I took a deep breath and drank in the comfort of home. Here was a place where the dark, violent world couldn’t get me. That strange, magical realm I used to roam. Yup, everything could now get back to normal.
That’s when I took another deep breath and smelled cherry blossoms on a spring day. I couldn’t remember the name of the perfume, but I knew the owner.
“So you are still alive,” a female voice came from the darkness of the bedroom. “I was beginning to wonder.”
I slowly closed the front door as the taste of my safe haven turned to sour dust in my mouth.
Cate Adair stepped out of my bedroom. Almost six feet of Amazon strength, with a temper to boot, she was like a lightning storm trapped in porcelain. Her long red hair was up and hidden in a towel, and the alabaster luster of her skin contrasted against the black cloth of my robe.
“Yup, there you are alive and breathing.” Cate plopped down in one of the chairs surrounding my antique dining table. “What are the odds?”
I didn’t answer. My first warning should’ve been Coyote. If he could find me, so could Caitlin.
“Hope you don’t mind but I used your shower,” she continued. “I had to drive up, and two days on the road is a bitch on the hair. Not to mention the crappy motels I stayed at. There was this one place in Dunsmere—”
“Caitlin,” I said as I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb. A headache began a pirate’s dance on my skull.
“Hmm?”
“What are you doing here?”
“‘Why hello, Caitlin, how are you?” She smiled sweetly. “‘Oh, I’m fine, Nicholas, how about you? ‘Oh, good enough, I guess, seeing as how I’ve been missing for five years.’”
“Whatever it is, the answer is no,” I said, my voice going cold. “Everyone should respect a man when he wants to stay lost.”
Her smile never left her face. “If you want me to leave, make me dinner. I miss your spaghetti.”
So much for being direct. “If you eat, will you leave?”
She raised her hands in mock defeat. “Eat and talk, that’s all. If you want me to leave afterwards, I will.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“That’s a good one. Try another.” My mood fouled, and the retort slipped out before I could stop it.
She visibly flinched. “Then how about I promise on Ann’s memory? Is that good enough for you?”
An edge had crept into her voice. Our last conversation hadn’t exactly been cordial, so she probably had a good reason for tracking me down. At least I could listen before tossing her out.
“Fine. One meal, one chat, and then you leave.” I threw my keys down on a small table by the front door. “You need a pint? You look pale.”
“Being out of the sun does that to a girl. You keep fresh?” She was surprised.
I shrugged. “There’s a guy living down the way. I’ll see what he has.”
She knew I was using it as an excuse to leave and gather my bearings, but for once she didn’t quip. That worried me. Cate showing restraint was like rain falling upward. With a sigh that seemed to come from my toes, I did an about-face and left without another word.
An icy wind snuck past my jean jacket as I left Cate behind and made my way across the open balcony toward apartment 2F. The peeling walls painted a bleak echo of my troubles. The apartments lined up like motel rooms, which made the walk shorter than I hoped. I slowed my stride as my mind swirled with questions and feelings long thought dead. What did Cate want? How did she find me when I spent so much time and energy to disappear? All these questions buzzed around like flies around the corpse of my old life.
A lone duck sat in the swimming pool that doubled for a natural preserve, but he didn’t give me any answers, so I knocked on Felix’s door. After a minute of silence, I pounded again, this time loud enough to wake the dead.
That was an ironic thought. A muffled question came from inside. “Felix,” I yelled, “it’s me. I need a pint.”
“You got cash?” a sleepy voice asked through the closed door.
“Unless you suddenly take American Express.”
The door cracked open and a face white as a sheet and twice as greasy peered down at me from a frame built like a telephone pole. Felix blinked in the gloomy daylight. His hands shook, even though the gloom couldn’t hurt him. It was either fear or he was strung out again.
I held up a five, and he handed over a pint of crimson. “Dude, when’d you start up the habit?” Felix asked, his surfer voice in direct opposition to his fear of the sun.
“It’s for a friend. Is this stuff clean?”
“Of course it is, man. What do you take me for?”
“I had to ask.” Felix liked the tainted stuff, heroin or cocaine junkies being his favorite. It was sad. He had all eternity and he spent most of it cracked out of his head. Even for the undead it wasn’t a way to live.
“Is your friend hot?” he asked.
“Good-bye, Felix,” I told him. “Thanks for the pint.”
“No problem, dude.” He slipped back into his apartment and four different locks engaged, one right after another.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. I walked back into my apartment and found Cate sitting in my black chair, leafing through one of the paperbacks. She had a tight black shirt and jeans plastered to her wet body. Like most times, it left little to the imagination. Her dark red hair was in all its glory, cascading down in a fiery wave.
“Never took you for a romance reader,” she said as I entered. She finished glancing through the book and studied the front cover. “The Glory Years, by Lilith A. Taylor. You actually like this crap?”
“What can I say?” I said as I walked past, grabbing the book out of her hands as I went. “I’m a romantic.”
My kitchen, if you could call it that, was a tiny closet off the main room. It was also the only spotless place in the apartment. Whenever stress knocked me down I came in here and fixed up a dish. It was easier back when I wasn’t alone. I angrily pushed the thought down and tossed the packet of blood on the counter.
“So you still have the baseball caps, I see,” she said as she followed me into the kitchen. “You know, you should show off your hair more, although you’ve definitely made the Seattle look your own. Where do you keep the glasses?”
She made me dizzy with her subject changes. “The mugs are above the microwave.” I hated it when her kind used glasses when they drank. Seeing the contents always made me nauseated.
She grabbed a mug, ripped open the blood packet, and poured the scarlet liquid inside. I turned away as she hungrily drank it down.
Her kind. That was a nasty thought. The woman underneath hadn’t changed; she just grew fangs and had a hankering for blood now. Of course, she was also the walking dead. It was a hard prejudice to overcome and, frankly, one of the reasons why I left. That, and Ann…
I squashed the thought before it could form. I hadn’t thought of Ann in years, and I wasn’t going to start now, even with her sister standing next to me drinking blood as if it was a nice Merlot.
“How did you get in here anyway?” I asked.
“Oh,” she gestured absently. “Your landlord invited me. I thought I’d have to wait all night in the rain until you came home, but he was nice enough to let me in.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I was an old flame who wanted to reconnect.” She laughed, the sound brightening the room. “I guess the old guy is a romantic too.”
I shook my head and continued cooking.
“So,” she said as she went to the sink to rinse the mug out, “how’s Seattle treating you?” I watched the lazy red swirls before yanking my gaze back to the pasta.
I shrugged. “It’s cold and wet, but pretty much spook free. But there’s one thing about living in Seattle I never could stomach. All the damn vampires,” I quoted the movie and glanced at her. The Lost Boys had been her favorit
e, even before the change.
She smiled, and I caught a glimpse of her canines. “I don’t know how you can handle only three months of sun. I’d wilt away if I didn’t have the beach.”
Unlike the older ones, the newly turned could stay in the sun for a bit. No one knew what had changed in the bloodline, but it was a loophole Cate loved to flaunt. She was the only one of her kind living in Southern California.
“One of these days you’re going to end up as one of the Colonel’s special recipes,” I said as I turned off the heat and dumped the pasta into the strainer.
She shrugged. “There are things in life you don’t give up. I watched the sun rise the other morning. Made it almost ten minutes before I had to go inside. I had to feed afterwards, but it was worth it.”
I paused over the sink. “Feed?” I asked, attempting to keep the accusation out of my words.
She inhaled sharply. “Feed, not kill. There are a couple of college boys who can’t remember the good time they didn’t have.” She tried to laugh, but it came out strained. When I looked back, she had disappeared into the living room.
I finished making the meal in silence. The apartment was like a tomb, with only one of us breathing. I dumped the pasta in a bowl and turned the sauce off. Nothing fancy. As much as I missed Cate’s laugh, I couldn’t wait for her to leave. Life was good up here, and she complicated things.
I set the dinner down on the dining room table, and when I turned back I found her standing next to me. A soft curse popped out, and I flinched back, almost knocking the spaghetti off the table. She grinned like the Cheshire cat, with just a hint of the slightly extended and sharpened canines again.
Cate sat down and crossed her legs. The dining table was beautifully carved, if a bit small. I don’t know if it had been an actual dining room table before, but it was old and had a lot of emotion carved into the polished wood. For once I wished the table was bigger, because the size gave little room for the tension between us.
I picked at the spaghetti while Cate dug in with a gusto that would make a stray dog envious. “Been a while?” I said.
She sucked up a huge mouthful and stretched back in pleasure. “What month is it?” she asked.
“October.”
“The last time I ate was last Thanksgiving. A whole bird, with stuffing and cranberries. You never know how much you miss food until you live off of that crap for months on end.” She gestured vaguely toward the scarlet mug in the kitchen.
“Cate,” I said, “it’s time to stop playing.”
Cate sucked in one last noodle. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said as she slowly licked the sauce from her lips.
Trying to keep me off balance, but I didn’t take the bait. “What do you want?”
“Can’t a girl visit her brother-in-law?”
“We’ve been through this already.” I kept my voice on an even keel, even with anger threatening my insides. I always hated her games, even when we were best friends. “I paid a lot of cash to make sure no one came looking. Wards, spells, runes, you name it. You got past them all.”
“You should’ve saved the money. Maybe bought a cat…”
She must have seen something disturbing in my glare, because she looked away first. “I came to offer you a job,” she said. Her voice remained calm, but the muscles of her jaw clenched.
“You know what the answer’s going to be. Jesus, Cate, you know.”
“Hear me out,” she said. She didn’t relax. “This is the Big One, Nick. It’s enough for me to retire. We’re talking reams of cash.”
I didn’t answer.
“I need your help. I’ve been looking for you for months, and then this dragon told me‒”
“Dragon?”
“Yeah, he was named after an old Shakespeare character. He told me where you were and said it was repayment for some kind of debt.”
I should’ve known. Dragons were honorable with their debts, but damn if they didn’t screw you in the process. That bastard Oberon sent me the dragon scale and then warned me of a storm he sent my way. I suddenly had a taste for fried lizard.
“Anyway, I need your help on this one. Business has been on the fritz since you left, Nick. No one trusts me. As if I have a choice in what I am! Then this comes along and—”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the case.”
“And the answer will still be no. I have a life here.”
“A life of hiding!” she exclaimed as she sprang out of the chair. I tensed as she began pacing. “What the hell are you doing up here that’s so bloody important?”
“Exactly,” I told her. “There’s no blood, no death, and sure-as-hell no magic. I’m at peace here.”
That stopped her cold. “But your gifts—”
“Are nothing,” I interrupted. “They couldn’t save Ann.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Cate.”
“It wasn’t your fault! And neither are these.” She bared her teeth, showing her long, razor-tipped canines. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”
“What I have to do,” I said, my voice weary, “is walk you to the door. Then I’m going to clean the dishes, write a few chapters in my book, and go to sleep.”
“But you don’t even know the case.”
“I don’t want to. The answer will always be no. That life is gone. This is me now.”
“It will never be you, Nick. The game is in your blood. It’s what made you…you. It’s what Ann fell in love with.”
This time I looked away.
“So that’s it then?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.” I stood up to clear the dishes. “I wish it could be the answer you wanted.” The tiniest rush of wind hit me, and I glanced up. The front door stood open, and the wicked October wind stalked through the apartment looking for warm prey. Caitlin was gone.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said to no one in particular. I finished cleaning the dishes, all the while debating on what alcohol to drink tonight.
After five years of relative solitude and peace, I had had an encounter with a trickster and a vampire, all in the span of twelve hours. Yup, definitely not a day to end sober.
CHAPTER THREE
The next day rose with a bleary-eyed grumble as I pushed my way through the morning drizzle. The crowds huddled in their coats or dashed along, intent on getting out of the storm. I wasn’t cold, but the constant dampness got on my nerves, which was ironic considering where I called home. But there are perks up here in the Northwest that outweighed the constant rain. Beautiful parks, a pretty good music scene, and coffee.
The African Queen Coffee Shop was located down the street in a neighborhood called the Fremont District. A young couple sat making out on a peeling wood bench outside a vinyl record shop, their piercings in danger of being locked together.
As I walked past the battered guitar case of an old street musician, I went through my wallet and dropped in a five. The old man looked up and gave me a toothless grin, all the while strumming “LA Woman” on his guitar.
When I opened the door to the African Queen, soft jazz filtered out. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. There’s nothing like the smell of fresh coffee on a dreary morning.
Mugs clanked together as the owner of the shop went about her morning chores. Tall and lithe, Thelma could’ve been a long distance runner in a past life. With her neatly ironed pants and a tan blouse that complemented her dark skin, she was a sea of peace compared to Cate’s raging storm. It was something I desperately needed.
“How’s my goddess of coffee this morning?” I asked as I saddled up to the counter and parked myself on one of the stools.
“Good,” she said, “although seeing another paying customer always makes me happier.”
The coffee shop mirrored Thelma’s roots. Tribal masks lined the walls, displaying various African deities. The sky king Olorun looked at me with a disapproving scowl on his long wooden face, while the deity Shango
grinned lightning bolts from the skin of an ancient drum hanging near the ceiling. While the place had charm in spades, it lacked a pretty fundamental thing: customers.
Besides me, the only other customer was a long-haired vagrant asleep next to his tall latte. His black stringy hair fell from a worn cowboy hat and covered the greasy skin of his face. A long coat and ratty green sweater covered a frame as thin as a praying mantis, and his fingers clenched and unclenched while he slept.
“More people will come once the rain kicks in,” I told her.
Thelma went back to cleaning the mugs. “You want your usual?”
“Yes indeed.”
As Thelma went to work on my triple espresso, I let my mind wander back to the encounter yesterday. Cate had stirred feelings in me I purposely buried long ago. Out of her visit came sadness, remorse, and a definite acorn of guilt that threatened to blossom into a big old tree of regret.
Cate was a formidable woman before she was turned and now she was even more so. I had to wonder why she needed me. Sure, I had some pretty neat tricks up my sleeve, but most of it was rumor and legend.
But more than anything else, Cate made me think of my Ann, with her laughing eyes and teasing smile. My life lost in an instant of blood and fire, and now Cate wanted me to enter that life again.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Thelma said as she placed the coffee down in front of me.
“If I had a penny for every time my brain wandered, I’d be a rich man,” I said. “I’m just remembering old ghosts.”
“Ghosts only haunt us when we let them.”
That brought a smile to my face. “Is that another one from your grandmother?”
Thelma smiled back. “There are two things my grandma used to love: cooking and giving unwanted advice. I thought I’d share the latter. So what’s bothering you?”
I savored the bitterness of the coffee. “I had a visit from the past. Someone I didn’t want to confront.”
“A woman?”
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