1
FUNERALS FOR SQUIRRELS
BRENNAN’S JOURNAL
For plausible deniability purposes, everything contained in this journal is hypothetical, theoretical, and/or fictional. Yep.
Questions
- Who turned me?
- Blood: Animal? Human? How much? How often? Regular food, too?
- Other vampires? Other supernatural???
- Nocturnal? Sleep?
- Garlic? Sunlight? Silver? Holy water?
- Sparkles?????
- IMMORTALITY???????
It took Brennan Brooks forty-eight hours, six coffees, and approximately eight thousand pages of reading to come to the conclusion that there were too many goddamn books about vampires, and none of them came with an instruction manual.
In the far corner on the “silent study” third floor of Folz Library, Brennan sat on the carpet in the folklore and mythology aisle at the center of a tornado of books, stacks rising up into towers. He wore a flannel over an old band T-shirt and was currently testing whether vampires needed sleep or needed to shower by—you guessed it—neither sleeping nor showering. Signs pointed toward not needing sleep and desperately needing a shower, but more observation would be needed.
In Brennan’s experience, there were no problems that books didn’t have answers for. Unfortunately, being turned into a vampire during an accident you didn’t fully remember did not have its own For Dummies manual.
But Brennan had no trouble sinking into a fog of research, lost in a book about vampirism in Serbia and Bulgaria, which was fascinating but ultimately useless. His throat burned with a persistent thirst, his head throbbed, and every sound and smell was like a tidal wave. The soft snoring of some poor soul already behind on work for the semester was like a chain saw, the rhythmic squeak of a library cart like a piercing alarm, footsteps coming to a stop—
A shadow darkened the text and Brennan squinted upward, blinking away the dissonance of being rudely ripped back to reality.
“If you don’t mind my saying so” came a rich Southern lilt, light with amusement, “I think you’re missing a few key texts in the genre.”
Standing at the end of the aisle with a library cart, a guy arched a brow. Brennan processed what he must be seeing. The mess of books, not subtle in their titles of The Vampyre, Vampires and Vampirism, Les Vampires, The Legend & Romance of the Vampire, a dozen other things featuring the words “vampire,” “blood,” “monsters,” and so on. Brennan half-heartedly covered the book he was reading with an arm and blinked up at the fluorescent lights.
“Um, what?” Brennan said.
“Vampires, yeah?”
The boy had curly brown hair, delicate features disrupted by bushy brows, and light skin a bit more tanned than Brennan’s ghastly pale. He smiled, encouraging, and it was familiar. Brennan couldn’t place it. They must have had a class together, or crossed paths on campus. He looked like if Timothée Chalamet had a less punchable face. Maybe that was it?
Brennan squinted at the guy. “You have recommendations?” His voice was scratchy, his mouth dry. He was thirsty again. He cleared his throat.
The boy kept smiling, but it was sly. “It looks like you’re lacking in the trashy YA romance department. No Twilight Saga? Or have you already read it?”
Brennan deflated and avoided rolling his eyes, narrowly.
“No, I have not. I don’t think that will help with this particular project. Thanks, though.” He returned his attention to his pile of destruction.
He meant it as dismissal, but the boy left the cart at the end of the aisle and crossed toward Brennan and the stacks of books between them. He wore a ringer T-shirt with the logo for a coffee roastery, and the bitter, nutty smell of espresso lingered on him. He had one AirPod hanging from his ear, buzzing with some indie-sounding music Brennan could hear but didn’t recognize. He smelled too good to be normal, which meant Brennan was really thirsty.
“Come on, where’s The Vampire Diaries? Vampire Academy? House of Night?” he continued, and at Brennan’s increasingly blank look, added, “Or at least—Interview with the Vampire?”
“Okay, I have read Anne Rice,” Brennan defended himself. “But I don’t think half-naked werewolf love triangles are going to help me right now.”
“Fine, if you don’t do it for the research, do it for the experience.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brennan said, and didn’t bother hiding his amusement.
Brennan took in the brown curls, the freckles, and once again it niggled at the back of his brain that he’d seen the kid before—spoken to him, even. The memory was barely evading his grasp, like a dream slipping away as the morning alarm went off.
As soon as Brennan turned on the scrutiny, the boy straightened up and took a step back, pink spreading over his cheeks. “Gosh, here you are trying to work and I’m prattling on about Twilight and distracting you.”
“No, it’s okay,” Brennan caught himself saying, then shut his mouth with an audible click.
Really, he shouldn’t be encouraging this—distraction. He had work to do, questions to answer, and none of that would be helped by an (admittedly cute) boy talking to him about Twilight. No, no, nope.
While Brennan debated how to politely tell the boy to leave him alone until he figured out whether he was at risk of snapping and murdering someone, the rhythmic sound of high-heeled footsteps approached.
A girl with a pencil skirt, heels, massive dangling earrings, and blue hair came to a stop and leaned around the edges of the bookshelves.
“Cole, we have a homesick freshman situation in 202B and I’m really not equipped for these things like you are,” she said.
The boy—Cole, though the name didn’t answer the tugging question of familiarity—straightened, whirled around with the energy of Brennan who?, and gave the girl his full attention.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it. Will you put on the kettle? I’ll be down in a minute.”
The girl nodded with relief and strode back the way she came.
And that was when Brennan realized why Cole was so fucking familiar.
“You’re the Hot Library Blanket Guy!” Brennan said. Then he wanted to sink into the ground and let the earth reclaim him.
Cole winced and then put on a tight, polite smile. “I think technically the adjective used in the Sturbridge U memes group is ‘cute,’ but … yep. That’s, uh, that’s me.”
Brennan was mortified, but heat didn’t flood to his cheeks like normal. Did he even blush anymore? His pen was still in his hand, the notebook in his lap. He jotted his question down.
Cole’s eyes—brown, Brennan noted—flitted between Brennan and the notebook. His lips pinched inward. He smoothed his shirt, and the smell of roasted espresso wafted toward Brennan.
“Sorry,” Brennan said. “I’m easily distracted. I just—” He paused, unsure. “We talked once. I knew I recognized you somehow. It was a while ago, I don’t know if you even—”
“I remember,” Cole said. He gathered the books he’d set aside and propped them on his hip. “Of course I do. But, look, let me let you get back to your thing. Blanket duty calls.” ...
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