When I was about 10 minutes away from my home, my phone started to vibrate in my pocket. It was the call Emma had promised me earlier.

“Hey Auro.”

“Hey Em.” I smiled. Even though I’d only waved her goodbye not that long ago, her voice made me feel incredibly happy inside.

“Are you outside right now?”

“Yeah, I decided to go on a walk.” I told her I went to the park and about my encounter with the kid.

“So they built a new playground as part of a cover-up?”

“Looks like it.”

“Huh, interesting…” She stayed quiet for a couple of seconds before she continued. “But how are you feeling, after visiting that place again?”

“Honestly, it could’ve been worse. Right when I was getting moody, that kid showed up. Although I wouldn’t dare to claim I’m over it already.”

“I understand. But you are doing fine?”

“Hmm, I’d say so. Nighttime always calms me down anyway.” A black cat with white paws crossed the empty street a couple of meters in front of me, which drew my attention away for a bit.

“... Auro, are you listening?”

“Uh, sorry, I got distracted by a cat.” The cat jumped over a fence and out of sight. “Awh, it’s gone now. What did you say?”

“I told you to try to get some sleep when you get home.”

“Without my two beautiful girlfriends next to me? That’s going to be hard, you know?”

I swear I could hear Emma blush over the telephone line. “D-don’t say things like that out of nowhere!!” I was right, she was definitely blushing.

“Hehe.” I laughed. “I’ll try, I won’t promise anything, though.”

“I guess you are quite lucky to not be exhausted when you don’t sleep.”

“I guess I am, however, I won’t be able to dream about dates with you when I don’t.”

Muffled squealing made its way to my ears, together with some thudding.

“You okay, Em?” I smirked.

I could hear her clear her throat. “A-ahum, y-yeah. B-but I should probably head off now, Karin wants to play a game together for a while before we go to bed…”

“Alright, say hi to her from me.”

“W-will do. Good night Auro.”

“Night night, Em.” I waited for her to hang up the phone and then put it back into my pocket. Right on time for me to start fishing out my keys as I turned the corner of my street.

Once I was finally back inside my house with a kitten rubbing her head against my leg, my phone started to vibrate once more. This time it was Ria who messaged me to have a good night’s sleep as well. Although I was a little bit sad I couldn’t hear her voice as well, having her message me was still enough to put my heart at ease for the time being. I messaged her a good night in return, having to hold myself back to not put one hundred thousand heart emojis at the end of the message. And just like that, when I looked at the time on my phone, it was already midnight.

“Time sure flies, doesn’t it, Shima?” I had taken another glass of blood out of the fridge and had situated myself on the sofa. Shima had spread herself long out over my legs, purring gently as I ran my hand over her back. Some old Italian movie was playing on the television. The national TV-channel programmed things like that quite often on Friday evenings and on the weekend to show that they were trying to bring as much diverse programming to their viewers as possible. Not that it really mattered for me, as I just put it on for some background noise anyway. Between browsing the news and some internet fora and petting Shima I couldn’t keep following it after all.

When Shima decided she had enough pets and wanted to get some actual sleep, she moved away from my lap, stretched, moved to the other sofa and plunked herself down over there in a little ball of fur on top of one of the blankets.

I smiled and stretched my arms. “I should probably try to get some rest too.” I gulped down the last bit of ‘juice’ and got up from the sofa, gave Shima a kiss on her head and made sure all the lights were off before I brushed my teeth and headed to my bedroom. Once I’d crept under the covers, it didn’t take too terribly long for me to doze off. The lingering scent of my girlfriends definitely helped, sending my mind back to the memories of sleeping together the night before. -I guess I truly am the definition of a disaster lesbian… I can’t even sleep without thinking about gay…-

I got woken up by Shima standing on my cheek, mewling in my ear. I lifted her off me and stared at her while she was safely and happily hanging in my hands above me. “Shima, we really need to talk about that, it’s rude to wake people up like that, especially when they are dreaming about wholesome stuff.”

Shima just looked down at me and happily meowed.

“Sure, I’ll get you some more food, you little menace.” I put her down beside me and then got up.

Today was the day of the conclave and now that I was thinking about it, I was getting a little bit nervous. I definitely wasn’t shaking in my boots, but the thought of having a meeting with people who were at least several centuries older than me was quite intimidating. And then there was the entire deal about Ria’s condition that we were going to find out about…

“I wonder how she and Emma are feeling right now…”

The doorbell rang just when I put down Shima’s kibble. It still was a bit early for Emma or Ria to arrive, so it could only be one person.

“Gutenmorgen Aurora.” The mischievous German vampire greeted me once I opened the door.

“Viktor… we need to have a chat about that girl you sent to me yesterday.” I let him in and locked the door behind me.

“I’m sorry, it was just a little joke.”

“A joke, you say?” I was preparing to give him a tap on the shoulder before he suddenly put a box in front of me. “What’s this?”

“My Entschuldigung.”

I took the box out of his hands and opened it. Inside was an automatic cat feeder. I recognized it from a folder about pet accessories from one of the local pet stores as the Amicat 5000. It was one of the collector’s editions that came with a cute gray print covered with the best pink haired comic cat ever.

“Oh, wow! I love this.” I got it out of the box and put it on the table, so I could inspect it more closely. Shima jumped on the table as well to see what this new thing was, and she was quite interested in the box too.

“Since you will be gone for the day, I thought this could be useful.”

“It’s great Vik.” I nodded. “Thanks.”

Viktor smiled.

“But don’t think I’ve forgiven you for that prank yet. I will get you back for that one, one day.”

“Ah, I assumed so, but at least I tried.”

“You sure did.”

I offered Viktor a glass of you-know-what as I tried to figure out how the cat feeder worked from the manual.

“Aren’t you a bit early, the car would arrive here at two o’clock, right?”

“Ja, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t try to kill me when you saw me. That’d have been rather unfortunate if we were pressed to leave.” He gladly accepted the glass of ‘wine’ and took a sip.

“I guess that’s true.”

“But Aurora, how are you feeling now that you have been drinking this for a while?” He swirled his glass around for a second. “Don’t have too many reservations anymore?”

“It’s been helpful… and I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it either.”

“I’m glad to hear that, and have you been feeding normally as well?”

His follow-up question immediately started to make me blush. “T-t-that’s n-none of your business.”

“You should work on your poker face, werte Dame.” Viktor smirked and took another drink from his glass.

I started walking towards my bedroom, which prompted yet another reply from Viktor.

“Aurora, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to get my baseball bat to ruffle a certain vampire’s feathers a bit.”

“W-wait, Aurora!”

In the end, Viktor managed to persuade me to not play some whack-a-vampire by bribing me with a couple more promised bottles of ‘tomato juice’ and the promise to introduce me to his merchants, so I could get a safe from someone who wouldn’t sell me out or find me suspicious. We also talked a bit about real estate agents, just so I could inform myself if I ever wanted to buy a new house somewhere. And just like that, it was time for me to prepare myself and the house for my trip to the conclave.

Shima was happy with her new feeder and was already taking some nibbles from her dry cat food that just got dispensed, and I was getting excited to see my girlfriends again.

Sadly, the bag I was going to take along was a bit too small for my baseball bat though, to the relief of Viktor.