Chapter Three
LIFE WAS different in the Quarter.
I loved the varied aromas of food cooking, the uneven and broken sidewalks, the sound of music anywhere you went, and the art everywhere you looked. I loved the crowds of people that, even at three in the morning, you could walk past, and others would smile and wave at you. And I was crazy about the addendum of haunted—or not—on the signs for apartments for rent.
I liked that anyone could have a second-line parade: just pick a route, get a permit, and find a band. I loved that if you wanted wild and crazy, you could walk down Bourbon Street; if you wanted things quieter, you went one street over either way.
New Orleans was so different that, even though I fell in love with it instantly, I still suffered quite the culture shock.
In the cold and snow of Washington, people lived inside, separate from others. If you didn’t have friends or family to draw you out of your warm house to a cozy restaurant or coffee shop or even their own cheery homes… your life became so very insular. In the Vieux Carré, people talked to me the first day I arrived. They reached out, and I went from being alone to being part of a community.
It all started with my new home.
I went for a walk, looking at the neighborhood, trying to get an idea about what kind of business would fit, what I could do to make a living that would make me happy in the small 750-square-foot space on the 900 block of Royal Street. The building sat close to the corner of St. Philip and Royal in the Quarter, and I could open a shop on the bottom floor and live on the second. Rachel hadn’t mentioned that when she gave me the deed, so I was pleasantly surprised as I stood outside, staring up at the building that needed work but had great bones.
“You look like you’re contemplating your life.”
I turned and found a woman, probably in her midtwenties, all gorgeous dark brown skin with gold undertones and a cascade of wine-colored curls that fell to the middle of her back in tight spirals. Her bottomless brown eyes were even more alluring lined in thick black kohl, and her lipstick matched the crimson hair.
“I’m gonna open a shop,” I explained. She looked me up and down before her gaze collided with mine.
“That’s great.” She smiled slowly, and I was thoroughly enchanted by the stunning woman who made the air snap, crackle, and pop around her. I could feel the electricity flowing off her, whispering on my skin. “You need any help?”
“What can you do?” I asked, arms crossed, regarding her.
She mirrored me, except she put a finger under her chin. “I can match a person with a thing. I’m very good at it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, let’s say if there was a certain piece of art in your shop, I could sell it to whoever came in.”
“Really.”
“Yes,” she said with authority and a nod, absolutely certain. “As long as that thing, whatever it is, is something they need.”
“Or want.”
“Isn’t want just a hyped-up need?”
Made sense to me.
An hour later, over lunch at Acme Oyster House, Ode Reed had yet to stop talking.
“So we could sell consignment for people. Like a co-op.”
She shook her head. “No. No co-op. Fuck that. We buy what we like, pay them a fair price, and we sell it at our own markup. That way we’re being ethical, as in making the artists feel appreciated, but we make money on our end, and they don’t have to handle the selling part that bums most creative people out.”
“In what way?”
“If you made something from your soul and then had to convince someone to give you money for it, wouldn’t that sort of kill your vibe?”
“But they’re convincing us to buy it in the first place.”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “We’re walking around looking for treasures, and once we sell a few things, artists and craftsmen will come to us.”
I nodded. I could see it working like that, through good word of mouth.
“And for some artists, if we have an exclusive deal and everyone is in agreement, us and them, if we find them selling their stuff anywhere else in the Quarter—they’re out.”
“That seems fair.”
“It does, right?” She smiled, and a man walking by our table plowed right into a wall. “Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed, getting up to make sure he hadn’t broken anything.
I watched him sputter an apology before stumbling away. As bespelled as I was, her business model sounded reasonable. Resale and then staples were what I had imagined; I just didn’t think I’d find anyone to help me from the start. “Are you really here, or a figment of my imagination?”
Her laugh was as gorgeous as the rest of her, unexpected in how musical and resonant it was. “I promise you I am here and just as real as you,” she trilled, slipping her hand into mine.
Holding it gently, I sighed deeply. “We need help to get that place fixed up.”
“I have a lot of brothers.”
“That’s good because we’re gonna need ’em.”
And we did.
Her siblings helped out because I gave their sister a job, even though she could have worked for any of them. They were all in much better lines of work than me: one an electrical engineer, another a veterinarian, another owned several car dealerships, and her oldest brother owned a restaurant called Tau in the Quarter over on Madison and Chartres. Ode was a wanderer, and her mother, Josephine, was thrilled to meet me and even happier her child had seen me and decided to drop anchor.
“Thank God you came along, Jason,” she told me over dinner a week after I met Ode. “I wasn’t ready to have her sail out of my life just yet.”
“Well, I don’t know how long I’ll keep her interest,” I said honestly. “I’m not very exciting, and with how fearless she is and scary smart, she can be anything she wants.”
“I know,” she agreed, smiling at me. “It’s nice that you see her so clearly.”
“See and hear,” I muttered.
“What was that?”
I grunted, and she chuckled.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she pressed.
“I have a theory that she thinks she needs to give my life direction.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she agreed far too quickly. “Without a doubt.”
“Do you think so too?”
I got an eyebrow lift in answer.
“Well,” I grumbled, “what am I supposed to do? Say no to an angel?”
She patted my face with her warm, dry hand. “It’s good that you let her fuss over you. It makes her so happy.”
As if I had a choice. Once Ode picked you, it was over.
“Leave him alone, Ma, he’s mine!” Ode called from the living room.
Josephine rolled her eyes heavenward and left us to figure out our lives.
Her youngest brother, Issa, didn’t want to go to college and was giving their parents fits, so I put him to work finding treasures at artist co-ops, flea markets, and on his rambling walks around the Quarter. He found amazing crafts, from mercury glass to large-scale canvases to mosaics to installation pieces. He had an eye for quality, just like his sister had an eye on every customer who came through the door. She knew what they needed before they opened their mouths. Their sister, Kali, who came home from college at Notre Dame, worked for me whenever she was in town as well. Ode and Kali looked adorable together: Kali a younger, quirkier version of her sister, more pixie than Ode’s earth goddess, same curls but not dyed red, and wearing huge oversized glasses.
A month later we officially opened the shop, and I named it Spark and Ember. Ode loved it because the words were the alpha and omega of fire, one to start and burn bright, the other to slowly subside to warmth. I was ridiculously pleased she liked the name, my heart now permanently set on making her happy.
Another six months after that, with spring and summer turning to fall, now September in the Vieux Carré, my circle of friends large, business booming, and everyone I met open and inviting, I felt as though I’d lived there forever. It was so good to have finally found the place I belonged.
A MONTH later, Ode was putting up Halloween decorations and trying to get me to see her side of a discussion/argument/issue we’d been having for a while.
“It makes sense,” she insisted while she kept one eye on the young couple perusing the jewelry under the glass by the cash register. “Keeping the shop open later is a good business decision. I get so many calls and emails from people who saw something when they were window-shopping but couldn’t get in because it was after six.”
“Yeah, but it gets busy during the day a lot of times, and if I’m not here to help you, I—”
“Oh, for crissakes, J, I don’t want you to work the night shift. I like seeing you first thing in the morning, and we both have to be here to talk to customers and decide what we wanna buy. Everybody’s dying to be in here now because we blow out of things all the time.”
We did. In the past several months, word got around that we had fair pricing, exceptional quality, and most of all, a phenomenal staff. I loved talking to people, so did Ode, and Issa’s charm had plenty of people stopping by, hoping for a smile.
“It’s ’cause your brother’s so pretty.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.
She rolled her eyes and turned around and sold the couple who’d been there the whole time a $3,600 wedding set, all conflict-free, ethical, made-in-the-lab diamonds that pleased the bride and thrilled her chemist husband.
“I have to call that designer and tell him we sold another set of his rings,” Ode said after they left.
“You mean the last set,” I corrected.
“This again?” she said irritably. “I thought we settled this.”
“Clearly not, if you’re still talking about it.”
“But I told you—”
“And make sure you explain that because of how he treated you last time, we’ll never sell another ring of his in this shop again.”
She stared at me, arms crossed, waiting.
Shit. “What?”
“I know you didn’t just try and talk over me.”
I had, and it was something she didn’t permit. Double shit. “Yeah, I—sorry.”
She took a deep breath, let her shoulders fall, and a serene expression settled on her face as she uncrossed her arms before she gave me her attention again. “Now let’s discuss.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” I stated, rock solid in my conviction.
“It’s not your decision to make.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
She arched one thick, perfectly shaped eyebrow for my benefit. “We have a deal, do we not?”
We did. She managed the store, I oversaw it, and since her taste was flawless, me butting into her area of expertise was a mistake. But this was different.
“Do you know how much the store makes when we—”
“I don’t care what our commission is, and I don’t care how sorry the man is. He was ignorant and he misjudged you, and he’s lucky neither Issa or I heard it, or one of us would have laid his ass out.”
“Really? You think going all Neanderthal on the man would have been the right choice?”
“I don’t want anyone thinking they can come in here and throw their weight around and intimidate you.”
“Oh, I was so not intimidated, and as for laying him out—I could do that myself, thank you.”
I stopped inputting the order in the computer to give her my full attention. “He was a sexist pig.”
“You only know that because I told you.”
“And now that I know, you don’t expect me to do anything about it?”
“I expect you to respect my decision when I tell you that I can fight my own battles and that I have my relationship with the man firmly under control.”
“I just don’t understand why you would wanna keep working with him. Why?”
“Because once he found out that I was the person in charge, he got down off his high horse and has been nothing but sorry ever since.”
“Yeah, but you saw what he’s really like.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” she scoffed, making a face like I was ridiculous. “I only care that he makes beautiful jewelry that I negotiate an even better price on since he has to kiss my ring for acting the fool.”
“He’s a misogynist pig.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I think we send him a message that that’s not okay.”
“By showing him that we’re not professional?” she asked, squinting. “I’m not sure how that does anything productive.”
“It tells him that he’s got to change his thinking if he wants to be in business since women run a lot of the world and apparently no one told him about it.”
She chuckled.
“I don’t care,” I said implacably. “No one disrespects you in our store.”
“Yeah, see, our store.”
I shook my head at her.
“You can’t run around trying to fight my battles for me,” she explained, moving closer. “For one, I don’t need you to do that because I’m a grown woman, and two, when I was done with him that day, he couldn’t even speak, let alone give me any more crap. The only reason I told you about it was so that when you saw that his pricing was reduced, you’d understand why.”
I grunted.
“I already won the battle, Jason. The man’s been educated.”
“He’s got a crappy-ass attitude toward women.”
“He does,” she conceded, “but maybe I’m the first step in him seeing the light.”
“Fine,” I sighed, giving up. It was hard to be all pissed-off when she was thinking like a business owner and I just wanted to punch him. “It’s your choice.”
“I know it is,” she concurred, reaching out and tapping my forehead with her fingertip. “You have to start thinking with this, not just your heart.”
“I don’t do that,” I grumbled.
“Oh no? You wanna explain to me how the bottle cap earrings got in here?”
“No,” I said, looking back at the computer screen. I had bought them from a girl on the street who gave me a sob story about needing money for college. I bought all fifteen pairs she had, and Ode came in the next morning and lost her mind. “No trash in the store, Jason,” she warned me.
She wasn’t wrong. The same girl was in the same place when I walked by three days later. I was a sap, and Ode knew it.
“Look at me.”
I raised my eyes.
“I appreciate you wanting to protect me, but if I need you, I’ll ask, yeah? Trying to think for me makes you just as wrong as the pig jeweler.”
“Well, that’s fantastic.”
She laughed at me and then went to help an elderly couple who wanted to talk about a large metal sculpture in the front window.
I was ringing people up on the iPad later when Ode bumped me. She was beaming at one of three men, passing him one of the shop cards and telling him that, yes, I was single. I had no idea why that bit of information was important, but I thanked them all for coming in and then went out back because I’d forgotten to water the cacti garden Issa had started.
“Oh dear God,” she shouted before I made it all the way there.
I turned in the doorway. “What? Are you all right?”
“Did you not hear what I said?”
“When?”
“When?”
I shrugged. “Just tell me. You know I hate guessing.”
“I told that man you were single right in front of your face.”
“Yeah?”
“Ohmygod!”
I turned to go.
“Jason!”
After pivoting back to face her, I saw the bewildered expression on her face. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
“What does a man have to do to get your attention?”
I was lost.
“For God’s sake, Jase, do you ever get laid?”
“You’re a rude person, do you know that about yourself?”
“What did he have to do, draw you a map to his penis?”
“And crude. Did I mention that you’re very crude as well?”
“Holy shit, he could not have been more obvious.”
“Not true since I totally missed it!” I shot back, all in her face until I realized what just came out of my mouth.
“Uh-huh.”
Crap.
She rushed down the short hall and stood there, hands on her hips, staring me down. “You are hot like the surface of the sun, and if you weren’t gay, I’d have been all over you the second I met you. But Jesus, Jase, are you saving yourself for marriage?”
“I—”
“You might have to put out before that. I’m just saying.”
I groaned loudly and left her to get the watering done. When I returned an hour later, she was smiling at a cute little family buying a set of coasters and some sage.
“Why do they need the sage?” I asked once they left.
“It’s for the mom. After her in-laws visit, she always feels like their evil—as well as the smell of Ben-Gay—stays in her house.”
“Ah.”
“Hence the sage.”
I made a face. “I hate it. It makes everything smell like Catholic mass.”
“Oh, it does not,” she griped.
I sat down at the computer behind the front counter to check invoices, and when she coughed, I didn’t look up.
She coughed again.
“What?” I asked, my gaze meeting hers.
“You need to start dating. You’re much too handsome to be sitting home every Friday.”
“I don’t sit home. I go out with friends.” I said, horrified I was having the same conversation with yet another woman in my life. When Rachel had called to check in with me a week ago, she, too, was concerned over my lack of a love life.
“Not what I mean.”
I let my head fall back as I moaned.
“See, that’s a good noise. If you were making it between the sheets, I’d be happy. The first thing I noticed about you when you turned around the day we met was your gorgeous clear gray eyes.”
“Awww.” I waved her off, dismissing the compliment.
“I will kill you dead.”
I chuckled.
“You don’t even get it that women—and men—come in here all the time just to get a closer look at you.”
“If you say so.”
“Jason!”
“Ugh,” I groaned.
“That guy the other day, the one in the teeny shorts, you remember him?”
“No,” I said honestly.
“Well, I don’t know how you missed him doing his stretches in front of the display case you were filling up, but he told me when you went into the back that you were built all strong and buff and beautiful and that your shoulders were made for holding on to in bed.”
Really, my girl was adorable.
“He said it, not me!”
Sure he had. She was trying to give me compliments, and it was very sweet.
“Another lady told me that you were covered in the kind of bulgy muscles she loves, and what about that guy who fell over the candle display while checking out your ass?”
“That guy was an idiot.” That irritated me, because him I could certainly recall. “We had glass everywhere, do you remember that?”
“Lord,” she muttered under her breath.
“Are we done with—”
“Do you know what your best feature is, though?”
I winced. “Please don’t say my personality.”
She ignored me, plowing on. “It’s those eyes of yours. They are just so pretty, and your deep laugh and those dimples, and that thick brown hair and that scruff that I normally hate but on you is so very, very sexy.”
“Please go to lunch or something,” I begged.
“No, I want to revisit the topic of keeping the shop open until at least ten.”
“Ode, I—”
“We’ll just try it for a couple weeks and see how we do, all right?”
Reasonable. If, like I thought, people just wanted to look after dark but not buy—we’d know that pretty quick.
“I’ll hire someone, and we’ll see how we do,” she said cheerfully.
“But what if the later hours don’t work?”
“It doesn’t matter. We need another person in here anyway. Two, probably. I mean, what do we do if one of us actually wants to take a vacation?”
A valid argument.
“I’ll get the job posted up on a few places like LinkedIn and Indeed and Monster, and then we can go through any résumés we get.”
“Wait, we’re not just gonna put up a Help Wanted sign in the window?”
Her eyes got huge. “You’re not serious right now, are you?”
“I’d like to point out that you just walked up to me on the street.”
“I know, and look how much trouble I am!”
“Yeah, but I mostly like you.” Yes, she was a huge pain in the ass, but I loved her like the sister mine never was.
“Good,” she said far too quickly. “Because the cutest guy just moved into my building.”
“Oh God, please, no.”
“Super, super cute.”
“No,” I pleaded. This was not the first blind date she’d suggested.
“I might have told him to come by the store tonight since we are going to be open late.”
“That’s just vile.”
Evil grin, all teeth and dimples. “Yeah, I know.”
She was incorrigible, but I adored her.
I CALLED her after the “cute” guy she’d sent over to meet me left the store a mere twenty minutes after coming in. It had seemed like an eternity.
“How old do you think I am?”
“What?” she asked. The club music on her end was deafening.
“How old,” I reiterated, “do you think I am?”
Silence.
“Well?”
“I dunno, fifty?”
I groaned and hung up.
The man who’d come into my shop was in his midfifties, and while I enjoyed older men, he was much more interested in a notch on his bedpost than in taking me out for coffee. He even suggested we go to the back room and “get busy.”
My phone rang as I watched a man limp past two of the four windows in front of the shop. “What?”
“No good, huh?”
“He wanted to fuck me in the stockroom,” I informed her. “And while I’ve been known to be wild on occasion, I prefer to get a first name before I let someone have my ass.”
“Shit,” she groaned while I watched the man stagger forward and brace a hand on the glass.
“Hey, somebody’s hurt outside. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“What? No. Call the police,” she entreated. “Don’t go rushing out there to—”
I hung up, moved out from behind the front counter, and jogged over to the beautifully weathered antique leaded glass front door Issa and I had restored. It was heavy, so I opened it slowly and faced the man hunched over and panting.
He lifted his eyes, and they were opaque, almost iridescent, not a color I’d ever seen before. He was sweating and shivering and seemed scared.
“I’m gonna go with you needing help,” I mumbled to myself, moving quickly, getting an arm around his waist before I half carried, half dragged him into my shop. Once I had him inside, I helped him to the small love seat close to the indoor waterfall display near the back.
After I eased him down, I knelt so I could see his face. He was younger than me but not by much, maybe late twenties, with thick and coarse dirty-blond hair sticking up in tufts, a high, square forehead, a long, rangy body with clothes that looked like he’d slept in them. I was thinking he needed to eat.
When he lifted his eyes to mine, they were filling with color, and though still glazed, the deep brown was better than the sort of moonstone wash of a second ago.
“I’m Jason Thorpe,” I said, keeping my tone gentle, coaxing. “Who’re you?”
Thankfully the panting had subsided. “Cooke Slater,” he answered, trying to smile but coming up with more of a grimace. “Who the hell are you?”
“I just told you,” I said, chuckling and patting his knee. “Short-term memory is shot, huh?”
“No, I mean—” He took a deep breath and then straightened, lifting his ripped shirt.
A pale pink scar ran from his belly button to his left pectoral. It had to have been a vicious knife attack to leave something like that on his body as well as tearing up his shirt.
“Oh shit, did you just get out of the hospital or something?”
He stared at me, mouth open, looking just as confused as I felt.
“Should I take you there now?” I offered, needing to do something even as I heard my phone ring.
His movement, going from reclining one second to almost lunging at me the next, startled me. Because I was sort of waiting for some kind of response and was close, leaning toward him, when he came forward fast, I bounced up and took several steps backward. But he halted his own motion, freezing like he’d thought better of what he was doing.
It was weird and unexpected, and as I gave him room, I started to worry about what he might be on. “Are you tripping on X or something? Do you need to go to the ER?”
He fell back on the love seat, hugging himself tight, staring up at me like I might jump him at any moment.
“Cooke?”
“Man, who are you?” he asked, a trace of fear in his voice. “Or… what are you?”
I’d just crossed my arms, staring back at him, ignoring my phone ringing because I was trying to figure him out, when someone knocked loudly on the glass behind me. Turning, I saw four people of various ages, three women, one man with their eyes on me, the three women all crying, the guy looking like he might throw up.
“Could they—would it be okay if they came in?”
“Sure.” I was bigger than all of them and trained to fight in close quarters. I could take them easily if things got dicey.
Once I opened the door, they raced across the room to Cooke and landed all over him. I smiled as he groaned under their added weight and hands all over him, checking him over. They gasped as they examined his scar, and they asked questions, one on top of the other, a barrage of sound until he finally yelled.
“Shut up!”
“How?” the guy demanded. “I still have your blood on me, but now you’re healed? What the fuck happened? Did you find a pee-bee on the street to drink from?”
He shook his head and then looked up, and they all fell quiet, scrutinizing me. Then my phone rang again.
“Did your phone not ring?” Ode snapped after I answered.
“It might have. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah, okay, I just couldn’t get to it.”
“Couldn’t or just didn’t?”
“I was dealing with something,” I explained.
“You’re going to give me wrinkles before my time,” she griped, exasperated. “You can’t tell me there’s someone hurt outside, hang up, and then not pick up the phone when I call to check on you. That’s bullshit.”
“But I didn’t even yell like it was an emergency or something,” I defended myself. “I just said I had to get off the phone.”
“But what if you were just saying that because some guy had a gun pointed at your head and he was making you get off the phone or he’d shoot you?”
“Seriously?” I asked, deadpan.
“Yes, seriously!”
“I think you’re watching too many cop shows again.”
“Don’t you dare belittle my concern for your welfare,” she warned. “I’m not the one who didn’t pick up his phone when I called back to check and make sure everything was fine.”
“Why would you even do that? It’s not like I can’t take care of myself.”
“I don’t care that you think you’re some badass. I had no idea who the hell was outside, now did I?”
Her argument was valid. “Yeah, all right.”
“I don’t need your permission to worry,” she let me know, her tone all superior. “So now tell me, are you fine?”
And just like that, I felt bad. “I am.”
“Are you sorry?”
“I really am.”
She hmphed at me.
“Super-duper sorry.”
“You scared me.”
I knew I had, and it was terribly endearing and told me, as if I didn’t know already, how much she loved me. It also made me realize if the roles were reversed, I would have been livid. “I won’t do it again. I’ll always pick up the phone.”
“Yes, you will.”
“Did you leave the club?”
“Of course I left, I’m halfway there.”
I smiled into the phone. “Turn around, go back. I’m good.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
She grunted. “Don’t ever do that to me again, you understand? My mother doesn’t even not pick up the phone when I call.”
“I thought me not being concerned on the phone would tell you I was fine,” I pointed out.
“This goes back to the guy with the gun,” she reminded me.
If this was an episode of whatever cop procedural she was watching at the time, then it would have all made sense. But that wasn’t my takeaway. What was important was she loved me. “I swear to keep you on the line next time.”
“See that you do,” she said, her voice still rough with worry before she hung up.
Putting my phone in my pocket, I turned back to my guests and found them all crowded around me. It was a bit unnerving, but I wasn’t scared. I felt safe inside the walls of my shop, protected, almost encased in a bubble of familial warmth. Maybe it was because it had belonged to my best friend’s grandfather, maybe because Ode and I had imbued it with light and humor and happiness together and her family had blessed it with their care and compassion, guidance, and warmth. Maybe it was me, the strangeness that Tiago and Hadrian had both noted that I thought about from time to time. But for whatever reason, standing in the middle of my home, I just crossed my arms and endured them all looking me over like some kind of weird bug they’d never seen before.
“Tell me when you’re all done.”
They all gave me big smiles, and I realized they were younger than I thought, maybe around eighteen, nineteen, all pretty and wearing heavy eyeliner like goth club kids.
“Who are you?” Cooke asked.
“I told you already.”
“No, really. Who?”
I leaned against the counter. “A few minutes ago, your friend there asked if you’d found a pee-bee to drink from. What is that?”
They exchanged furtive glances.
“It’s okay.” I gave him the out. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, no, I… I mean, I want to because—you healed me. I owe you something for that, if nothing else.”
“I didn’t do anything. It’s not—”
“It is necessary, and just you bringing me into this amazing shop of yours and then letting the others come in and rest is way… more kindness than we’ve had in a long time.”
“Good, I’m glad,” I said, glancing at the others. “You guys can go sit down if you want. There’s a love seat and some chairs over there.” The furniture was clustered in the rear corner of the shop, and I had always found the area cozy.
They looked to where I pointed at the overstuffed piece of furniture that had a couple of chunky knitted blankets draped over one end, and moved en masse. Poor kids, they were all, I was sure, emotionally exhausted from worrying about their friend.
When I turned back to Cooke, he was studying me again, but then he gestured to a stool beside the counter. I took a seat and waited.
“They’re worried and scared,” he told me.
“Yeah, I know. About you.”
He shook his head. “No. About you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not the one who got jumped on the street,” I reminded him. “Should we maybe be calling someone? Police or—”
“We can’t call anyone.” He was implacable, and it spurred a memory of another person not too long ago who had the same adamant reaction to my offer of a law enforcement summons.
“Why not?” I prodded, wondering and then dismissing the possibility just as fast that Cooke and Tiago could in any way be involved in the same cult on the opposite ends of the country.
“Because we handle things ourselves. We don’t involve humans.”
I shivered. The “human” part pretty much clinched it. “Why don’t you involve us? Because the prince will take care of it?”
He scrunched up his face like he’d eaten a lemon. “Why the hell would the prince care what happens to us?”
Jesus. I was in over my head. “Could you just start—”
“So you are a vampyr, then. I thought so.”
Oh man. “Is that what your cult is?” It was good to finally know. Now the whole bloodletting thing made sense. It explained people biting Tiago but not “drinking” from him because they thought his blood was cursed by the prince. It was very blockbuster summer movie and people who lived on the CW. From what I’d witnessed firsthand, though, it was not glamourous in the least.
“Could I just ask, though—if your organization is this big, how come I’ve never seen anything about it on CNN or Dateline or something?”
“What?” He was squinting at me.
“What?” I was confused.
“Organization?”
How had I lost him? “I’m just saying that no group with as many members as you guys must have could stay secret, but I looked after my first run-in with you guys, and I couldn’t find anything on the net about a cult that had rituals with blood drinking beyond satanic ones or people who think they’re vampires.”
“I don’t think I’m a vampyr. I know I am.”
“Then your cult is, in fact, a vampire one.”
“No.”
I needed a drink. “But you just said—”
“We’re not a cult of people who think we’re vampyrs.”
“Then what kind of cult are you?”
“Not a cult at all. We are actual vampyrs.”
I didn’t yell at him. What would that accomplish? I had to marvel at the brainwashing that went on and how it was done. “So are you guys born into the cult? Like that M. Night Shyamalan movie The Village? Is it like that?”
He scowled. “That movie’s not about a cult.”
“No, I know,” I growled. “But are you guys raised believing—”
“It’s not a cult!” he yelled. “We are vampyrs!”
I stood up and crossed my arms so I wouldn’t grab him and shake him. I wondered how much time a psychiatrist—psychotherapist or whoever—would have to put in to get his mind right. If someone was told something their whole life, and they grew up and lived their whole life thinking what wasn’t true actually was, how did that even get turned around?
In the Corps I saw lots of guys who grew up racist and slowly, over time, really started to see a person of another race for the first time in their life. Men who started out thinking something about black guys or white guys or whoever had their entire frame of reference altered when their lives were suddenly in another man’s hands. But that was something they could experience. How did something you couldn’t prove to begin with get changed?
“Do we need to go?” one of the girls asked, on her feet, her voice a frightened wobble as she looked from me to Cooke and back.
“No,” I soothed, giving her a smile. “We’re fine. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“Not you,” she said, frowning at Cooke.
He groaned. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
She nodded and sat back down, sighing as she did, clearly relieved they wouldn’t be expelled from my shop.
“Jason?” Cooke said hesitantly, “I didn’t mean to—”
“You’re saying a different word.” Perhaps the first thing I could start with was to understand what was going on from his point of view. Instead of judging what I was pretty certain was a bad situation, maybe I should listen first.
“I’m sorry?”
“We’re not saying the same thing.”
“That’s because you’re saying ‘vampire,’ like Dracula or something, and I’m saying ‘vampyr’ as it really is.”
It sounded like vam-pier. “Spell it.”
“Think vampyr, with a y and an r and not an i and r and an e, and you’ve got it.”
“I—what?”
He crossed his arms. “Are you or are you not a vampyr?”
“Oh no,” I said quickly. “I’m not a member of your cult.”
“I told you already, not a cult.”
“Yes.” I didn’t want to fight, even though I was frustrated. I was getting no closer to figuring out what was going on with him, and thus Tiago and even Hadrian. They were all in it, but I had no real idea what “it” was.
“Who are you?”
“I told you already,” I replied, sighing heavily.
“But you haven’t told me what you are.”
“I’m a human being, just like you.”
He shook his head. “But I’m not human, and I don’t think you are either.”
Both he and Tiago, totally nuts. “How big is this cult? Can you tell me?” The part of my brain with all the military training wanted to know, needed to catalog the answers so I could better understand precisely how it worked. “I won’t ask how you got in or why—that’s not my business—but I would like to know, like, is there a main location where you all go?” And then I remembered something. “Is it in Malta?”
His brow creased like he was trying to figure something out. “What’s your deal?”
I’d pushed. “Sorry, I just want to get a few answers, if you can tell me. Or, I mean, if you’re allowed to tell me.”
“Who are you?”
Again with that, and I realized I wasn’t going to get any information out of him. He, much like Tiago at the time, found me to be the curiosity. I wondered how they regarded regular people, our concern being so far out of their realm of understanding. It made me sad for both of them, but here, trying to get blood from a stone, wasn’t doing me or Cooke any good. “You know what,” I concluded with a sigh, “never mind, all right? Clearly you can’t talk about this any more than he could, and I—”
He stopped me before I could get up, hand on my shoulder for a moment before he stepped around the counter to face me again. “Sorry. Just—I’ve never met one of… whatever you are before, and I’m a little freaked-out.”
“Whatever I—what?”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said quickly. “Just tell me—tell me what it is you wanna know.”
“And you’re freaked-out?” I was incredulous. “I’m confused about what I should be doing to help you, just like I didn’t know what I should have done for him.”
“Who?”
“Another member of your cult that I saved a while back,” I explained. “I felt so bad that I didn’t do more, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure what that could have been.”
“So we’re not the first vampyrs you’ve met?”
“You mean you guys, right?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I answered. “I met some back in Washington where I used to live.”
He nodded. “And they didn’t convince you that we’re not some big cult?”
“I—”
“How about I explain everything to you,” he offered.
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“We are, to some people.”
“Great.” I huffed. “Talk to me.”
“This might take a bit.”
“I’ve got all night,” I said cheerfully, urging him on. “G’head.”
“All right.”
I nodded. He exhaled.
I waited. He stared.
“Did you wanna start, maybe?” I nudged after taking a deep breath, worried he wasn’t really going to give me the answers I was looking for. “Now?”
“Yeah, no, of course I can—okay, so… I’m a vampyr,” he began softly, seriously.
“Yeah, you said that already.”
“Listen,” he pleaded, his voice gentle but firm. “And this time really think about the word and what you know and what you’ve seen.”
I stilled, and it was everyone, not just me and Cooke, not just the others sitting behind me, but the entirety of the city, that held its collective breath.
I thought about Tiago and how he’d been shackled beside the bonfire, and all his cryptic words about his blood and his prince and his preternatural strength and surprising speed.
I thought about the fangs on Hadrian I assumed I’d imagined, and how agile he and his men were in the snow.
I thought about how, every now and then, here in New Orleans, I’d see odd things like people there one second, gone the next.
I thought about others on the street at night taking blood from each other’s wrists. I told myself it was them sharing a needle, but I only ever saw teeth.
I thought about how I overheard strange words and names from people who came into the shop, glanced at me, and smiled.
All of it went through my head as I got up and walked around my little store, pacing, running everything through my logical brain, looking for something other than the obvious to make sense.
Vampyr.
As crazy as it sounded, the single-word explanation helped make sense of other things that had not. It wasn’t a cult. They were actually vampyrs.
And now, finally, I could listen and hear the truth. I crossed the shop quickly and stopped in front of Cooke and stared.
I nodded. I just wished I had some way to get in contact with Tiago and Hadrian, especially Tiago, so I could apologize for not realizing what he’d been trying to tell me.
“I know you probably don’t believe me, and if I showed you my teeth, you’d say they were fake or filed or whatever, but that’s what I am. Just so we’ve got that part straight.”
“No,” I said so he knew I was listening, just as he’d asked. “I believe you. Please go on.”
He checked my face, his brows furrowed like he was worried. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, my throat dry and my voice in and out.
“Interesting. The last guy I came clean with had problems from the jump, but it seems like you’re all right.”
I stayed quiet, letting him get himself together.
“Diving right in, then. Vampyrs as a whole are called nori-ah and—”
“Could you write these down for me?” I asked, smiling to myself, remembering Tiago putting things in my phone that he quickly erased. “I need to have them for reference.”
“You sure you’re all right?” he asked suspiciously, looking at me the way people did when they thought you were crazy. “Because you’re acting sort of odd.”
I bet I was. “Yeah, I know, sorry. Just—I’m fine.”
“I do.”
“Just like that?”
“Thing is,” I said, taking a breath, “it’s not just like that, right? I’ve been working stuff out in my head for a while now, so yeah… I’m wrapping my brain around the word ‘vampyr.’”
“I know. I’ve told other humans, and they always look just like you do right now. Kinda shell-shocked, like your brain is ready to explode.”
“Did you know about vampyrs before you became one?”
He squinted. “Became one? I was born one.”
“Born one?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a quick huff of breath. “It’s not like in the movies. No one gets bitten and becomes a vampyr. You’re either born one or not.”
“I just thought—”
“That you’d get bitten and grow fangs and the whole deal.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said flatly.
“But you have fangs or no?”
He opened his mouth and lifted his top lip so I could see canines that were a bit longer than mine, more pronounced, and beside them, a smaller set that looked exactly the same but sharper.
“You have two sets of canines?”
“Yeah,” he said, moving his fingers. “And I don’t have any grinding surfaces on my molars like you do.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I need to grind anything?”
“So you don’t eat at all?”
“No.”
“Well, I drink water, and in my case, bourbon,” he said with a smirk, “but all my nutrients come from blood.”
I gestured at him. “Lemme feel your teeth.”
“Gross,” he said, face twisted in horror. “Like I want your disgusting fingers in my mouth.”
“Yeah, all right,” I acquiesced because, really, if the shoe was on the other foot, I wouldn’t want his fingers in my mouth either.
“I can see your mind working,” he said, chuckling, clearly enjoying this conversation with me.
“Sorry, I’m just wondering about your teeth.”
“What about them?”
“They’re all sharp? Even your molars?”
“Of course. They’re all made for piercing, cutting, even shearing if need be,” he answered logically.
“And the extra set of canines are called what?”
“Supernumerary teeth. And just so you know, a lot of humans have them as well.”
“No shit.”
“No shit. But in humans they’re just weird extra teeth that come in randomly. Some people have extra incisors or molars, and some even have the canines like us.”
It was fascinating. There had to be a whole evolution of being a vampyr, and that in turn filled my mind with more questions. “Can I ask something else?”
“Course,” he sighed, tipping his head as he regarded me.
“Why don’t vampyrs come out?”
He snorted a laugh.
“Shit, you know what I mean.”
“But we have, haven’t we?”
“What are you talking about?”
“People talk about vampyrs all the time,” he pointed out, leaning on the counter.
“Yeah, but not like as something real.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I think you’d have to take a poll to really know that for sure.”
“Gimme a break. No one thinks vampyrs are real.”
“But you say vampyr, and everyone knows what that is, right?”
“Sure.”
“Vampyr is part of the lexicon, like egg or car or lamp. It’s a thing you know.”
“Sure,” I conceded. “I’ll give you that. But what if a vampyr wanted others to know you all were really real and not just something in books and movies?”
He shrugged. “I think that person would need to consider how old vampyrs actually are and that we are everywhere, in everything, from the bottom to the top, and then make an informed decision.”
“I’m not following.”
“So let’s say you’re some young idealistic nobody and you’ve fallen head over heels for some human, and you want the whole wide world to know.”
“You’re sounding very cynical right now,” I commented. The way his voice rose told me he didn’t think too much of love. “What happened to you?”
“Don’t get me started on how fucked-up love is, man. The girl I followed here from Seattle dumped me for a rich human lawyer who set her up with a house in the Garden District and bought her a tricked-out Mercedes. Love is for brain-dead idiots.”
“I see. So, jilted party of one, can you go on?”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “So my bet is that our guy who wants to tell the world about vampyrs is dead before anyone has the time to even check out his story. We’re taught from the time we’re little that humans are fine in small doses—we evolved from humans, after all—but to be known as real is a death sentence.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
“And the internet is insane. Who can tell what’s real or not?”
He had a point.
“Right this second I bet you can go on YouTube and find a ton of videos from people who thought they saw a vampyr or who are vampyrs or God knows what else.”
“You said God. You still believe in God?”
“Of course. I’m Episcopalian, man.”
“Huh.”
“Let’s face it: there are a billion things in the world scarier than vampyrs, and everyday people on the street don’t have time to deal with the supernatural. They have enough to do just to take care of their families and put food on the table.”
He was not wrong. Who had time to believe in things that went bump in the night when you had to go to work in the morning, pick up the kids from school, make dinner, and pay the rent? Most people would go for what made more sense, just like I had. A cult instead of a mythological creature? Absolutely.
“So yeah, no one’s outing anyone. We keep quiet, and no one’s the wiser.”
“Then you just live in plain sight, but nobody knows—or more importantly—believes.”
“Yes.”
“And you all, I mean, vampyrs, you’re fine with that?”
“If it’s something you’re raised with, the secrecy, you don’t question it.”
At least that made sense. “I have to ask. Where do vampyrs come from?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly because we go to school just like you, with you, but we’re the kids with weird allergies that don’t eat anything at lunch.”
“Really? During the day?”
He rolled his eyes. He obviously thought I was the biggest dork on the planet. Then he shook his head with so much judgment. When he finally spoke, he sounded very aggrieved. “Seriously, do not believe everything you see in movies. It’s total shit.”
“So what you’re saying is that vampyrs evolved from humans, you’re just not up enough on your own history to know when and where.”
“That was bitchy and judgmental.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“Well, the when was during the Late Bronze Age, the where would be originally eastern Europe, but later, all over, traveling with humans and settling all over the world.”
“You don’t seem to care a lot about this.”
“Do you think about ancient history every day? I mean, if you’re not a historian, if that’s not your job, wouldn’t going to work be farther up on your to-do list?”
I smiled. “So you’re a practical vampyr.”
“I’m a practical person,” he informed me snidely, smirking for good measure. “The only difference between me and everyone else you know is that I drink blood to stay alive.”
“Okay,” I said, chuckling at his indignant, defiant expression, like what the hell was I thinking? “But your history, it has to be written down somewhere.”
“I’m sure it is, and I have no doubt that if you were granted an audience with the king or the queen or even the prince, that any one of them could tell you and maybe even show you some big superserious etched carving done in solid gold or some shit, or maybe just an extremely informative and well-researched PowerPoint presentation, but for those of us out here in the world—the fuck do we care?”
Had he even taken a breath while venting at me? I wasn’t sure, but I could see his point. What did knowing about the evolution of homo sapiens—if you even believed in evolution—do for the average person on the street? Still, I was disappointed I couldn’t get the whole story.
“Is that it?” he prompted.
I’d hoped he could fill in so much more. “No, not at all.”
He nodded, and I glanced at the others just to see if maybe any of them had a different take on things or had anything to add. They had all passed out.
“They seem exhausted.”
“It’s a fight for your life out there, man. It’s nice to be in here where it’s safe.”
“What’d you mean? Safe in here how? And why aren’t you safe outside?”
He shook his head. “I have no clue why it feels like it does in here, but I think it has something to do with you.”
Back to this. “I’m not a vampyr, I promise you.”
“And I believe you, but you’re not just human either.”
“That makes no sense.”
He shrugged. “I have no idea what to say to you.”
We were getting nowhere, and I still had a billion questions. “Then in the meantime, could you give me the rundown of everything you do know?”
“Oh, sure, why not,” he said sarcastically.
“Are you gonna be an ass?”
“You don’t know me yet. This could be me in a fan-fucking-tastic mood.”
I snorted, which drew a smile from him. “Could you do me a favor, though?”
“Hit me.”
“If there are any weird words, would you write those down?”
“I don’t—”
“It’d make things a lot easier. It’s how my mind works, I gotta see it.”
“Sure. Whatever,” he agreed, a bit disgruntled, and took the pen and paper I passed him. “Okay, so I’m gonna start with the nori-ah”—he scrawled “noreia” as he spoke—“because that’s all of us as a race. With vampyrs, how old your family is, is directly related to how much wealth, status, and privilege you have.”
“Technically that’s people too. I mean, old money and new money and no money.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “So there are the pee-bees—as in purebloods—who have only ever bred with other vampyrs, and they’ve got ancestors that go back to the Iron Age or before, and their fancy name is row-genus.” He wrote down “roginus.” “You can’t miss them; they have sticks firmly wedged up their asses.”
“Got it.”
“Right. And then you have vampyrs like me with no lineage, regular folks, vampyrs who mixed with humans, and like the slang for roginus is PBs, for us, everyone says ‘made.’ Like you’re just made, no big deal, nothing special—which is most of us—but the real term is ee-cee-knee.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, repeating iceni silently after he wrote it down. “Money or breeding or whatever counts for crap in the real world. It’s who you are and what you do with your life.”
He smirked. “Yeah, I know, oh champion of the common man, but I’m trying to get through Vampyr 101 over here.”
“Wow,” I retorted, scowling. “You’re really a dick.”
“I was stabbed earlier,” he reminded me. “Not having the best night.”
“Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that.”
He made his eyes huge for a second, like Wow! and I laughed.
“Now above the purebloods are the nobility, who have titles, and I’ve only seen a few in my life. One time outside a club I couldn’t get in when I lived in New York one summer with my cousins, and then again when I went to Europe after high school for a month. They’re called the deh-nee”—“dene” was what he wrote—“and they run with celebrities, and that’s crazy old money.”
“I think I’m missing the difference between the purebloods and the nobility.”
“It’s the elite mating with the elite, like one royal house mating with another one. Think of it like in the old days how a prince could only marry a princess.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Yeah, that’s some serious shit.”
“And that’s all?”
“No. The last is the very top of the food chain, and those are the descendants of the first vampyr king, Ascalon. That’s the royal line: the king, the queen, and the prince. They’re the day-see-uhn,”—dacian—“and don’t ask me anything about them, because I have no fuckin’ clue. No one I’ve ever met has seen any of them.”
But I had met two men who saw the prince on a regular basis. “All right, so, calling you all the ‘made’ is probably what gave rise to the whole legend about being able to ‘make’ vampyrs, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” he said. I could tell he could not care less.
“This isn’t fascinating to you?”
“This is ancient history you’re talking about. Who gives a crap?”
“You should care.”
He made a derisive noise.
“Do you all get along?”
“Who?”
“Like you and the PBs?”
“Us and them, you mean?”
I grunted. “I think that answered my question right there.”
“Yeah, it’s not good.”
“It is what it is. They hate us on general principle, and we feel the same about them. Mostly we all stay clear of each other, but if you’re a made vampyr walking alone at night, like I had to earlier, you might get jumped and killed.”
“It’s that bad?” I was horrified. It was a war zone right there where I lived, and I’d had no idea people were dying.
“Hell yeah. And that’s a shitty way to go because they kill you and send your fangs and a finger to whoever knows you. The rest is just burned.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, but you can’t have vampyrs in the news with our weird teeth and strange cell structure,” he apprised me.
I had no idea what to say in response, too shocked and dismayed by what he’d just said. It had to be terrifying for the individual being killed and heart-wrenching for their families.
“So yeah, it’s dangerous out there.”
“They kill you, you kill them just because you can.”
“Absolutely.”
I studied him.
“You wanna ask, so g’head.”
“Have you killed any purebloods?”
“Yes.”
I would have asked something more, but I stopped myself because it wasn’t right for me to ask him to implicate himself, and beyond that, I had no frame of reference for the struggles of vampyrs. In human terms, having been to war, having seen carnage up close, I could take a side, try to help, make a difference, but this was a reality he understood and I didn’t. “What happened tonight?”
“I was meeting my friends and the party was a block away, but I got to the end of my street over there on Ursulines and Chartres, and I turned a corner, and they were there, waiting on me.”
“Why?” I asked, angry for him that this was his reality, what he dealt with every day.
“I have no idea,” he said but glanced away. He knew exactly why he got grabbed; he just didn’t want to say.
“So they just jumped you and tried to slice you up.”
“There was no trying. They did a pretty good job, but my friends came looking for me, and since there were only a couple of PBs and four of my friends, they stopped carving me up and bailed when they heard my buddies yelling.”
“Jesus.”
“Like I said, it’s bad out there if you’re a vampyr, which is why, on both sides, we try and never go out alone.”
“That’s crazy to hate others just like you. I mean, you’re all vampyrs, it’s just a class distinction and money you’re talking about,” I said vehemently, having seen this over and over again at home and abroad.
His grunt was judgmental.
“What?”
“As though humans are any different,” he sighed. “It’s exactly the same.”
He was not wrong. Apparently humans and vampyrs had a lot more in common than simply an ancestor. “I have more questions.”
“Go for it,” he said, smiling. “This isn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be.”
“Thanks a lot.”
His shrug told me he could not have cared less if he offended me.
“I want to know about humans now. How do they fit into the vampyr world?”
“Pureblood vampyrs only have children with other vampyrs, but made vampyrs—”
“No, I got that part. I want to know what other ways humans fit in.”
“Well, there are vampyrs in both groups, PBs and made, who don’t follow the rules where humans are concerned.”
“How so?”
“They drink them dry and kill them,” he explained. “And that’s bad.”
That’s bad? “That’s bad?” I said incredulously, getting louder, astounded that he could say something so appalling and horrendous as though it were the most mundane, everyday occurrence.
“Jason—”
“Are you screwing with me!”
“Why’re you yelling?” he had the gall to ask.
“That’s bad?” I intoned dramatically. “Seriously?”
“It’s a law that you don’t do it.”
“I think I like this law,” I said dramatically as he cracked a grin.
“Humans are off-limits unless you’re married or mated to one.”
“And how do you prove that?”
“With a marriage license or a mating ceremony,” he explained, “both of which have paperwork that’s filed either at city hall or with the leader of your community.”
“And if you drink from someone outside of marriage?”
“Don’t get caught.”
He made it sound like drinking blood from humans was like using a recreational drug. “Now what if you kill a human?”
“Then you’re dead.”
“Who carries that sentence out?”
“Either the head of the PBs or the head of the made vampyrs,” he explained. “Whatever type you are, they do it.”
I absorbed what he said, thinking back to Washington.
“If you fuck up like that, either drink from a human outside a covenant bond—that’s the marriage or mating—or kill a human, you’re called a foe-more-ee.” Cooke added “fomori” to the list he was making. “Usually anyplace you go, you’ll find both roginus and iceni and their leaders. Here in New Orleans, Niko Gann is in charge of the made vampyrs, and the Diallo family—the ruling pureblood clan of the city—is run by Benny Diallo.”
I nodded, listening, wondering how in the world all of this existed outside of what I’d known all my life. I was trying to take it all in; I’d have my own private freak-out as I went over everything in my head later. Now was the moment to learn all I could.
I briefly checked on the others, still dead to the world. Were they vampyrs too? “Is there anywhere I can find out this stuff on my own?”
“Check out The Law of Ascalon. It’s a book of rules. You can buy it online or check it out at the library. I have a copy if you wanna borrow it.”
“You can find a vampyr book in the library?”
He shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mean, to anyone but us, it reads like a piece of fiction. It’s the vampyr laws all written down, and we’re all supposed to follow them.”
“And so if you don’t, then you’re considered a fomori?”
“No,” he said scornfully. “You think every law is punishable by death?”
“Like I would know,” I snapped.
“Well, it’s not like that,” he assured me. “We’re not so rigid that every slight transgression means you’re dead meat. Only drinking from a human who you’re not bound to makes you fomori, which means you’re done.”
The way he said fomori, drawing the word out, using it like the word heretic, told me what a huge deal it was. There was nothing worse in his book. “And everyone has to follow the same rules?”
“You mean like purebloods and—”
“Yeah.”
“Of course,” he asserted. “Across the board certain things are finite.”
The night I met Tiago, when he said who he was and how important he was—if the prince was at the top of the food chain, did Tiago have to follow all the laws or was he untouchable? “And what about the rajan?”
He scowled.
“What?”
“The rajan. The counselor of the prince?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?” He sighed, looking pained.
“It?”
“Well, I can’t say he or she ’cause I don’t know who the current rajan is.”
Interesting. “Why not?”
“Why don’t I know who the rajan is?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I?”
“Because you should know, shouldn’t you?”
“I guess, but I’d have to go to what Madagascar or—”
“Malta,” I corrected.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he said, “Malta. Madagascar, Macao, Mozambique, I get all the M countries mixed up. But so yeah, since the king’s court is on the other side of the planet and I’m not independently wealthy, I’m thinking I won’t be running into the rajan anytime soon.”
“But—”
“And how do you know about the rajan anyway?”
“Tell me about the prince,” I said, ignoring his question. “What’s he called?”
He started at the top and went down the list. The title of the king was the boria; the queen, the mavia; and the prince, the draugr. The court was in Malta, though apparently the Maedoc family had purchased a Greek island and the queen had moved there. She and the king were not close.
“I guess if you’re married for thousands of years, it’s hard to keep that old spark alive,” Cooke said, snickering.
I would suspect so. “I thought vampyrs liked darkness. Why would Greece be good?”
“The sunlight and garlic and not being able to see your own reflection—that’s all crap.”
My preconceived notions were getting blown all to hell.
“But one of the things that is true is that for us, the older you get, the stronger you are, and drinking blood slows down our aging process.”
“By how much? How long a life does metabolizing only blood get you?”
“I dunno, but I’ve met guys who are eighty who look twenty-five.”
“Then the immortal part is true.”
“You’re not immortal if you can be killed.”
“How long do vampyrs live on average?”
“That depends on your line too. The stronger the genes, the stronger you are.”
I smiled.
“Nothing. I—This is just so interesting.”
“If you say so,” he said with a shrug.
“So how old are you?” I asked, excited.
“Sixty-one.”
“Wow. You look damn good for a senior citizen.”
“Aww, gee, thanks.”
“And what about Benny Diallo?” I wanted to gauge the age of vampyrs versus their places in the world. Like, would I be talking to people who had been born centuries before me, or just a few years? “Do you know how old he is?”
“I think he’s like a hundred, hundred and two.”
“What about the prince?”
“I’ve heard the prince fought in the crusades so if he was of age by then, that puts him well over a thousand.”
“Holy shit.”
“Well said,” he teased.
“So it’s safe to say that there’s no preset time for how long a vampyr can live.”
“Again, it’s genetics. The king’s life can probably go on indefinitely. I’ll maybe see two hundred if I don’t get killed walking home.”
“I wonder what a thousand-year-old vampyr is capable of?” I mused, ignoring his obvious fishing for concern.
“Anything he wants would be my guess,” Cooke said. “Okay, so now you. Explain to me what you are.”
“I don’t get your question.”
He gestured at himself.
“You lost me.”
“I was losing blood, then suddenly I find this place—find you—and now I’m all healed up,” he said pointedly, staring at me. “So tell me… what the hell are you?”
“I’m not anything special, I swear. I’m just a guy.”
He shook his head. “You’re not just ‘anything.’ Are you a pureblood?”
“I told you already. I’m human, not a vampyr.”
“Yeah, I can smell your blood like sharks do in water, and if you were a vampyr, I wouldn’t be able to.”
“See? Then you know I’m human.”
“Yeah, but then how are you doing this?”
“Doing what, the healing?”
“Yeah.”
“I have no idea.”
“Man, this is a mindfuck.”
It most certainly was. All of it. From when I had first met Tiago and Hadrian to Cooke nearly collapsing on my doorstep, all of it, all of them, had made me doubt my sanity, only to realize there wasn’t a thing wrong with me all along. My perceptions, what I observed, all of it was valid. I had to stop doubting myself.
We were silent a moment. “I’ve met one of the prince’s guards,” I threw out.
His eyes got big and round. “Are you fucking with me?”
“No. Why?”
“That’s amazing. Do they shift into wolves, or are they more like part men, part wolves and walk on two feet?”
“What’re you talking about?” I couldn’t go from vampyrs to werewolves—that was asking too much. One paradigm shift per lifetime was more than enough.
“They call the prince’s guards the wolves of the house of Maedoc; I just assumed they were werewolves or something.”
“Have you ever seen a werewolf?”
“No.”
“You just assume there is such a thing?”
“That’s ancient shit I have no idea about.”
“Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but there were no werewolves, just guys.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“That’s disappointing,” he said and then abruptly jolted.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” I asked, concerned, because watching him almost jump out of his skin, hearing him catch his breath, studying the way he was now shifting back and forth from one foot to the other, was unsettling.
He tipped his head at the front windows, and outside loomed five guys in suits, looking in at us.
“The guy right there by your door, he’s the one who cut me.”
I made a decision. “Then lemme go see what he wants,” I said gently, getting up, wanting to see if I could help the situation while resolute in the knowledge I would let no harm come to my new friend.
“No, wait, you gotta listen.”
“It’s gonna be fine,” I promised, walking around Cooke and heading for the door.
“They’ll kill us all if you let them in!” he yelled, and he must have startled the others because everyone was shouting at once, their voices layering, pleading with me, one of the girls shrieking, absolutely frantic.
“Stop,” I ordered. “You’re all safe with me,” I stated before unlocking the door and leaning out.
The closest man actually snarled and lunged at me, but he hit an invisible wall between us. He bounced back into the man at his shoulder, who caught him and helped him regain his balance.
None of the others moved, and they didn’t look mad anymore, more startled and wary.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Who the fuck are you?” the first guy asked.
“I’m Jason Thorpe. I own this shop. Who’re you?”
“Garrett Spencer,” he said, glaring at me.
I met his gaze, held it, didn’t look away, holding my ground, waiting for him to make some kind of move.
After a moment he glanced sideways and then back to me. By the huff of breath and the anger rolling off him, I understood he was both annoyed and hesitant. He wasn’t afraid of me, but he wasn’t sure of the situation either. And so we stood, watchful and ready, also wary, two gunslingers in the street, each waiting for the other to twitch.
“Did you wanna come in?” I offered. Something had to give. Vampyr or not, I wasn’t afraid. Maybe I should have been—I’d seen both Tiago and Hadrian move—but I was also a big believer in fate.
I was supposed to be at that cabin in the middle of nowhere to help save Tiago, just as I was meant to be here now to intercede on behalf of Cooke. For whatever reason that had not yet made itself clear to me, I had been ushered into the new (technically old) world of vampyrs. I had a part to play; I just had to figure out what that was. But while the reason escaped me, understanding dynamics seemed like the best way to start.
“Do you want to come inside?” I repeated to the vampyr standing in front of me.
He gave me a curt nod, begrudging, brows furrowed, lips in a tight line, jaw clenched, really not happy to find himself here. He stepped inside, the others following close behind, and when I turned, Cooke’s friends were up from the love seat and clustered around him.
In my shop, ten of them plus me, gathered together, they eyed each other up, and once that was done, all attention was on me.
In that strange, quiet moment, I instinctively understood I was supposed to do something—an opportunity I didn’t want to miss.
“So what can we do for you all?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Sir?”
“Garrett,” he corrected.
I offered him another welcoming smile. “Garrett.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean that outside on the sidewalk, I wanted to get in here, kill him—kill all of them,” he said, gesturing at Cooke and his friends. “But… I don’t know, because now wanting that seems strange, like that wasn’t me, even though of course it was, ’cause that’s one of the things I do for my boss….” He glanced around the room. “Somebody else say somethin’.”
The rest of the men who came in with him—vampyrs, men, it was hard to make a distinction between human and other—glanced among themselves and then back at me.
No one spoke, no one threatened, they waited instead, and after a few long minutes, that got really awkward. Cooke finally looked at me and turned his palms up.
“What?” I asked.
“I dunno, what?” he snapped. “What are you wanting here?”
“Yeah,” Garrett said, tipping his chin toward Cooke. “Answer.”
It couldn’t hurt to ask. “Well, don’t you all think that we have an opportunity here, right now, to air some grievances? And then maybe try and figure out where we could go from here that might not include homicide?”
Silence.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could make the Quarter a place where both pureblood vampyrs and made vampyrs could all feel safe?”
I got a lot of scoffing, some snickering, and a bit of swearing. Apparently this war between the upper and lower class was not something to be fixed overnight. I understood the hostility and resentment ran deep and poisoned everything. Casting aside hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years of bad blood wasn’t going to just miraculously happen. They were all carrying around ancient grievances none of them had a hand in creating. Programmed to judge and fear and hate, they just wouldn’t see with new eyes.
“Maybe we could start with a small fix and work up to a big one?” I suggested because a journey of a thousand steps and all that.
I expected more of the same—snide comments and profanity—but none came, and I was happily surprised.
“How are you doing this?” Garrett asked, his eyes narrowed, studying me.
“Doing what?”
Cooke cleared his throat, and Garrett turned to look at him. “It’s weird, right? It’s like we should all be calm in here or something.”
Garrett nodded. “Yes. Why? Do you know?”
They were talking, just them, finding common ground in the oddity I was.
Cooke shook his head. “No, but it’s felt like that since I walked in here, and it still hasn’t changed even with”—he tipped his head at Garrett and his men—“you all, and I’m not scared.”
“Yeah,” Garrett agreed. “Me neither.”
Cooke lifted his brows, and he was trying to hide his astonishment over what was just said. “You guys—you worry about us too?”
“Everyone has the same fears when they’re out alone,” Garrett said quickly, trying to sound nonchalant but clearly failing, with how sharply his breath caught.
Their gazes met, held, and then both turned back to me. Clearly they were waiting, again, for me to do or say something.
They would stand there all night, frozen, it seemed, in anticipation.
Whatever was happening, it was of my making. I was the spider, and they were caught in my web, so that now, in my shop, everyone felt safe, protected. Even the guys who normally intimidated others were scared, or they wouldn’t have started threatening people to begin with. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: people were on guard, it put others on theirs, and round and round and round until somebody snapped and blood and death reigned.
But here I had an opening for peace.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
I just had to see how far my reach could actually go. I needed to start small.
It turned out Garrett worked for Benny Diallo, and Cooke was tight with Niko Gann, so they had inherent issues right up front.
“I would love to see if maybe Mr. Diallo and Mr. Gann could come to the shop and sit down and talk with me about calling a truce.”
The irritation on Garrett’s face told me he wanted to say it would be a cold day in hell before that happened, but instead he said, “I’ll ask him, all right?”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely before turning to Cooke. “And I need you to speak to Mr. Gann as soon as possible, okay?”
Cooke nodded hesitantly.
“Excellent,” I sighed, pleased with both men, because even though they had barely agreed to my terms, they still had, in fact, agreed. Smiling, I returned my focus to Garrett. “In the meantime, what can we do about the animosity between you and my friend Cooke here?”
“Cooke there,” he scoffed, “almost died tonight—”
“Died?” I asked, feigning confusion. “From what?”
“From what?” Garrett retorted. “Are you kidding? I ripped a hole in his abdomen as big as the Grand Canyon!”
“What’s he talking about?” I projected as much innocence as I could, and when I turned to Cooke, he snickered and then smiled lazily, lifting his shirt to show nothing but freckled skin over tight, wiry muscle. Even the pale pink healing mark was gone.
Garrett was stunned to silence.
The men with him blinked, openmouthed.
I cleared my throat and drew everyone’s attention. “Since clearly Cooke is a lot stronger than you thought—can we get back to figuring out the source of the trouble?” I asked patiently.
“Yes,” Garrett said, arms crossed, scowling at Cooke.
The issue was easy enough to understand. As Garrett explained, if he’d told Cooke once, he’d told him a thousand times: don’t work the sidewalk in front of his restaurant. Cooke was a street musician with enough of a following to make it hard on certain businesses.
I shot Cooke a look.
“What?”
“How many times did he ask?”
He had to think.
“That’s really not helping,” I informed my new friend.
Cooke shrugged.
“I can’t have them outside my restaurant,” Garrett explained sincerely. “I have a nice, steady clientele, but I’m going to start losing them if they have to keep asking people who reek of patchouli to get the hell out of the way just so they can get inside.”
It was a valid point. Cooke and his band impacted Garrett’s ability to make money for his family.
“But he gets to come at me with a fuckin’ saber?” Cooke asked, horrified.
Also a legitimate point.
“And we need a place to go that will draw people at night,” Cooke countered.
The solution hit me.
“You know what?” I said brightly, “I think I can help.”