I kicked and kicked and kicked the bag as hard as I could, and screamed.
The first few kicks had started out all right-the Taido ma-washy-getty kick was close enough to an old Tae Kwon Do roundhouse that I’d picked it up pretty quickly. But Taido had all these stupid rules about how to throw kicks that I didn’t really get yet, and it was hard to remember to come back to the same position. I tried, really, but the more I kicked, the madder I got, and by the final three I’d lost all form and was just kicking, kicking, kicking.
“Jeez, Dakota,” Darren Briggs said, dropping what he was doing. He was the black belt in charge of Emory University’s Taido club. Today he’d traded out his normal blue instructor’s jacket for a uniform so old and worn the belt and clothes were both shades of grey, rather than the stiff white karate gi’s worn by the rest of the class. But the man in the uniform wasn’t old. He was young, clean-cut, with a spray of spiky hair he was constantly dying different colors; this week, it was purple and platinum white. “Are you drinking?”
“I have a water bottle,” I said, waving him off. “I’m hydrating.”
“No, I meant, have you been drinking?” he asked. “Like, alcohol. Your face… ”
I straightened and looked in the mirror. My face was flushed red, almost mottled, and I knew it was from more than from just working out. “No,” I said, disgusted, whacking the bag one more time and cursing as it caused a throbbing pain in my knee. “They took Cinnamon.”
“What?” he said. “Your daughter? Hey, wasn’t she supposed to come tonight?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to fall back to the long low stance Darren called choo-dan -but it just made my knee throb and I cursed. “Yes, damnit, damnit, damnit! YAAAA!”
And I kicked the bag again, this time so hard it popped off the chain and fell to the floor. No big feat-it was attached with a big carabineer up top and was always popping off. But as it fell, pain exploded, and I knelt on my other knee, cradling the wounded one. “Damnit.”
“Dakota,” Darren said, hunching down beside me. “You all right?”
“No,” I said. “And I know what you mean. No, my knee hurts.”
“Same one? Damnit, Dakota,” Darren said. “All right, take a break. You weren’t supposed to start back until you healed, but I cut you a break because you were doing so well. Clearly you’ve been overdoing it. So chill out tonight, and go see a doctor tomorrow.”
I hissed, and Darren pressed. “I mean it. Nobody’s been seriously injured in the whole history of the club and I don’t want to start with-”
“All right, all right,” I said, struggling back to my feet. “Ow.”
“Just… try to go easy,” Darren said. “Keep icing it after every practice. And on your own time-don’t laugh-do sem-ay-no-hokay, the new exercise I showed you tonight. You did really good for your first time. It’s pretty advanced stuff.”
“It felt natural,” I said, “but, man, it wore me out.”
“ Sem-ay can give you a real workout, but it’s low impact,” he said. “Probably OK for your knee, but if it bugs you, focus on the breathing. Focus on the breathing if nothing else.”
“Does that really help?” I said.
“Sure does,” Darren said expansively. “Breathing isn’t just the source of your power-it’s the bridge between your conscious and your subconscious.”
I looked at him skeptically, but just then, Rary, the number two in the class and Darren’s off-again, on-again girlfriend, appeared with an icepack.
“No, seriously,” she said, putting the ice on my knee. “The diaphragm is the only muscle under joint control of the deliberative and autonomic nervous system. Controlling your breathing lets your conscious self signal your subconscious self in its own language.”
Both Darren and I were staring at her. “What?” she said. “I am in med school.”
“Soooo… ” Darren said. “You going to join us at Manuel’s?”
“No,” I said. “I have to bail. I gotta get the last of my junk out of my apartment tonight.”
“You need help?” Rary said.
I shook my head. “I’m almost done,” I said. “And, look, Olsen is being a real pisser about Cinnamon. She almost called the cops on me, not just that night but when I went back for the first load. I really don’t want to involve you guys. I’d hate for her to call the cops on you.”
What I didn’t say is that I was scared my crazy life would bite these people. Maybe it was uncharitable, but I thought of them as mundanes: they couldn’t roll minds, lift cars or block bullets, and if their guts got ripped out they wouldn’t come crawling back to them.
So that’s how it was that I found myself alone in the apartment at ten-thirty that night, with about fifty thousand times more crap to box up than I remembered. I desperately hoped Mrs. Olsen wouldn’t hold me to the midnight deadline, but I started tossing things into boxes at random in the hope that I’d somehow get it all done.
My cell rang. “Dakota Frost,” I said, taping up a box with the phone in the crook of my shoulder. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast-”
“You should have that on your answering machine,” Calaphase said over the line.
“I do,” I said, “you just catch me awake whenever you call.”
“My shift at the werehouse must be when you sleep,” Calaphase said.
“Your shift?” I said, laying down one more line of tape and tearing it off with the dispenser’s serrated edge. “You lead the Oakdale Clan. Don’t you have flunkies for that?”
“I lead by example,” Calaphase replied. “What are you doing?”
“Moving out,” I said. And I explained about Mrs. Bitch downstairs and her ultimatum.
“Charming,” Calaphase said. “Speaking of bitches, I have news from the Lady Saffron, delivered by the way of the Lady Darkrose.”
“A four-link chain,” I said, emptying a junk drawer wholesale into one of the smaller boxes. “Nicely insulated so that neither of us has to talk directly to someone who has talked to the other. Sounds good. Maybe this will keep things on an even keel.”
“Don’t count on it,” Calaphase said. “Her high-and-mightyness the Lady Scara-”
“Who?” I asked. “I can only keep track of so many ‘Lady S-something’ vampires.”
“She’s one of the Gentry,” Calaphase said. “Old, moneyed vampires who used to run the cities before the rise of the Consulates. There a few of them, the Lady Onyxa and the Lord Ian something and supposedly an ancient vamp too deformed by age to be seen in public.”
“Sounds charming,” I said. “And this Scara?”
“Their enforcer,” Calaphase said. “Scara’s informed the Lady Saffron that the Gentry officially considers the Consulate’s handling of this plague a failure-because they’ve found out one more of their vampires has been killed by graffiti, just like Revenance.”
“Oh no,” I said, my heart falling. “A new wave of killings… ”
“Maybe,” Calaphase said. “Scara had been hunting the vampire’s human servant, thinking he was responsible, but when she found him he was hiding out, scared shitless. He and his mistress were partying on New Year’s Eve when she was caught and killed by graffiti.”
“That’s even before Revenance,” I said. “Maybe the first vamp taken.”
“And just before Josephine,” Calaphase said. “And get this, same night-”
“A homeless man was set on fire,” I said. “I’ve been reading the crime blotter too.”
“Sounded awfully suspicious,” Calaphase said. “We should compare notes.”
“Sure,” I said. “Hey, what happened to the human servant? Sounds like Scara treated him like a suspect, but since he’s not involved, I’ll want to hear that he was released unharmed.”
“Would you now?” Calaphase laughed, a bit nervously. “I’ll, uh, pass that along if I ever see the Lady Scara, not that I ever hope to.”
“Speaking of hope,” I said. “What about Demophage… ”
Calaphase fell silent. “Dakota… the vamp he was looking for. .. the weres found his body, not two days ago. Burned to death, just like Revenance, about four miles from the werehouse-near some very familiar looking graffiti.”
“Please don’t tell me-”
“They’d painted it over before they even talked to me,” Calaphase said, and my heart sank. “The weres that weren’t caught are really pissed, and Krishna still hasn’t made bail. But… they did listen to me, and took pictures. Just got them today.”
“Great!” I said. Pictures wouldn’t be as good as a live tag, but if they were good enough maybe we had a shot of tying the design to the behavior. “I mean, not that I’m happy he died or anything, but, maybe, finally, maybe we’ll be able to make some progress-”
“ And,” Calaphase said, “if that sounds good, I’ve got an entirely new batch of pictures of suspected master tags taken by the Van Helsings, Darkrose Enterprises, and even some from Tully, all printed out in a folder ready for you to take a look at.”
I was speechless for a moment. “Oh, I love you.”
“Easiest way down a tattooist’s pants is to show her some flash,” Calaphase laughed.
“I’m not that easy,” I said.
“I didn’t say you were. Still, Darkrose wanted a report to give to Saffron,” Calaphase said. “Can I bring these by and get your official opinion? Darkrose isn’t a daywalker, so I need to tell her tonight. Otherwise I have to pass the message to Saffron herself, and she’ll-”
“I know, I know,” I said, looking around me and tossing the rest of the pile around me into a box. “But can it wait a few hours? I’m not done moving out, and I promised Mrs. Bitch downstairs that I’d be out of here by midnight tonight.”
“Need a hand?” Calaphase said.
“I-thanks, but no thanks. I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said. “Mrs. B-Mrs. Olsen is on a hair trigger. She wanted to call the police on me over Cinnamon.”
“I’m just, ” Calaphase said, “a cleancut young man come by to help a friend move.”
“Oh, damnit,” I said finally. What could it hurt? “Sure.”
A Friend Helps You Move
Twenty minutes to midnight. No time, no help-and no more boxes. I had only one left, which was rapidly filling as I found bric-a-brac and knick-knacks and odds-and-ends in every nook and cranny of the apartment. I swear, the things were breeding.
And then there was a knock at the door, and I looked up to see Calaphase, holding a box of Krispy Kreme donuts which he opened with a flourish, row upon row of glazed delight.
“Oh, I love you,” I said, hopping off the floor and snatching up an original style. It was hot and soft in my hands and seemed to dissolve in my mouth with a grand flash behind my eyes. “Oh. Oh. These are better than sex. Not really, but they’re better than sex.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, laughing.
“Mmm. Mmmmm. Wht?” I said, munching, scanning the box. There were already four missing out of the dozen. “Didn’t you have some?”
“No, I gave three to Mrs. Olsen,” he said. At my shocked look, he laughed again, a warm sound that left me as tingly as the donuts. “Call it a peace offering. I explained that I was supposed to help you, but was late. You’ll have all the time you need.”
“Thank you, Calaphase,” I said, taking another donut. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Finish up,” he said, handing me the box. “I’ll take loads to your car. Can you beep it?”
With a vampire carting boxes and me cleaning up, we finished up quick. I filled the last box, taped it up, and then helped carry down the final load. So many boxes. Even with the seats folded down in the back, they barely fit in the Prius, and I couldn’t see out my rearview mirror. Thank God for the backup monitor-and thank God I didn’t need to make a second trip.
After the car was packed, I took one last trip up the stairs to the place I’d called home for… hell, at least five years. As I climbed the steps, I saw Mrs. Olsen’s light was now on, no doubt from Calaphase’s visit, but I tried to ignore it. This was hard enough already.
At the door, I sighed. My mat, my curtains, the little stand beside the door were all gone; it already felt like a completely different place. I went in, finding empty rooms, feeling the place even more empty than when I’d moved in. Then, it held promise: now, it held nothing.
The storage unit closed at seven, so we dropped off the load at my hotel. Hands full, I slipped the little card in the slot, saw green, and kicked the door open, dumping the boxes next to the air conditioner. Calaphase, with three boxes in his arms, stopped at the door.
At first I thought he was staring with amusement at my Vespa, parked in front of the hotel window at the management’s request to free up a space in their tiny lot. Then he seemed to gather himself, cleared his throat, and looked straight at me. “May I come in?”
I hesitated-just a second-wondering if that pause was a vampire thing or simple courtesy. “Sure,” I said, moving a chair out of the way to make more room.
He waltzed around me silently, murmuring, “Wouldn’t want to wake-oh.” He stood there, holding the column, staring at the two, tiny, made beds. “Where’s Cinnamon? Out running with the werekin, or dare I hope, a sleepover with new friends from school?”
“She’s not here,” I said sharply, heading back to the car.
We got the rest of it unloaded, and then I came in and sat down on the bed. My hands were shaking. I could feel my face, hot, could see Calaphase standing by the door, feel the concern in his gaze, even though I couldn’t see his eyes.
After a moment, I explained the situation to him, as briefly as I could without pissing myself off again. Of course, that didn’t work so well. Just as I was getting really wound up, Calaphase made a motion, and I looked up to see him gesturing to the door.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get a drink.”
“Why?”
“You need one, and… I’m a vampire,” Calaphase said. “I don’t want to be alone with you, especially not for drinks. Let me take you to a nice place, frequented by many humans.”
I glared at him, face still hot. “Don’t you know I trust you?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s not the problem.”
“Then what? Don’t you trust yourself? ”
He shrugged. “Don’t trust the situation.”
I was still glaring, but I felt it soften. “Fine,” I said. “No, really, fine.”
Calaphase directed me down North Avenue to Peachtree Road, then towards Buckhead. Long before we got there, we approached R Thomas, a New-Agey 24 hour joint that made the only vegetarian burgers that Cinnamon could stomach. I was about to suggest it when Calaphase pointed to a car coming out of a parking space, right in front of a set of small shops on the opposite side of the street. “There,” he said. “Someone’s smiling on us tonight.”
So we parked the Prius and hopped out into a row of shops that felt like a snippet of a walking neighborhood, like a micro-Virginia Highland on the other side of the road from R Thomas. We passed a Chinese restaurant and an art gallery before walking up onto a chic crowd of Buckheadites, milling around the front of Cafe Intermezzo.
“How late is this place open?” I asked.
“Two,” he said, taking me through heavy wood doors into a dark, loud, crowded empire of wood and glass. Classic posters and slogans extolling the glories of coffee adorned the walls, a slide show of what looked like ancient Greece was projected up into a high cranny, and everywhere people were crammed at tiny tables, consuming an astonishing variety of drinks.
“What?” Calaphase said, after the screech of the espresso machine ceased.
“A little loud, isn’t it?” I repeated.
“Two,” he said, handing a twenty to the maitre d’, who winked and nodded. “I wouldn’t do that normally,” he said, a little embarrassed when he saw my eyebrow, “but Cheryl knows me. She’ll get us a table in the front window. It’s a little quieter, but it takes a few minutes.”
We stood by a rack of newspapers on dowels, like you might see in a library. “Right across the street from my favorite veggie burgers,” I said. “Why have I never been here?”
Then he handed me the menu-a thick, narrow booklet that was as comprehensive as a dictionary-and I knew. “Jeez!” I said, and Calaphase winced. “OK, the normal coffees aren’t much worse than Starbucks, but some of the liqueurs are like, fifty dollars.”
“Only if you get one that’s older than I am,” Calaphase said.
“I have dresses older than you are,” I said, flipping and flipping and flipping, trying to get to the back. “All right, I can see why poor dropout me has never been here, but how can you afford it on what the werehouse crew have been paying you?”
“Vampires have many sources of income,” Calaphase said, slightly uncomfortable.
“Such as what-oh my God.” In a reflection I saw what I was standing next to, and turned around to see two huge glass cases of elaborate cakes in front of the espresso machine. “You had to stuff me full of donuts before I came here, didn’t you?”
“Now you know how I suffer when you eat,” he said. “Come on, she’s got us a table.”
The front window wasn’t much quieter, but at least there we could hunch over the table and talk. I told him the long version of what had happened to Cinnamon, and Calaphase patted my hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, face clearly worried. “You’ll get her back. I’m sure of it.”
“Try not to sound so convinced,” I said, slurping my mocha just to see him squirm. Unexpectedly they had delivered it with a small glass of hazelnut liqueur, which I sniffed before offering it to him. “I don’t drink and drive. Not even a little.”
“Aren’t we here to drink?” he said, sipping, with pain, a tall blended drink. “ I’ll drive.”
“Doesn’t that milkshake thing have like, a shot of vodka in it?”
“Something like it,” he said. “Look, you ordered it, and it is good. Please-”
“ Fine, ” I said, taking the hazelnut and taking a small sip. “Not bad. I’m still not drinking the whole thing, no matter what you say. Just my luck, they’ll pull me over and breathalyze me.”
“You’re sounding a little more like Dakota. Ready to get back in the saddle?”
I stared at him blankly-and then he pulled a manila folder out of his jacket. “You have pictures of the tags,” I said, leaning forward. “Gimme, gimme!”
These pictures were better than any I’d seen yet. The finest masterpiece, a complicated whirlpool design almost certainly made by the first tagger, was marred by whorls of black soot emanating from its center. The soot hadn’t destroyed it, but it obscured too much of the design to see it clearly, and I scowled… until I remembered that Calaphase had said the victim had burned. Then the soot began to look uncomfortably like a body, and I looked away.
“Both this guy and Revenance caught fire,” I said thoughtfully, “and I assumed it was the sun… but the werehouse burned too. Could burning be part of the life cycle of the tag?”
“I hope not,” Calaphase said. “That would be a disaster. There are a lot of tags.”
“I’d tell Rand, but I think he’d have me arrested,” I said. “Calaphase… can you arrange to send an anonymous tip to the police for me? I mean, we can warn the Edgeworld, but the police are looking into this too and I’d hate for some poor officer to get crisped.”
Calaphase frowned. “If I can’t arrange it, Saffron certainly can.”
There were also pictures showing the art of the second tagger, mostly around the werehouse. Apparently Tully had been chronicling the graffiti for some time. There were a few candid pictures with tags in the background featuring werehouse regulars like Vic, a few werekin boys, and even Cinnamon, who had been caught swatting her claws at the camera.
“These are very good,” I said, studying that last picture closely. I loved my girl, and already missed her terribly. “What are you up to, Calaphase?”
“What do you mean?” he said, taken aback.
“You didn’t need to do all this just to get an early report to Saffron. She’s not going to come stake you in your sleep because you’re slow getting back to her.”
“Touche,” he said, raising his glass. “You caught me. I planned to ask you out again.”
I leaned back in my chair. Damnit. “I smelled something fishy with your late-night call.”
“I take it that’s a no, then?” Calaphase said, smiling.
“What are we doing right now?” I asked. “Having coffee that costs as much as a meal? If the kitchen was still open, you’d be selling me on their food, just to watch me eat.”
“That I would. I love watching you eat,” Calaphase said warmly, and I glanced away, embarrassed. He laughed, then got serious. “Care to try again? A real date, no drama?”
“Someplace inexpensive?” I said. “Not four thousand dollar drinks forty miles down the backwoods of Atlanta? Someplace we can go Dutch, like real twenty-first century humans?”
Calaphase laughed. “That sounds good to me.”
“OK,” I said. “It will have to be after the hearing, though. I’ll let you know.”
“I understand-you’ve got a lot going on,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready-but until then, throw me a bone on the pictures, something I can pass to Saffron.”
“There are three separate taggers,” I said, and Calaphase leaned back in his chair. “Call them two and a half Siths: a master, a journeyman, and an apprentice. My mystery benefactor in the police force has said as much, and these pictures confirm it. The master tagger is active in downtown Atlanta, and his tags are the most dangerous. No vampire should go near them. The other two look to be wankers, copycats. Only the one that nearly killed Tully was associated with an attack, and I think that’s only because he tried to whitewash it alone.”
“That’s not a bone,” he said. “That’s a labeled skeleton with a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.”
I shrugged and took one more sip, finding I’d finished the tiny little glass of the liqueur. “I do my best. Mind if I send these to my mysterious benefactor?”
“Please, go ahead. One more thing-if you do squeeze out some time, give me a little advance notice? One of my flunkies can take my shift and we can have the whole night together.” His face fell as soon as he said it. “I didn’t mean to imply-”
“I’m not made of glass, Calaphase,” I said, smiling.
But Calaphase didn’t smile. “Vampires are known for taking advantage of human… prey,” he said with distaste. “I do not want you to think I’m just out for your blood.”
“You know what I think, Calaphase?” I said, finishing the last swig of mocha.
Calaphase cocked his head at me. “No. What do you think, Dakota?”
“It’s going to take more than the threat of a bite to scare me away from you, vampire.”