Twelve
Two Years Later
The window was lightly misted with the heat of a magic kissed night. Saben Mariley Frost perched on the edge of the window sill and watched the sprawl of the street below where a silhouette stood unmoving in the semi-darkness.
Her eyelids fluttered closed and for an instant she could feel the phantom of someone standing behind her. Lips cool on her neck, teeth hard on her bare shoulder. She leant her head against the cool window pane and watched her breath mist against the glass as she sighed.
Every year on the Longest Night, since she had lived in the desert, someone stood and watched from the street below.
"Aren't you going to be late?"
She turned with a start. Tobias was struggling to do up the buttons in his shirt, fingers made clumsy from his overwhelming nervousness. Tonight was a big night for Tobias, for the whole of the spell casting nation in fact. The excitement in the air was almost too much to bear, claustrophobic, cloistering, like the dense air of a smoke filled club.
She forced a smile to her lips and went to him, quickly feeding buttons to the holes. She smoothed her palms on his chest when she'd finished and felt the rhythm of his heart beneath her hand. "Everything's going to be fine." She assured him.
He kissed her and her body was awash with desire to stay, to cling to the warm muscled flesh. "I'm going to be late." She whispered against his lips but he didn't stop sliding his mouth across her cheek. His breath was fever hot on her neck and she trembled.
Her eyes fluttered closed and she was swept in a memory of cool lips as delicate as a moth wing on her skin and the sharp tip of a tooth pressing painfully into the soft part of her neck.
She pushed Tobias away, shaken by the memory. Her breath laboured and eyes haunted and she stared up at her lover whose mouth was set in a thin suspicious line.
"Saben-"
There was a sudden knock on the door.
"That must be Charlie." She said picking up her jacket and heading for the door.
"I'll see you there then?"
She had already closed the door behind her.
Charlie leant against the wall, a cigarette bobbing between his lips as he chewed on gum. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, taking in her lacerated boots and faded Venom tee. He took the cig from his mouth and flashed a toothy grin at him. "Okay?"
Saben grasped Charlie's arm and hauled him toward the staircase without saying a word.
He ducked to take a sniff of her, soaking in the heady mix of confusion.
"Don't start with me, Charlie." She said through her teeth and raised her collar high.
"You don't look so good, Sabe." He muttered.
"Thanks."
"No, I mean. You look pale, sweaty." He touched her forehead. "Are you coming down with something?"
She batted his hand away. "Let's just get to the place in one goddamn piece, please."
*
The ceremony would commence at a minute to midnight.
Saben Mariley Frost searched the crowd for her lover, amidst the glittering masks, sashes and gowns she could barely tell friend from stranger. Tobias, she was sure, had not yet arrived.
She and Charlie had arrived early for the sound check. Not being a supernatural she couldn't guarantee the carriage of her voice and would be the only act using a microphone on the longest night.
As she stood at the mic, breath grazing it, eyes staring out into the unlit expanse of the grand hall a wave of memory hit her and she closed her eyes to absorb the shock of images. Dark undulating crowds, the inhuman graceful rippling of the People, their eyes staring up at her, shining like beacons, deceptive lights to lure, to trick, for their teeth and claws to devour.
And then those brilliant blue eyes, like electricity searing through the din and deep into her soul. She came out of the memory, her heart hammering in her chest. At that instant a thousand eyes that could read her thoughts and she felt guilty.
Charlie gave her a strange look before laying down his bass.
"I'm okay." She said. Her mantra. I'm okay. Though she wasn't. Not really and not for a long time.
She walked off stage, dragging her feet.
She loathed the spectacle beyond the curtain. The People gathered, beings of magic and wonder and her wandering through the crowd, lost and lonely. Though they knew who she was, Tobias' lover, not all were happy about that.
Tobias was important, rising in the ranks of the Circles where big things were predicted for him. After all he was the Crone's last apprentice, had taken up duties in her Vegas practise whilst the Harman heir, Blaise Harman was in education.
Over the years Saben had learned a little more of Night World politics, not all of it was easy to digest, being human in the strange alien world was not an easy thing to bear. She was still plagued by flashbacks which the psychologists had concluded was a vampire attack that had muddled her mind, something that was irreparable.
Tobias had been accused of taking her to his bed for this reason, as an act of charity, a gesture to the Day that he was committed to peace between humankind and the Night.
Saben turned her head away from the snide whispers, the undercurrents of jealousy of those accusations.
The ceremony was rushing on, she had barely raised a glass of punch to her lips before Thierry Descourdres appeared on stage. He stood in a shaft of light. Wearing a smart suit and holding an unlit candle. The People pressed closer to the stage, delighted to see their benefactor and leader deliver a rousing speech that barely reached Saben's ears.
Saben's eyes was on the look out for Tobias, wanting to apologize.
"…In honour of The Crone." Thierry bowed his head and all seemed to follow suit. The candle in his hand burst to light. All candles were lit, each Person held one aloft and the room was a beacon of glittering wicks. The wax was scented clogging the room with sweet perfume.
Alex was on next and was glad to escape the pungent smell of the spell the candles weaved.
She approached the mic with a dramatic reverence. She took hold of the stand as if it were a lover and softly began to sing. A bluesy track, a ballad speaking of love found and lost and fading but never forgotten. Ode to a night lost in memory.
Charlie was beside her, concentrating on the groove and as always when he played she could close her eyes and felt suspended on the rhythm of his playing, safe in the pattern he slapped or plucked.
Glittering eyes stared up at her. There was nothing sinister in that but she longed for the sweat and screaming of her soul music to rise through the hall and drown the shining throng in dark melodies.
She finished to the sound of applause, when she exited the stage they were offered congratulations and smiles. She couldn't focus on this.
"Have you seen Toby?"
No, no one had, masks indicated with polite shakes of their heads. She headed back to the party, watching a vampire quartet fill the room with complicated chorus. The crowds were swaying as they danced, blending seamlessly into one beautiful organic and glittering mass.
Except one. He wore a mask painted black, the eye holes fringed with real diamonds that glistened beneath the witch light, but the mask had no mouth.
He offered a gloved hand and she reached for it, not hesitating for a moment but trusting blindly like a child. He danced with the inhuman grace of a vampire. Their feet barely touching the solid ground it was if they were floating and she was filled with such peace all thoughts were pushed out.
She lay her head on his chest and could hear no heart beat.
He whispered something, so soft, she could barely hear it but conjured meaning through memories. She was enveloped in a sense of unquestionable belonging.
Memories flowed to her as the chord that bound them wrapped them together like a celestial gift. The wasteland of her memories flourished and she remember more of him. Him. His cold mouth softening in a kiss, the tips of his teeth pressed into his bottom lip, and the alien tenderness he had shared with her not so long ago after a show in California.
"Things are different now." She could feel her lungs constrict as she spoke. "I can't do this with you anymore…I'm in love with someone else."
His body sang with tension. The music changed, a different magic descended, she was torn apart from her partner and could not spy him in the converging crowd.
"Wait." She called and pushed her way through the People. "Please don't go." As if she could erase what she had said.
The June air was dry and hot and made her nauseous as she burst outside in a tangle of pink hair and silk gown. "Did you see him?" She asked the closest Person, leaning on the stranger heavily whilst she looked wildly to and fro.
The Person held up his hands to show he had nothing, had seen nothing and moved on.
"Have you seen him?" She asked no on in particular.
"Who?"
She mumbled an apology and took blind steps into the night. The front of the mansion was filled with neatly rowed cars. She slipped between them searching for any hint of the vampire she had danced with.
She came across two figures embracing. It took only a moment for her mind to distinguish the sight of who they were. Leaning against a blood red car, the woman was wrapped around Tobias like a python.
Her heart beat rose in her ears, she struggled to catch her next breath. Nausea rose in a wave, a spasm of her throat and she doubled over and vomited the little she had eaten that day.
She heard her name being called from a distance but staggered away aimlessly into the night.
*
"Easy, easy." Blaise laid a cool hand across her head. "No fever."
"I feel sick." Saben muttered. "I'll be okay."
Blaise left briefly to mix a brew to calm Saben's stomach and she returned with a steaming cup of herbal tea. They sat upstairs in the magic shop. Blaise had already been there when she had ambled in declaring she didn't feel well. The witch had yet to make her grand entrance to the Descourdres party before Saben had slumped in the magic store's doorway.
As Saben sat and rocked slowly Blaise stroke her hair back from her face.
"He wasn't meant for you." Blaise cooed.
Saben's blood turned cold. "What?"
"You knew that from the beginning." She said simply. "He could never have truly been with you. He's a witch and you're-"
It seemed as if the witch were speaking of more than Tobias and her words cut deep. Saben stood wrapping arms around herself. "A stupid little human." Wasn't that what she had often been called?
"I have to go."
"Go? Go where?" Blaise stood trying to grab a hold of Saben's arm to calm her down to draw her back to her seat.
She didn't reply as she ran out of the store.
Like a mad Ophelia in the city she wandered bear foot, her hair wild about her face, her face wet with tears and regret. At some point that night she returned to her apartment. Crashing through the front door, she went to their room, the bed they shared was undone, pillows and sheets laying everywhere.
She fumbled with the box of the kit they always kept in the draw for emergencies. She sat in the bathroom with her skirt bunched into her lap, knickers at her ankles. Her bear feet were muddy and stained. Her fingers were wrapped around the plastic stick with a certain sense of dread.
"Shit." She whispered.