Page 31 of Only Fangs

Sharon does have a point though. And it’s something I hadn’t even thought about.

“So how do we do photos?” I ask Brody as we leave the restaurant and walk towards the cathedral that dominates the skyline, lit up to showcase the intricate stone architecture.

“Hmm, thinking about what Sharon said, there’s two purposes, right? First to see what the person looks like. But then to learn more about what’s important to them, who they are on a deeper level.”

“I guess we could ask for portraits,” I say. The only problem is a lot of vampire portraits are drawn by humans desperate not to become food and so they do tend to err on the side of flattery.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Have you seen the one in my hallway?” I ask him by way of illustration.

“You look amazing.”

“Exactly. I don’t look like I do in real life.”

“Yes you do.” The words are quiet, almost a whisper. I turn round and he’s blushing.

I pretend not to hear him but I glow a little inside. “What we need is someone who can sketch them all.”

“I have a friend who does these photo realistic drawings,” he says, pulling out his phone and bringing up an Instagram account.

“These aren’t photos?” I ask eventually, momentarily stunned into silence as I stare at the little squares on the screen in front of me. There’s a dog portrait and the fur looks so fluffy I just want to reach into the picture and stroke it.

“She’s good huh?” There’s a hint of pride in his tone. Like this artist means something to him. Oh shit. Is this his girlfriend? Or at least his crush.

“Oh. Is she…” but I trail off. It isn’t professional to ask the question. And I don’t care about the answer anyway.

“She mainly does pets and things. But I’m sure she can do people.”

“Vampires,” I correct him.

“Still people.”

“They’d have to sit for her though. It isn’t like she can work from a photo.” I point at her profile where she explains that all she needs for a commission is a picture of the pet. “That would kind of defeat the whole objective.”

“I’ll talk to her. She could maybe do a test run? Draw you and see what you think.”

I nod. “That sounds like a good idea. Let’s get her to draw you too. We should make some mock ups of what the profiles will look like and it would be useful to have a guy and girl.”

“But I’m not a vampire.”

“Obviously. But you aren’t going to get your teeth out in the picture so it really doesn’t matter.”

“True. I could try to get Kiki to draw us at the weekend so we can stay on track with everything else we have to get done this week.”

Kiki agrees to draw us on Saturday and in the meantime we start to think about the special interest photos we can attach to the sample profiles.

“So the idea would be to show personality, taste, interests, all that stuff you see on normal dating sites,” Brody says.

“OK. So what have you got?”

“Well, what do you think I should do?” he asks.

I narrow my eyes at him, not really clear what he’s asking. “They’re your pictures.”

“Yeah, but not actually me me. I mean, this isn’t a real profile.”

“Why not?” Is there a part of me that wants to know what he will choose? Yes. Of course. I want to see the things that make him tick, to peel back the layers and get to the kernel of truth inside him.