Free Fang Girl by Helen Keeble

of What We Do When Unexpected Company Appears had kicked in. “I made tea,” she said, putting the tray down on the coffee table. “Milk? Sugar?”
    “Mum,” I said, just as Ebon said, “Yes, thank you, ma’am.” I’d never seen anyone accept a cup of tea so gratefully. As we all watched in fascination, he gulped down a mouthful as though doing a shot of vodka. Catching our eyes over the rim of the mug, he flushed, lowered the cup, and stared down into the tea as if divining the future.
    “So … Ebon.” Mum sounded as if she was grilling a particularly hapless PhD student on his dissertation. She even had a pad of paper balanced on her knee, a mechanical pencil poised to take notes. “Tell us about yourself. How old are you?”
    “The years of my life numbered one-and-twenty, madame.” He had both hands wrapped round his teacup, like a boy clutching a teddy bear, but his voice was velvet-smooth again. “But the years of my unlife span considerably longer. I was born in Paris in 1770.”
    The point of my mother’s pencil snapped. The silence was so thick I could hear my parents’ hearts beating.
    “Oh,” Zack said, sounding disappointed. “I hoped you were a Victorian.”
    We all stared at him, nonplussed.
    “What?” he said, looking around at us. “Then he could have helped me make some period trousers. Allthe steampunks would have thought that was awesome.”
    “Steam … punks?” Ebon said.
    “Don’t ask,” I advised him. “Really.”
    “Ebon?” Dad said. “How long do vampires live?”
    Ebon turned one hand palm up, spreading his fingers. “Until we are killed.” He leaned forward, his pale blue eyes intent. “Which is why I have come. There are those in the world who hate and fear our kind, and seek out any newly emerged member of our race. They attempt to slay us in our infancy, before we know how to protect ourselves. And as you have found, Xanthe, they are already here.”
    Mum stiffened. “As you have found?” she repeated, shooting me a narrow-eyed glance of suspicion.
    I avoided her gaze. I hadn’t felt the need to share the full details of the night’s events with my parents. “I, uh, kind of ran across a few of them. Only briefly. I was perfectly fine! No danger at all, really!”
    “Terrible danger,” Ebon corrected, supremely unhelpful. “The hunters are a hereditary secret brotherhood, intent on eradicating the Blood from the earth. Throughout the centuries their fanatics have hunted down and slain many of us.”
    “Well, to be fair,” Zack said reasonably, “you arebloodsucking, undead monsters.”
    “Hey!” I slapped him on the back of his head as Mum said, “ Manners , James!”
    “I cannot condemn you for holding that opinion, young master.” Ebon shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting. “The hunters have carefully cultivated lies about my kind for uncounted centuries, and the fruit of that harvest is fear and hatred.” He gestured in my direction. “As you have discovered, in truth we wish only to live in peace, taking nothing that is not freely given by those who love us. But the hunters care not that we do no harm. They see us as animals, to be hunted for sport.”
    “Huh,” I said, frowning. “Great. As if I need another group of people out there wanting to kill me.”
    “Xanthe Jane Greene.” Dad’s parental sixth sense had obviously just pinged into the red. “What do you mean, another group?”
    That’s right—with all the excitement, I still hadn’t gotten round to filling my parents in on last night’s conversation. “I got that call from my sire,” I told them. “Lily. But she wasn’t worried about hunters. She said that the real danger is this evil, ancient vampire named Hakon.”
    “Ah,” said Ebon, clearing his throat. “If I may?”
    From my mum’s and dad’s faces, we were two seconds away from complete parental explosion. I charged on in an attempt to defuse the bomb. “Because, you see, they’ve got this