Nine
December 1995
The magic and mystery of the longest night.
A call went out to all those of the Day and Night World beckoning pilgrims from afar to gather in celebration.
It was Solstice Eve and Saben sat alone in her apartment writing on the walls. Her hands stained in black paint, pungent fumes of the ink making her dizzy with clarity. Her walls were covered from top to bottom and she was running out of space until the fragments had more desperate scrawls on top of old.
When Celeste Morgan paid her visits, Saben would have to disguise her walls, paint over them to re-write but the words only ever came back.
It was as if her creative mind were trying to vomit forth a memory she had lost. She had scrawled the word 'time' so many times. Running out of time. Mortality. Immortality. What was she trying to remember? What time?
Geoff Deckard playing guitar. A mic pressed to her lips. Strangers with their hands raised to the stage. The breath of an old house. Blood on the tiles. Greasy plastic phone piece pressed to her mouth.
Frustrated and sad she wrote on the walls.
She was furiously scratching the word Time to conceal more of the same beneath it. She remembered Pin Cushion's van, the stench of old leather, dirty equipment, old sex, Heather Mazahura's cool fingers stroking her scalp, the strobe lighting of the Black Iris club. Her head thrown back exposing her throat.
She sighed.
Earlier that evening she had watched Blaise Harman ready herself for the longest night. Dressed beautifully in black, she had woven pearls and flowers in her hair. Saben had watched all of this from a distance, in reflections and periphery.
She could imagine the celebration, built a vast and beautiful fantasy in her mind's eye. A decadent affair with rippling silk and jewels. A bacchanal, lovers swooning, hot flesh drenched as they danced hypnotic to tribal rhythms.
Her hands dropped from their effort, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand the vision of the walls beginning to blur. She stumbled to the window, pulled it up to let humid air wash over her. She hated the desert.
The streets were deserted and why not? She had heard the People march out of the building, car pooling to the mansion where the biggest party in the Night World calendar was underway. The gracious host, Thierry Descourdres, a Night World Elder and human sympathiser.
A place where People and people intermingled. She blinked and a startling sensation of cool silk sheets against her sore broken lips and the sweet pressure of someone on top of her smelling of sweat, sex and blood. She rubbed her eyes again resigned to the poison of the pen fumes.
She leant in the window sill looking out at the dusty streets dappling in moon glow. Saben had been to the mansion once, surrounded by suits undergoing a barrage of interviews as the infernal Circle had tried so valiantly to place her. She was useless to them it seemed, a nobody with fractured memories.
As the first whiff of self pity emanated she saw the silhouette standing in the middle of the road. She leant forward, mesmerised and she could have sworn the stranger was staring up at her. Her leaning was perilous but she was drawn, it was a soul sucking stare and only a painful grip on the window sill itself stopped her from plummeting to her doom.
Even as she blinked she thought she heard a voice but it was not from someone's lips, it slithered into her skull saying It hurts when I…
There was a knock at the door. Shocked out of her reverie, her heart hammering, meaty on her tongue she strived to swallow her pulse. She half dreaded seeing the silhouette at the door but when she made her way slowly to it, opening it a slim crack it was Tobias she found standing there.
"Why aren't you ready?" He strode into the apartment, pushing her aside before she gathered her wits to block him out.
"Ready for what?" Her voice was distant, trembling as her mind lingered on the silhouette's stare.
Tobias stopped short when he saw the wild scrawling surrounding them. "What is this?"
She shrugged. "I ran out of paper."
He tore his eyes away from it and turned back to her to find her shivering in an oversize t-shirt she wore like a dress, paint smeared combat boots unlaced and pink hair severely restrained from her face. He went to close the window as if it were the breeze that made her cold.
She suddenly felt self conscious as she noticed he was dressed in an expensive shirt and slacks, looking older than usual and quite handsome. He was also lit with something extra, something that made him look more exotic, more compelling, the static energy rose between them.
She sneezed.
"This won't do." He said and walked to her bedroom. She heard the creek of her wardrobe doors and slowly followed to watch him rifling through her Ts and things. He seemed to find something, though his back was to her for a long time when he turned back round he presented her with a white dress. "Why don't you wear this?"
"I don't wear dresses." She said as if it were a dismal fact. He looked at her sceptically but her expression held no malice or stubbornness. She had never worn a dress to her recollection. She had been homeless early in her life and she knew fine things did not belong to her.
"Where did you get it?"
"My therapist thought it would be a good idea."
"Celeste Morgan." Tobias smiled fondly as he spoke her name. Saben wondered if he'd slept with her and felt the small prick of jealousy.
He threw the dress at her and she caught it with her stained hands. They held each other's gaze for a long moment.
"Get dressed. We haven't got all night."
Her eyes darkened and her grasp on the dress became hard and angry. "I said I don't want to go."
He let out a long sigh. "You don't go anywhere except the shop, do you?"
"I go to therapy." She looked to the walls before looking back into his face. "It's too dangerous out there."
"I'll be there."
She shook her head, no. There were too many unpredictable elements, all out there to eat her. She had seen a little slice of hell that day, leering demons, rancid saliva and too many teeth. She shuddered at the thought.
"Saben."
The energy rose again, like electricity and heat, it made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "You shouldn't have come here." She said suddenly on the verge of tears but she couldn't fathom why. Her fingers ached with the need to write to pick up her guitar and play.
"Get dressed." He said firmly.
Perhaps it was the way he said it, she wasn't used to being ordered around, or at least she thought she wasn't. Maybe it was magic or mind control but it worked and she pulled her shirt over her head exposing her body riddled with tattoos.
Chrysanthemums, a peacock, stars and sakura. Slender tribal designs woven into an exotic picture that covered her back, crept onto her upper arms and wrapped around her stomach and hips.
After the initial shock of her sudden nudity, Tobias looked away his cheeks turning red as if he were embarrassed.
She moved slowly and deliberately, knowing that she was no more than a child in the eyes of the People. Hating that she was considered a creature, something to be pitied. Thinking perhaps she could be something more.
She slipped the dress on. "Can you get the back?" She asked struggling to reach the zipper.
He pulled the zipper up cautiously, careful no to nip her skin, his fingers lingering on her inked flesh and she shivered. Something changed. The whispering touch of his fingertips and breath on the back of her neck.
She felt ashamed, maybe she was trying to seduce him. Was she? How long had it been since she'd been with anybody? She stepped away from him, caught between desire and feeling ridiculous.
He stared at her with his lips parted, staring as if she were a creature that would disappear at the slightest sound, the merest move.
The dress was Grecian in style, flowing white chiffon with some beaded detail just under her bust. She was still in her combat boots and this made him smile. "Come here." He pulled her hair out of its bun and pink hair spilt over her shoulders. He pulled a flower from thin air and placed it in her hair.
"I look like a fool." She stated blandly.
"You haven't seen yourself."
"I don't have to." She whispered her ink stained hands clenching into fists and the anger was back again.
"Come with me to the Solstice ball."
"I'm sure your latest squeeze would object to having a punk ride in the two seater with you."
Tobias laughed. "I'm not going with anyone else."
She frowned at him. Crackling electric energy suddenly swirling about them, all his kindness, his soft words and closeness going to her head. But there was something about this night of all other nights had made a change in him as it had many of the People she'd seen.
Their skins lit with a magical glow as if they were filled from tip to toe with magic, as if currents of divine thunderbolts were glittering beneath their flesh and eyes. Tobias offered his hand and it seemed to glitter.
She looked into his eyes, wide, blue, kind and knew that if she took his head something would change. They would come together in ionic attraction and something would break in her, the shroud of solitude would fade, she had been frightened for so long….
She took his hand.