“Wait, so you’re not a vampire?”

“I–,” she paused, unsure how to answer the girl. It was so much easier to say what she wasn’t than what she was, but humans had this driving need to name things. Even things that didn’t have a name. “Not really. Not the way you mean.”

“Oh, well that explains the crosses and the garlic I guess.” The teenager looked disappointed, which amused the shade since if she had been a vampire the girl would have been dead. Better to be alive and wrong, than right and dinner. “So what are you?”

Again with the names! She shuddered, sending a ripple of smoke-like shadows out from her hair. “I am unique, and thus unnamed by men. What they cannot see, they do not fear and only fear will name things. You are the first in a long, long while and I think you shall be the last.”

“Why?”

“Because I tired of why’s! And what’s and but’s and if’s and all the ways you seek to bind us into something you can understand. We are dreams! Shadows! Things that were never meant for this nonsense.” The shade drew back, realizing she’d stalked the girl into a corner. “Do not call again, I will not answer.”

The teenager nodded in terrified agreement, and didn’t move to stop her as the shadow flowed across the room and out the open door.