by Tanya Huff
"And the danger to you?"
"He hates you because you're different. You haven't hurt him or anyone near him, but neither are you like him." Madame Luminitsa paused, glanced around the room, and spread her hands. "We are also different, and we work hard at keeping it that way. In the old days, we could have taken to the roads, but now we, as much as you, are sitting targets."
"You're sure he's just a man?" Vicki asked, twisting a pinch of the tablecloth between thumb and forefinger. She'd met a demon once and didn't want to again.
"Just a man? Men do by choice what demons do by nature."
Vicki'd spent too much time in Violent Crimes to argue with that. "You've got to give me more to go on than tall, dark, and male."
From a pocket in her skirt or perhaps a shelf under the table, Madame Luminitsa pulled out a deck of tarot cards. "I can."
"Oh, come on..."
Shuffling the cards with a dexterity that spoke of long practice, the older woman ignored her. She placed the shuffled deck in the center of the table. "With your left hand, cut the cards into three piles to your left," she said.
Vicki stared down at the cards, then up at the fortune teller. "I don't think so."
"Cut the cards if you want to live."
Put like that, it was pretty hard to refuse.
Tarot cards had made a brief surge into popular culture while Vicki'd been a university student. A number of the girls she knew laid out patterns at every opportunity. Vicki'd considered it more important to maintain her average than to take the time to learn the symbolism. She also considered most of the kerchiefed, sandaled, skirted amateur fortune tellers to be complete flakes. As a history major, she was fully aware of the persecutions the Romani had gone through for centuries, persecutions that had started up with renewed vigor after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and she was at a loss to understand why anyone would consider the life of the caravans to be romantic.
The pattern Madame Luminitsa laid out was a familiar one. "Aren't you supposed to start by picking a card out to stand for me?"
"Do I tell you your business?"
"Uh, no."
"Then don't tell me mine." She laid down the tenth card, set the unused part of the deck carefully to one side, and sat back in her chair, her eyes never leaving the brightly colored rectangles spread out in front of her. "The Three of Swords sets an atmosphere of loss. Reversed, the Emperor covers it; a weak man but one who will take action. In his past, the star reversed; physical or mental illness."
"Wait a minute, I thought this was my reading."
"It's a reading to help you find the stranger before he can strike."
"Oh." Vicki reached into the inside pocket of her jacket for the small notebook and pen. She carried the old massive shoulder bag less and less these days. Somehow a purse, even one of luggage dimensions, just didn't seem vampiric. "Maybe I should be writing this down."
Madame Luminitsa waited until the first three cards had been recorded and then went on. "He has just set aside his material life."
"Fired from his job?"
"I don't know, but now he does other, more spiritual things."
"How can destroying me be spiritual?"
"He believes he's removing evil from the world."
"And what will be believe when he goes after your people?"
"For some, different is enough to be considered evil. He's about to come to a decision; you haven't much time."
"Or much information."
"You're here, in his recent past. I suspect you took his blood and the mental illness kept the shadows you command from blotting the memory. The Page of Swords—here—means he's watching you. Spying, learning your patterns before he strikes."
She remembered the feeling that something was wrong, out of place. "Great. Like I've only ever fed off one tall dark man, unstable and unemployed."
"There's only one watching you."
"That makes me feel so much better."
"Ace of Wands, reversed. He's likely to make one unsuccessful attempt before you're in any actual danger. He's afraid of being alone, and he's created this purpose to fill the void. He has no family. No friends. But look here..."
Vicki obediently bent forward.
"... the Nine of Wands. He has prepared for this. In the final outcome, he is dead to reason. Don't argue with him, stop him."
"Kill him?"
Madame Luminitsa shuffled the cards back into the deck. "That's up to you, Nightwalker."
Tapping her pen against the paper, Vicki glanced over her list. "So I'm looking for a tall, dark, unstable, unemployed, lonely man with sawdust in his cuffs from sharpening stakes, who remembers me feeding from him and has been spying on me ever since. He'll make an attempt he won't carry through all the way, but when push comes to shove, I won't be able to talk him out of destroying me and may have to destroy him first." When she looked up, her eyes had silvered slightly. "How do I know you're not setting me up to destroy an enemy of yours?"
"You don't."
"How do I know you didn't deliberately mislead me so that you can destroy me yourself?"
"You don't."
"So, essentially, what you're saying is, I have to trust that you, and this whole fortune-telling thing, are on the level."
The Romani's eyes reflected bits of silver; the physical manifestation of Vicki's power stopped at the surface. "Yes."
*
"Vicki, get real! These are Gypsies, they live for the elaborate scam."
"Not this time, Mike." Swiveling out into the room, she tipped back her desk chair and frowned up at him. "Even if your stereotyping was accurate, this wasn't a scam. Madame Luminitsa needs me to protect her family. That's the only possible reason strong enough for her to even deal with me. If my danger wasn't her danger as well, I'd be facing it on my own."
"So she wants something from you."
Beginning to wish she'd never told him how she'd spent her evening, Vicki closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Yes, she does. And so she's no different than any of my other clients who want something from me except that she's paid in full, in advance, by warning me of the danger that I'm in."
"You want to know what danger you're in?" Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci stopped pacing and turned to glare at the woman in the chair. He'd loved her when they'd been together on the police force, he'd loved her when a degenerative eye disease had forced her to quit a job she'd excelled at and start over as a private investigator, and he'd continued to love her even after she'd become an undead, bloodsucking creature of the night—but there were times, and this was one of them, when he wanted to wring her neck. "This fortune teller knows what you are, and what one Gypsy knows, they all do."
"Romani."
"What?"
"Most prefer to be called Romani, not Gypsy."
He threw up his hands. "What difference does that make?"
"Well, let's see ..." Her voice dripped sarcasm. "How would you like to be called a dumb, bigoted wop?"
Celluci's eyes narrowed and, over the angry pounding of his heart, Vicki could hear him breathing heavily through his nose. "Fine. Romani. Whatever. They still know what you are, and therefore they know you're completely helpless during the day. I want you to move back in with me."
"So you can protect me?"
"Yes!" He spat out the word, defying the reaction he knew she'd have.
To his surprise, there was no explosion.
As much touched as irritated by his concern, Vicki sighed impatiently and said, "Mike, do you honestly think that a plywood box in your basement is safer than this apartment?" The converted warehouse space boasted a barred window, a steel door, industrial strength locks, and an enclosed loft with an access so difficult even Celluci didn't attempt it on his own. The safety features had been designed by a much older vampire who'd made one fatal error—she hadn't realized that the territory was already taken.
Slowly, Celluci sank down onto the arm of the sofa. "No. I don't."
"And it's not lik
e you're home all day."
"I know. It's just..."
Vicki rolled her office chair out from under the edge of the loft, stopping only when they were knee to knee. She reached out and pushed an overlong curl of hair back off his face. "I'm not saying that I won't ever move back, Mike, just not now. Not because a mentally unstable, unemployed blood donor thinks he's a modern Van Helsing."
He caught her hand, the skin cool against his palm. "And the Gy... the Romani?"
"From what I understand about their culture, Madame Luminitsa's abilities make her a bit of an outsider already, and she won't risk being named marhime ... a kind of social/cultural exile," she added when Mike's brows went up, "by telling her family she's dealing with a vampire."
"All right." Releasing his grip, he pushed her chair far enough away to give him room to stand. "So how do we stop this Van Helsing of yours?"
"I love it when you get all macho," she purred, rubbing her foot up his inseam. Before he could react, she scooted back to the office, the chair's wheels protesting her speed. "According to the cards, he's prepared. You could check with the B&E guys to see if anyone's reported stolen holy water."
"Holy water?"
"Madame Luminitsa said he thinks of me as evil and holy water is one of the traditional, albeit ineffectual, ways to melt a vampire."
"How the hell would someone steal holy water?"
"Don't you ever watch movies, Mike?" She mimed filling a water pistol. "Ask them about communion wafers, too."
"Communion wafers?" He sighed and looked at his watch. "Fine. Whatever. Patterson's on evenings this week and he owes me a favor. It's only a quarter past eleven, so if I leave in the next few minutes, I'll catch him at Headquarters before he heads home."
"Great—I'll make this next bit quick. Since the cards also pointed out that our stalker's recently unemployed, a homicide detective with an open case involving the shooting of two counselors at a Canada Manpower center last month would have a reason to ask for a printout of everyone who'd recently applied for unemployment insurance."
"The guy who did the shooting could've been unemployed for years."
"You don't know that."
"Okay, let's say I come up with a plausible story and get the list—would you recognize the name of a..." He paused. This aspect of her life wasn't something they spoke about. Intellectually, Celluci knew he couldn't fulfill all her needs, but he chose to ignore what that actually meant. "...dinner companion."
"I don't know. Do you remember what you had for dinner every night for the last month?"
His lip curled into an expression approximating a smile. "Any other time, I'd be pleased you thought so little of them; this time, it's damned inconvenient. If you won't recognize his name, why do you want to see the list?"
"I might recognize his name," Vicki corrected. "But mostly I want to see the list to compare it to..." She paused and decided Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci would be happier not knowing about the list she planned on comparing it to.
*
Unlike the unemployment office, the Queen Street Mental Health Center was open more or less twenty- four hours a day—recent government cutbacks having redefined the word open.
Vicki watched from the shadows as the old woman wearing a plastic hospital bracelet shuffled into the circle of light by the glass doors, cringed as the streetcar went by, pushed a filthy palm against the buzzer, and left it there. She'd been easy enough to find—this part of the city had an embarrassment of riches when it came to the lost—but less than easy to control. Those parts of the human psyche that responded to the danger, to the forbidden sensuality that the vampire represented, were so inaccessible they might as well not have existed. Vicki'd finally given her ten bucks and told her, in words of one syllable, what she needed done.
Sometimes, the old ways worked best.
Eventually, an orderly appeared, shaking his head as if the motion would disconnect the incessant buzzing. Peering through the wired glass, his frown segued into annoyed recognition. "Damn it, Helen," he muttered as he opened the door. "Stop leaning on the fucking buzzer."
Vicki slipped inside while he dealt with the old woman.
When he turned, the door closing behind him, she was there: her eyes silver, her smile very white, the Hunger rising.
"I need you to do me a favor," she said.
He swallowed convulsively as she ran her thumb lightly down the muscles of his throat.
Sometimes, the new ways worked best.
*
When the approaching dawn drove her home, Vicki carried a list of recent discharges from Queen Street and a similar list from the Clark Institute. All she needed was Celluci's list from UIC to make comparisons. With luck there'd be names in common, names with addresses she could visit until she recognized the distinctive signature of a life she'd fed on.
Her pair of lists were depressingly long and, given the current economic climate in Mike Harris' Ontario, she expected the third to be no shorter. Searching them would take most of a night and checking the names in common could easily take another two or three nights after that.
Unlocking her door, Vicki hoped they'd have the time. Madame Luminitsa had seemed convinced the wacko in the cards was about to make his move.
The apartment was dark, but the shadows were familiar. Nothing lurked in the corners except dust bunnies not quite big enough to be a danger.
After locking and then barring the door with a two by four painted to match the wall—unsophisticated safety measures were often the most effective—Vicki hurried toward the loft, fighting to keep her shoulders from hunching forward as she felt the day creep up behind her. Almost safe within her sanctuary, she looked down and saw the light flashing on her answering machine. She hesitated. The sun inched closer toward the horizon.
"Oh, damn." Unable to let it go, she swung back down to the floor.
"Vicki, Mike. St. Paul's Anglican on Bloor reported a break-in last Tuesday afternoon. The only thing missing was a box of communion wafers. If he drained the holy water as well, they didn't bother reporting it. Looks like you were right." His sigh seemed to take up a good ten seconds of tape. "There's no point in telling you to be careful but could you please..."
She couldn't wait for the end of the message. The sun was too close. Throwing herself up and into the loft, she barred that door as well and sank back onto the bed.
The seconds, moving so quickly a moment before, slowed.
There were sounds, all around her, Vicki couldn't remember ever hearing before. Outside, in the alley— was that someone climbing toward her window?
No. Pigeons.
That vibration in the wall—a drill?
No. The distant ring of a neighbor's alarm.
In spite of her vulnerability, she had never faced the dawn wondering if she'd see the dusk—until today. She didn't like the feeling.
"Maybe I should move back into Celluci's ba..."
*
Vicki hated spending the day in her clothes. She had a long hot shower to wash away the creases and listened to another message from Celluci suggesting she check out the church as he'd be at work until after midnight. "...and don't bother feeding, you can grab a bite when I get there."
"Like that's going to speed things up?" she muttered, shrugging into her jacket as the tape rewound. "Feeding from you isn't exactly fast food."
Quite the contrary.
Deciding to grab a snack on the street, or they'd never get to those lists, Vicki set aside the two by four and opened her door. Out in the hallway, key in hand, she stared down at the lower of the two locks. It smelled like latex. Like a glove intended to hide fingerprints.
She jumped as the door opened across the hall.
"Hey, sweetie. Did he scratch the paint?"
"Did who scratch the paint, Lloyd?"
"Well, when I got home this p.m. I saw some guy on his knees foolin' with your lock. I yelled, and he fled." Ebony arms draped in a blue silk kimono, crossed over a well-musc
led chest. "I knocked, but you didn't wake up."
"I've told you before, Lloyd, I work nights and I'm a heavy sleeper." It seemed that pretty soon she'd have to reinforce the message. "Can you tell me what this guy looked like?"
Lloyd shrugged. "White guy. Tall, dark, dressed all in black, but not like he was makin' a fashion statement, you know? I didn't get a good look at his face, but I can tell you, I've never seen him before." He paused and suddenly smiled. "I guess he was a tall, dark stranger. Pretty funny, eh?"
"Not really."
*
"He's likely to make one unsuccessful attempt before you're in any actual danger."
He'd made his attempt.
"The Page of Swords—here—means he's watching you."
He knew what she was, and he knew where she lived.
"Well, that sucks," Vicki muttered, standing on the front step of the converted factory, scanning the street.
Something was out of place, and it nagged at her subconscious, demanding first recognition then action.
At some point during the last few nights, she'd seen him, or been aware of him watching her. A little desperately, she searched for the touch of a life she'd shared, however briefly, but the city defeated her.
There were a million lives around and such a tenuous familiarity got lost in the roar.
Another night, she'd have walked to St. Paul's. Tonight, she flagged a cab and hoped her watching stranger had to run like hell to keep up.
*
It had been some years since churches in the city had been able to leave their doors unlocked after dark; penitent souls looking for God had to make do with twenty-four-hour donut shops. Ignoring the big double doors that faced the bright lights of Bloor Street, Vicki slipped around to the back of the old stone building and one of the less obvious entrances. To her surprise, the door was unlocked.
When she pulled it open, she realized why. Choir practice. Keeping to the shadows, she made her way up and into the back of the church. There were bodies in the pews, family and friends of those singing, and, standing off to one side, an elderly minister—or perhaps St. Paul's was high enough Anglican that they called him a priest.
