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limetimo · 2 years

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RAB fics I read this week (16-22 Jan)

Tides by jimmyjanejams ROYALTY PIRATES AU I REPEAT ROYALTY PIRATES AU WITH RUNAWAY PRINCES SIRIUS AND REGULUS AND PIRATES REMUS AND JILY

i see how this ends (poorly) by Quillium Seer Regulus dreams how people die and upon realising that fate is not set in stone, sets out to save as many as he can. Ya'll I'm in love with Evan Rosier

Rough Waters by Anonymous Remus and Lily get sorted to Slytherin, and when Regulus and his friends arrive to Hogwarts a year later, they become friends! Watch Remus be a foster big brother to tiny danger noodles

Trials and Tribulations by lemon_drps THIS. THE FLAVOUR. Set after Sirius ran away from home and Regulus has to step up as the heir. I'm. I love what lemon's doing with Regulus' mental and emotional state. So good.

For Shits and Giggles by silverfield If Regulus' digesting tract is going to kill him he's going out with a bang. He's so stupid, I want to hit him ♥ Slowburn Jegulus!

Chained by maquira Teddy Lupin is playing potions and since it's Grimmauld Place he's playing at, he ends up adding time turned sand in the mixture. Both him and Harry are yeeted back to 1970s, and Harry is blackmailed into attending the Death Eater Academy. No seriously, the Death Eaters are so well organised, no wonder the Order was losing something terrible.

Prove It by fuckboyregulus for ScreamingFae James is an art thief, Regulus is an art thief, they should kiss ♥

Genetic Lottery by Trex_patronus Younger siblings rights! As always with Trex, immaculate siblings interaction ♥♥♥

Of Leaves and Stars by irrationalmoony, LadyAmina it's modern magic au, Remus never went to Hogwarts, also is trans, Sirius is gender fluid, and they have phones. No Voldemort. Regulus shows up around... chapter 18? Maybe?

A Thing Like Stars in the Dark by toliveinthesky Regulus + Cave = chewed on Regulus in hiding first with Sirius and Remus and later with the Potters. Gorgeous, I enjoy it immersly

Pages of You by wolfpants the focus is Drarry but Wolfstar owns a Queer bookshop and Regulus is dating Fabian and it's very cool ♥ muggle au, too

When All Hope Was Lost by HogwartsIsMyHomeJMC 📷 Escaping the Malfoy manor Harry dies and Hermione uses a Dumbledore-ex-machina to travel to 1970s and becomes the leader of Horcrux Hunters: Marauders edition. Regulus has yet to show up but he's in the tags! :D

The Horcrux Hunt by Keysie I tag this one every week do I even need to introduce it anymore? Remus and Regulus are saltmates and yelling at Dumbledore is cathartic ♥♥♥

Sky Full of Stars by TowardTheStars Severus/Sirius, they both have issues, Jily in the making, Regulus is a good boy, Peter is a cunt, trust me on this

Waves of Magic by xivz Regulus is dying of pancreatic cancer and wishes to have his family around him for the Christmas. Sirius takes his roommate (oh my god they were roommates) for moral support... and finally realises they're married in everything but law.

After Everything, Always by Reggie4dayzz James and Regulus are casual fuck buddies, what could go wrong?

Mad as a Wet Hen by Trex_patronus Regulus can't swim and his friends don't know.

Is It Really You? by fuckboyregulus muggle au. Regulus died 5 years ago. James always sees his ghost everywhere, so he doesn't really pay attention when Harry claims Daddy is here. good shit.

when you were mine by battlehamster felon Regulus is house arrested at his high school sweetheart's, single dad James Potter's, house. Are they over each other or will the feelings bloom anew, stronger than before?

Living as if the past didn't exist by 6coolaish6 fem Harry gets yeeted to the 1970s, enlists Regulus and Remus, stuff happens...

Seek(er) and Ye Shall Find by fallovermelikestars Regulus wants to tell Sirius about the Mark before he finds out in another way. It goes both better and worse than he hoped. Beautifully written.

BLAME by YouBlitheringIdiot for potting_lilies the premise fucked me up, I want to straight up murder Dumbledore. James takes the blame for the Prank, gets expelled, and agrees to join the DEs to spy for Voldemort. No sight of Regulus yet but I have high hopes and honesty I'm so invested I'm going to devour it anyway

survived by by justwhatialwayswanted I'm screaming get your tissues ready, MY HEART. Regulus is mourning his best friend, and is joined by an unexpected person.

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The Black Sheep Dog I know everyone loves this series. I tried it once but I was in a bad place for it mentally and emotionally. (Orion blackmailing Sirius into coming back was too hard at the time.) Had to quit and have been avoiding it since. I came across it this week and marked it for later in case I ever feel like braving it again. But the reviews are really good and the writing was immaculate so you should check out the tags and go for it!

Nor All That Glisters by sweet_s0rr0w this one has NOTHING to do with Regulus at all, it's pure post wizarding war Drarry, but ITS SO GOOD OMG I'm dropping it here anyway

#regulus black #fic rec #I'm concerned for my own health ahahaha #how are there so many #what does a girl gotta do to get employed writing book summaries?#like GURL I'll read you books and write you summaries you never heard of

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darkpoisonouslove · 3 years

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Sparks of Life Opera Edition

I am still not over Singing a New Tune so I am going to recap for you the experience of writing that fic because there were many interesting moments over the course of those three days. Lemme start from the beginning.

- So I’m writing a fic that mostly focuses on sexual stuff but it is also mainly happening in an opera so my first order of business is to figure out what that opera is. Both the building itself and the show they’ll be watching. Because that is of utmost importance.

- I have already mentioned that SoL is located in New York so I looked up New York operas. I do not vibe with research most of the time but I vibe even less with having to come up with names for any kind of thing so research was definitely the choice here.

- I somehow get results about operas that are in the other end of the USA. That was not great. I get to the Metropolitan Opera House at last (which I might have known existed if I cared about opera in any way, shape or form) which is great! I am so close to starting the fic! Just need to figure out what opera they’re watching. Because I need that for reasons.

- I end up downloading a PDF with the seatings inside the Met Opera so that I can figure out where the hell they will be seating. But I leave that for later. I look through the actual plays that they’re having while absolutely failing with the navigation of their site. I find a show that catches my eye. It’s called The Magic Flute. I have zero idea what it’s about so I read the Wikipedia summary just to be aware. It mentions that a character has a moment when he’s singing about his search for a wife and I think “Perfect! Foreshadowing!” (since this is set pretty early on in Griffin and Valtor’s relationship).

- I decide to look up the opera and see if I can find a part of it on youtube to figure out how it will sound. I am pretty sold on it already because of the summary I read and also because it implies there is magic as a subject in it which would call back to canon. Still, I look it up. I find a full version of it on the internet with English subtitles... It is 2 hours and 35 minutes:

youtube

- “Wow, okay... that’s a bit much. But hey, it has got subtitles in English. Maybe I’d actually watch that... once I’m done with the fic. I’m just gonna listen to a little bit while I finish my research, though, so I can have an idea of what it sounds like.”

- Now it’s time to open the engagement fic - Enough to Be Yours - because I don’t remember what year they got engaged in and I need that to reverse engineer the year in which this fic is taking place so that I can make sure that The Magic Flute was being performed back then. I don’t have an year stated in the engagement fic, though. I have a date - 9th October which is Friday and that means the year is 2015. Great! So I need to figure out if they were performing The Magic Flute back in 2010. Great.

- That takes a shit ton of time and nerves as it turns out. I spent over 4 hours just researching the logistics for this fic and a lot of that was unnecessary but I’m getting ahead of myself.

- I cannot find out whether they were performing the Magic Flute in 2010. I get results of it being broadcast in English (for the first time, I believe) in 2012 but that is way too late for this fic to be happening. Also, they are speaking of a broadcast which just doesn’t work for me. So I am having a hard time over here.

- I find a list of the new titles in 2011 but nothing mentions The Magic Flute as far as I can see.

- I am now considering switching to another opera. I see an opera that is based on events from The Song of the Nibelungs (I cannot be assed to go back and check what the actual title was). That catches my eye because I have read a book that was titled The Ring of the Nibelungs, I believe, and I kinda remember stuff from it... which is what makes me hesitate because that was a big tragedy.

- Meanwhile, I have stumbled upon a trailer for The Magic Flute:

youtube

MY GOD IS THAT BEAUTIFUL! THOSE PROPS ARE FUCKING GORGEOUS! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN THAT YOU GET TO GO AND SEE THAT LIVE? THAT IS NUTS! (Also, when I mentioned paper birds (I think they are) in the fic, I meant the ones shown in 0:13, not the big one in the beginning but HOLY SHIT, DID YOU SEE THAT THING????? HOW IS THAT REAL?!?!?!?! IT IS SO FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN’T. I AM DYING. THIS IS JUST TOO BEAUTIFUL.)

- I somehow happen upon an old archive of the opera (idk how I did that but I bookmarked it in case I’ll need it again) that has information about plays going back as far as the year 1900. This is nuts! I am in too deep but I can’t pull myself away. I’ve gotten this far, I will see it through.

- I search for keyword “flute” and I get results. Some of them are pretty old but I finally find what I need. Performances of the Magic Flute in 2010! Bingo!

- ...Oh, wait, they’re all around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Hmm... when will it be okay for them to go? I mean, Valtor has been established to have zero free time around that time of the year and I can’t see them going on the 24th or the 31st... Oh, those are matinees. Definitely no! I need them to go in the evening. And some of these are broadcasts which doesn’t work for me either.

- I looked up earlier years as well. I considered another opera again. I decided to switch up the timeline a little. It makes sense if it’s in 2009. I think they had spring performances of The Magic Flute then. Or was it 2008? Anyway, I finally settle on an early April date in 2009 (I think). Now that that’s settled, let’s go back to the seats.

- First I need to figure out what floor (let’s say) of the opera they’re on. I was thinking of the last one first (family circle) but the boxes (I figure those seats will be safest for their activities) look like this:

which isn’t vibing with me because they would be in the front row and it seems more visible. So I relocate to the previous floor (balcony) that looks like this:

That works a little better although there’s the danger of having more people in their box. But they’re sitting in box 14, seats 5 (Griffin) and 6 (Valtor) (where the arrow is pointing) and there’s only one man in seat 4 in front of them. So that is the best I can do.

- Wow, all that’s finally figured out. I decide to do all the rest of the research up front in order to be able to just write after that and not stop for another 4 hours. More on those other things later BUT I get to the part where I need to pick a vibrator and... well, I done fucked up.

- First thing that comes up for a remote controlled vibrator is Lush, of course. And I am immediately sold because it has a sound activated setting which Valtor will definitely love to utilize while in the opera.

BUT

Lush 2 (which is the first one to have the sound activated setting, I believe) came out in 2018. Even if we accept that Lush also has it, that came out in 2015. My fic is set in 2009. Searching for 2009 vibrators literally went no where so in the end I decided that the SoL verse is actually set in a parallel universe where time is a little warped so the Lush 2 is out in 2009. Plus, that way there isn’t going to be a pandemic in future installments. Overall, that works. Except that I needn’t have been so thorough with my opera research beforehand. Oh, well. It’s finally time to start writing.

- How do you write? How do you start a fic? One word in front of the other? Oh, okay, never mind. Lipstick is a girl’s best friend. Let’s start from there. And a kiss that leads to the discussion of lipstick... Damn, I forgot to spend one more hour on researching what kind of lipstick Griffin would have worn. Shame! You don’t get that detail now. I believe I didn’t even mention a shade.

- Oh, wait. Need for his breath to taste like something. Hmm, let’s see. Tonic water? Yeah, that sounds about right. Never mind that he should have probably drunk it right before getting out of the car to kiss her if it was still lingering on his breath. I mean, that’s not impossible. Just improbable.

- He’s also wearing cologne, right? Gotta research that too. How else would I get this:

and zero idea what it actually smells like despite the description. Also, did not check if that was a thing in 2009 but the story now exists in a vacuum so who cares.

- Apparently, Griffin doesn’t own any golden bracelets even though she does have a golden necklace? Or she could have a golden bracelet, just not one she likes for the current situation? Anyway, I wanted to mention Ediltrude as well because the twins always go together and that was the best I came up with. (That said, I didn’t need to put the mentions of them one sentence apart.)

- My god, I used a semicolon! That feels illegal. I sure hope I used that bitch correctly.

- Okay, I absolutely love all the banter and just flow in the car. Idk how I did that since it’s such a constricted space but I am really proud of it. However, the logistics were sometimes hard to logic my way through. I mean, Valtor doesn’t get to look at her a lot and I had to employ a red traffic light to give him the chance to do so.

- I hit a wall about three paragraphs later. Things started going in a weird direction. I was considering even deleting the last two lines but then I managed to get back on track thanks to having figured out how they met and I decided to write a little bit about that without spoiling it (that will be a fic of its own some day). Suffice it to say it was a meet-very-ugly. But it bailed me out. Also, they got over it so it’s all good.

- And now... that paragraph. You know which one I’m talking about. It stands out with the locations I’ve given. That paragraph required 30 minutes of looking at Google Earth to figure it out and I still nearly got it wrong. At that point it occurred to me that they’ll need a place to park. I mean, idk how parking is in NYC but it’s probably not the way it is in Bulgaria especially on small neighborhood streets where it’s just... park wherever (even in front of a garage if you’re brazen enough and don’t fear having your tires slashed). So first, I was going to have them coming down Tenth Avenue and passing by the backside of the Opera which is not ideal for me because I needed Griffin to figure out they’re going to the opera so that they can have the following dialogue. But there is the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts right next door so I figure Griffin will recognize the area if it’s next to a library. And I have them almost at the garage but... that’s not looking right. This garage is on 65th Street and mine is on 62nd... I have been looking at the wrong garage for the past hour. Now that I have caught that mistake, things get easier. They just drive right past the facade of the opera, take a right turn and then enter the garage. Easy peasy. For whoever’s actually paying attention to the map.

- They’re in the garage now and I have to write another kiss. Shoot! I do not vibe with writing kisses. Writing sex scenes is much easier. But I’ll try my best because this is a little bit necessary if we’re dealing with an insertion of a vibrator in a public bathroom one minute from now. (Again, logistics!) I actually went back to add in a little discomfort during the kiss (but not too much because they’re consumed with each other anyway and probably missed something) just to make it more realistic. They can’t be comfortable in the car. Also, you have got to love how I never even thought of what make the car is. But I did stop to research the tinting of the car windows.

- Now this is extremely funny but I would have had zero idea that there are different laws about how tinted your car windows can be in the USA if I hadn’t read a very extensive critique of Fifty Shades (whichever part it was that had that info). So I look up the VLT for New York and it says 70%. Great! Then it won’t be that visible through the windows what they’re doing inside. Oh, wait! VLT means Visible Light Transmission aka 70% of the light should be passing through the window. Aka it is only tinted on 30%. This much:

That’s practically nothing. You can see everything through it. Welp, then someone’s gonna see, I guess.

- Can’t believe I didn’t stop to look up clutches either. (Lmao, I was calling it a purse instead of a clutch at first even though I definitely meant a clutch. And then I remembered that clutch existed as a word. Who would’ve thought?) It’s baffling trying to figure out why my brain was prioritizing some details over others and I just genuinely have no idea what was going on.

- Griffin is blushing a lot in this. Can you tell I have no idea how else to convey Valtor giving her feelings through body language?

- I first envisioned the box being opened by the hair pin by turning it like a key. Only later did I realize that that wouldn’t be possible because the pin has two parts (whatever they’re called) and that would make turning it impossible unless all of the base fits into one hole in the lid of the box. So I had to adapt my vision to using the extensions at the ends of the hair pin like a hook that pulls the lid up once it’s clicked free. I have zero idea how that would be done but I’m sure it can be done. So yeah, anyway, the pin looks like this but with attachments at the ends to open the box:

- I might have gone a little overboard with Griffin’s reaction to having the vibrator inside her. I might have made her a bit too embarrassed but I still think that she simply wouldn’t appreciate someone knowing about what she considers a private experience (despite the very public setting).

- And I am being overly specific again with the seats but I worked for that information so you’re getting it against your will!

- Speaking of, that man in their box was pretty ignored throughout the fic. But then again Griffin wasn’t overflowing with lucidity. She is sure to have missed... A Lot, actually.

- My apologies (once again) to @her-majesty-wears-jeans for not letting Griffin punch Valtor in the face for the terrible pun he was about to make but I thought that that would ruin the mood so I had to skip it.

- I might have imagined things a little differently but then consent factored in and I had to change things up so that Griffin is clearly on board with everything. I hope it came through that way at least. She is on board even if she is very, very frustrated. She would never throw the bet just because it’s difficult for her. Though, I’m taking note for future fics of maybe being a little bit more explicit about the enjoyment of all parties involved. I just couldn’t really think of a way to convey it better back then and I am coming up with several ideas now and I will try to keep them in mind for future fics.

- I keep going back and forth on just how far into their relationship this is. Sometimes it feels like it’s not enough time for them to get this familiar with each other and sometimes it feels like too much for them to still be skirting their feelings for each other like that. Will update when I make up my mind about how long exactly it has been.

- In retrospect, probably should have picked up an opera that people would be less likely to bring their children to (as brought to my attention by @her-majesty-wears-jeans). I apologize for this. Did not consider it at all.

- A wild tangent about Griffin’s sexual experiences before Valtor popped up (for the second time now). This is giving me thoughts and I am not even sure if I’ll manage to get them all out in the bachelorette party fic. Oh, no, I am getting ideas again.

- God, I had to mention those paper birds because I adore them. Also, needed to do a time skip somehow (sure hope they don’t show up at the very end or the very beginning).

- So there are some things about the whole thing with the suit jacket that if you squint, you’ll miss the very far-fetched and convoluted ways in which I could make them make sense but again, it isn’t impossible to make them operate according to logic so good enough.

- And now for the dress:

I thought it would be reasonable for Griffin to own something like that. It doesn’t look overly expensive or dramatic.

- I swear that most of the 2% angst was an accident. Griffin was supposed to say the “You paid how much for tickets exactly just so you could fool around?” line but the following few paragraphs sprang on me out of nowhere. That was where I left it off the first day I was working on it and I wasn’t sure how to continue it. Then the angst happened.

- I do not believe the retaliation part was planned but would it really be a Griffin x Valtor story if something like that hadn’t happened? XD

- “reverberated”, “multitudinous” and “unobtainable” are probably not words that Griffin’s muddled mind would go to in that precise moment but everything else I came up with for them just did not sound right.

- I completely forgot the word for neckline and was so mad at myself for that but, luckily, I managed to remember it before posting the fic. I believe the original read “he slipped a finger under the fabric of her dress, running it over the top of her breast” which is not incorrect but just not precise enough for my liking.

- Sure hope the shortened version of the opera did not cut out the ending musical sequence. But that seems unlikely.

- The idea was running overly long in my head by having them going back to the penthouse so that I could have the scene where he picked her up so I decided to move things around and have him carry her bridal style on their way from the opera to the car. It’s not like she didn’t earn it.

- Pretty sure I had planned something a little different for the last several lines of dialogue but I couldn’t remember what so we get this. Which isn’t a disadvantage. I mean, Griffin is already thinking of marrying him. XD (That’s probably a bit of a stretch at the current status of their relationship but then again, she was thinking of a wedding, not necessarily of their wedding even though I’m clearly a little romance gargoyle that meant exactly that.)

- Originally, Valtor was supposed to floor the brakes while they were out in the NYC traffic but then I decided that doing it while still in the garage with only one car behind them and both vehicles driving at a very slow speed was a lot safer so I switched to that. It also saved me writing more words which was appreciated. I thought this fic would be a bit shorter.

- I was at a loss for how many orgasms Griffin should want from him but then the commitment line happened and that was all avoided.

#winx club #winx griffin #winx valtor #griffin x valtor #covenshipping #sparks of life #singing a new tune #trivia #trivia tuesday #research #my writing process #the magic flute #yeah no cut and this is gonna be hell on mobile #i know #i'm evil

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ayearofpike · 5 years

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Thirst No. 3: The Eternal Dawn

Simon Pulse, 2010 478 pages, 26 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-1317-7 LOC: MLCS 2012/41874 (P) OCLC: 651759027 Released October 5, 2010 (per B&N)

When we last saw Sita, she was brain-traveling back in time to kill the first vampire before he was ever born, thus ending the line of eternal bloodsuckers forever. Little did we know that this was simply her way of writing herself out of Seymour’s life. She is very much still immortal. But Sita is learning that there is more to her family, both found and genetic, linked to an even older power that is bound to destroy her. That is, if the multinational trillionaire corporation that happened into some kind of crazy mind control doesn’t do it first.

Check out that fake boast on the cover: “long-awaited new book.” Um ... no? You ended the series, asshole, we weren’t long-awaiting SHIT. But we all know that the new expectations of the genre are that everything is a series, and so the publisher no doubt did more business by linking these books together even though there’d been no previous expectation for another Sita book before the reprinted bind-ups showed us Pike was at it again.

And there’s a lot going on in here too. The Eternal Dawn opens a door to a whole new world of vampire fighting with all the things it introduces. Sita, long a loner, now has a whole cadre of friends and assistants and hangers-on that connect her new world to the old world, and even to the ancient people that she’s just starting to learn about. Again, I get it: teens want to read about popular kids, or at least popular among a small select group. They don’t want a total loner, which actually has become troublesome in itself as school shootings become more regular and publicized and railed against. And also, we have a precedent of Team Vampire from those other popular sparkly vampire books that came out just before this.

But this doesn’t really work for me. Sita has always been that strong solo artist who didn’t want to rope people into her fold, as much for their own safety as because they couldn’t do stuff as good as her. And yet by the end of this book there’s like eight people all living together. Yes, circumstances change, we’ll get to that, but for someone who read the original Sita books in 1995 and was expecting a story along the same lines, this part feels like a betrayal of her character.

Ugh, I’m already tired of writing about this book and this is only the introduction. Let’s see how fast I can power through the summary.

So for some reason Sita has relocated to Truman Village, Missouri. Well, we learn the reason pretty quickly: Teri Raine, a freshman runner at Truman College who has no idea that her ancestor is still alive and watching out for her. In fact, the first thing Sita does is straight murder a dude who’s raped other girls and now has his sights on Teri. But not just by draining him of blood, which she no longer needs after Kalika: she drinks enough to weaken his heartbeat and then crashes his car into a lake, where he drowns in terror. Holy fuck, Sita, you got even darker.

Back in town, she introduces herself to Teri as a budding writer who wants to hire her as a research assistant. She sets up a meeting with Teri at the club where her boyfriend is playing later that night. Then she goes home, where she feels suspiciously watched, and it turns out there’s a couple driving up to ask what she knows about IIC. This, it seems, is a huge multinational corporation with a penchant for privacy that has an extensive file on one Alisa Perne. Which ... come on, dude, it’s been twenty years, why are you still using the same alias? But these two are curious and suspicious, not just of Sita but also the company, where the woman happens to work even though she’s not totally sure what she actually does. But she does know that her boyfriend was looking into it, just before he mysteriously disappeared.

So Sita says she’ll stay in touch and then goes to her meeting, where she immediately gets all of the boners for Teri’s boyfriend. He’s super talented and totally hot and gives off this aura of worldliness and experience, all of which is like catnip to our eternal vampire. She hasn’t been intimate or even interested since Ray, or I guess Arturo technically. So all of this stuff that happened before was real, but up to this point Sita hasn’t really explained how it got written down or why she’s doing it herself now instead of using a muse like Seymour. She is, in fact, a published writer, and the story she shows her new ... kids? is Pike’s token acknowledgement of the vampire/werewolf dichotomy that you can’t ignore if you’re writing a vampire book in 2010. It’s enough to get Teri to agree that she’ll work with Sita, and they all shake hands and part ways.

But back at Sita’s house, shit is exploding. Like, she pulls up to the garage and bullets start hitting everything. She finds a weapon of her own and dashes out into the woods, where she encounters an unusually strong and skilled man with a Gatling gun. She disables him, but before she can learn who he is and why he’s after her he whispers something in ancient Egyptian and then is consumed by terrible fire. Is this related to the whole IIC mystery?

Who knows? First we gotta drool over Teri’s boyfriend in the pool. Sita wants to help him get this bread (or whatever the kids are saying) with his musical talent, but he isn’t ready for the spotlight. They talk a little more about Sita’s writing and the different pen names she employs, and now the boyfriend is starting to get some feelings that Sita is more than who she claims. Which, why wouldn’t he, she’s not exactly being subtle or cautious in throwing all her wealth at these random kids.

There’s a quick side trip to Fairfield, Iowa, to track down and extract information from the contract killer IIC hired to take out the employee’s boyfriend, and here I had to pause and do some Google Maps. According to the book, Sita flies to Cedar Rapids and then drives 90 minutes to Fairfield, but Truman College is in northeast Missouri. Does this make sense at all? No! There’s no such thing as “Truman Village” or “Truman College,” but there is a Truman State University in Kirksville ... which is already a 90-minute drive from Fairfield. In fact, to fly to Cedar Rapids from Kirksville, Sita would have to connect through St. Louis AND Chicago. How fuckin’ long does this impatient immortal want to travel? Does she not own a globe? There is a public municipal airport in Fairfield; it would have been more believable if Sita had literally flown herself. And guess what? I caught this easily avoidable flub because we’ve seen the hour-and-a-half drive from Cedar Rapids before. Not counting on someone with a master’s in English analyzing your shit, are you, Kev? Or, like ... a map?

But anyway, the killer gives up his next contract, which is a young Indian girl living in San Antonio. Sita flies there and meets the girl, who has been hideously scarred by having acid thrown in her face upon backing out of an arranged marriage. She copes with the pain and partial loss of eyesight by praying to Krishna, which resonates with Sita, obviously. The girl has contract work with IIC, basically answering weekly questions over the phone with yes or no, so it’s unclear to Sita why she’d be a target. But she arranges for the girl to be protected and then takes off for LA, where IIC is headquartered.

Once there, Sita waltzes right into the joint and asks to speak to the CEO. While she’s waiting, a creepy little girl in the waiting room smashes a vase, and Sita helps clean it up. But then she goes into the office, where she immediately feels oppressively observed, and also kind of intimidated that the boss isn’t scared. She (the boss) makes it clear that IIC did not send the fire killer, and Sita was pretty sure already, since the dude in Iowa wasn’t in the same league. She does offer to help Sita protect herself from this mysterious group if she joins up with IIC. But we already know Sita isn’t a joiner, unless it’s a group she can form herself with some random college kids who get her horny.

Instead, she goes to find the couple who tracked her down, but the dude is obviously dead. Well, not obviously, but someone with Sita’s senses can smell the amount of blood that’s been washed down the bathtub. She tracks down the woman and gets her the hell out of town, all the way to ... Barstow? An hour and a half? Seriously? Like, I get it that to someone from the city Barstow probably feels like a middle-of-nowhere armpit (and it is kind of an armpit). But haven’t we already learned that this company can reach people anywhere?

But then Sita leaves and waits to follow the boss home ... only she doesn’t go home for like two days. And when she does, she leaves everything unlocked. There’s another encounter with another creepy little girl, but then the boss is just sitting on the couch watching TV, easy pickings if Sita just wanted to take her out. Only she can’t. In fact, she suddenly finds herself unable to move, act, or even think on her own. The boss somehow manages to compel Sita to stick her gun in her mouth and pull the trigger. But at the last second, Sita thinks of Krishna and ends up shooting the TV. So whatever IIC is, it’s got power that isn’t easily resisted.

Sita ends up taking everybody back to her house in Missouri: the IIC employee, the scarred girl and her uncle, and of course Teri and her boyfriend. Easy pickings, right? Especially now that Teri is running in the NCAA championships, and the strongest performers will be considered for the Olympic team. So Sita, true to her pattern of non-involvement and letting things play out their own way

Just kidding. She totally meddles and gives Teri some blood to make her feel stronger and run faster, but not enough to actually turn her into a vampire. So she wins the championship, and now everybody is going to London for the Olympics.

But Sita’s not done making Club Vampire yet. She has to track down Seymour. Wait a second, didn’t he die? No! It turns out that he got the right medication to treat his AIDS in time, and now is a successful writer living in New York City. However, he’s never shown anybody the weird vampire series he wrote in high school and keeps locked in a desk drawer, so he’s freaked out that Sita knows so much about it. But he does pretty quickly believe her and tag along with the group.

So they go to London (yes, the entire fuckin’ squad) and Sita gives Teri more blood. The boyfriend knows that Sita’s doing something, and he’s highly against it and a little pissed, because Teri would never take a performance-enhancing drug but that’s essentially what this is. Sita gives her more blood, and Teri yells out the name of the original vampire in her sleep, which ... how would she possibly know that? But she turns it on right at the end of the race, winning the gold medal and earning an invitation to party with the president of the United States at his hotel.

And then Sita hears some heartbeats. Four of them, all strong and powerful like the fire killer’s. She knows she’s the target, and figures she’ll be safer if she goes to the president’s party and hides out behind the secret service detail. But the four assassins show up anyway, and Sita ends up going full Matrix, blowing away two at close range and then leaping the height of the ballroom to take out a third. The fourth manages to get away, and Sita has to hypnotize the agents into letting her go after her. The car chase takes Sita to a ferry dock, where she misses the boat and has to swim after it (with the help of some friendly dolphins). She sneaks up on the fourth killer and incapacitates her, then they get off the ferry and drive the killer’s car back across the English Channel.

Let me repeat that. Sita drives a car. Through the Chunnel. Back to England.

(Technically, you can take a car, but it’s like a train-ferry. You don’t actually DRIVE.)

She checks them into a cheap hotel room and sets about trying to extract information from this killer. Yes, they have a connection to the ancient Egyptian civilization that Sita saw before, but they’re not the same evil fourth-dimensional lizard aliens we’ve come to know and love. Their people, the Telar, go back much farther and older than even them. They’ve taken responsibility for the planet and the things living on it, but right now humanity has gotten too large and too hubristic, so the Telar wants to pare it down. They do know about vampires, because one of their number ended up marrying (guess who) Original Vampire like a thousand years ago. So they know about Sita, and have maybe due to blood purity fanaticism have been led to believe she’s even more dangerous than she actually is, which is why they’re trying to wipe her out.

It’s been a long-ass day, so both Sita and her assailant fall asleep. But Sita dreams of demons and evil, and wakes up once more out of control and ends up drinking all the blood of this poor immortal, in the most horrific way. It’s mostly left to our imagination, but when she comes to (thanks to the intervention of Seymour and the young Indian girl) she mentions the “mass of torn flesh” (292) on the bed and feels ill. And lucky for everyone! Teri and her boyfriend have followed Seymour to this random, how-the-shit-did-they-find-it hotel somewhere a solid two-hour drive from London, and they’re totally disgusted by what they see and the boyfriend tells Sita to kindly fuck off and never come back.

What now? Sita can’t think of anything else but to find her prophet friend, the one who had Miracle Baby way back in the fourth book. The kid is I guess 17 now, and so engrossed in a video game that he won’t even talk to Sita. They’re living somewhere in the Greek islands now, and they drop in uninvited because the lady has taken pains to not tell Sita where she is now. Why is she so pissed? Well, she’s just as annoyed at Sita for trying to take the fate and the responsibility for all of mankind as the boyfriend was. (And actually, the events in this book are pissing me off kind of the same way.) But Sita wants some help and comfort and information, as best they’re willing to give it to her. She’s figured out that picking up the pieces of the glass vase gave IIC enough genetic information on her to be able to control her through their power system, and the prophet friend points out how the Indian girl can block this power. Which we’ve already seen. This is Sita’s protection.

Still, she’s not willing to put a kid at risk when she follows her lead to Switzerland. Remember the Swiss fax number? Like, put two and two together, Sita. You can remember what someone you met once for ten minutes SMELLS like; you can certainly remember Original Vampire chasing you down from a whole COUNTRY. So she goes there and traces the dude to a hotel, where the owner says he’s been expecting a young blonde woman to ask about this former guest and points her to a secret vault that the guest said she’d be able to open. Inside is a book, in Original Vampire’s handwriting. It discusses how Krishna taught him about this ancient enemy, but stops short of explaining how to overcome it.

She makes a copy and then goes back to return it ... upon which she finds herself locked in a basement cell, the prisoner of the Telar. They’ve got an impressive torture device that taps directly into the pain center of a person’s brain, and they threaten to use it on Sita if she doesn’t tell them all of her dealings with IIC. That’s not a problem: Sita has no love lost for this company that has twice forced her to carry out her basest animal instincts against her will. But she stops short of telling them anything she knows about the ancient prophet or her current day reincarnation, so the torture begins. And again, she finds herself thinking of Krishna, and of Miracle Baby Teen, and finds she can control her brain even as overwhelming pain should be incapacitating her.

So now the Telar leader doesn’t have control over her anymore, and he’s just about to kill her when everything starts blowing up again. It’s the Abomination, everyone says, which freaks the leader the fuck out. He takes off to warn the overarching bosses and instructs the remaining fighters to not let the Abomination leave this place alive. But they don’t stand a chance: this motherfucker has all of the lasers and straight murders EVERYONE except Sita. Guess who? It’s Teri’s boyfriend! Who it turns out was Original Vampire’s son with the Telar lady he married! No wonder he got Sita so horny. He knew how the Telar felt about vampires, but his dad was one, and he couldn’t just let Dad’s most ancient love die in some basement as a victim of immortal Nazis who also supposedly killed him for betraying the blood purity of their species.

He assault-helicopters them the hell out of town and then they take the whole clan to some abandoned mining town in Colorado, where he owns a safe house. And now Sita has to decide what to do, even though pretty much all the advice she’s gotten in this whole book is “do nothing unless you’re actually targeted.” I guess it’s hard to argue, though, that she’s not a massive target from both sides. She knows that IIC is using its wealth and power to manipulate world governments. She knows that the Telar intend to do the same and fabricate war so that humanity is pared down. And she knows that both powers are at odds. It seems pretty obvious which side is worse, but they’re not even given time to make that choice: the Telar are attacking.

Immortal Boyfriend has prepared for this kind of attack. He sends the mortals down into the mine, and he and Sita find a vantage point to repel the Telar forces. They dispatch pretty much the entire fighting force with a combination of guns, mines, and drones, but not before the Telar manage to release a toxin that makes even these immortals blister and cough. They make for the mine, but Sita hears some Telar nearby and takes one hostage to get the antidote, and he pretty much immediately joins Team Vampire to keep from dying. They go through the mine to Immortal Boyfriend’s other helicopter, but as they’re making their escape the bad guys target them. So it’s time to jump from another helicopter into another lake! Only it’s winter in the Colorado Rockies, and the nearest lake is frozen over, and Teri horrifically breaks her leg when she jumps and is about to die from blood loss.

Yeah. The whole reason Sita started this stupid club in the first place is almost finished, and very much does NOT want to be made over. She states it clearly. But Sita just can’t let her die.

We leap to the epilogue, where Seymour is preparing himself for a funeral. Everyone’s there: the Indian psychic (who has been healed by months of plastic surgery and a little bit of vampire blood), the seer buddy and Miracle Teen, the new Telar recruit, the evacuated IIC employee, Immortal Boyfriend ...

And Teri.

What the fuck? Whose funeral is this?

It turns out that yes, Sita did turn her goddamn descendant into a vampire against her goddamn will, and of course Immortal Boyfriend was even more pissed than before. So much, in fact, that IIC was able to train their system onto him. Sita was able to reason a little bit, but Seymour saw the writing on the wall and couldn’t just let this dear old friend he just met get shot with a frickin’ laser beam. So he charged the dude, and of course he stood no chance, but Sita dove in front of the gun before Immortal Boyfriend could fire it.

So here we are. And Seymour is the last one at the grave, paying his respects. But then Teri comes back. And she whispers into his ear that she is still here, that she is Sita inside Teri’s body.

Obviously now we have to fuckin’ read Thirst No. 4, right? And honestly, as annoyed as I am at how long this vampire story is getting dragged out, and at how much Sita is changing because of market pressures learning from time, this is still a better cliffhanger than “I went to prom with the vampire, somehow wearing a leg cast and one high heel, and thought about what everyone else hadn’t told me yet but I would be finding out in the next three books, so go buy them, everyone.”

Still. This thing was hard to write, you guys. I will not give up with only five books to go, but seriously? I kind of want to.

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