Excerpt: Environ Me With Darkness

The day was fine, though our warm snap had ended. The sun shone high in a blue sky rippled with white cumulus clouds, but the wind gave the bite of autumn. Last night, we’d had our first hard frost, and the temperature on the bank clock across the street read at 49 degrees. I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my shearling coat and ambled off in the direction of my office.

Jez would be frantic, but I didn’t want to face her just yet. Instead, I called and told her that the cavalry was on its way to Cayden’s rescue. I rung off and headed toward Pack Square. I didn’t have any destination in mind; I just needed space. I needed not to be around Jez.

I walked. That’s what I do when I’m nervous. But I couldn’t understand why I should be nervous. It didn’t have anything to do with the commission that Kristofer Tod had left me in his will. I was just as prepared to ignore him in death as I had in life. Not that I wasn’t sorry that he was dead; that was horrible. But my mood had nothing to do with that.

I walked aimlessly until I found myself on the bridge to West Asheville. It crosses the French Broad River as well as the artist studio district on the Asheville side. From my vantage point at the middle of the bridge, the river swept in a graceful arc, its blue gleaming waters making even the weedy railroad tracks on the West Asheville side look romantic.

If you follow the line of the river far enough, down to where the last of the old warehouses are, you’ll come to the Kali Sutra. In the sunlight, it looks just like any other old big building rescued from the bulldozer. The only thing that sets it apart from the artist studios that precede it is the fact that all its windows are bricked over.

The Kali Sutra is both meeting place and sleeping space for most of the vampires of greater Asheville. I’m told that Asheville has the second largest vampire community in North Carolina, second only to the Triangle Park area where the three great universities converge. Vampires love artists of all kinds, and you’ll find more artists and artisans here in Asheville than anywhere else in the state.

Through the bare limbs of birch and gingko trees, I could see the outlines of the Kali, grim and gray beneath the bright autumn sunlight. The vampire I’d killed last year had slept there – had managed the place, in fact – but Cedric never had. Cedric had always slept at my condo, in the tiny apartment I’d made for him in the utility room

Vampires aren’t evil. At least, they’re no more evil than the rest of us. They’re just different. And I should know, because I’d been involved with one – been his lover, to be precise – for a year before his death at the hands of another vampire.

Cedric had been funny and feckless, a charming cad and a good friend. I had loved him.

And that was why I couldn’t bear to go back to the office. I recognized in Jez all the symptoms of love, and I couldn’t bear it. I was sick with jealousy. Even though Cayden might be in jail at this moment, and certainly was under suspicion for murder, he was alive. Jez had hope that they might be together in the future. I had no hope, not for myself. My future with Cedric was as dead as he was.

I realized as I stood there on the bridge just how very sore my feet were. The boots I was wearing were cute, but they weren’t meant for hiking long distances. I must’ve tramped a mile or more in them since I’d left Sylvia Fossett at the courthouse.

The balls of my feet let out a silent protest as I marched on over the bridge to West Asheville. A bus stop sign was posted a few yards from the end of the bridge, though there was no nice covered bench like they had on the outbound side.

I rested my butt on the edge of the guard rail and dug in my purse for change. Yes, I had enough to get me back downtown to the terminal. I’d still have to walk back to the office from there, but the ride would cut half a mile off my hike.

The metal guard rail felt like ice through the denim fabric of my jeans. I shoved the change into my front pocket and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to keep warm. The thicket of trees that grew on this side of the river were clustered tightly enough to put the bus stop in shade. Without the heat of the sun, I felt all the chill of mid-November.

The trees gathered behind me like a cadre of malefactors. I glanced over my shoulder. The land fell away sharply beyond the guard rail. The muddy ground was covered by a slick carpet of brown, dead leaves in the gaps left by the overgrown brush. Empty chip bags and beer cans littered the slope. The only sounds that reached me were the shushing of the river and the crackle of tiny feet – or maybe just the breeze -- through the dead leaves.

Despite the pain in my feet, I pushed myself up from the guard rail and paced the sidewalk, trying to rev up my circulation. When I turned, I saw a little girl standing before me.

She wore a white, sprigged muslin dress, white tights, and black shoes. She had long chestnut brown hair with bangs cut straight across her forehead. Her hair was untidy, as if she’d been crawling through the brush, but her dress was free of stains.

“Do you miss him?” the little girl asked.

I looked over my shoulder, just on the off chance she might be addressing someone else. She wasn’t. At least, no one visible.

“Miss who?”

“Him.” She nodded toward the opposite side of the river, toward the Kali Sutra.

I took a step back. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“You should stay away from the black house,” she said, ignoring my questions.

“The black house. You mean, the Wiley building?”

She nodded, her colorless eyes solemn beneath her dark lashes. She began to hum, swaying back and forth and doing an occasional pirouette. She stopped suddenly.

“They used to play music there,” she told me.

“I know.”

“It was bad music. I didn’t like it. But it did.”

“It?” I asked.

“The one that lives there. The music made it strong again. Don’t play that music if you go there. You say you won’t go there, but I know you will.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, wondering where everyone was. Not a pedestrian, not a cyclist, not a single vehicle had passed us going in either direction since the eerie little child had made her appearance.

“I can read it in your soul,” she said. She stepped forward, her hand outstretched, her index finger pointing. It touched my solar plexus. “Right there,” she singsonged.

I staggered back, scrabbling at the spot on my jacket where the little girl’s bony finger had scraped. When I raised my eyes, heart beating a tattoo in my chest, the child was gone.

The dull roar of a diesel engine brought me back to myself. I could hear children playing at a nearby day school, the caw of crows in the trees, and the hum of an entire civilization whirring smoothly along.

The terminal-bound bus trundled down the hill from West Asheville and braked to a stop beside me. My hands shook as I grabbed the railing and pulled myself up the steps, shook as I dug the change out of my pocket. I had to use both hands to funnel it into the fare well. If I looked odd, the driver gave me no notice. I fell into a seat behind him and with the pneumatic hiss of released brakes, we set off across the bridge.

What in the hell had I just seen? Worse, what had just touched me? Ghosts – even full-body apparitions – don’t have that much substance. It might have been a demon, given those weird eyes, but since when did demons start warning you against danger? Usually they were urging you on.

I finally settled on some kind of elemental. Elementals are nature spirits – what our ancestors called fairies, pixies, or goblins. They exist in this world with us, but on a plane we don’t see.

They’re mostly indifferent to us, the way we’re indifferent to woodchucks and squirrels. We notice them when they intrude on our comfort; some of us brake for them when they run out into the road. That’s the way elementals see us, as a lower form of life that occasionally intrudes itself on their world.

So for an elemental to notice me, to come talk to me, I must be in the process of running out into a road where something big and bad might be about to run me down. That big, bad thing was the darkness inside the Wiley building. And was the elemental right? Was I going to run out into that road regardless of the warning I’d just received?

The bus pulled into the terminal. My breathing and heart rate had slowed. My hands no longer shook as I grabbed the bar next to the seat and hauled myself to my feet. I thanked the driver and descended the steps. I stood on the concrete sidewalk a moment, letting the rush and swirl of commuters reorient me to the human world. A woman in a black quilted jacket with fake fur trim around the hood pushed past me onto the bus, dragging her daughter by the hand. The child turned her head. The face that stared back at me was the elemental’s. She smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth sharpened to points. I staggered away and up the street.