Ivy clasped her resume nervously to her chest, her clammy hands threatening to sweat through the paper. It was a hot summer's evening and she was desperate, desperate for a job. Rent was due and the last dregs of her savings had only just stretched to cover her power and phone bill. If she didn't get a job today, she was proper fucked. After hours of tramping through town, applying at various places and being turned down at almost all of them, she arrived at a place of last resort.

'Help Wanted' the sign said. It hung in the window of a contemporary grungy coffee shop, one with the words 'Coffee Wrex' written on the awning in distressed text. The whole shop frontage had been painted black then treated so that the grain of the wood still showed through darkly. It was a vortex of sweet smelling darkness on the High Street and though Ivy had never entered it herself, being far too poor to afford superfluous luxuries like coffee from a coffee store, she'd always been somehow drawn to the place.

It was dark out, but the interior of the shop was lit with a cozy glow that put Ivy in mind of candlelight. Peering through the slightly swirled glass panes of the shop door, she saw that the place was largely empty aside from a couple of customers lining up for coffee.

Help Wanted. Ivy bit her lower lip nervously. Her degree in Classical Studies hadn't gotten her anywhere, but Ivy had seen a coffee machine once and she was pretty sure she could figure out how to use one.

She pressed open the dark door and stepped inside. It was more pleasant than she'd expected. Instead of being tacky and filthy, the wooden floors were well polished and the tables clearly saw a good wiping down fairly often. There was a slight hint of incense in the air, but it was innocuous, not like the sticks her old roommates used to light that gave her headaches.

The customers were still at the counter so she hung back, waiting patiently as the line dwindled. As she waited, her eyes were drawn to the man serving the customers and making their coffee. He was working by himself and he was probably busy, but he seemed perfectly calm and in control as he expertly drew off cup after cup of designer coffee.

He was probably in his early thirties and he had a presence that drew every eye in the place to him. Imposing, that's what he was, Ivy thought to herself, though she couldn't quite figure out why. He was tall, but not so tall as to be noteworthy, and though he appeared to be well built he was certainly no body builder. No, it wasn't his physical presence that made it almost impossible for her to take her eyes off him. He was dressed simply in a short sleeved black button down shirt and black jeans. It certainly wasn't his clothing that drew her attention either.

Maybe it was the tattoos on his right bicep. Ivy found her gaze drawn to those, they weren't your typical tattoos of dragons and barbed wire and tribal symbols, instead they appeared to be religious in origin. A multi-limbed goddess took pride of place on the hard muscle of his bicep and Ivy found herself squinting to see it better.

The sound of the barista clearing his throat brought her eyes up to his face where she met his deep gaze. She'd been caught staring. With a barely muffled squeak she leaped back behind the last customer in front of her and did her best to pretend that nothing had happened. As the customer droned his order however, Ivy's curiosity got the better of her and she found herself peeking around the customer to get a better sense of the man.

He was undeniably attractive with a hard, square jaw and large brown eyes surrounded by long dark lashes and set in milk coffee skin that was pleasing indeed. His hair was longish, just brushing the top of his collar and dark as night.

Finally the customer in front of her received his coffee and Ivy found herself called before the barista's bench.

“What can I get for you?”

The wicked eyes fell on her and for a moment, she was tongue tied.

“I … er... I...”

The man, wearing a name tag Ivy now saw read 'Jon' looked at her expectantly.

“A um.. flat white please,” she stammered.

Why had she done that? Why hadn't she just asked about the help wanted sign? She didn't have money for coffee!

Her heart thudded in her chest as he nodded and began brewing her coffee. Frantically, Ivy scavenged about in her purse, hoping that she would have enough to cover the coffee. With an inward sigh of relief she pulled out a few crumpled dollars. She'd be walking home, but at least she wouldn't have embarrassed herself.

“There you go,” he slid her the coffee with a professionally polite smile.

“Thank you,” Ivy handed over her precious last few dollars and retreated to a corner of the coffee shop to enjoy the hell out of the caffeine buzz that was going to have to get her home.

Sitting in the shadowy corner she savored the scent of the brew, which was beautifully made and moped to herself for a bit. 'Suck it up, Ivy,' she lectured herself quietly. 'Just go and ask.'

She didn't just ask though, not for a long time. For a long time she sat, pretending to drink her coffee, watching Jon out of the corner of her eye.

It wasn't until long past midnight when every customer in the place had left and the barista started going through the motions of closing up the shop that she approached him timidly. He was busily wiping down the counter with something of a frown on his face, as if he were thinking very deeply about something that concerned him.

“Excuse me?”

“What can I do for you?” He looked up, his expression clearing as he looked at her.

“The sign in the window...” Ivy pointed towards it, as if he might not know what she was talking about.

“Yeah?” Jon leaned against the counter and looked at Ivy with his arms folded across his chest, a friendly expression on his face.

“Well I'm.. I mean.. I could be help.”

Jon's pierced brow rose ever so slightly at her, as if he didn't quite believe that she could be of help to anyone. “Know how to make coffee?”

“Yes,” Ivy lied.

“Show me,” he stepped back, allowing her space to get behind the counter and swept his arm in the direction of the machine.

“Okay,” Ivy agreed, approaching the coffee machine. She didn't know the machine from a flight deck, but she had a plan. Ordinarily she wouldn't have tried bluffing her way into a job, but desperate times and desperate measures and all that.

“Oh,” she said when she was in arm's reach of the monstrosity, which appeared to be all knobs and pipes. “This is a slightly different model from the last one I used. Maybe you could show me how you use this one?”

Jon shot her an incredulous look. “It's the standard layout.”

“Oh, well, yes, I suppose it is,” Ivy said agreeably. “Well I suppose...”

She picked up a cup and placed it under what looked like a nozzle then selected a button at random and pressed it. With a horrid scream that sounded like beasts being unleashed from the underworld, a cloud of steam billowed around her. Ivy shrieked in surprise and leaped back, closing her eyes tightly, as if closing her eyes would protect her from the havoc she'd unleashed.

When the ringing in her ears subsided, she realized that someone was laughing. It was Jon. Deep rumbling laughter rolled out of him as he bent over, half doubled with mirth.

“I'm so sorry!” Ivy spluttered. “I don't know...”

“That's obvious,” Jon straightened, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye. “Why would you lie about knowing how to make coffee?”

“Because I need a job,” Ivy confessed, feeling thoroughly stupid and embarrassed.

“I see,” Jon said, becoming serious. “Well if you are looking for a job, did you bring a resume?”

“Yes!” Ivy thrust her resume towards him. It was now crumpled and translucent in some places from where the steam had hit it. She tried straightening it out before she handed to him, but she only succeeded in spreading brown muck from coffee grounds across the header.

He took the piece of paper and perused it. She saw a muscle in his cheek twitching and hoped against hope he might give her a chance.

Jon glanced over the battered piece of paper at the young woman in front of him. He'd felt her from the moment she'd timidly paused outside on the street, clutching her ragged resume and battling with herself as to whether she should go in or not. He wasn't quite sure what made him notice her, in many respects she was entirely unremarkable.

Standing in front of him with her feet slightly pigeon toed, she looked pale and uncomfortable. She was dressed badly, but she had pretty eyes behind her large spectacles which were still slightly steamed from her run in with the coffee machine. He could smell her fear. She was trying to hide it, but the stink of desperation was thick about her.

What was her name? She hadn't introduced herself in all her stammering. Ivy, he read on the resume. A pretty name. An old name too. He approved.

“Classics eh,” he rubbed his chin as he read the rest of resume. “I went for Anthropology.”

She smiled uncomfortably, and he wondered if anyone so awkward could make it in a coffee shop like his that often attracted an edgier clientele. Still, she'd been at least willing to give the machine a go. That took spunk, and he liked spunk. He wondered how much more of it she would have when she was not so clearly afraid.

“Okay, you've got yourself a trial.”

Her smile would have lit up a cavern. “Really?”

“Really,” he said, handing her resume back to her. “Be here tomorrow night, at 8.”

“I will be. Thank you so much!”

He smiled at her. “Aren't you even going to ask what the pay is?”

She gave him a blank look and then he pretty much saw the light bulb go on over her head. “Oh, yes!”

“11.50, plus tips.”

“Oh that's good!” Her happy beam was priceless.

Jon chuckled inwardly. Oh for the days when a few dollars an hour seemed like riches beyond his wildest dreams. No doubt about it, they were more innocent times.

“Okay, I will be here tomorrow, thank you again!” Ivy burbled happily.

“You're welcome Ivy,” he held out his hand. She put her pale, cool mitt in his and he clasped it warmly. As he pressed the flesh of her hand against his, as a shock ran through him, tugging at parts of his mind. There was something odd about this girl, something very odd indeed. He watched her turn and almost bounce out of the coffee shop into the darkness of the night, happy and innocent as a lamb in spring time.



A job, a new job! It was as good as a new life as far as Ivy was concerned. She was fizzing with excitement as she walked home. It almost didn't matter that she had a good five miles or so to walk home. She had a job!

The night was a dark one, the cloud cover was thick, which meant that she had to rely on the streetlights, which were not well maintained at all. Rushing between spots of light, her stomach began to growl. She was getting hungry.

Up ahead, she saw a spark of light. It came from a lighter. On the street corner there was a group of young men milling around aimlessly. She heard the rumble of rough desire mixed with angry rejection from them. Young men were often strange, they wanted nothing more than to fuck, but they also hated the people they wanted to fuck. It was as if they hated their own drive for pleasure and blamed the women around them for it.

“Hey!” One of them yelled out as she passed.

She put her head down and kept moving quickly. There was still a good mile or two to get home, she didn't have time for this. Her stomach rumbled again, reminding her that she hadn't eaten properly in a couple of days.

They were following her. She could hear their shuffling footsteps, the little sniggers. Her heart began to race. They were keeping their distance, but she felt their intent keenly. Like a pack of dogs, they were pursuing her for sport and perhaps for something else too.

As she drew closer to residential areas, they made their move. Laughing like jackals they raced forward and surrounded her. The leader, an ugly youth with jug ears leered at her horridly.

“What's your problem, bitch? Why don't you say hello?”

“I'm sorry, I was.. thinking...” Ivy stammered.

“I'll give you something to think about,” he said, crudely grasping at his crotch. The others laughed as he advanced on her. She retreated, keenly aware that she was being herded back to the darker reaches of the less populated part of town.

“Please, let me go,” she begged. She didn't want this, not now. This was not a good time. She was hungry, too hungry.

“We'll let you go when we're done with you.”

There was a cruel light in the young man's eyes, and his face carried the expression of one who is accustomed to preying on the weak. He was smirking, already so sure that he had her where he wanted her.

She regretted that she wasn't able to see the moment his expression turned from triumph to terror as she lunged at him, pressed past the point of forbearance. She grasped him with a strength that belied her fragile frame as her fangs sliced forward, cutting into the precious artery. She felt the blood rush into her mouth, pumped at full volume by a terrified heart.

Screams were all around her, not from her victim, his cry was quickly cut off as she gripped his throat with superhuman strength. His friends, seeing their leader cut down quickly and cleanly by a predator who masqueraded as one of them, took to their heels and fled, crying the whole way.

Ivy heard their shouts receding down the street as her victim's blood flowed into her, warming her, nourishing her. She felt her body begin to hum with life even as the thug's leeched from him. When she had taken her fill and he was limp in her arms on the verge of existence, she laid him in long grass beside a factory.

“Remember, you too are prey,” she whispered into his ear before taking off into the night at speeds faster than the eye could detect. Now that she had fed, her powers were temporarily restored. She was at her home almost in the blink of an eye.

The night held one more surprise for her however. On arrival, she was surprised to see a familiar figure waiting for her in the lobby of her apartment.

“Jon?”

“Hello Ivy,” he spoke casually, as if it were quite natural for a new boss to show up at his employee's home hours after employing her.

“Is something wrong?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he said smoothly, looking around his surroundings with a distasteful eye. “You really live here?”

“Yes,” Ivy replied simply, fishing in her bag for her apartment key. “Would you like to come up?”

“Please.”

He spoke grimly. Ivy shot him an inquiring stare, but he clearly wasn't going to elaborate on his displeasure there in the lobby with the peeling paint and the stained carpet that smelled of a myriad of body odors.

She felt his presence behind her, large and angry as she ascended the stairs. What bothered him she couldn't say, but he was certainly holding his anger in well. If she hadn't been so sensitive to the emotions of others, she would perhaps have mistaken this for a friendly, albeit strange visit.

Once inside her apartment, he paced back and forth like a caged animal. It was clear that he didn't feel comfortable in her little bedsit. She thought it was nice enough. It was clean-ish and there was very little furniture to clutter it.

“What is wrong?”

She asked the question directly, though her heart was in her throat. Perhaps he had decided that she couldn't work for him after all.

“I saw you.” He faced her for the first time and glared at her quite angrily.

“You saw me? Yes, I was in your store.” Perhaps he had some sort of dissociative disorder, perhaps he was broken mentally. She didn't sense instability in him, but her senses had been off for a while.

“No,” he walked towards her, his jaw set sternly. “I saw you. On the side of the road. Killing a man.”

“Oh I didn't kill him,” she reassured him. Her mind raced as her heart sank. How could she explain this away? There was no way he would allow her to work in his store now he'd seen her feasting on the living flesh of a human being. Flesh eating experience was totally undervalued in entry level employees.

He shook his head at her. “That is not the point. On the street. In full view of others, without so much as attempting to cloud their minds!” He was looming over her now, shaking his finger at her as if she were a kid who had committed some gross misbehavior.

“Wait...” Realization was settling in. He wasn't concerned about the bloody attack. He was concerned that someone else might have seen it. She stared at him for a long moment as the pieces mentally fell into place. He was not a normal man. He was a creature like her. A blood drinker, a vampire. “I didn't feel you there...”

“No, because you are sloppy,” he said curtly. “Whoever made you was remiss in their duty to educate you.”

Torn between the desire to keep her new job and anger at this man who dared walk into her life and lecture her without knowing the first thing about her, Ivy gritted her teeth.

“My maker is dead.”

“Oh,” Jon replied, brought up short by that news. “What happened?”

“A hunter,” Ivy replied coldly, avoiding his gaze now. She did not want his pity.

He nodded, taking that information in. “How long after you were created?”

Ivy growled quietly. She found the questions invasive. She did not like questions as a rule. “Are you here to tell me that I no longer have a job with you?”

He took a deep breath. “I am here to tell you that you were seen. I saw you. You cannot allow yourself to be seen.”

Ivy shrugged. “Sorry. It wasn't planned. They attacked me.”

His gaze grew darker still. “Because you let them! Why were you walking home so slowly?”

“I was hungry and weak. I could not move at my usual speed.” As the questioning continued, Ivy began to grow more incensed. Who was he to bluster into her home and start questioning and lecturing her?

“Why did you not drive, or at least take a cab?” The questioning continued unabated.

“For the same reason I applied to work in a coffee shop,” she said tersely. “I have no money.”

Confusion was written all over his handsome face. She knew why he was confused. Poor vampires were rare. Long lineages meant money. Ivy's lineage had been cut short abruptly and she had been left penniless.



Jon looked around at the sorry little hovel. This was not suitable. This was not suitable at all. The rage that had consumed him when he saw Ivy feeding on the side of the road like an alley cat was almost gone. What was left of it was now directed at whoever had left this fledgling vampire on her own to crash about the world without a clue how to handle herself. They had been grossly negligent, dead or not.

“You sleep here?”

She shook her head and he looked at her askance. It was clear that she did not feed often. Those who did not feed became tired and vulnerable. She had to sleep somewhere.

“Do not lie to me, Ivy.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Yes, I sleep here.”

“Where?”

She pointed to the dingy lump of upholstery that could have been alive itself at one point. “On the couch.”

He swallowed another wave of outrage and managed to speak calmly. “You mean to tell me that you sleep here, in this room, protected by nothing but a shoddy plywood door?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugged again. “What's it to you?”

Jon's brows rose skyward. “Don't give me attitude, girl. I am not some petty human. I will not be disrespected.”

Her gaze dropped to the ground and she shifted uncomfortably in front of him. “Sorry,” she muttered.

“This isn't acceptable,” he lectured.

“I said I was sorry,” she exclaimed.

“Not that, though you would do well to watch how you speak to others. This place. It's not acceptable.”

“Because it's not a coffee shop?”

Jon growled. Her pert attitude was becoming tiresome. “Because it's not safe.”

“Life's not safe,” she replied cavalierly.

“You are not alive,” he reminded her.

“Look,” she said, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “I'm tired. Do you still want me to work for you or not?”

“If I say not, what will you do then? Be evicted from here and sleep in dumpsters during the day?” He heard the derisiveness in his tone, but really, the situation was so far from tenable it wasn't funny.

For a moment she looked angry. Very angry. Then her face fell and he saw that he had hurt her with his harsh words of judgment.

“I'm sorry,” he said more gently. “I am simply concerned. I would like you to work at the shop. Consider this an advance.” He fished into his wallet, pulled out ten crisp hundred dollar bills and placed them on the marked old counter top.

Ivy's eyes went wide like saucers behind the silly glasses he was now sure she did not need. “What's that for?”

“Get yourself a decent place to live.”

“That's very generous of you,” Ivy said, drawing herself up stiffly in a way that told Jon she was going to be difficult about this. “But I like where I live, and I can pay my own way.”

He felt his jaw clench in frustration. She had no comprehension of the danger she was putting herself in, or of how to be a vampire at all. The apartment spoke to that quite clearly. The couch was facing away from the curtains towards the front door and was covered with a blanket. He guessed that her method of escaping the sun's rays probably involved climbing onto the couch and covering herself with the blanket until the sun went down each day.

She was looking at him uncertainly as his eyes passed disbelievingly around the room for the nth time. He could feel her fear again. She wanted the job, but she didn't want his charity. Looking at her face, he saw that she must have been fairly young when she was turned, perhaps nineteen or twenty years old. He doubted she had been vampire for all that long. Oh the folly of youth. She thought she knew it all, this vampire who lived as if she were still a mortal.

“Very well,” he said, relenting for the moment. “I will see you at eight.” He left before he could totally shred her dignity.