Chapter 2: The House That Drips
The van dropped me at the curb at 11:47 PM.
I knew this because the system had helpfully added a clock to my HUD, sitting just below the VEP counter like a production assistant's call time reminder. Helpful. Aggressively so.
The house looked exactly like it did on television, which was somehow more disorienting than if it had looked completely different. Victorian architecture that had given up on being maintained sometime around the Eisenhower administration. Windows that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. A front yard that had evolved past lawn into something more accurately described as "botanical resentment."
The Council van pulled away without ceremony. No escort. No instructions beyond the paperwork in my hand — a single sheet with a Council seal and my new designation: FAMILIAR (PROVISIONAL), RESIDENCE 447-B, NANDOR THE RELENTLESS (PRIMARY), DURATION: INDEFINITE.
I looked at the paper. Then at the house. Then at the tutorial prompt still patiently blinking in the corner of my vision.
"Okay," I said quietly. "Fine."
[TUTORIAL ACTIVATED]
Information cascaded through my brain in neat, digestible sections. The Supernatural Documentary Production System. An interdimensional audience. Viewer Engagement Points as currency. Abilities that scaled with drama.
I was a television show. My life was content. The system would reward me for being entertaining and punish me for being boring.
Makes about as much sense as anything else tonight.
I skimmed the ability descriptions. Confessional Cam — pause time to speak to camera and access options. Episode Rating — season progression tied to narrative arcs. Familiar Feature — apparently I could eventually recruit a supporting cast. Sponsored Segments. Blooper Reels.
All locked. All Stage 1. All useless until I had more VEP and more experience.
[TUTORIAL COMPLETE. BASIC FUNCTIONS AVAILABLE. ADVANCED FEATURES UNLOCK WITH PROGRESSION.]
[CURRENT STATUS: PILOT EPISODE COMPLETE. SEASON 1, EPISODE 1 BEGINS.]
I closed the tutorial and looked at the house again.
Three steps to the front door. I counted them as I climbed, feeling the old wood creak under feet that still didn't feel like mine.
The doorbell didn't work. Of course it didn't.
I knocked.
Footsteps approached. Quick, efficient, the walk of someone who was used to answering doors and resenting it. The door opened.
Guillermo de la Cruz stood in the doorway. Shorter than I expected — television adds height, apparently — wearing a familiar sweater vest over a button-down shirt, glasses slightly askew. His expression shifted through several phases in about two seconds: surprise, confusion, suspicion, and something that might have been territorial concern.
"Can I help you?"
"Hi." I held up the Council paperwork. "I'm the new familiar."
The suspicion intensified.
"We don't have a new familiar."
"You do now." I offered what I hoped was a disarming smile. "The Council assigned me. There should have been a filing."
Guillermo took the paper. Read it. Read it again. His jaw tightened in a way that suggested the Council's filing system had once again failed to coordinate with anyone affected by its decisions.
"Nobody told us," he said.
"Nobody told me either, until about three hours ago. But here we are."
He looked at me. Really looked, the way someone sizes up a potential threat or a potential ally and isn't sure which category applies. I kept my posture open. Non-threatening. Helpful human disaster who needed direction.
"Come in," he said finally.
[+6 VEP: THRESHOLD CROSSED]
The interior of the house hit me in layers. First the smell — old dust, older blood, and something floral that might have been attempting to mask the first two and failing spectacularly. Then the visuals — centuries of accumulated objects, furniture from at least five different eras arranged with no apparent organizing principle, paintings of subjects who were definitely dead and possibly watching.
"Wait here," Guillermo said. "I'll get them."
He disappeared up a staircase that looked structurally ambitious. I stood in the entryway and let myself look.
The fancy room is through there. Colin's basement access is behind the kitchen. The coffins are upstairs, second floor, the room with the heavy curtains.
Meta-knowledge. Still accurate, as far as I could tell.
The question was how long that would last.
Footsteps on the stairs. Multiple sets. The vampires were coming.
Nandor descended first, cape trailing behind him with the gravity of someone who had practiced that entrance for several hundred years. Dark hair, elaborate facial hair, the bearing of a warlord who had conquered nations and now couldn't figure out how to use a smartphone.
"Who is this little man?" Nandor asked.
"New familiar," Guillermo said from behind him. "The Council sent him."
"I did not request a new familiar." Nandor peered at me with open suspicion. "Guillermo is my familiar. I have one already."
"A household familiar," I said. "For general duties. Not a replacement."
Nadja appeared next, descending with considerably more grace than Nandor. Dark hair, sharp features, an expression that suggested she had been interrupted from something more interesting.
"The Council sent us a present? How unusual. They normally only send us complaints."
"Or auditors," added a voice from behind her. Laszlo Cravensworth emerged from a side room rather than the stairs, holding what appeared to be a human skull with candle wax dripping from its eye sockets. "The last auditor was very boring. Colin drained him completely and he still wouldn't leave."
"The auditor or Colin?"
"Both, actually."
[+8 VEP: COMEDIC ENSEMBLE MOMENT]
They arranged themselves in what I recognized as the fancy room — the formal receiving area for guests, distinguished from the regular living room by slightly less dust and significantly more portraits of dead people.
Nandor sat. Nadja stood. Laszlo continued to examine his skull. Guillermo positioned himself behind Nandor's chair like a bodyguard or a shadow, watching me with undiminished wariness.
"So," Nadja said. "What can you do?"
"I was in television production," I said. "Logistics. Scheduling. Problem-solving. I'm good at making things run smoothly."
"We do not have a television," Nandor said.
"That's not—" I caught myself. "I meant I'm experienced at organizing complex situations with difficult personalities under pressure."
Laszlo looked up from his skull.
"Did you just call us difficult personalities?"
"I called you complex," I said. "The difficulty was implied."
Silence. I had maybe three seconds to determine if that was funny or suicidal.
Laszlo laughed. A deep, genuine bark of amusement that echoed off the walls.
"Oh, I like this one," he said. "He's got spirit. The last familiar was terribly dull."
"You ate the last familiar," Nadja reminded him.
"Yes, well, that's what I mean. Dull flavor, too."
[+12 VEP: SOCIAL NAVIGATION SUCCESS]
The interview — if you could call it that — continued for another twenty minutes. They asked about my experience, which I made up on the spot using a combination of my actual production background and creative interpretation. They asked about my willingness to handle unpleasant tasks, which I confirmed enthusiastically. They asked if I was afraid of vampires.
"Afraid?" I considered the question honestly. "You're apex predators who've lived for centuries. It would be stupid not to be aware of the danger. But fear implies I think you're going to hurt me unprovoked, and you've been nothing but hospitable."
Nandor made a pleased sound. Nadja looked mildly impressed. Laszlo went back to his skull.
"He can stay," Nadja decided. "On a trial basis. Guillermo will show him his quarters."
Guillermo's expression suggested he would rather show me the door, but he nodded.
"Follow me."
The quarters turned out to be a supply closet. An actual supply closet, converted into a bedroom with the addition of a small cot, a single bare lightbulb, and what might generously be called ventilation.
"It's not much," Guillermo said, and I couldn't tell if there was satisfaction in his voice or guilt.
"It's fine." I meant it. I'd slept in worse places on overnight shoots. "Better than the alternative."
He paused at the door.
"The alternative being?"
"Council execution chamber."
That got a reaction. A flicker of something — surprise, maybe, or recalculation.
"Why were you being executed?"
"I don't actually know." True. "Woke up mid-trial. Didn't get the briefing."
Guillermo studied me for a long moment.
"Nobody ends up in front of the Council for nothing."
"Probably not," I agreed. "But whatever I did, I'm here now. And I'd rather be useful than dead."
He didn't respond. Just watched me for another beat, then left, closing the door behind him.
I sat on the cot. Felt the springs protest. Looked around at my new life.
A converted supply closet in a vampire house in Staten Island. A body I didn't recognize. A system that wanted me to be entertaining. A household full of creatures who could kill me without effort if I became inconvenient.
"Okay," I said to the invisible camera, because apparently I had an audience now. "Day one. We survived day one."
[+4 VEP: CONFESSIONAL MOMENT]
I could see the HUD in my peripheral vision. VEP: 76/100. Health bar full. Tutorial completed.
Time to figure out who I used to be.
But first, I needed to make myself indispensable.
In the hallway, I heard movement. Through the thin walls, Guillermo's footsteps. Pausing near something.
I knew what he was passing. A hidden panel in the hallway baseboard. Behind it, a crossbow, wooden stakes, and several other implements that didn't belong to a familiar who just wanted to become a vampire someday.
I said nothing about it.
[+12 VEP: DRAMATIC IRONY BONUS]
The crossbow stayed hidden. Guillermo walked on. And I sat in my supply closet, reading my system manual by the light of a bare bulb, while somewhere in the house above me, centuries-old monsters went about their evening.
The system's first line glowed in my vision:
[CONGRATULATIONS — YOUR SHOW HAS BEEN GREENLIT.]
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