Witch's Jewel

by Kater Cheek

  One side of the ballroom had a buffet table with a punch bowl, beautiful centerpieces, and canapés. These made me brighten considerably. I walked over to the refreshments table and made friends with some salmon pate and expensive wine poured by a young woman who probably earned more hourly than I did. An ice carving of a castle melted slowly into a tray. Still no Fenwick, but at least the Guild Leader hadn’t yet arrived. I wasn’t ready to face him alone.

  “That color looks fabulous on you,” a vampire said behind me.

  I spun, startled, not having heard him approach, and then got another shock when the vampire actually smiled at me. A civil vampire? That was new.

  Fain was one of the vampires in Palmer’s squad, so Palmer might have put him up to it, but even fake smiles are nicer than none. He put his hands in his pockets in what was probably a deliberate attempt to copy human gestures.

  Fain looked, well, he looked like me. Average height, with a more muscular than average frame. We had the same small nose, the same narrow chin, and the same shade of brown hair. Anyone who saw us would assume we were siblings. He looked more like me than my brother James, which was ironic, because Fain and I weren’t related at all.

  “I heard the news of your induction into the Guild. Congratulations.”

  “Uh, thank you.”

  “And since you are alone, perhaps you will dance with me?” Fain was already grabbing my hands, taking my wine glass and setting it down on the linen tablecloth.

  “Dance? Ballroom dancing?” My smile froze on my face.

  Fain brushed aside all complaints before I could even voice them and pulled me out to the floor just as the band started another song, this one accompanied by a soprano in a sequin dress. The vampires and some of the older humans were mouthing the words.

  “I really don’t know how to dance.” One two three and, crap, how did this go? I’d learned fourteen katas, and done them well. Put me in the ring and I could fight just about anyone. Dancing made me feel like a drunken donkey. Maybe it was the dress and heels.

  “You’re doing fine. Just try to relax.” Fain seemed to know what he was doing.

  “Right.” He moved to one side, and my hand slid down to feel the strap under his tux. Was that … yep. Definitely a shoulder holster. Leave it to a Guild member to wear a gun to a ball.

  “I get the feeling that you’re nervous. Why?” Fain lifted his arm for the third time and I finally figured out he wanted me to turn.

  Well, let’s see. Dateless, in a secondhand dress, at a party where almost everyone wanted to pretend I didn’t exist and hoped I wouldn’t embarrass them, dancing poorly with a gun-toting vampire. “This isn’t my kind of party. I don’t know many Guild members.”

  “And where is your tall friend? I was under the impression you two were together.”

  “He’ll be along later.” He’d better. Damn it, Fenwick, where are you? I craned my neck to look for him, but Fenwick was nowhere to be seen. How hard was it to spot a six-and-a-half-foot tall man?

  “Oh, I see.” Fain was signaling for a turn or something. He lifted his arm, leading me into a gentle stumble and scramble to get back into place in time with the music.

  The music came to a close. About time. I gave him a little smile of thanks and backed off. “I hope you’ll excuse me. I want to look around for Fenwick.”

  The double doors in the back of the ballroom led to a garden, with sheet-covered rose bushes and a thick layer of iced mulch. Only a few brave smokers hung around out there. I came back in, found a ladies’ room to freshen up, and then found a smaller, dimly lit lounge area with a jazz quintet playing on a small stage. Fenwick wasn’t there either, but at least I didn’t look so conspicuously dateless sitting on one of the red upholstered couches. He better have a damn good reason for standing me up.

  “Still not here?” Fain walked in carrying two wine glasses, and handed me one as he sat down on the couch next to me. “Perhaps I can keep you company while we wait for him.”

  He had followed me here. Why? What was he after? I perched on the edge of the seat and sipped, while Fain lounged out against the back.

  “You can sit back, you know. I’m not going to bite you.” Fain smiled and swirled the wine in his glass. “Unless you allow it, that is. I must admit you look quite tasty.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, but no. No offense or anything, but the whole blood drinking thing freaks me out.” I stood to leave. “Sorry you had the wrong impression.”

  He reached out and took my wrist, gently pulling me back down. “You think I just want to drink blood from you?”

  “I can’t think of any other reason why you’re going out of your way to be civil to me.”

  “I did have my hopes.” Fain smiled and leaned back, taking a sip of the wine. “But I really wanted to chat with you. We so rarely get new Guild members. We’ve been gossiping about nothing else since your induction.”

  “I’m flattered. And this is very good wine. Thank you, Mr. Fain.”

  “No Mister. Just ‘Fain,’ although you can call me Leonard—Leo, if you feel the need to shorten it. I don’t much like to be called Lenny.”

  “Understandable. You don’t seem like a Lenny. Any other questions?”

  “Why did Holzhausen invite you to join the Guild?”

  I joined because Holzhausen said the Guild could keep people from killing me for the magic jewel glued to my brow, the one that gave me second sight. So far, the Guild hadn’t been a warm and fuzzy support group. They didn’t trust me, and I didn’t trust them, which is why Fain got a vague answer. “I joined because Holzhausen invited me to join, and it was too much of an honor to refuse.”

  “Too much of an honor to refuse. How diplomatic.” Fain swirled wine in his glass. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Holzhausen’s motivations are his alone. I’m not going to pretend to know his mind.”

  “I see.” Fain’s smile said he expected to get the truth out of me eventually, but that he was too much of a gentleman to press.

  “Can I ask you a question about vampires?”

  Fain tilted his free hand out, as though he had been expecting this question. “We have a disease which makes us require blood, but enables us to live without aging. No, we can’t fly or turn into bats, but we heal very quickly. Yes, sunlight hurts us, no, we don’t sleep in coffins.”

  “Actually, I wanted to ask you something personal.” And was this too rude? Palmer said not to pester any other Guild members, but Palmer wasn’t too keen on giving me information either.

  “Mmmm,” he chuckled. “A beautiful woman wants to ask me personal questions. This evening is looking up.”

  Was he flirting with me? “Palmer says that rank in the Guild is mostly by age. How come he’s in charge of your squad then, since you’re much older than him?”

  He held stock still and stared at me.

  Jesus. This is exactly what Palmer warned me about. That’s what I get for not listening to my sponsor. I set down the glass and stood, backing up with my hands out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. Forget I asked anything. I didn’t know it was that personal.”

  “How did you know how old I was?”

  “A good guess?” From the bindi on my forehead, which he could plainly see under my bangs, but who believes in magic jewels?

  “Now I understand why the Guild Leader wanted you.” He began moving again, as though an unseen director had held up an “act human” cue card. “And to answer your question, Palmer is the leader of the squad because there are political reasons why the Guild Leader does not want to favor me, and so Palmer was appointed in my stead. Palmer repaid him by offering to sponsor a human Guild member—a task no other vampire wanted. One presumes that he is more sympathetic to humans because of his taste.”

  “Taste?”

  “Palmer and his wife are a mixed-race couple. You met her, didn’t you?”

  “But they’re both black.” I frowned, not quite getting
it.

  “Yes, but she’s human.”

  Oh yeah. Duh.

  “I can’t say I don’t have that taste myself. I enjoy the company of humans, especially beautiful young women such as yourself.” Fain chuckled and took my hand as he stood. “And now that I have answered your question, would you be so kind as to dance with me again?”

  And there was no polite way to refuse that. Fain let me go after one dance, into the arms of another vampire, and then another, and then a drunk human initiate. By three a.m., my dancing had become almost competent, and my dress had grown snug from all the hors d’ouvres. It had almost begun to feel like a normal party, until the Guild Leader arrived.

  The murmur of the crowd paused, and shifted, as people made note of his presence. The Guild Leader wore a nice tuxedo, though no nicer than the others. He wasn’t handsome, though that observation was mostly from memory because from where I camped near the buffet table, the only visible sign of him was his bodyguard, Chen. She was a whippet thin vampire standing close enough to the Guild Leader that they could have shared an umbrella. She was dressed in a black leather suit, and carried more guns than a Wal-Mart sporting goods section.

  The Guild Leader walked towards my side of the ballroom, a people-free oval pushing across the dance floor. Along the way, vampires and notable humans stopped him to exchange greetings. All this time he still hadn’t lost his smudgy black aura. How old was he? Two centuries? Three? Vampires were tough, but you had to be awfully canny to survive three centuries of wars, bombings, car accidents, sunlight, and all the other things which could destroy a vampire. The Guild Leader wasn’t one to take chances. If you believed the rumors, more than one person had gone to an unmarked grave by crossing this man. He was a mage too.

  As if to underscore this, his smudgy aura flared as he cast a spell. (No one else saw this, of course. Chalk one up to the magic bindi on my brow.) Then the Leader of the Vampire Guild of Seabingen caught my eye. I swallowed the canapé and tried to pull myself invisible. The flare died, his spell complete. He gave me the merest of nods, then walked on.

  This is what mice feel like when the owl has passed them by.

  Three-thirty a.m. was time to call it a night, even though the party was still in full swing. Outside, snowflakes fell thickly, as though a giant hand dusted the city with dandruff. The streets were empty, and ovals of yellow streetlight reflected off the new fallen snow.

  Fenwick’s apartment wasn’t too far from my place, close enough to drive by on the way home. I got out of my van and walked towards the stairs leading to Fenwick’s apartment. My damp tennis shoes (I changed out of the dress shoes as soon as I got to my van) plowed a path through the parking lot, then joined the muddy path along the sidewalks. Even this late at night people had come and gone, returning from the bars.

  Except that the stairs leading to Fenwick’s apartment were covered by perfectly smooth snow. He either hadn’t left at all, or he hadn’t come back yet. Lights shone through the closed curtains, meaning he was probably home. No police cars or crime scene tape, so that was good news. I kicked off the snow as I climbed his steps. Knock, or use my key? I turned the key, afraid of what might be behind the door.

  The door swung open. No blood. The place wasn’t ransacked. He wasn’t lying unconscious on the floor. The television was on, and the silhouette of his head showed above the couch.

  “Fenwick?” I crossed the room to confront him. “What are you doing here?”

  “TV,” he said, and changed the channel.

  “Why didn’t you come to the party?”

  It was my “starting a fight” tone of voice, but Fenwick didn’t rise to it. He just flicked through the channels, eyes locked on the screen. After five minutes, I turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind me. I wanted him to follow me, and walked slowly down the stairs to give him time to catch up with me, but he didn’t.

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  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for reading Witch’s Jewel. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Isn’t it great when you can take a story you love and share it with strangers? The good news is, you can do that by writing a review.

  I really need your help. Reviews are essential for helping people find my work. Without reviews, new readers won’t take a chance on my book, and without honest feedback, those readers will never find out about Kit and Fenwick and James and all these other characters you’ve just spent time with. Please go here and write a review as soon as you can.

  Not sure what to write? Just talk about the parts you liked. The romance between Kit and Fenwick? The tension with the vampires? The mystery? Talk about what you didn’t like too; that will help readers decide if the book is for them. If you need more guidance, I have a post called “how to write a book review” on my website www.catherinecheek.com/2016/08/28/how-to-write-a-book-review/

  If you can’t get enough of Kit Melbourne and want the latest news and some sneak peeks (including a deleted scene from this novel), you can sign up for my newsletter by entering your email there.

  Feel free to write reviews on as many sites as you like to review books on.

  Thank you so much for your help.

  Kater Cheek

  About the Author

  Kater Cheek is a graduate of 2007 Clarion San Diego. Her work has appeared in The Living Dead anthology, The Steampunk User’s Manual, Weird Tales, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. When not writing, she throws pots, gardens, binds books, and spends a lot of time in the woods.

  To learn more, visit www.catherinecheek.com or Kater’s Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Kater-Cheek/e/B0056VZR7O

  Books by Kater Cheek

  Kit Melbourne Series

  WITCH’S JEWEL

  DRYAD’S BLADE

  VAMPIRE’S DAYRUNNER

  FAERIE’S KILLER

  SHAPESHIFTER’S TURF

  HAWTHORN’S HEX

  SORROW’S APPRENTICE

  Alternate Susan Series

  ALTERNATE SUSAN

  MULBERRY WANDS

  THE HEAT STEALER

  Other Fiction

  PARASITIC SOULS

  ANIMAL MAGIC

  COOP DE GRACE

  (a comic about chickens)