by D. N. Hoxa
“I was, yes.”
“How intriguing. What’s immortality like, Mr. Reed? Please indulge me.” Even her pheasant was very interested in me now. I could be rude, but I did need her to make me those clothes. Searching for the spell I was looking for anywhere else would be a waste of time. Vampires had made sure to destroy all evidence of it, but Sinea needed it before it was too late. I had no other choice.
“It’s very boring, I’m afraid. A lot of long days and short nights. That’s all there is to it.”
Her laugh rang in my ear. “That’s all there is to it!” And she laughed some more. “I didn’t know vampires could even be funny. It would make sense for death to strip you of your sense of humor, but apparently that’s not the case with you.” She winked at me. I forced myself to laugh.
“You’d be surprised how little makes sense about us,” I said, clearing my throat. “For example, we all long for a past that we detested while we lived through it. Like is my case tonight.”
“Is that why you want to go back in time? Are you longing for the past, Mr. Reed?” She batted her lashes at me and her voice dropped lower, almost to a whisper.
“Just for a very specific thing right now. I do hope you will help me. Won’t you, Ms. Angels?”
Another laugh. “I certainly will—and you’re in luck because I already have something from Victorian-era London. Come with me. Let’s see what you’re hiding under there.” She pointed her index finger up and down my body.
It was a relief, at first. And then she took me to the wider part of the room, through a door on the left, and into a fitting room. One of the men who’d been working the desk came with us, keeping his head low, a measuring tape around his shoulders. She didn’t bat an eye when she asked me to take off my jacket and my shirt. She just sat in one of the leather chairs in the small room and watched me, her cheeks flush, the blood in her veins rushing. I wasn’t one to be uncomfortable in situations like this, but this time it got to me. Maybe it was the impatience. I still had things to do, and I didn’t want to spend all night in Tailored Time with Seraphina Angels.
But once the man—who was a Level One wizard—took my measurements, and I got dressed, she gave me some good news.
“The outfit I have is from 1840. It’s about a size and a half too big for you, so we’ll need to do some work on it before you can wear it.”
“I don’t mind at all, actually.” As long as it got me to where I needed to go…
“No, no. The clothes have to be a perfect fit for the spell to work, I’m afraid. In the meantime, join me for some wine, Mr. Reed. I have an impressive collection, if I dare say so myself,” Angels said, waving for me to follow her out of the fitting room.
I indulged her because I had no choice. I went to her office and drank half a glass of wine while she told me tales about who’d been at her shop, and how many people had successfully visited the past at the hands of the Angels family. Impatience almost got the best of me in the first five minutes, but I gritted my teeth and sat still. I listened for almost an hour before the young wizard knocked on the door to let us know that my outfit was ready. I wrote a check for Angels before we walked out of the office because I wasn’t planning on going back in there again.
Then, we went to the second floor.
The room she put me in had a coffin in it. It stood on four thick metal legs in the very middle of the small space she called the Transportation Room, and it had a glass cover on the side. When I first saw it, I expected it to be a joke, but it wasn’t. That was where I was going to lie down, with the glass cover over me, while my mind traveled back to the past.
Not a lot of things made me uncomfortable anymore, but this certainly did. Still, I had no choice but to wear the clothes that the workers had prepared for me. I didn’t remember much about outfits from twenty years ago, but these items I did remember. The cream-colored shirt was close fitting and had silver-colored cuffed sleeves. There were no buttons, only soft laces that stretched to my midsection, topped with a very small collar. The necktie was made of brown silk and about the only thing I liked about the outfit. Good thing my preferences didn’t matter. I put on the trousers that were tighter than I remembered around the waistband and hung very loose all the way to my ankles. Next, I put on the black suspenders, and over them the dark brown vest. There was a folded handkerchief in the left side of the pocket, the exact same color as the shirt I was wearing. I tightened the tie at the back of the vest all the way—Angels did say the clothes had to be a perfect fit—and put on the black boots that were fastened with hooks. They were actually very light and comfortable in my feet, even though I didn’t like the narrow pointed toes.
As soon as I was all dressed, the door to the Transportation Room opened and Angels walked in with her familiar on her shoulder and a big smile on her face. Under her arm was a book with a thick, hard cover decorated with dark red vines that seemed to be made out of foil.
“You’re a handsome devil, Mr. Reed,” she said, her eyes moving up and down my body like she was trying to make me feel uncomfortable on purpose. “Tell me, are you single by any chance?”
I tried my best to be polite. “Oh, no. I’m one of the lucky ones, Ms. Angels.”
She wasn’t surprised in the least, which made me wonder if she’d heard the rumors about Sinea being my mate. “She’s a lucky girl, indeed. Shall we?”
I thought she’d never say that. “What do you need me to do?”
“Just lie in the Transporter, please. Perfectly still. I imagine that won’t be hard for you,” she said, standing by the end of the coffin.
“How does this work, if you don’t mind my asking?” I lay down on the white sheets, and to my surprise, it really was comfortable. I looked down at Angels who’d put her heavy book over my legs. Her familiar rattled her feathers then flew to the other side of the room onto the doorframe. Her eyes never left my face.
“It’s a complicated spell, I’m afraid. It’s going to take me about twenty minutes to perform, only because you’ve already been there and know where you’re going. The fabric of the clothes you’re wearing comes from the timeline you want to visit, and that’s my spell’s main focus,” she explained, flipping the pages of the book as if she had never done this before. “It will guide my magic to that era, then connect you with it—kind of like a Gateway for your mind. Normally, I’d have to be the one to do the imagining for people who only want to visit certain timelines, but with you, it’s going to be easier.”
“I’m ready to get started,” I assured her.
“Good. All I need from you is to think hard to the very moment you want to go back to, with as much detail as possible. Anything you can remember, think about it. Take a mental picture of that memory and describe it to yourself in your mind while I chant. Can you do that?”
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“The spell can last up to half an hour, but whenever you want to get back, just push through the magic and try to wake up. It’s like waking up from a dream—if you remember what that’s like. Which reminds me—how old are you, Mr. Reed? I’m only curious.”
“Over three hundred, and that won’t be a problem. Would it be too much bother to ask for a pen and paper to be ready close to me when I wake up?” I was going to memorize the spell, but I wanted to write it down as soon as possible, in case I forgot a word.
Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Of course, Mr. Reed. Now please, close your eyes and start thinking.” She cleared her throat, closed her own eyes, and put both hands over the pages of her book.
The memory I was looking for wasn’t very clear in my mind, but it was clearer than most from that era. We were in a clubhouse in Whitechapel, having just arrived in London three nights before. A few years back, there had only been hotels and taverns, but things had changed drastically. The clubhouse we were in was huge, and you could find all kinds of people in there, no longer divided by how much money they made. I thought it was refreshing. Amina thought it was disgusting, but her attitude
improved once we received word of who was going to be in that particular clubhouse that night—Elijah Cromswell. Cromswell was in charge of the Guild at the time when there were only three people on the committee, and he was a very powerful Prime sorcerer. Amina had wanted to meet with him for quite some time now, to discuss with him the possibility of making new vampires. I kept telling her it wasn’t going to work—the Guild wasn’t interested in vampires because vampires couldn’t really be controlled the way the Guild wanted them controlled. But she was sure it would work this time because she was going to propose to the Guild that the vampires she made work for them. It was just a ploy. I knew it, the Guild knew it, but she went ahead and made her proposition that night. It didn’t work, but that’s beside the point.
The clubhouse we were in was like most we’d seen in the past few days here. The ceiling was high, the smoke hanging in the air like magic. Ugly brown chandeliers hung low, close to the round tables, but the furniture was all brand new. There was a piano to the left of the room, next to the bar, and a young man played it with such enthusiasm, I still remembered the happy tune. I thought about it and about the ashtray on it, next to the glass of whisky the man had been drinking. I thought about the U-shaped bar and the bartenders, though I wasn’t sure how many there had been. I thought about the smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol, of sweat and piss and mud. I thought about us—Amina, me, and Paul Kurtis who’d already been in London when we arrived. Paul used to be a friend. He was a vampire, too, a very funny one. Seraphina Angels would have certainly liked him if he hadn’t been killed by the Guild not two decades after that night. I thought about his square face, his long dark hair tied in a leather behind his head. I thought about Amina, her hair shorter than Paul’s, her eyes just as green as they had ever been, her lips just as red. I tried to think about myself, about what I had looked like in the mirror that night, but the memory escaped me like it had never been there at all.
Then I thought about the dirty floor, about the polished wood of the table, the wine they served us in gold-colored pitchers. I remembered the slightly metallic taste that kind of reminded me of blood. The wine had been good, and the more I thought about it, the more I remembered—the thin glasses, the engraved pitcher, the blurry face of the bartender with the crooked nose. They called him Eagle because of it. Yes, I remembered. Eagle was human, like most of the people in that club, but he always seemed to look at us differently, almost like he knew we weren’t the same.
In the back of my mind, I could hear the voice of Angels, whispering the words of her spell, but I was no longer in the room with her. Whether it was the magic in the words or my own mind focusing on a different place, I already felt like I was sitting in the wooden chair, the edges of it biting into my back. I tried to look around, but it was all very blurry still. Then the chanting turned to shouting, and for a second I wanted to jolt myself awake and jump to my feet, but soon I realized it wasn’t chanting. It was singing, and it sounded an awful lot like shouting.
Like pulling a veil from in front of my eyes, the view in front of me cleared. I saw, and I remembered so much more than I’d been able to think about in the darkness of my mind. I remembered the three tables some men and women had put together at the right corner of the club, and how they were all screaming their guts out, singing to the tune the piano man was playing, beers in hand, so drunk they kept swaying from one side to the other. I remembered the bar with a crack right in the middle of it that people said was made when a man had thrown another man into it during a fight. I remembered the low yellow lights of the chandeliers and the mud-colored walls.
I remembered it all because it was right there in front of my eyes.
This time, when I thought about standing up, I actually did. Being a vampire meant always feeling your body to be as light as a feather, but now, I felt like there was nothing there at all. I looked down at myself and I saw a shadow where my chest and stomach should have been. I raised my arms in front of my face and they were nothing but a projection, too. A weak projection that blinked out of existence every few seconds when people moved around me and their shadow fell on me. I tried to touch my fingers together, but they slipped through each other like they weren’t even there.
The excitement that came over me was better than a glass of wine that rewarded me with taste with every sip. I could hear the music, the people, I could smell the smells, I could see everyone in such perfect detail that I wondered how my mind had filled in the holes.
Then, I turned around to see where I’d come from, and I saw myself.
My outfit was a bit different from what I had on now. That night, I’d had a grey suit on, with a waistcoat and a golden pocket watch hanging on the right pocket of the vest instead of the handkerchief. My hair was long and combed back, the wax that held it together making it look like a glossy surface. The ends of it touched the base of my neck. Everything about me was the same as it had been when I’d looked in the mirror at the fitting room, except the expression in my eyes. It was easy to see how we were two different people. The Damian Reed of the 1840s was relaxed. His shoulders weren’t as rigid. His eyes weren’t as sharp. He wasn’t trying to figure out who everyone in the room was or how they could be a threat to him. He wasn’t thinking about the best way to kill someone if they approached him. He was quiet, almost peaceful. He sat back on the chair and watched the piano man as he tapped his fingers to the table in rhythm.
It pained me to admit that I missed that time. I missed what it meant—the few responsibilities, the desire, the motivation to do everything I could do without getting bored. I’d been only a couple of decades over a hundred then, and it showed.
To my side was Amina, her gloved hand on my shoulder as she laughed at what Paul Kurtis was telling her. I wasn’t listening—my focus was completely on the piano until Amina pulled me to the side.
“Why the long face, darling?” I heard her voice, cheerful, complacent, every bit the Amina Grey I knew her to be. She’d been different then, too. Less guilty, more open, less evil.
“I’ll be back,” said Paul Kurtis, and I didn’t even get to see his face before he turned around and walked back to the entrance of the clubhouse, putting a black hat over his head.
“It’s going to be a great night tonight. I just know it,” Amina whispered to me, then grabbed my chin in her hand and pulled me to her. She kissed me like she owned me, and at the time she had. When she let go of me, she wiped the red lipstick from my face with her gloved thumb. My eyes had changed, grown darker, and I looked at her like a lost puppy. I’d been so infatuated by her then, and now I couldn’t even understand why.
Luckily, I didn’t need to. “Every night is a great night, kelebek. This one isn’t going to be different.”
Kelebek. I had completely forgotten that word. It meant butterfly in Turkish, and Amina was born in a Turkish family, had lived there her whole life before becoming a vampire. She used to like me calling her that.
“This one is,” she insisted. “Just wait until I speak to Cromswell. This time next decade, there will be no stopping us, Damian. You just wait.”
We laughed and clanked our glasses together. I spun around once more, the need to look both at the people around me, long dead, and at myself at the same time, almost overwhelming me. I wanted to walk around the club, see everyone from close up, go outside, see the streets of London once more, the dark sky, the moon. Had anything changed? Would I even notice if it had?
My mind buzzed and it was very distracting. Thankfully, a moment later, Paul returned. He was a bit taller than me, but slimmer, and when he tried to walk at normal speed so as not to freak the humans out, he always looked strange. I only remembered that as I watched him walking with his head forward, like he was drunk. He had always walked like that.
He came back to the table, a grin on his young face. He’d been days away from his twentieth birthday when he’d been turned.
“Look what the wind blew in,” he said and put a folded piece of pape
r on the table. “This is it. The last written copy of the Biter’s Poison.”
The Biter’s Poison—the spell I’d come here to find.
Moving fast wasn’t an issue—it was obvious that nobody here could see me. I couldn’t even see myself. I stepped behind Amina and watched her gloved hands take the piece of paper and slowly unfold it. It was a page torn from a book—a very old book if the yellowed paper was anything to go by. The spell on it was handwritten with black ink.
A noise rang in my ears. For some reason, the Damian from that night looked up at the ceiling, and for a second, it almost felt like he was looking right at me. Then, he turned back to the paper.
“May the wizard who made this rot in hell for all eternity, gentlemen,” Amina said and grabbed the lighter from the table, right next to her pack of cigarettes. My eyes hurt as I read the words on the piece of paper. Two paragraphs. A drawing. A list of four ingredients. I read it once, and then twice while the fire from the lighter spread onto the corner and quickly rose up. I could only read the first half of it for the third time before the fire completely devoured it. Amina dropped it on the ashtray and laughed along with Paul and me as it turned into black ashes.
“To the future!” Paul shouted and raised his glass of wine. Then, they all drank.
Vampires had always sought to destroy spells that were specifically designed to hurt them. They’d also succeeded. Most of the spells meant for our kind were gone by the time the twentieth century rolled over. I had never heard of the Biter’s Poison since that night in London. The Latin words of the spell spun in my head, every word burning itself in the back of my lids. I had read every letter and I would remember it for at least another few years—I had no doubt about that.
But what if I didn’t?
I turned around to the exit doors as three men walked in, and the one in the middle fell face first on the dirty floor. Cold night air came rushing in, as if to remind me that it was the end of January here, and the cold cut you like a silver blade. I caught a glimpse of the night sky before the doors slammed closed. I wanted to see the outside so badly, but I didn’t dare move an inch. If I forgot even one word of that spell, all of this would have been for nothing. Sinea needed the spell as soon as possible.