“This mess and her mood is her fault,” I said tightly. “ She chose to interpret her ex having an innocent dinner with a friend as some kind of marital betrayal.”
“True,” Darkrose admitted, glancing at Calaphase. “But I do not think she would appreciate seeing you tonight. Either of you.”
“What?” Calaphase said. “I know she was angry, but this is ridiculous. ”
“I agree,” I said. “ I started these meetings. And it’s a public restaurant.”
“But she still blames you, and is too hot under the collar to think clearly.” She stepped aside. “ I will not bar your path. But I came to warn you- it is not safe to go inside. ”
“Not safe? What the fuck? What is she, two? ” I said. “I mean, God damnit -”
“Not safe-really?” Calaphase said. “You heard us coming. Can she hear us?”
“If she was paying attention,” Darkrose said, smiling. “She’s very, very powerful, but inexperienced. If you entered she would know, but you are safe, for the moment.”
“Well, screw her,” I said, a shade short of livid. “Come on, let’s go to the Vortex.”
“However,” Darkrose said carefully, “I’d like to take Cinnamon inside.”
“What?” I asked, putting my hands protectively on her shoulders. “Why?”
“To shame my Lady Saffron into admitting that the protection on Cinnamon still stands,” Darkrose said. “Perhaps I can get her to re-extend it to you… ”
“Now I’m a little too hot to go under the collar again,” I said, still feeling the flush in my face. “You know, I didn’t think I cared, but… she had that made for me, and she threw it away. Kind of like she did with our relationship when she became a damn vampire.”
Calaphase twitched and Darkrose put her gloved hand to her mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, now feeling embarrassment. “That just popped out.”
“You sure you don’t has Tourette’s?” Cinnamon asked, looking up at me.
“No, your mother is right,” Darkrose said. “It is a… hard thing when your lover becomes a vampire, when the one you love becomes a thing that feeds on human life. It is very hard, for you know in your heart the first life they want to feed on is your own.”
My lips parted. This wasn’t a vampire talking anymore; this was a human. And it was not abstract; this was very real, and very personal. It had happened to her.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. She looked sad and very old now. “I didn’t know.”
“It was a century ago,” Darkrose said. “Another life. Another time.” She straightened, smiled. “I do not blame you. Selfishly, I am glad, because I want her.”
She said that simply, openly, staring me straight in the eye. But I couldn’t blame her for staking her claim clearly. Some tiny part of me would always be connected to Savannah and remember what we’d been like together, when I didn’t want to wring her neck. “I’m glad you have her, my Lady Darkrose.”
She inclined her head gratefully. “Thank you, my Lady Frost.” She extended her hand to Cinnamon. “I promise I will treat your daughter well. As if she were my own.”
“You didn’t turn your daughter into a vampire, did you?”
Darkrose looked up in shock. “No!” she said. “That would be unthinkable-”
“I was messing with you. Sorry,” I said, squeezing Cinnamon’s shoulders. “So, Cin, feel like hanging with the gang while your Mom and her fang go neck in a back alley?”
“Don’t come back with no bite marks,” Cinnamon said, “just k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
“When did you become the mom?” I said, hands on my hips.
“When you started dating fangs,” she said, head snapping in her sneezy tic.
“All right,” I said, glancing at Calaphase, who seemed amused by the ‘fang’ comment. “Try not to get us into more trouble with her highness.”
So Calaphase and I were left there, on the corner of North Highland and Linwood, barred from our favorite restaurant. We stared at each other uncomfortably. “Sorry about the damn vampire comment,” I said. “And when she called you a fang-”
“You mean Cinnamon? Oh, she mouths off like that,” Calaphase said lightly-but my heart fell at the implication. “I’d love to say I don’t take things like that personally, but I’d also love to say that we vampires don’t deserve it, and that isn’t true. There’re reasons humans fear us, and werekin hate us-oh, screw it, let’s get some drinks. What about Vino’s?”
“Believe it or not, I was just there,” I said, “but Virginia Highland is one of the best walking neighborhoods in the city.”
“And it is a nice night,” Calaphase said, eyes resting on me calmly, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Stroll up to San Francisco Coffee? It’s right near to Beaver’s Books.”
“Does everyone but me love bookstores?” I said, sighing as my phone blooped at me. I pulled it out, saw a text message from a number I didn’t know, and set the phone to vibrate. “I think we’ve been to every one in the city looking for used audiobooks for Cinnamon.”
“So what will one more hurt?” Calaphase said. He poked his elbow out at me. “Come on, we can windowshop restaurants for our next date.”
I took his arm. “I thought this was our next date.”
“Technically our first, if the last one was an innocent dinner,” Calaphase said.
“Ouch,” I said. “I’m even more sorry about that than the vamp comment.”
“Then I’ll call this our second,” Calaphase said, “and hope there is another.”
“Hope springs eternal,” I said. “You know, you’re a very unusual vampire.”
“It’s like Saffron said the other night-I once thought becoming a vampire would be liberating,” Calaphase said. “Dark lords of the night, free of all restraint, on an endless orgy of sex, blood and violence. But vampirism turned out to be more addiction than superpower, and vampire culture is all prancing poseurs, petty politics and turf wars. So I never changed.”
“You sure about that?” I said, feeling his arm. He was lean, but his movements still had that immense strength of a vampire. If I let my hand flow with the sway of his elbow, he felt gentle; but when I got out of sync it felt like tugging on a building, or trying to stop a car. “Remember when we first met? You called me morsel.”
“I can put that mask on if you like,” he said, smiling, but not looking at me, “but I’m not on duty, impressing my employer by terrorizing trespassers. I’d rather just be myself.”
“I’d rather that too,” I said, and I wasn’t sure whether I was talking about him or me.
We strolled into San Francisco Coffee and in minutes were sitting down across from each other at a tiny striped wooden table-a vampire and a skindancer, wedged in with granola girls from the Little Five Points alternative district and trendy yuppies from the Virginia Highland walking district, without a one of them being the wiser. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; with my coat, deathhawk and tattoos I stand out more than a vampire. But you can’t tell a skindancer from their canvases unless you look closely.
I stared down at the beautiful leaf pattern the barista had woven into the surface of my mocha, then looked up at Calaphase, sipping a frosted slushy with a grimace. “Just like old times,” I said, raising my mug and taking a sip.
“Just like old times,” he responded, rubbing his forehead with two fingers. “Ow. Brain freeze.”
I don’t remember what we talked about; it didn’t matter later anyway. All I know is that halfway through our drinks, Calaphase got a buzz on his phone, frowned, and then stood to take it. I sipped my coffee, sighing, looking at a cute girl with a woven knit cap who was scoping my tattoos; maybe I had another customer.
Then my phone buzzed, and I looked up to see Calaphase staring at me. With a sudden flash of fear, I whipped out my phone and saw another text message, same number: ‹‹check your email, “skindancer”››
And then a picture of a graffiti tag began slowly loading on my phone’s screen.
“We gotta go,” Calaphase said, closing his phone with a click and picking up his coffee without sitting down. “Saffron has ordered us back to Manuel’s Tavern.”
“Oh, shit,” I said, reluctantly closing my phone, swallowing the dregs of my cup, and standing. “Don’t tell me she’s taken away Cinnamon’s protection-”
“Nothing of the sort,” he said, swigging the rest of his with a grimace and motioning for us to go. “Emergency war council. We’ve got serious problems. Demophage, our new Lithuanian vampire, you met him the other night-”
“Curly,” I said, following Calaphase outside. “He got the sand. I liked him.”
