Page 3

DOLION

The cramped inside of the speakeasy was made up to look like it had been around for two hundred years even though the building had only existed for twenty.

Sebastian updated my vocabulary along with my wardrobe once we arrived in New Orleans and our spacious accommodations that he had organized below street level to knock out all light from his sleeping arrangements.

He’d currently dressed me in pale pants that hung loose from my thighs as though my musculature had disappeared sometime in the passing centuries, though I knew it hadn’t.

No, the vampire had simply…over clothed me.

A lawn shirt of some description draped across my shoulders but clung to my skin in sticky air.

The one thing that hadn’t changed during my deep sleep.

The air here was like breathing pure water, even away from the edge of the bayou.

But even I recognized the simple pleasure of a shirt that didn’t itch my skin, a craft that was worth the price tag I was certain Sebastian paid for each of the garments.

The depths of my friend’s pockets, it seemed, hadn’t changed in three hundred years.

New Orleans, however, had.

What I recalled as a fledgling pile of goop barely out of its primordial sludge era was a full thriving city complete with enough subculture to put the biggest cities in Europe to shame.

Colorful streets displayed a mishmash of culture on the outside warring for dominance while on the inside the people Sebastian introduced me to in short order were clearly defined in their own rights, well immersed in their beliefs and ways.

The city thrived despite the damage that etched its shadow beneath the stunning street front facades.

The tiny whisky bar that we sat in was no stranger to this horror.

Apparently, a hurricane had ripped the previous structure from its foundations and the town had rebuilt as best it could.

Despite its shortcomings, the building and its overcrowded patronage of a certain caliber held a certain charm.

I perched on my bar stool next to Sebastian where he chatted with a witch disguised as a barwench—forgive me, bar tender —and tried to make sense of the new world and my place in it.

Or outside it.

The four walls of the speakeasy, already imbued with enough splattered alcohol and other bodily fluids that no wooden tavern should ever have acquired in the space of a mere two decades, shrank with every sip I took of my strange, pale ale.

I studied the dregs that clung to the bottom of my fast warming glass as though I could read my future in them.

“You are not wearing your gris gris ,” the swamp witch/bar wench hissed, slamming another beer on the bar top before she pushed it along to her next customer.

“Be more careful, Sebastian,” she warned out of the corner of her mouth before her attention switched in the opposite direction.

“You pay me now.” She held out her hand to the man with a more imperious nature than she used on my far from favorite vampire of the moment.

The customer let out a low growl and turned his head half way to face her.

I caught a glimpse of something silvery in his gaze that lanced the side of his face almost to his neck like a shard of metal was embedded there, before he turned away, and flicked a hand out, holding a rectangular device in her direction.

A beep later, and the witch was satisfied.

I watched the transaction with bemusement. “Your tavern is an interesting cover,” I murmured, forgetting to study my ale dregs for a moment.

The witch’s green and coal black gaze lit on me. Eyes that had seen a short eternity recognized the depths of time that had passed on my own, perhaps.

Or not.

Who knew what Sebastian saw when he stared into the serpentine pits, but he seemed beyond enamored with her.

For my part, I was done with witches after our last encounter with one, no matter what name this one went by in this strange age.

A smile twisted her carved lips as she leaned forward, her many colorful shawls draped around her like so many faded rainbows.

“People see what they want to see, stone heart,” she rasped, her imperial nature of a moment before as easily discarded as one of her many outfits, I suspected. “They come here, because they can be themselves. Like you.”

She nodded to where my hand gripped my glass too tightly. The finest network of spider web cracks created a mosaic on its otherwise pristine surface.

Some of my warmed beer leaked through as I hastily placed the ruined glass on the countertop. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Don’t pay no mind to folk like you. It’s the ones who are malicious that bother us.”

A hum arose around us in agreement, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

“I need to leave,” I murmured to Sebastian, but the vampire sat back on his low backed stool, the edges of his lips curling upward. “We heard about the fires. And the crypt.”

“What crypt?” Already I'd fallen in over my head in Sebastian’s strange game.

Clearly, he had a history with this woman and this place that I knew nothing about.

“What fires?” He had mentioned something on the journey here.

I’d barely paid attention then, still studying the inside of his enormous carriage.

The vampire at my side I swore I barely recognized anymore laughed, leaning back on his barstool. “Tifa, this is Dolion.”

“Ah, the gargoyle has come back to life.” She thumped her chest and one of her shawls drifted from her shoulder, baring skin. Sebastian’s attention wandered until she dragged the colorful material over the strap of her dress. “It is good to see Sebastian with a friend. He has been so alone.”

“You make me sound like a lost puppy,” Sebastian grumbled.

“But it is true.” She covered his hand for a moment, and he didn’t pull away.

I turned my head, unable to watch the display of affection, not ready for it. “You mentioned fires,” I said sharply. “What does that have to do with us here?”

Tifa smiled, her green gaze lancing through me.

“Ah, the firebird. She hides in the shadows, bursts into flame. But the fires, those hurt people. This we cannot have. Here in the supernatural community, we take care of our own. Sebastian, he helps.” She shrugged.

“If the fireling does not harm others, she will be left alone.”

“And what fires has she set?” condensation gathered at the edges of my glass and dripped in long runs down the sides to pool around the base.

“Several around the city. One at a laundromat.”

“What’s a laundro?—”

“And one at a school.”

I didn't have to ask about that one.

“I see.” I didn’t have a clue what this had to do with either Sebastian or me apart from the fact that at sometime in the last three hundred years, my friend had left off his mourning cloak and become an intolerable flirt.

“Shall I read the cards for you?” Tifa offered, withdrawing a tarot deck from inside her mass of shawls.

I shook my head, recalling the last time I saw a deck of cards in action, and the reaction from the reader. Salt stung the back of my tongue and I managed not to lurch upward from my seat, but it was a near thing.

“No, thank you for the offer.” My tone remained civil, but the look I shot Sebastian was not.

He waved me down. “We shall investigate. Thank you for your help.” A fresh beer appeared in front of him, and he turned to engage the man on his other side.

The witch, however, studied me. “You should tell your friend to wear the gris gris necklace . He’s the one who isn’t fireproof, unlike you.” Her French lilt that sounded all sorts of wrong dropped like another of her personalities as she tipped her head to one side.

“The what?” I watched the cracks grow up the side of the glass, a bare millimeter at a time. “Sebastian can look after himself.”

She shook her head. “Not against this. I know he’s fought before. This will not be the same. I have read his cards.”

Visions of the sorceress, the house a burning backdrop and Minette’s body as my stone heart cracked obliterated the hidden tavern as I pushed my stool away from the bar.

The witch watched me as I panted, my knees stiff, heavy.

No. Not here. I couldn’t revert to my stone state in this ridiculously close space.

I’d be at the mercy of whoever came alone and from what Sebastian showed me of this time and place, the people were . .. .less than respectful.

Perhaps that was why he’d taken me to an inn filled with supernatural creatures where the people pretended they were from another time, pretending to be normal when they were anything but.

Because here, where my monster showed through, only my own kind would judge me.

But that was the revelation I’d had as I studied my ale dregs. There were no more of my kind . Not that I’d seen in 1735 when I helped Sebastian build the house. Not since I left Europe and my perch above the church in a street anchored of gargoyles and all the hideous, ugly things just like me.

And certainly I hadn't seen another creature like myself here.

I spun away from the witch, unable to bear her serpentine gaze or her strange collection of colorful personalities any longer.

In the corner of the room amidst the shadows, something brighter than any of the barwenches’ shawls emerged, if only for a moment.

I looked, because that's where, had I been given the choice, I would have hidden.

But Sebastian dragged me to the counter upon our arrival and that was where we had stayed and he had hosted his conversation.

From what I gathered, he was a regular here, in his role as supernatural sheriff.

My eye, however, was drawn to a different prize.

Hair the color of burnished copper hung to her shoulders in the sort of blunt cut that suggested a hard and stubborn exterior.

That alone should have told me to stay away from the woman who glowed with an aura like the sun rising above the Caribbean on a midsummer morning, but it was her eyes that gave her away.

Those were ember black, the sort of darkness that lit a flame from within. She allowed me a rare glimpse as I met her gaze within the shadows when everyone else in the tight, crowded space ignored the girl hiding against the wall.

Bare shoulders gleamed a radiant cinnamon, different from the dark skinned peoples of the bayou I was so used to seeing, or the bar witch who still studied me with serpentine gem eyes that both suited her and didn’t.

Not that Sebastian seemed to make the distinction as he leaned forward, engaging Tifa in small talk. I looked back at the shadow woman, but her corner and table sat empty. A survey of the room assured me that she'd taken my moment of distraction to escape.

“You were hiding,” I muttered to myself as I walked away from the bar, leaving Sebastian to flirt—an action that still left centuries old betrayal in my mouth, though he had obviously moved on. “But who were you hiding from?”

I reached the empty table, and swept my fingers across its surface, coming up with nothing but fingertips coated in the finest, dark particles. Frowning, I raised them to my nose, and sniffed.

“It’s ash, stone heart,” the witch whispered in my ear.

I jerked back with an oath, but when I checked the space beside me, Tifa still stood back at the bar, though she’d stopped speaking to Sebastian, and watched me again.

“Whenever she disappears, that’s all that is left.

Makes a hell of a mess.” Her head tipped from side to side as she considered me and spoke in that voice that reached me across the room though she talked to no other.

“Why don’t you try the cemetery? The largest one.

I’m sure your friend will show you the way. ” She gave Sebastian a prod.

He moved reluctantly off his stool as she murmured something in his ear. The vampire listened attentively, then leaned in and kissed her cheek.

I pretended not to witness their show of affection as my own heart, the organ unfortunately not stone as I wished it, pumped furiously inside my chest cavity.

The betrayal I wished would stop and still in the world did no such thing, and the muscle beat on, forcing me to take breath after breath as I ignored Sebastian’s after-death choices and focused on the odd pile of evidence of my strange girl before me.

Proof that she existed even if I didn’t want to anymore.

Circling my fingertips in the silky ash, and leaned against the empty table, trying to work out how my strange shadow woman left the room without being seen or moving at all.

I came to the conclusion I was as mad as any of the patrons in this place just as my ale glass I’d left on the bar top exploded into a thousand shattered fragments.

Glass shards littered the floor, reflecting copper highlights like the building itself couldn’t forget the woman just as I could not, long after she’d gone.