Excerpt:“No one will ever love me again. I shall die alone with naught to mourn my passing.”
Jessie
MacCaverty stopped wiping down the bar top to raise an eyebrow at the chestnut
curls belonging to the adorable and devastatingly handsome yet extremely
annoying, melodramatic vampire who flounced through the door in a swirl of
early autumn air and leaves before dramatically collapsing on a stool in front
of her. Her bartender and apprentice Caroline rolled her blue eyes before going
back to pouring beers for the amused regulars at the other end of the bar.
“Get
your head off the bar. I just wiped that spot,” Jessie tucked a long,
silver-gray curl behind her ear, completely unsympathetic to her friend's
plight, whatever it was this time.
Nicodemus
shot up on the stool, outrage and wounded betrayal reflected in his honey gold
almond shaped eyes. The younger of two vampiric siblings, he was as beautiful
in death as he had been in life as a long dead king’s military advisor and
member of a noble family.
“You!
You who are supposed to be the one I hold most dear, the most treasured of my
bosom companions, have you no mercy on my poor soul? My wounded heart?”
“Not
when you start talking like the bastard child of a Hallmark card and Harlequin
romance, I don't.” Jessie was extremely unimpressed-- and unsympathetic.
“So
be it,” he huffed, slumping back down to prop his elbows on the oak bar top
that had been lovingly polished over the decades until it gleamed forever.
“Take away my poet's soul. See if I care.”
Jessie
beamed. “See, isn't that better? Now, do you want a drink while you calmly and
sensibly tell me what's going on without all the histrionics?”
He
scowled before relenting. “Fine. But none of those weird, fruity, sweet things
the kids are drinking everywhere! Those colors should never have been put into
anything consumable,” he shuddered in disgust.
“Caroline,
make him a Manhattan, will you?” Jessie called over her shoulder.
“Sure
thing, boss,” Caroline replied cheerfully, tossing her long, blonde, curly
ponytail over her shoulder as she deftly flipped a martini glass over and
grabbed the bottle of rye.
Nicky
studied Jessie as she settled down next to him. She was tiny. Long gray curls
framed a slightly oval shaped face, high cheekbones, and huge, piercing blue
eyes. She lived for broken in jeans and obscure band or bar t-shirts that were
so soft and well worn, they were one stitch away from falling apart. Like all
witches, she stopped aging in her mid forties and was eternally in that stage
of beauty when the laugh lines enhanced the late summer glow of youth.
“Now.
What happened this time?” she asked, settling in for the long haul.
He
heaved a melancholy sigh that sounded like it came from his toes. She resisted
the urge to follow Caroline's eye-rolling example.
“I
thought I met the one. He was so perfect. The gargoyle of my dreams!” Jessie
choked on her tea.
“I'm
sorry, the what of your dreams?”
He
looked affronted. “Gargoyle! I told you about him last week!” ”
Jessie
barely managed to hide a guilty look. To be fair, when he started on the love
interest du jour, it could get a little... repetitive. It wasn't her fault if
it was easier to tune him out and concentrate on inventory. Bits and pieces of
his hours-long recitations of adoration started to come back to her.
“Oh,
right! That gargoyle!”
Jared,
Jessie's other apprentice and barback, a tall, young man with impeccable style
and skin the color of dark chocolate and who had lined up a promising career in
role playing game production, stopped with the ice bucket in midair to stare at
Nicky.
“Dude!
How does that even work?” He demanded, fascinated.
“Well,
if you must know,” Nicky drew himself up haughtily, “Gargoyles are only stone
by day when they revert to their... less attractive but more widely known
visages.”
“So,
what, at night they're hot?” Sometimes talking to Jared was like talking to the
blunt side of a hammer and about as subtle.
“If
you must put it that way, yes, they can be. Are. Usually are.” Nicky would have
blushed if blood pumped through his veins. Jessie realized that he hadn't fed
recently. He must really be enamored with this guy.
“Did
he ghost you?” Caroline asked with a sympathetic glance. “No offense, Charlie!”
“None
taken.” Charlie was the bar's resident ghost. When Mary Jo Sutton, who was
still the town’s most beautiful and seductive succubus at the age of fifty, had
propositioned him in the bathroom, he had neglected to mention that he had a
heart condition. He swore the resulting heart attack was worth it. She still
felt guilty about the whole thing.
“Ghost
me? Ghost me??” Nicky was stunned, floored, flabbergasted that anyone could
even consider such a thing. Jessie gave in to the urge to roll her eyes. Trying
to hold back was exhausting.
“Focus!”
she slapped her hand on the bar harder than she planned and instantly regretted
it. “Where were you supposed to meet?”
“Well,
here, tonight actually. I wanted him to meet you.”
Jessie
blinked at him.
“So
you're telling me that you just waltzed in here and immediately went into
hysterics without even bothering to see if he was here first? I mean, we're not
exactly balls to the walls over here, but it's not like we're dead either! No
offense, Charlie.”
“None
taken,” Charlie replied with a burp. One of Jessie's neatest (in his opinion)
little pieces of spellwork involved creating a mug that acted as a portal that
gave whatever it contained the ability to exist on the spiritual plane. At the
moment, that happened to be beer. No one was entirely sure if the belching was
necessary, but not even Jared was willing to ruin Charlie's contentment by
asking and possibly ruining the experience.
Nicky
looked faintly abashed. “I don't see him though! That's understandable, right?
I mean, I even came late on purpose!”
Jessie
dropped her head in her hand and shook it with the long suffering patience of
one who realized a long time ago that their friend genuinely did not have a
clue how personal relationships should go.
Nicky
squirmed on his stool.
“Well...
it seemed like a good idea at the time. But he didn't stick around, so it
doesn't matter! And besides, I was only about fifteen minutes late!”
Jared
shook his head as he walked toward the back to put away the ice bucket.
“Man,
even I know better than that, and I can't keep a girl around to save my life.
No offense, Charlie.”
“None
taken,” Charlie replied with equanimity. He had never realized how many turns
of phrase involved life or death until he himself switched from one side to the
other.
“Hey,
Jared, check the bathroom for trash and toilet paper on your way back, please,”
Jessie called before turning back to the matter at hand.
“Admittedly,
I don't really remember seeing a stranger hanging around tonight. What does he
look like? And what’s his name? Also, have you tried calling him or do you have
a picture, she asks, knowing that of course you didn't, you just immediately
broke down into hysterics and started talking like you came off the cover of
the best selling romance novel of the decade?”
Now
Nicky rolled his eyes. Jessie felt herself get twitchy as she resisted the urge
to pop him on the arm.
“I
do not talk like that,” he protested.
“Well,
no, not when you remember what year it is,” Jessie replied. Nicky pulled out
his phone.
“His
name is Warsaw, and unfortunately, I can't take a picture. Gargoyles turn into
stone in front of a camera,” he showed her a picture of him kissing a stone...
lion? dog? on the cheek while gazing coquettishly at what was obviously a phone
camera perched at the end of a selfie stick.
“You
carry a selfie stick? Of course you do. Why do I even ask?” She snorted in
amusement.
Caroline
snickered, grabbing the phone,“You're such an adorable couple! Do you think
your kids would have your eyes or his density?”
“Ha
ha!” Nicky glared as he snatched the phone out of her grasp. “You're so funny.”
He tried-- and failed-- to regain some control of the conversation. By this
point, Caroline was giggling uncontrollably, and Charlie laughed himself
through his stool.
“Okay,
okay, let's calm down,” Jessie grinned. “Try to call him. See what happens.”
“Fine,
if it will get you all to stop cackling like a pack of hyenas,” Nicky huffed as
he hit a button and held the phone to his ear.
“Wait,
did you hear that?” Caroline switched from hilarity to alert in seconds. Jessie
was way ahead of her.
She
met Nicky's eyes with a growing sense of dread. Out of nowhere, a phone had
begun to ring, a muffled sound that could only come from behind a closed door.
At
the same time, they heard Jared's scream and the thud as he fell over
backwards, scrambling away from the bathroom. Inside was a lifeless body that
once belonged to a shy, love struck creature who had, for one brief, shining
moment, thought he could have everything his heart, which would never be stone,
had ever longed for and found in the deep, deep love of a whimsical, sometimes
overly dramatic, slightly narcissistic vampire.
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