He’d collapsed to the floor and buried his head in his hands, but there was nothing to block out the eternal absence, the silence no ocean could fill. At that moment he’d truly wanted to kill something.
A bottle of beer slid across the table, then a glass of water. “Be right back with your food!” the server said as he disappeared back into the restaurant.
“Greg, babe, wake up.” Linda’s smile had changed—shadowed by hurt now. He couldn’t stand hurting her, but it must be his fate. “Clearly we have much more to discuss, and by God we will, but why don’t you show me the mystery-note.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” He dug into his suit jacket pocket for the folded slip of paper, then slid it across the table to her. As she bent her formidable attention to it, he idly picked up her notebook and turned it over. His name was there—like always in her handwriting, underscored, almost struck out; fluttering now in the wind, as paper beat against paper.
He turned his head to look at the bay. He took a drink of his beer. It tasted like blood, but then, he knew it would.
* * * *
The Book of De Leon has the answer to your problem. Seek the fountain where it is not.
Linda didn’t pay much attention to the words yet. When Greg had read them to her over the phone, she’d written them down, but she wanted to judge the materiality of the note for herself. It was old-fashioned copperplate in black ink, no smudges. The paper itself was a thick cream linen, expensive stuff but carelessly ripped in half. Its edges would slice her fingers if she weren’t careful.
Closing her eyes, she played her fingers over the note’s surface the way Mami had taught her. She closed out the sounds of nearby conversation, passing cars and motorcycles, and 70s AOR on the restaurant’s sound system, and she tried to take in any impressions left behind by the writer—
Chill up the spine, hairs rising on the back of her neck. Torn skin, torn world, open wound. Cold inside, cold out.
When she dropped the paper on the table, the feelings disappeared. The problem was, she told herself, that what she felt might not have been from the writer, but from the last person to touch the paper. She looked up.
Greg wasn’t looking at her. He’d pushed his chair back and turned to watch the water and the lights on the nearby Bridge of Lions. The familiar sight broke her heart a little—that long, languid slouch; the straight nose and sharp chin ghost-gleaming against the dark; his hair blowing across his forehead; one hand wrapped around the bottle, the other stilled on his leg. Her thin white duke was cold now.
She wanted to cry. No, she wanted to go over and climb into his lap, just as she’d done at that party in Tampa seventeen years ago, dropping down into the gorgeous stranger’s hold and saying, “Hi, I’m Linda, and I’ll be your date this evening.” He’d grinned at her, his arms locking around her waist, before he told her he was Greg and he’d been waiting for her all his life.
God, she wanted to cry.
In lieu of wailing and rending her garments, however, because she sure as hell refused to consider herself a widow any more: “This wasn’t written by Bobby, I can tell you that. You did say that he gave it to you?”
He looked back at her. “Yeah. Such a handy thing, the childhood pal who grows up to be county coroner. A guy would think it was all meant somehow.”
Her hand went to the chain around her neck, fingers dancing across the gold piece for safety and sight, before letting it go. “We can talk about destiny later. How did he get it? And since we’re on the topic, why the hell in the past four months didn’t he ever call and tell me you weren’t really dead, instead of that bullshit about a lost body—”
“Because I am dead. And because I asked him not to, not to tell anybody.” The arrogant son-of-a-bitch spoke sharply—apparently the time for apology had passed. That was her Greg all over. “The point is, that two days ago he found an envelope on his desk at the morgue. It was directed to ‘the blond man who died yet lived,’ care of Dr Robert Lee Thompson.” He waved his beer bottle dismissively. “While every morgue’s handbook has a section about dealing with the undead—odd, the facts one learns—St. Johns County doesn’t actually see a lot of vampires running around. He knew it was for me.”
“Okay. Do you have the envelope?” And then: “Wait a minute. Two days ago? You didn’t call me until last night.”
“Bobby kept the other. And, um, I told you I wouldn’t have called if I hadn’t…okay, I did my own Internet search first.”
“Didn’t find anything, did you? Rank amateur, honestly.” But she said it with love. “You should leave that kind of research to the professionals.”
He smiled back, his own love mixed with such pain that she could feel it cut into her own skin. His words were light, however. “Thanks, sweetheart, but I’ve heard your librarian-pride speech before. So what did you learn?”
She picked up her notebook, although she didn’t really need to look at the notes. She had to do something with her hands so that they didn’t tremble, reach out to him again, gather him in despite the chill. “Okay. The Book of De Leon isn’t referenced in any database I could find, nor could I find it in the histories of Ponce De Leon I checked, or in the translation of Herrera’s original account. I assumed it’s Ponce De Leon, of course, from the reference to the fountain.”
“Not that I have much use for the fountain of youth any more,” he murmured, and began to pick at the label on his bottle.
“Greg, stop that. And a fountain might be any number of things, you know, metaphorically as well as literally.” When he sent her a familiar, ironic smile, she felt the tears threatening again. Pushing them away, damn it: “Anyway, I made a couple of calls to some archivists I know. Struck pay dirt with Estrella—she works in the archives in San Juan, you’ve met her.”
“I do remember Estrella, yes.”
“And I remember just how shamelessly you flirted with her, babe, but never mind. Okay. She transferred me to one of her colleagues who’d just come back from Santo Domingo, Pedro de Gama.”
“Of course—Santa Domingo in Hispaniola. Where Ponce De Leon died.”
“And where my family came from.” She touched Mami’s gold piece again. Safety and sight…and then she felt the rush of another reality.
Something crouched out there in the spring night. Its existence manifested on the breeze, on the water, struck at skin and bones—something old yet new, expensive yet ripped in half, it could cut, there was salt and blood and so much hunger, cold inside and out—
“Sweetheart, come back.” Greg’s voice pulled her safely out of the vision-stream, as it had done so many times before. “You’re right here, Linda. Come on back.”
She opened her eyes—she hadn’t realized she’d closed them. He was leaning across the table, although not touching her. “Why should I come back if you’re not with me?” she whispered, the words only fragments of what she felt, what she’d felt for four long months. She didn’t know why she’d said them. She didn’t know why the thing in the night seemed to be scratching at her heart, claws dipping into blood.
“Don’t. Please don’t, sweetheart.” He still didn’t touch her, but his gaze felt like a caress with a razor. “What did you see just now?”
“I don’t know. Vague impressions, all kind of nasty. I’ll go through them later.” She shivered off the fear and the longing, then said dryly, “I’d like you to take a note, however. Unlike some people, I don’t lie and say ‘Oh, I don’t remember’ when very clearly, I do.”
Leaning back in his chair, he said with equal dryness, “So noted.” He put his beer bottle on the table. “Right. Fine. What did this guy tell you?”
“Right.” She glanced at her notes, collected her thoughts. “He said that a dissertation written in 1995 at the University of Miami argued for the existence of a Book of De Leon, the last private notes of the great Juan Ponce de Leon himself. The book was supposed to be full of spells the man had learned, some European, some from the islanders—the scholar
argued De Leon was seeking more than just the fountain of youth. But the dissertation failed. Not just because of weak scholarship and whatever, but because the scholar wouldn’t produce the actual Book of De Leon or say where he’d seen it.”
“Have to able to verify it, right,” he said. “Strange that the man’s adviser hadn’t figured out the problem before the defense.”
“Leo Archer—that’s the scholar—was apparently a little, um, strange. He might not have listened. Anyway, he sent one copy of the rejected dissertation to the archives in San Juan for some unknown reason, and then left academia.” She smiled. “A quick name check led me right back here. Leo Archer recently opened a magic shop in the Spanish Quarter.”
“Did he really.” Frowning, he picked up his beer bottle again. A roll of its neck in his long fingers, then another, like worrying a bone. “I wonder if he ever opens the shop at night.”
“Well, as it happens, he does, but only by appointment. Which we have.” She paused while the waiter came out with her nachos, set them in front of her, and left, while Greg’s frown deepened. “As soon as I finish these nachos.”
He said in an infuriatingly spousal tone, “No, Linda, I called you for research, nothing else. You’re not going with me, it could be dangerous.”
“Out of some fairly strong contenders, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
When he growled at her—he actually growled, an uncanny, feral sound so unlike her elegant pacifist—she had to clutch at her necklace to keep herself steady.
He shocked himself, too. His chair went back, his beer bottle went on the table, his hands anchored on his thighs. In a soft, desperate voice, as far from the growl as possible: “You see? Please, sweetheart. Please just…don’t ask me.”
She distracted herself by playing with her table knife, catching the light in blade-edge glints. The thing in the night was slinking closer again; she could feel it without the aid of magic. But Linda Ramirez, Mami’s favorite and Greg McGarrity’s wife, was made of stronger stuff. “I made the appointment. I’ve done the research. I know something about magic, and you don’t. Conclusion, I’m going.”
“I know this is a terrible idea.” Softer, more desperate.
“It hurts me when you don’t trust, Gregory.” It was her turn to be unable to smile, although she tried—four months of anguish couldn’t go away overnight, it still lived in her. “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t say it.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, as the sea breeze curved between them like their years of love, as noise and other people and traffic retreated so that they couldn’t be touched. Fragments and repetitions kept coming to her—“don’t,” “please,” torn skin, torn world. Then he sighed, the forced breath sounding unnaturally loud. “All right, yeah. But just this evening.”
Now she could breathe, too. “I figured you’d see it the right way in the end, babe.”
“You know, sweetheart, your tendency to gloat has always been one of your least attractive qualities.” He finished his beer in one long swallow, his throat moving in an easy rhythm.
She wondered what he looked like when he drank blood. Did his essence change shape as he changed, as his teeth elongated into weapons? Had his hunger changed? She wondered what his mouth would feel like now on her own throat, not in a bite but a kiss, his teeth scraping but not penetrating in the way they’d both always loved.
To stop her thoughts, she turned her attention to her many-layered nachos. The first mouthful was meltingly good—
But then he picked up her knife and poked at her food with it, and his face froze into a mask of appalled horror. “For Christ’s sake, Linda! I die, and you decide it’s okay to go back to eating meat?”
The absurdity of it, so thoroughly and wonderfully Greg, ripped a laugh out of her, then another, as the tension she didn’t know she had cracked into a million pieces. She kept laughing until she was crying again, hot salt burning on her cheeks and tongue, until he reached over and put the handkerchief he always carried into her hand.
When his fingers touched hers, she used the link to pull herself to him, to slip around the table and drop down into his lap. No matter what his changes, the thing in the night couldn’t get her here.
* * * *
“Crying so loud you scared away the bikers. That’s some accomplishment, sweetheart.”
“Oh, shut up.” Even though her eyes were still a little red from that release of grief in the restaurant, so deep and strong that he’d had to fight his own mourning as she’d wept in his arms, she sent him a smile just like always.
Neither the teasing or the smile helped much, however. He could still feel the shock of her dropping into his lap, her body imprinting on his again, her sweet curves and skin, the sweeter gallop in her veins. Christ, how he wanted her…just like always.
But he also could still feel the growl resonating in his throat from that earlier moment, still feel the weight of fangs trying to descend, and the anger like a dragon ready to spring.
When they walked beyond the Milltop Tavern, out of the rushing streams of noise and light, he shoved his hands in his pockets for safety. The Spanish Quarter of St. Augustine were busiest during the day, when the little shops, galleries, and historical sites were open and the old streets were full of pedestrians; at night fewer people ventured past its periphery, its restaurants and bars bathed in bright, artificial glare. He felt more secure in the glare.
Linda touched his arm. “Hey, you there?”
Hands deeper in pockets, hunger pushed down. “Yes.”
“Just checking. I don’t want you to get lost.” This time her smile was more complicated—she wasn’t saying everything she felt—but she made the effort at lightness nevertheless. “I can barely hear you.”
“Right. The lack of breathing, the increased stealth…the side effects of my brand new predator instincts.” And that was a fucking bad joke.
Nevertheless she laughed, bumped him with her shoulder. “No, estupido, it’s the same old same old. You and your damn sneakers and your cat-like tread.”
“There’s nothing wrong with these shoes. Still a lot of spring in them, and they’re broken-in just right.” He bumped her in return. “You’ve always had a grudge against my Chucks.”
“No, babe, I’m used to them by now. They’re a part of you.” She pulled his hand out of his pocket, linked their fingers. He forced himself not to let go, not to make an issue of it now. He’d promised her tonight.
Laughter gone, they walked further into the shadows.
And he made himself focus on the task ahead. “So, I’m wondering—if Leo Archer is the world’s expert on a book that may or may not exist, how do we approach him? Can’t imagine it’s a good idea to just stroll into his store and say, ‘Hi there! Got a Book of De Leon? We hear it’s helpful with vampire problems.’”
“Obviously we don’t do it like that, Gregory.” She’d pulled out her Madame Librarian voice. “We use the truth, so far as it goes; I’ve already told him I’m interested in magic. Now we add that I’ve heard about his dissertation and my family was originally from the Dominican—Wait. Hang on.” He saw her other hand go to the gold coin resting just above her breasts, saw her bite at her lips in a nervous habit that made his mouth water. This wasn’t a good time to think about that.
Lifting her head to the dark, she closed her eyes in a way he knew; she was calling on her sight, the Ramirez legacy he’d spent seventeen years coming to terms with. It wasn’t reliable, exactly—just “impressions,” as she’d said, flashes of precognition or extended vision—but he’d learned to trust its foundation, and to help her return when she needed to.
His own joke about instincts coming back to him, however, he lifted his own head and breathed in deeply. The first month after turning, before he had learned to block it his new sense of smell had almost crushed him with the weight, more, the layers of what existed around him: earth, sea, plants, animals, people, sky, death and life. H
is senses pushed at him now, the natural and unnatural worlds like two rivers flowing together. Linda was even more overwhelming this way, God, he was so hungry although not for blood—but he pushed himself beyond that, reached out, caught the right scent. It was iron and bitter-dark, like smelling himself on the sea breeze, separate but familiar. And it was close.
“Linda, what do you see?”
“There’s something nasty out there,” Linda whispered. “I can’t see what it is, but I know. I got a glimpse of it before.”
Iron and bitter-dark—and it had its own sound, too, a repeated lap of the tongue against the air like the sea lapping against stone. The thing was hungry, too, but in a different way.
With an effort he stopped the sounds that wanted to escape, fought back his rage. He’d never felt so nearly out of control before. When he trusted himself to re-channel it: “How far are we from Archer’s magic shop?”
“A few blocks. It’s not on one of the main streets.” Her finger touched his lips. “Before you say anything, you don’t know the way and I do, so don’t even suggest your going by yourself.”
“We’ll argue later. Which way is it?”
“I’m not going to tell—”
He let the growl loose, let it vibrate, echo off the ancient buildings. Although her eyes widened—was that fear?—she set her mouth stubbornly on the answer. He forced himself to say more calmly, “I need to figure out where whatever’s out there is going. Which way is the magic shop?”
She pointed, with obvious reluctance, away from the bay. Good answer.
“Wait here. Stay in the light for me.” Without giving her a chance to object—as a rule his Linda would loudly object to being left out—he took off running down St. George Street. He could smell the bitter-dark thing by the old City Gates, the ones that no longer led to anywhere.
As he got closer, he saw her, poised on the south side of the gates, hands spread on the stone of the nearer one. It was a woman-thing in black with a glimmer of gold around her neck—and she brought back that Publix parking lot and a Save the Manatees sticker, a falsely sweet “Hi, can you help me?” and then the slam of metal against his body and the rip of fangs into his neck.
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