Tall, Dark & Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  Plus, he cast a shadow. Not to mention the fact that a regular ghost would have trouble carrying my latte and the saucer with my croissant on it. Sebastian didn’t. In fact, he slid my food so deftly in front of me that I had to ask, “Were you a waiter once?”

  “Oh, more than once,” he said. “I worked my way across several continents waiting tables. It’s a good job to have done because there’s almost always work.”

  “True enough,” I agreed. I’d done a stint waitressing while in college.

  “Can I ask a small favor?” He looked vaguely sheepish, and I was wondering if he was going to bum some money from me to cover the food and drinks.

  “Sure,” I said suspiciously.

  “Would you tell me your name?”

  “Garnet Lacey,” I said, then instantly regretted it. My stomach twisted in that way it does right after you’ve given the cute stranger you just met at the bar your real home phone number. Oh, yes, dead guy, here, have my true name. Why don’t I just hand over some fingernails and a lock of hair, too, so you can have complete control over me?

  I should have given him my ritual name. Because of the constant threat of Vatican spies infiltrating the coven, it was standard protocol to have an assumed name, one that was used primarily among other Witches. My coven had been strict about it, secrecy had been drilled into me, and here I was exchanging private information with a dead guy I’d only just met. Super, Garnet.

  “Well, Garnet.” He smiled that harmless smile I wanted to trust but couldn’t quite. “It’s nice to be officially introduced. My name is Sebastian Von Traum.”

  Well, at least he appeared to have returned the favor. If this guy didn’t know magic, he certainly knew the right questions to ask and how to phrase the responses. After all, he didn’t just say: “I’m Sebastian” or “I’m called Sebastian,” he said, “My name is.” It was an offer of trust. Or a happy accident. The glow in those brown eyes made me doubt it was the latter.

  “Sebastian is kind of an old-fashioned name,” I said, trying to be sly about sussing out his age. After all, at this point in the conversation it seemed a little gauche to ask him how long he’d been dead.

  “It is,” he agreed, glancing out the window at a drunken gaggle of college frat boys in full barhopping mode. “I’m named after the saint, no less.”

  “I’m not big on Christian saints,” I said. “Which one as he?”

  “Praetorian guardsman, pierced by arrows, though apparently that wasn’t what killed him in the end.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  Sebastian smiled. At that moment in the conversation— i.e., me having declared my stupidity—I normally would have taken such an expression as condescending. Instead, Sebastian’s grin seemed self-deprecating, almost shy.

  “I do that,” he said. Again, on other men, I’d have assumed arrogance, but there was something about the way he said the words that cast them in a softer, kinder tone. “He lived through the arrows. He got beaten to death with a stick. Anyway, do you know what I find truly bizarre? Here’s this poor guy who gets shot with a zillion arrows, and do you know what he becomes? The patron saint of archers. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?”

  “It does,” I admitted with a laugh.

  Sebastian took a sip of his drink. He’d bought something dark that came in a big yellow coffee mug. From here, it smelled like a dark roast of some kind. Most dead things I’d run across so far could drink if they wanted to, even zombies—at first, anyway. So, it didn’t surprise me to find him able to do it. I just wondered at his choice.

  “You have the strangest expression on your face right now,” he said to me.

  “You’re drinking regular coffee,” I said.

  “So I am,” he said. “Though this is organic, shade-grown, fair-trade, and bicycle-delivered.”

  Of all the things to spend your money on, I thought. Here this guy is dead and he doesn’t even spring for a fancy latte or a shot of anything. What a waste of precious digestive juices. I mean, I believed in the power of a normal cup of joe, but when you were going out for coffee, a person should go for broke. And, if you’re dead… well, you should really whoop it up.

  “Does it offend you?” he asked cautiously.

  “No. It’s just… don’t you want something more special?”

  “Why?”

  “To mark the occasion.” He raised his eyebrows in a way that reminded me that he wasn’t privy to my inner thoughts, and I probably sounded like a complete idiot. “I mean, you can make that stuff at home.”

  “Ah, but at home I can’t spend three dollars for the privilege.”

  “Exactly my point,” I said with a smile.

  “You’re a very odd woman, but you have the loveliest smile,” he said. “It attracted me instantly. It’s rather enchanting, actually.”

  Like your eyes, I almost said. Instead, I pulled myself away from those amber depths and stared at the napkin I’d been folding into a tiny triangle. “So, uh, Von Traum… What kind of name is that?”

  “Austrian,” he said a bit perfunctorily, as though he’d been asked about it a number of times.

  I felt bad not acknowledging his earlier compliment, but I didn’t know what to do about his/our attraction. The fact remained that he was dead. As a doornail. And dating doornails was no fun. Trust me, I tried being with a dead guy once, and it was miserable. I found that whole cold skin thing a big turnoff in the bedroom. You can only do so many things in a hot bath or shower, and even then the heat didn’t… well, penetrate, if you know what I mean.

  I banished that thought with a sip of my latte. The honey and milk tasted sweet on my tongue, and the hint of espresso gave the drink a perfect kick. Izzy sure knew her stuff. I looked up to see her smiling at me from behind the counter.

  Meanwhile, Sebastian’s attention had wandered to the street again. Two women walked by, loaded down with shopping bags. One of them wore a dress with the price tag still hanging from the sleeve. I cleared my throat to draw him away from the two laughing women. “I’d have thought you were English from your accent.”

  “I was educated in Britain,” he replied distractedly. I got the sense he’d been asked both these questions a lot.

  Since I was asking all the traditional getting-to-know-you questions, I might as well go right down the list. “How long have you lived in Madison?”

  He sighed. “Since my dreams of becoming a rock star died.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No, my best singing is done in the shower,” he said with a smile.

  My imagination suddenly flashed to an image of Sebastian naked and wet. I could almost feel my hands sliding easily over slick shoulders and down the flat planes of that broad chest to—

  “I moved here from Phoenix a couple of months ago.”

  I blinked, banishing my fantasy with a quick shake of the head. “Uhm, so,” I said, wishing we could talk more about what Sebastian did while wet. “What were you doing there?”

  “I was a tour guide at the botanical garden.” Before I could ask him more about that, he turned the conversation back to me. “What about you? Have you always lived in Madison?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m a world traveler, like yourself. I must have come three, four, five hundred miles in my entire lifetime. I was born in Finlayson.” He gave me the blank look I often got when I mentioned my hometown. “Minnesota. A speck on the map, really. I left there for college as soon as I could.”

  “So, you’re at UW?”

  “No, I’m done. I got my degree in Minneapolis.”

  He gave me a skeptical look, as though he didn’t think I was old enough to be a college graduate. I was, in point of fact, nearly thirty. It was the clothes; I always got carded when I went Goth.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so,” Sebastian said. “Garnet is an unusual name, as well.”

  This was the question I got asked all the time. I was the only Garnet anywhere I went, and thus I’d had to endure a lot of playgrou
nd teasing in my formative years. Though I loved the uniqueness of my name, I’d developed a love/hate relationship with it. Frankly, I always thought Garnet Lacey sounded a bit like a stripper.

  I had a pat little story I always told to try to explain the origin of my name. “What can I say? Even though it was the late seventies, my parents hadn’t given up on flower power. They’d moved to a farm to live off the land—they’re raising organic chickens today. Anyway, they always used to joke that they were so into being ‘back to the earth’ they named their only child after a rock.”

  He laughed. A lot of people laughed when they heard the story of my name, but he seemed to share my amusement at my crazy, organic folks. “You’re not serious.”

  “Not entirely. Garnet is also my birthstone.”

  “January,” he said without hesitation. “So, does that make you a Capricorn or an Aquarius?”

  “Come on,” I laughed. “Look at me. Do I seem like a Capricorn to you?”

  His gaze seemed to take in the pixie hair, ankh, and miniskirt in one measuring glance. “So, you’re saying you’re not somber and reserved?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m a Capricorn,” he said with a slight crinkle of a smile.

  Oops. Before I could apologize for implying I wouldn’t want to be a Capricorn, Izzy interrupted us with Sebastian’s tuna sandwich. After she handed it over with a professional, “Here you are, sir,” she waited until he wasn’t looking and made the telephone sign to me with her fingers to her ear to let me know she wanted all the dirt later.

  “I know Capricorns get a bad rep as being the boring, responsible sign, but you’re more than that,” I said.

  He gave me a look over the rim of his coffee mug that seemed to say, “You bet I am.”

  What I’d meant was that a person’s sun sign was only one small aspect of their natal chart. Among a myriad of things there was the ascendant, the Moon sign, hard and soft aspects, and houses to consider. “What time were you born?”

  “If you’re asking my ascendant, it’s Sagittarius.” I supposed I should be surprised he knew, but I wasn’t. I mean, he had walked into my shop looking for mandrake.

  As he ate, I thought about his sun/ascendant combination.

  A person’s sun sign represents core personality traits, but the ascendant, or rising sign, is one’s mask to the outside world—how you present yourself. My first thought was: philosophical scientist. No wonder he was a mystical car mechanic. It might also explain the various jobs. His Sagittarian soul was seeking new learning experiences, while the Capricorn sun insisted he master all his chosen trades. Hmmm, I thought, attractive.

  Ugh. What was I doing? I was sizing up my compatibility with someone who was dead. I squinted at his aura one more time: still nothing.

  Watching him dig into his food, I decided he was certainly hungry enough to be a ghost. Vampires tended not to eat. Zombies couldn’t.

  I picked at my croissant and tried to think if there was any other kind of reanimation I knew about. I squinted at his lack of aura again. If he’d been serious about the rock star thing, I’d have asked Sebastian if he’d sold his immortal soul to Satan for a record contract or something. But, I didn’t believe in Satan.

  If it was about the lack of a soul, Sebastian certainly had the muscles to be a golem. The most famous one had been made to protect the Jews of Prague from attack. If that were the case, he’d have the Hebrew word for life written on his forehead. I chewed another piece of pastry. I supposed that part of the legend could be some kind of metaphor. Or maybe if he frowned just right, it’d appear in wrinkles. It would help if I read Hebrew, of course. Still, Kabalistic rabbis would probably spawn an Orthodox golem, so I just had to figure out a way to ask him if he was Jewish. I could wait until we had sex and look, but circumcision was so common these days that it really wouldn’t be proof of anything.

  “We could go out to a proper dinner, you know, if you’re still hungry,” I suggested, giving a meaningful glance at his empty plate. “There’s this great deli down the street if you need to keep kosher.”

  He arched his eyebrow as he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “The only religious dietary restriction I’d even consider is the Pope’s requirement that I eat fish on Fridays during Lent. But that’s only because they have the best fish frys down at Syl’s.”

  “You’re Catholic?”

  “Sort of,” he said with a wry smile. “I was. Well, technically, I still am. I was excommunicated.”

  “Really? Wow. What did you have to do to warrant that?”

  “Dabble in the dark arts,” he said with a smile that showed off his canines. Were they a little too sharp after all? “Catholics frown on Witchcraft.”

  I should know. The Vatican Witch hunters destroyed my previous life. His comment made me curious about whether or not he was familiar with the assassins. Not everyone was. And those in the know tended to be very circumspect about talking about the Vatican and real magic in public. Of course, I’d already given Sebastian my true name, which was a big no-no among the hunted.

  Yet somehow I wasn’t quite ready to talk about the Witch hunters. Probably because talking about killer priests out loud made me sound like a stark raving lunatic with a conspiracy theory complex. I still wanted to make a good impression on Sebastian, so I changed the subject somewhat. “What kind of magic do you practice?”

  I was expecting him to mention Alexandrian or Seax-Wiccan, or Feri, but instead he said, “Alchemy.”

  It was an odd answer, but it wouldn’t account for the lack of an aura.

  Damn. I was running out of ideas. “Can I see your palm?”

  “Are you Romany?” He offered his hand, palm up, without question.

  “I may have a little Romany blood,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “Family lore has it that Mother’s grandmother was.”

  I peered intently at his palm, though I’d asked for it with an ulterior motive. His flesh was warm. What I now knew was grease had worked its way under his fingernails, but he had no cuts, bruises, or scrapes anywhere on his hands. Which implied his flesh might be immutable or regenerative, since he worked with sharp and heavy car parts all day.

  I ran my fingers along his wrist. There was no pulse.

  “What do you see?” Sebastian asked.

  I looked up into those gorgeous brown eyes with their unearthly light, which seemed only to have gotten brighter now that the sun had slipped below the horizon. He seemed genuinely interested in the fortune I might read, so I took a more serious look at his palm. I wasn’t an expert palm reader by any stretch, but I understood that the curved crease nearest the thumb was called the lifeline. His was broken in the middle where it split into two lines. I pointed to it.

  “Well, if you weren’t sitting here with me, I’d say you died young,” I told him.

  My hand cradled his, so I could feel his muscles clench, though to my eyes he barely twitched. He knew he was dead, and now he knew I knew it.

  “What else?” he asked, not bothering to respond to my implication.

  I was almost out of tricks. Then I remembered one other thing my grandmother had showed me. I turned his hand to the side and looked at the skin underneath his pointer finger. There were no creases. “You will have no children.”

  For some reason that pissed him off. He jerked his hand away. “Do you really believe in this stuff?” he asked, though from the way his jaw worked I thought it was pretty clear that he did.

  I shrugged and sipped my latte. “I don’t know. People have been reading palms and stars for millennia.”

  “Ignorant people,” he all but spat.

  “Newton was an—” I started, but before I could go through my list of famous, intelligent people who believed in any number of “superstitions,” Sebastian interrupted me.

  “Isaac Newton was an asshole. And mad as a hatter. He used to poke sticks in his eyes to test his optics theories.”

  I crossed my arms in front of my c
hest. “You sound like you’ve had dinner with him.”

  Sebastian’s lips twitched. “I have a master’s in history of science. I take this stuff personally.”

  A dead, English-educated auto mechanic/tour guide with a history of science degree who did herbalism on the side… If all of it was true, Sebastian was sounding more and more like a man who’d been kicking around for a few centuries and had a lot of time to pick up skills and interests.

  Sebastian frowned out the window at the deepening twilight. The electric light caught the amber highlights in his eyes. I wanted to ask him about his strange reaction to my comment about children, but I didn’t know what to say or how to phrase it. I sensed it was a subject I needed to tread carefully around. Sebastian certainly seemed deeply troubled, and I doubted his mood was a result of talking about Isaac Newton.

  I reached across the table to caress the back of his hand where it wrapped around his coffee mug. At my touch, our eyes met. Oh, and what a look. It was one of those zing-we’ve-got-chemistry, smoldering, penetrating, I-can-almost-see-a-hint-of-your-soul meaningful glances.

  My breath quickened. Sebastian leaned closer—maybe to say something, maybe to kiss me. I stretched across the table, and a tingle of anticipation shot through me. He looked like he’d be a fantastic kisser, and I was dying to find out for sure.

  I found myself watching his mouth, reveling in the thin line of his lips… the sharp glint of his canines. The what? Before I could take a closer look, Sebastian turned away. “Sorry,” he muttered into his hand. “I have a transmission to rebuild tomorrow. Call me when the mandrake comes in, okay?”

  “Uh.” Watching him stand up and shrug into his leather jacket, I was too stunned to say anything else. “But…”

  His hand squeezed my shoulder as he headed for the door. The warmth of his palm lingered momentarily along the curve of my neck. “I had a great time. Really,” he said. “I hope to see you again, Lilith.”

  “Yeah,” I said to the jangle of bells on the door as he walked out of my life. I replayed the last part of our conversation in my head, noting the various places I’d screwed up… or did I? I was on my fifth go-round when I nearly choked on my latte.