Blair POV.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, clean and in fresh clothes; jeans and a plain red t-shirt, Zacky was stood in my room. He turned to face me as I shut the door.
“Hey.” I greeted, smiling slightly. He smiled back.
“Hey, how’d you sleep?”
“Well thanks.” He nodded.
“Good. You want something to eat?” My stomach grumbled in response to the mention of food. Zacky laughed. “Come on. Let’s go get you something.” I followed him wordlessly as he walked out of my room. We walked straight through the main lounge area that we’d arrived in yesterday and headed through a sliding partition door into the kitchen. I still couldn’t get over the sheer size of everywhere here. The kitchen alone was easily the size of the whole ground floor of my house. An island sat in the middle of the kitchen, pots and pans hanging from hooks above it. I loved the open plan feel of it. I could just imagine everyone being in here at once laughing, having fun. Strangely, I imagined myself there with them.

Zacky gestured at the island and the stools that were dotted around it.
“Take a seat Blair. I’ll see what we’ve got.” I perched on one of the stools and watched him open and close cupboards, surveying the contents. Eventually he sighed. “Ok, I’m no Danger, but how does pancakes sound? My cookery skills can stretch that far.” I smiled and laughed.
“That sounds brilliant.” Zacky wouldn’t let me help so I stayed sat while he mixed up the pancake batter. Rather than sitting in silence, I opted to pick up the conversation that we’d left off last night. Partly through curiosity and partly because I didn’t want to force Zacky to start it up again since we’d ended it so awkwardly yesterday. “So vampires can eat normally? Like humans?” Zacky turned his head to look at me, a mild expression of surprise on his face, before it gave way to a smile. I smiled back. I’d clearly done the right thing to fix the small argument we’d had yesterday.

He turned back to his cooking as he replied.
“Like I said yesterday, we’re distantly related to humans. That means that we can eat normally, provided that we supplement our diet with blood.” A thought crossed my mind that I didn’t want to voice, but I had to know.
“Am I going to need to drink blood?” I asked in a quiet voice. Zacky paused again and turned to face me fully.
“Most probably, yes. But we won’t know for sure until you complete the Change the blood balance of Dhampires is always different, depending on their other half.” I closed my eyes and sighed.
“There’s going to be a problem with that.” I mumbled. Zacky cut me off before I could tell him my problem.
“I know that it seems kinda icky, but it’s something that you’re just going to have to get over I’m afraid. It’ll get easier with time.” I shook my head.
“It’s not just that.” Zacky’s look turned curious.
“Oh?”
“I’m vegetarian.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“On principle or…?”
“I throw up when I eat meat. I’m ok with fish, but meat makes me ill every time.” To my surprise, Zacky smiled.
“Don’t worry about it. We can work around it and it won’t be an issue until you Change anyway.” He turned back to his cooking and I returned to the conversation.
“So what else am I likely to come across while I’m staying with you?” Zacky laughed.
“It’s more a case of what won’t you come across, but I see your point. You’ll almost certainly come across the Fae.” I frowned.
“Fae? Like Fairies?” Zacky flipped a pancake and began to pull sugar, syrup and other toppings out of a cupboard.
“Not the kind of fairies that you’re thinking of. The type of Fae that I’m talking about are numerous, powerful and, I won’t lie, dangerous.” He put the first cooked pancake in the oven to keep warm before moving onto the next. “Fae is a generic term, kind of like Weres or Shifters, it covers more different types of Fae than I could name.”

I frowned, trying to think of something that I could relate it to.
“Kind of like dogs?” Zacky looked curiously at me. “Y’know, like Canine is the species, but you have loads of different breeds like Labradors, Jack Russell Terriers, Collies.” Zacky nodded as he understood, then laughed.
“Exactly like dogs.” He chuckled again. “Damn, Danger is going to love to hear you refer to the Fae as dogs.” I was getting curious about this Danger person.
“Is he Fae then?” Zacky nodded.
“In a way, you’ll meet Danger for yourself soon enough.” He added another pancake to the first. “Fae are the most powerful of those in our world, purely because they are the most magical. They don’t think like the rest of us do. Logic is a strange word in the world of Faerie.” He caught my puzzled look and elaborated. “The Otherworld exists within the human world, running parallel to the human world. The Fae are part of The Otherworld, but they have their own world too. That’s Faerie. It’s accessed through doors, but only those with Fae blood can open the doors into Faerie.” I nodded, understanding what he meant, even though the logical, scientific part of my brain was telling me that this was impossible.

Something deep inside of me was telling me that this was possible and was happening, so I’d better sit up and bloody listen to what Zacky had to say to me.
“You were saying that the Fae think differently to everyone else?” He nodded.
“Yeah. Faerie has been around for millennia and so have some of its inhabitants. They’ve had trouble adapting to the modern world. There’s a saying about the Fae that the rest of the Otherworld sometimes use; in order to build a road, Humans will dig through the mountain, Fae will pick the mountain up and move it.” I frowned. Now that was impossible.
“That’s impossible.”
“Not in Faerie. That’s how strong some of their powers are. There are many different types of Fae, some you’ll have heard of, some not.”
“Could you give me some examples? Just to make it clearer in my head what they’re like, I mean with vampires and werewolves, I have some idea, but with Fae all I can think of are tiny people that live in flowers at the end of your garden.”

Behind us, someone suddenly burst out laughing. Both me and Zacky turned sharply to see who’d snuck up on us. Jimmy stood leaning in the doorway, doubled over with laughter. Zacky sniggered at him and went back to his pancakes. Eventually Jimmy straightened up, wiping his eyes as he walked into the room.
“Sorry, I just had an image of Danger prancing about through flowers at the end of a garden.” He explained. Zacky burst out laughing.
“You’d better keep that image to yourself if you like your knee caps where they are.” Advised Matt as he strolled into the room with Val, the woman that we’d run into yesterday. Johnny followed behind them.
“Something smells good.” He commented, taking the seat opposite me. “Morning Blair.” He smiled at me, I smiled back.
“Hey Johnny.” I replied as Zacky sighed and looked down at his remaining batter.
“I’m going to need to make a whole lot more of this aren’t I?”