Chapter 193 - Leave Me Alone, Hoomans!

I, of course, had to immediately show the news release to JJ from the bigger screen of my office computer. Unlike me, though, he frowned as soon as he saw the preview shot, and the crease between his eyebrows only deepened the more he listened.

"Do you know her?" I asked when the video was over.

"I'm unsure. There's certainly some familiarity here, but nothing certain. I think I might've met her in passing at some point, but I could be deluding myself or just have seen someone with similar features." JJ shrugged.

"She never introduced herself, but she didn't hide her face or voice… So it's not like she hides from anyone. I'm sure there are plenty of people in her area that recognise her. It's more like that she can't be bothered to waste words on giving her name to us, weak and short-lived humans." I rolled my eyes. "She just fuels everyone's fears!"

"It's amusing to hear you say that when you don't belong to weak and short-lived humans yourself," JJ noted, grinning.

"That's… Well, that's a grey area, isn't it? If you think about it, then we all humans in our core, except only for spirits, who never were humans to begin with," I recalled my meeting with one such female spirit on one night of magic, and how inhuman the being was despite all her human pretence and her like of mobile games. "Vampires are undead humans, shapeshifters are humans who can turn into animals—"

"Or animals who can turn into humans. Some of them are really born beasts, and they don't like when others mix up who is who."

"Alright, but animals are still something familiar and normal. And then there are witches, who are basically humans with wells in them. We all humans, not some aliens from outer space or, like demons, invaders from other dimensions. We have more similarities that differences! That some of us aren't weak, or short-lived, or need to have a hemoglobin-heavy diet doesn't change it. But people just have to see the differences first. Everyone. This lady vamp goes all racially elitist, but so does everyone else." I finished my increasingly heated speech by folding my arms over my chest and giving the office wall opposite of me my best scowl.

"Such is human nature, and I mean that for all kinds of humans. It takes effort for most of us to see the bright side instead of the dark one. But think of what this woman did this way, ma chèrie. If she felt compelled to come to her country's news with it despite her obvious disgust towards common people's attention, then she must've realised that it was impossible to avoid it fully anymore. And since types like her tend to be the most stubborn and conservative ones, I can hope that others of my kind will soon start to think about what they could do to avoid the negative consequences of the publicity they now have instead of simply ignoring it."

I couldn't be optimistic right now, no matter how I tried. To make myself feel a little better, I pulled my chair closer to JJ's and pulled his arm over my shoulders. "I think their first reaction would be to lash out or something similar. This lady vamp was basically lashing out, too. Leave me alone, hoomans, hiss-hiss-hiss!"

JJ chuckled. "You sound just like her."

A smile tugged on my lips for a moment, but then frown replaced it again. "This is totally going to blow up soon. The government might do nothing because vampires can just control the top, but they can't hypnotise every single person who lives in the world."

"No, they can't." JJ's voice grew grim. "And you are right that something bad is going to happen. If a real panic beings, people will fight they fear by fighting against the vampires, witches and shapeshifters—and when they don't find them because we all can hide all too well, then they will start attacking anyone who even remotely resembles one."

"This is terrible." And all too true. I knew history well enough to know that picking a scapegoat was everyone's favourite ways to deal with problems. Blame government, immigrants, corporations, poor, rich, anyone but themselves or those like themselves. What history couldn't tell me was how to stop that. In every historical scenario I could remember, hatred lingered for centuries after the reason for it appeared. Discrimination was never fully gone. "There must be SOMETHING to be done… Something."

JJ hummed thoughtfully. "Raising people's awareness about what they fear this much, for once—but this is already being done, in no small part thanks to you and your coven-mates."

"Yeah, Prom Queen does fine without any more of our help there after I gave her Avarice's contact number."

"Indeed, this was pretty ingenious of you, my brilliant witch," JJ grinned. "Alyona has the funds to pay Avarice to interview her followers, and Avarice has enough kinds of rare supernaturals in her command to satisfy Alyona's journalist's soul. I think it's Avarice's special ability, to spot people with unusual talents."

"I won't be surprised. It's like she can do it better than witches."

JJ nodded. "But for all Alyona's enthusiasm, she isn't a figure of authority for people, so while she spreads information, it doesn't hold much weight amongst people. It's the same for all others who leave anonymous messages on the Internet. The effect would've been much stronger if someone with weight, like the leader of a country, or a celebrity, spoke out."

"This makes sense. But it's not that easy to get to a president or a celebrity. They are already hounded by people, humans and not-just-humans. But now that I think, it's not just people that have weight, some channels too. If the information was told on a big, well-known show, or a in a respectable newspaper…"

And that reminded me. Prom Queen wanted to talk about witches on news. And if even the more conservative vampires began to say "fuck it", then maybe it was time.