by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
He was clearly pleased with the mix. “People are gonna be fucked up tonight. In the groove. Cool.”
“You’re the king of cool, so that makes sense.” She smiled at him, bemused. All of her employees were loyal. She interviewed extensively, paid them well—she had all the money she needed in this life…or the next. But some of them were intimidated by her. Lily said it was because she was so mysterious, and somewhat taciturn with them. That, and the fact that she dressed like a 1940s movie star, which, Lily said, “can be a tad off-putting to someone with four nose-piercings.” But Cool was never intimidated, as far as she could tell. He came into her office whenever he could catch her, always with a “new sound” that he insisted she listen to.
“If I’m the king of cool, you’re the queen, Tess.”
“Stop flattering me. Your girlfriend will think you’re trying to get me in the sack.”
“Come on, Tess. We’re old friends.”
She smiled at him. “Of course we are. And one of these days, I’m going to retire and leave the club to you and Jorge.”
“You always say that…but you’re shittin’ me, and I know it. You can’t fool a guy from the Bronx.”
“You wait and see.”
In truth, the papers were already drawn up. If she died, or if she simply gave her lawyer the word, or if she “disappeared” for more than three months, the club would transfer ownership to the two employees she trusted the most—and that the club meant the most to—and who would also never betray the loyalty of the people who worked there.
“Okay, Tess. In the meantime, I better go do some sound checks and get ready to rock the house.”
Cool turned, his dreadlocks swaying slightly across his back as he walked away. She admired his passion.
About ten minutes later as she was going over the liquor orders, she heard a knock on her office door.
“Come in.”
Jorge entered. He was a hulking figure with piercing black eyes and a tattoo on his enormous right biceps that read “Bella”—his daughter’s name. He was married to a woman less than half his size, a quiet but strong-willed schoolteacher named Delorean who had tutored in the NewYork State prison system as a volunteer and fell in love with the convicted felon. Believing his protestations of innocence, she contacted an old college professor who had written a textbook on DNA testing. After much persuasion, letter-writing and promises of Delorean’s undying gratitude, she had convinced her old professor to have Jorge’s DNA tested against a single strand of hair from inside the panties of the rape victim. It wasn’t a match. In fact, when the case was reopened, nothing about any of the DNA evidence matched Jorge. Soon, the actual rapist was behind bars, and Jorge was exonerated. He and Delorean married four months later, and after a long job search with many doors slammed in his face, he began working for Tessa.
“Tess, I need off next Wednesday.”
“Okay.” She smiled and then looked back at the Excel graph she had up on her computer screen.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you need off, you have a reason.”
“I do.” He stared at her, willing her to ask him, eyes sparkling.
Tess put down her pen. “Okay, Jorge. I’ll bite. Why do you need off?”
“We got the baby.”
“Oh blessed Buddha!” Tessa leaped up from her desk and crossed the room to hug him. Jorge and Delorean had been trying to adopt a baby for two years, and recently they had been very close to getting an infant boy born to an unwed teen mother. The baby was blind, but otherwise healthy and in need of a special home. Delorean and Jorge had no problems getting pregnant—Bella was their biological baby—but Delorean had been adopted as a child, and they believed too many special needs children needed a family.
“I know.” His eyes were shiny. “We’re going to name him Micah. It’s a biblical name.”
“You two are going to give him a wonderful home. I bet Bella can’t wait to be a big sister.”
“I know. She’s over the moon. But if you hadn’t found us that lawyer, we’d still be mired in red tape. You have to let me pay you what he charged you.”
“No. And there’s a ten-percent raise as of next Friday. You have another mouth to feed.”
“What are you, Tess? An angel?”
Tessa mused at the irony. “No. I’m no angel. But Delorean is. And so are you. Do me a favor and send in Colleen?”
“Okay.” He couldn’t speak any more and rubbed at his eyes. “I have a son now. Bella has a brother. Thanks, Tessa.”
“It’s nothing. Really. Bless you all.”
He left and shut the door, and she mused at how such a big, hardened man had been softened by the love of a good woman.
Colleen came a few minutes later and poked her head in. She was one of Tessa’s best bartenders. She also auditioned constantly for Broadway parts. She was talented, too, and Tessa expected to lose the five-foot-eleven-inch strawberry-blonde to a role any day now.
“You asked for me?” Colleen looked worried.
“Yes. I’d like you to plan a baby shower for Jorge and Delorean.”
“You heard the good news?”
“Yes. I’m ecstatic.” Tessa walked over to a Paul Klee painting on the wall and removed it from its picture hook, revealing a wall safe. She spun the dial back and forth a few times, opened it and withdrew ten crisp hundred-dollar bills. “This will cover decorations, a cake, and call Anya over at Zenith to cater pastries. We can do appetizers from the kitchen. And then take whatever’s leftover and get…what do they need?”
“Everything. Little Bella’s four now. They still have their old crib, but no boy clothes, and their old stroller is just a wreck.”
“Get a stroller from me. If you need more money, let me know.”
“When do you want to hold the shower?”
“Thursday, before we open.”
“Want to make it a surprise?”
“No. We’ll never pull it off. He’s too smart. Just tell him we’re doing it, and if he doesn’t show up at seven o’clock, he’s fired.”
Colleen looked like she would bubble over with happiness. She grinned and stared at Tessa, shaking her head.
“What?” Tessa asked.
“Nothing. It’s just whatever anybody says…you’re a softie.”
“Well…don’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Colleen shut the door, and Tessa thought about the trials and challenges her employees faced. They didn’t appreciate the humanity of the day-to-day struggle of life. She would have given anything to be, once again, a twenty-something woman with human frailties and human needs. To wonder about what the future held…
Tessa continued with her paperwork, getting lost in numbers and her financials. The club was doing remarkably well. When she left it to Cool and Jorge, they would become rich men.
Around eleven o’clock, she decided to see how Cool was getting the house rocking. Wearing a black Edith Head pantsuit she walked out into the club, where the feeling was electric. The dance floor was packed and the energy was palpable.
She watched the dancers grind into each other. Looking around her she saw all the younger women had stomach-baring tops and naval piercings. Everyone seemed lost in Cool’s music. Couples kissed, and the bar was unbelievably crowded. Cocktail waitresses, their round trays aloft, maneuvered expertly through the crowds.
She had virtually no turnover. For one thing, she made allowances for their “real” lives. If they needed a day off to attend to personal business, they didn’t have to lie and call in sick. For another, on a good night the cocktail waitresses would clear three hundred fifty a shift, the bartenders double that.
As she made her way back to the VIP lounge, she thought she glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye. Turning to the dance floor, she looked intently, uneasy with how her very being registered danger. But she saw nothing.
She took two more steps. Again, she felt it. She whipped around, focusing her senses on both what was seen—and what was unseen. She had learned over the years that she could detect things the rest of the world couldn’t, like a metal detector could find lost rings and pieces of jewelry and beer cans beneath the surface of sand on the beach.
She stood near the dance floor, allowing her instincts, animallike and eerily accurate, to take over.
And then she saw him.
There, dancing on the perimeter, was a vampire she had known decades before, in 1946 to be exact. She was sure it was him. Their eyes locked, and she was even more convinced. It was Jules. Minus the haircut of that era, of course, and now dressed like a typical New York club-goer with a black T-shirt over perfect, sinewy chest and arms, and black dress pants. His black hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and he wore a single diamond earring in his left ear. He was dancing with a girl who looked drunk out of her mind. Tessa was anxious. He could take that girl and feed on her in a bathroom stall and she’d never even know what bit her.
He smiled the false, menacing smile she always knew him to have. His crooked mouth seemed dangerous, even when he wasn’t smiling or contorting it into an evil leer. Tessa moved toward him, trying to squeeze past dancers gyrating on the floor to Cool’s remixes. As she neared Jules, he pushed his dance partner and stepped back off the dance floor, hurriedly making his way to where the unisex bathrooms were. Tessa followed him, trying to stay focused, ordering herself to calm down and keep her wits about her.
Jules was the worst kind of vampire. He was a follower of Marco and his hedonistic band of disciples. They believed virginal blood brought them greater power. She shuddered to think of how many lost young runaways had succumbed to them. She had to get to Jules.
The hallway by the bathroom led to a locked storage room, an office and an extensive CD and record room, sealed with an alarm, that Cool used to catalog his exhaustive collection. Beyond that was an exit that led to both a back door in case of fire, and a staircase. The staircase ascended all the way to the roof.
Tessa was just at the entrance to the hallway when she saw Jules reach the door at the end, his face illuminated by the red neon Exit sign. He turned and licked his lips, taunting her, then pushed on the door and disappeared.
She raced down the hall. Just before she reached the door, Jorge called to her. “Tess!”
She turned. “Don’t follow me, Jorge.”
“If you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’m coming after you.” He fidgeted with his watch and set its alarm. She sighed and pushed through the exit door. She knew Jorge had gotten used to his employer’s mysterious ways. He respected her wishes, but would come find her when that alarm went off, damn him. She had twenty minutes.
In the stairwell, Tessa climbed cautiously. At the third-floor landing, again she felt Jules’s presence. Looking up, she saw he was attached to the ceiling like a spider clinging to a wall.
“Tessa,” he hissed, a slight lisp to his S sound. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of your company.”
“Hasn’t it, though? I thought it was you. I thought I smelled shit, Jules.”
“Always the bitch, ever the fucking bitch. Tonight, you will be a dead bitch.”
“Still hoping Marco will relent and let you suck his cock? How many decades are you willing to wait for him, Jules?”
“Fuck you!” He flew down from the ceiling and attacked her with a powerful kick to her jaw.
Tessa reeled for a minute, but she knew she needed to remain aware, alert and ready to fight.
Before she could even kick him back or fly at him with a flurry of punches, he was on the move again, racing up the stairs. She chased after him, hearing him breathing as he kept three or four steps ahead of her, out of reach. Then she heard the door leading to the roof slam. Tessa pushed through the door, too, cautious that it might be a trap, but feeling she had no choice.
Jules stood, poised on the ledge at the far end of the rooftop, his figure outlined against the backdrop of the lights of Manhattan.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, looking around and seeing no one else on the roof—just the two of them.
He flung his hand back with a flourish. “What am I doing where? On the roof? I like a little night air. It’s good for my constitution.”
“No. I mean my club. New York. Last I heard you were in Germany.”
“So dull once the Communists got their hands on half of it. Hitler…now that was a man with vision. I could really follow a man like that.”
Tessa shook her head. “Is Marco here?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in years. No, I’m here to track down an old friend.”
“This old friend wants you gone.” Tessa moved toward him, adopting a stance she had learned while studying with her martial arts master in China.
“You look a little…aggressive. You always wanted a fight. Couldn’t just go along, could you? Couldn’t be happy with immortality. We defy the gods, Tessa. We are equal with them. But you had to adopt your code, from your little slant-eyed friends.”
“Still spewing hatred and racism, are we? My ‘code’ is as ancient as Buddha.”
“Too bad it means nothing against my strength.”
Jules leaped from the ledge and flew at her, trying to strike her with his hands, but she was quicker, blocking him and sending him off balance.
“Oh…I see your fighting skills are still sharp. This is going to be a pleasure,” he hissed, recovering.
Tessa knew she could never take one of Marco’s spawn lightly. They had great strength, derived not only from Marco’s strength, but from how much they fed and from the rituals of evil they performed.
She struck quickly, using her fists, landing a strong punch on Jules’s sternum. He gasped, and then his face turned dark. She had stirred his wrath even more.
The two of them faced off, delivering flurries of furious kicks and blows, then striking defensive postures. Finally, Tessa was able to corner him near the building’s air-conditioning shaft.
“Tell me who sent you and why you’re here, and I’ll let you go.”
“You have it all wrong. Before I kill you, I’ll fuck you. Tied to the roof, staring at the moon and waiting for the sun to rise. Burnt to a crisp like a side of bacon come morning.”
Tessa struck with a powerful sidekick. It landed with brutal force on his ribs, and she heard the bones snap like twigs. But Jules, despite a momentary winded reaction, drew a dagger from a sheath hidden beneath his shirt and waved it in her direction.
While she focused on avoiding his blade, Jules landed a kick on her collarbone. Pain coursed through her, but she responded with a roundhouse kick near his kidneys. He struck back, kicking at her again and again, his knife still drawn, leering at her.
They fought, Tessa feeling muscles aching and bruises forming. She would hurt tomorrow—provided Jules didn’t win and leave her to be burned by sunrise—one of the four ways to kill a vampire.
She flew backward, needing to catch her breath, but Jules was soon near her. She could smell his very sweat.
A drizzle had started, and as Tessa drew back to strike at him again, she lost her footing on the slick tar of the roof. She found herself flat on her back, and rolled quickly twice, avoiding the downward trajectory of Jules’s dagger. He slashed at her arm, catching it and making a sharp slice from elbow to near her wrist.
Groaning with pain, she clutched at her arm. She struggled to her feet, ready to fight Jules to the death now. But he suddenly rose, levitating before her.
“Consider this a warning.”
“A warning about what?”
“It will soon be apparent. Oh, you’ll die, finally, and no one will weep for your passing. But you’re going to suffer first.”
“Speak for yourself.” Tessa sailed through the air with a flying sidekick. But by the time she reached where he had been floating, he had transformed and was away, a dark-winged
raven four feet across, darting through the night sky and the rain.
Breath ragged, Tessa look down at her arm, dripping blood on the rooftop. She winced with pain. The rain was icy cold, and she was completely drenched.
Suddenly, the door to the rooftop opened, and a beam of light from the stairwell illuminated the figure of Jorge.
“Tessa?” he called out.
“Over here.” She wrapped her uninjured hand across the slice on her arm. It was healing already, but still it hurt, and her teeth chattered from pain and the chill.
Jorge dashed over to her, saw the dripping blood and looked at her with eyes radiating concern.
“What happened, Boss Lady?”
“You know better than to ask. An old enemy from a lifetime ago, I’m afraid. Hard to explain.”
“Where is the bastard?”
“He leaped to the next rooftop.”
Jorge looked at the roof of the next building. He squinted in the rain, seeming to judge the distance. Tessa sensed he didn’t believe her, but he knew better than to ask. She never asked him about his past, his time in juvenile hall, the tragedies that led him to associate with the people that got him thrown in prison. He afforded her the same courtesy.
He took off his outer shirt, leaving himself in his white undershirt. Wrapping her arm in the shirt, he escorted her, limping and tired, down to her loft apartment.
“I know you don’t want me to call the police.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“What about calling Detective Flynn? He seems to like you, even if he snoops around a bit.”
“No, that’s okay.”
At the door to her apartment, she withdrew her keys and unlocked three separate locks to gain entry, then shut off the alarm. Tessa stood on tiptoe to kiss Jorge’s cheek.
“I know you like to fuss over me like a mother hen, but I’ll be fine.”
He gave her a dubious look. “Whatever you say.”
Tessa entered the apartment and locked the door behind her. Looking down at her arm, she saw the edges of the knife wound healing. She walked into her bathroom and applied a bandage. The blood flow had, at this point, stopped, though the cut still throbbed.