Halloween had always been my favorite holiday. Where I come from, the holiday isn't ruined with sugar highs and monsters (okay, they don't ruin it); instead of sugared treats and heinous tricks, Halloween symbolized something different. There wasn't a terrible population of witches in the area, but the ones who lived there? They were serious and devout. The tribe my father was brought up in revolved around Wiccan rituals, pagan ideals, and some other strange hocus pocus (see what I did there?). Existing in a world where your powers are encouraged and anything but strange, I fell in love with Samhain â€" rather, Halloween. When we moved to the United States, the holiday was presented in such a strange way that I couldn't help but fall in love with that, too. Horror films and the cast of psychological thrillers walked the streets side by side with women dressed in only enough clothes to cover what others shouldn't (should) see. I'm a particular fan of zombies myself, but only the kind that I've raised from the grave myself â€" not the latex-mask laden kind. See, the holiday morphed for me, but I never fell out of love with it.

Upon receiving Damon's invitation to the party du-jour, I'd found myself in a series of hysterics brought on by the realization that real vampires, real witches, and real were-wolves would be present. And what exactly would the leeches dress up as? Mulling over whether or not to attend, the desire to see just what the idiots would look like for Halloween took over any kind of distaste I harbored for the vampires of the city. After all, Damon had become a close friend and it would be rude (whatever) if I didn't grace him with my present. He'd asked for it, after all, and he knew what that might entail. I'd debated about what I should don as my costume, hiding the fact that I was a witch â€" maybe I could dress up as Damon himself. The idea had given me a good laugh, but I wanted nothing to do with looking like the race I held biases against. The irony wasn't lost on me... and it took a good bit of time to talk myself out of dressing up like the host himself; I did, however, decide that it was only proper to pay credit where it's due and allow myself to dress up like a famed vampire.

What?

I can't have any fun. Serafina told me I needed to be something I'm not â€" that took away any incarnation of murderer, gangster, and general agent of debauchery. If American Halloween is for pretending, then a vampire was surely fitting. You might say I'm lazy, but weaving an illusion of the costume I might want was cost effective and therefore I would prefer to term myself innovative. The calcium of my teeth was easy to manipulate into the fine points of fangs that would mimic the vampires at the party. A tiny, tiny fraction of me thought it might piss them off, but that alone was only reason enough to promote my guise. Cloaked in what everyone's general idea of what a vampire looked like, I made my way to the party that I hadn't originally wanted to go to only to slip in through the back as the establishment had become a familiar haunt.

Maybe I should have just been a ghost.

It wasn't long before familiar faces swam into view in the sea of bodies â€" the delicate visage of Alexis gently encouraged me to go to her. Shy, she might feel out of place and as a friend (was that it?) I was more than happy to step in and offer her my hand.
"Looks like we had the same idea," I said, announcing my presence with a tooth-bearing grin. " I need to find Damon shortly, but I think I need a drink and potentially a dance with you first." To the bartender, I offered my attention and a short order of bourbon and gingerale. With a drink in hand, I offered the other to Alexis.

"Shall we? Or is this ... Crap, I can't even call him a leech 'cause that's hypocritical isn't it..."