organization of independents; they enforce treaties between the families and various other magical groups. They’ve got some pretty powerful and respected members who can make their rulings stick. I’m sure you know one, if you think about it, Ray.”

I paused and thought for a moment. “Wait, you don’t mean…” Magically powerful, independent, and able to stand up to the old magic families described exactly one person I know. My own grandmother.

“The Ironwoods Treaty is, in fact, one of the treaties the High Council enforces, so they did need a member from the Ironwood witches. Who better? Your aunts have their own things keeping them busy.”

I groaned. “I love Gram, but the idea of her being on some sort of international court of last resort is terrifying.”

It’s terrifying to all of us, Ray, trust us,” said Lorraine.

“Oh, good. So I’m not entirely alone.”

Meanwhile, the dead man was asking Lawson in an aside, “Wait, he’s Ironwoods? What’s he doing working -here- then?”

Because when you look like me and have my background, you get two choices- either pretend to be someone’s muscle or do it as a real job, and honestly, I like my violence with a stunt coordinator and medical on hand.”

Louis scratched his nose, distorting the mask again. I waved a hand at him. “So is this like, your only options from now on? Is there a way to get his face back? Because that’s disturbing, no offense.”

“None taken,” said Louis. “I’m not even sure why the thing itches when it’s not there you know? Shit’s weird.”

“Oh, that part’s easy. We’ve just got to feed him enough blood for him to regenerate it himself. I was just trying to hold off on that as a solution in case his curse was one of those that can’t be reversed once you’ve fed on blood the first time. But uh. I don’t think reversing the curse is really on the table from my initial observations. For one thing it’d probably just leave him a corpse.”

“What strain is it, do you know?”

“It’s not one of the obnoxiously contagious ones, at least. There’s a Greek version that has anyone killed by a vampire rise as one. And not just the traditional blood drinking- there’s reports of them pushing someone off a cliff and the corpse at the bottom got up again. And it’s definitely not the New England strain or he’d have felt compelled to attack family.”

“So you’ve managed to find out what kind of vampire he isn’t.”

“Yeah, pretty much. There are way too many kinds of vampires. If I had to guess, it’s a ‘transforms after death' variant, and maybe someone had been slipping the stuff that induces the transformation into his food.”

I had a brainstorm. “Is there any stuff that would trigger a transformation like that, that someone might be selling as poison? Maybe someone was trying to kill him slowly and it not working like expected is why they hired a hitter?”

“Could be,” agreed Lawson. “Any recent changes in your diet, cousin? Something Clara suggested, maybe?”

Louis thought about it. “Not really, no. Just the protein shakes I started taking to get into shape for the play.” He patted his gut, which didn’t look particularly reduced.

Lawson pulled out his phone. “What’s the brand name for those, anyway? Who makes them, do you know?”

“No idea who makes them, but it’s called Ichor.”

I sighed. “That’s just about the on the nose name I expect from someone making a meal shake catering to the magical crowd.”

Lorraine shook her head. “Probably some wizbro outfit. You know, the ones who want to disrupt the traditional spellcasting paradigm.”

Louis looked thoughtful “I think “Disrupting the breakfast paradigm” is literally their slogan.”

Lawson finished his search. “So I may have been right about the gourds.”

“What?”

“The company that makes Ichor’s based in Slovenia, and advertises that all their ingredients are locally sourced. Several of their mixes include pumpkin or watermelon, and the vampiric gourd stories come from that part of the world, so I’m afraid, cousin, you may have been drinking a vampire slurry as part of your daily meal. That’s what set off the transformation after you got killed.”

All of us were quiet for a bit after that. There wasn’t really anything to say in response, which is why everyone started trying to tell their own dumb joke and stepped on their lines and then fell silent again. Lawson sighed. “So did anyone recommend this brand to you? That may have been aware of the issues?”

Louis shook his head. “Not that I can think of. I saw an ad, thought it sounded interested, and ordered a case.

Lawson shook his head. “If this were one of our plays, it wouldn’t be a coincidence, but it’s looking like it might be here.”

“I don’t trust coincidences, but we’ll probably have to set aside him being a vampire as being part of some master plan,” I agreed.

“So what’s our play now, anyway? Do we hand you back to your family? Will that disrupt whatever they’ve got going with the council and the Kathor family?”

Louis shook his head. “Probably not. Dad probably had this in his back pocket ready to go for years as a contingency, in case I couldn’t inherit,and well, I can’t really now, can I?”

On the upside, the time window’s limited for this- assuming it drags out for a few months, your son will have developed mentally enough that your father can’t steal his body, even with the Kathor method, and the council can drag things out for a very long time. They must have something in the works to push it through, we just don’t know what.”

Louis kept tapping his, well, you can’t really call it a chin, since it was missing even before his face got hollowed out, sending ripples through the mask. “Well, he’d probably have some sort of follow up setup. Maybe someone from the Kathors that he bought off to do some sort of false flag attack? Something big and notable that’d also...tie...up...loose...ends.” He trailed off, and looked around at everyone, eyes wide.

“...Um. I think dad may have specifically absolved you and the neighborhood of blame so he could have you all killed and blame the Kathors?”

I had a sinking feeling. “...You’ve definitely had a lot of practice playing detective in our shows. That’s probably how we’d write the twist.”

“It seems like a stretch for something to happen like that in real life, right?” Louis tried to laugh it off and failed. “It’s definitely something he would do, though. I mean, that’s just how the game is played at their level.”

He didn’t sound particularly approving or disapproving, just matter-of-fact.

“He’d give it a little bit- enough time after his press conference to have some plausible deniability and then there’d be an attack, he’d send people to ‘help’ but they wouldn’t get here in time and find evidence that the Kathors did it.” Louis shrugged. “Might just be hours from now. You all have a wrap party when a play ends, right? That’s when he’d do it. If he’s doing it.”

We all looked at each other.

The boss started cursing, and his intercom speaker burned out.