Chapter 37: A Fight He Couldn't Win

After his first encounter with vampire lore, Valentine is obsessed. Spoiled as he is, he remodels his room to better fit with the vibe of the lore. The walls are darker, the decor becomes... strange, or so his mother thinks. When she gets an old bookcase delivered, courtesy of the company, that she has no place for, Valentine happily snaps it up. The room outside his bedroom is now entirely transformed. He even bought an old gramophone, well a modernised version he can hook up to Bluetooth and play alternative music from his phone on. Sunny, who has to go through the room every day on route to his office, shakes his head and doesn't understand a thing, but holds back judgement and hopes it is a face (and wishes his son had less money to spend, but he is not in control of the Landgraab money his grandmother left with free access for him.)



But regardless of his parents views, Valentine loves his new room, and spend hours reading up on vampire lore by his new desk.



When not in his room, he mostly sit by the piano practising his musical skills.



Except for dinner time, when his parents still make him come out and join them. It's not that he dislikes his parents. On the contrary, he wants them to join him in living forever, but he does find their interior design choices dull and garish. Modern furniture is so... ugly.



Meanwhile, in San Sequoia, Christmas is enjoying the last of toddlerhood with Harmony. She is learning quickly now, and becoming more independent by the day. She still loves mommy reading to her.



But a moment later she is happily playing on her own.



Or with her favourite brother.



She has mastered all toddler skills, and is more than ready to start school. For the day in question Christmas has baked her a cake, and soon the house is filled with family members. Even Valentine was forced to come out of his room for this.



Christmas helps Harmony blow out her candles.



And she grows into a girl with an active imagination, who still loves her princess diadem.



Link might be happy that his sister is growing up, but he's even more happy that Daisy was allowed to come to the party, and that she agrees to be his best friend in the whole wide world and exchange friendship bracelets with him.



Best of all, mom and dad has agreed to let her sleep over! So once the party is over and all guests have left, Daisy and Link has a proper pillow fight in his room. And this time he gets to win.



They also tell each other stories late into the night.



And in the morning, mom has made pancakes!



For Harmony, aging up means she has access to the tree house, regardless of if Link wants to share it or not. She loves the drawing table and spend hours up there just drawing.

Link and Daisy get bored not having the house to themselves, and ride their bikes over to her place where she changes into her scout uniform. Her room is small, but you can always play on the landing.




But the house is also crowded with neighbors milling in and out of the house as they please, and soon Daisy has to leave for the scouts anyway, so Link returns home.



Just in time too. Christmas is back from work, and the family has been invited over to aunt Alice, who has just moved out of her parents house and gotten a house of her own. It's the house next door to where Sunny and Carolyn used to live.

Harmony and Link is happy to get to watch TV while the adults are talking and making dinner.



Alice isn't the best of cooks. It's macaroni and cheese on the menu. But mom really seems to like Alice's new house.




When the others look around, Link and mom talk for a while in the seating downstairs.

Next day it's Harmony's first day of school. She's a bit nervous in the morning, but oh so happy when she returns home.



She's bubbling about everything new during dinner.



And isn't hard to persuade at all to do her homework.



Jamie has news too. He has gotten promoted to Investigative Journalist and gotten another full day off. It's a good thing too, because with Christmas's working weekends, Friday is the only day the entire family can really spend time together out of holidays.



Holidays are, however, on the horizon with Winterfest starting off the winter holidays. As usual they gather at Willow's for the festivities. For once everyone manages to stay clear of Munch the cowplant. Harmony, as usual, loves the attention grandpa Derek gives her. Valentine, on his end, is dying to talk to Willow in private about vampires and occults, but he's out of luck as there are too many people everywhere for that.

Thanking day is spent at home, together as a family. As San Sequoia sees nothing that resembles winter, but is warm year round, the family is outside most of the day. Daisy, as usual, is over playing with Link, while Christmas and Jamie are improving the treehouse by adding a slide and a sliding pole. Link's and Harmony's Winterfest presents.




"Can Daisy sleep over tomorrow?" Link asks at dinner.
"It's New Years," his mom answers. "Isn't she celebrating with her mother?"
"They have guests over. Lots of adults. She said it would be boring."
"Well if her mother agrees, I suppose she can," Christmas agrees.



And so New Years is spent playing games, eating pizza and dancing - for the kids. And cleaning up after them for Jamie and Christmas.



As the New Year is approaching, Harmony has long lost the fight against sleep, but Link and Daisy are still up and gets to watch the Countdown to Midnight on TV.



In Tartosa, Neo and Malik are celebrating a very different new years at the beach bar.



The night is going quite well for the old men, until Malik decides to get a snack from the vending machine as dawn brings need for something to eat. Unfortunately it gets stuck.



Having no tools to fix it, Malik uses the second most efficient method of making sure mechanical gadget works - violence.



And when that doesn't do the trick, more violence.



Unfortunately, the machine has decided to fight back. Hard.



Hearing the commotion, Neo rushes over to help as Malik looks as if he is about to get the heavy metal machine off of him.



But unfortunately, he's too late. As the sun rises for the first time this year, Malik looses his grip, and the vending machine becomes his doom. This was one fight he couldn't win.



For hotheaded Neo, grief is not a sad feeling, it's an angry one, and life without Malik is not one he wanted. For hours, he rants and raves and kicks garbage cans, which makes him more angry because he then has to clean them up. He has worked himself up to enraged by the time he has to leave to get to Willow Creek for the funeral.



The ceremony is small, as most of the people Malik and Neo knew are dead. Neo's sisters and husbands are invited. He didn't bother with inviting their offspring. He starts by laying into Rory for no good reason at all.



And once the funeral is over and his sisters try to persuade him to leave, he refuses. As night is falling, they leave him there, making him promise to call if he needs anything.
"You know I live close by. You can sleep on the couch," Willow offers.

But Neo doesn't want to leave. This is where Malik is, not at Willows, not in the large empty house in Tartosa, not at some hotel room, but here. And so he stays, yelling at Malik's grave for the injustice of it all until his heart can't handle the stress any longer. Neo draws his last breath right there, by Malik's grave, in the company of a lonely ghost roaming the graveyard.



The next morning, the staff at the cemetery calls Willow and lets her know what has happened. She and Sandy both rushes over to where a grave has already been arranged for her brother, next to the love of his life.



Willow gets there first, and by the time Sandy arrives, she's already made an arrangement for the grave.
"It's just the two of us left now," Sandy tells her. "We have to take care of each other." They promise to do so, for the time they have left in life.