Megan took one look, rolled her eyes, and retreated to the kitchen. She had no patience for lawyers. Did anyone? This woman’s clothes, heels, carriage screamed “bloodsucker.” In my world, there was always great concern that the term was literal. I nearly laughed out loud when she ordered Cabernet.
“With that suit?” I asked.
Her lips curved; her perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted past the rims of her self-regulating sunglasses, which had yet to lighten even though she’d stepped indoors. I could see only the shadow of her eyes beyond the lenses. Brown, perhaps black. Definitely not blue like mine.
The cheekbones and nose hinted at Native American blood somewhere in her past. Though she probably knew the origin of hers, I did not. Who I’d been before I’d become Elizabeth Phoenix was as much a mystery to me as the identity of my parents.
“You think I’d spill a single drop?” she murmured in a smoky voice.
How could something sound like smoke? I’d never understood that term. But as soon as she spoke, it suddenly became clear to me. She sounded like a gray, hot mist that could kill you.
“You from around here?” I asked.
Murphy’s, located in the middle of a residential area, wasn’t exactly a tourist attraction. The place was as old as the city and had been a tavern all of its life. Back in the day, fathers would finish their shifts at the factories, then stop by for a brew before heading home. They’d come in after dinner and watch the game, or retreat here if they’d fought with the wife or had enough of the screaming kids.
Such establishments could be found all over Milwaukee, hell, all over Wisconsin. Bar, house, bar, house, house, house, another bar. In Friedenberg, where I lived, about twenty miles north of the city, there were five bars in the single mile square village. Walking more than a block for a beer? It just wasn’t done.
“I’m from everywhere,” the stranger said, then sipped the wine.
A bit clung to her lip. Gravity pulled it downward, the remaining moisture pooling into a droplet the shade of blood. Her tongue snaked out and captured the bead before it fell on the pristine white lapel of her suit. I had a bizarre flash of Snow White.
“Or maybe it’s nowhere.” She tilted her head. “You, decide.”
I was starting to get uneasy. She might be beautiful, but she was weird. Not that we didn’t get weirdos in the bar every day. But there was usually a cop or ten around.
Sure, I’d once been a cop, but I wasn’t anymore. And pretty much everyone, even Megan, frowned on bartenders pulling a gun on the clientele. Of course, if she wasn’t human—
My fingers stroked the solid silver knife I hid beneath my ugly green uniform vest as I waited for some kind of sign.
The woman reached again for her wine. Contrary to her earlier assertion, she knocked it over. The ruby-red liquid sloshed across the bar, pooling at the edge before dripping onto the floor.
I should have been diving for a towel; instead I found myself fascinated by the shimmering puddle, which reflected the dim lights and the face of the woman.
The shiny dark surface leached the color from everything, not that there’d been all that much color to her in the first place. Black hair, white suit, light brown skin.
Slowly I lifted my gaze to hers. The glasses had cleared. I could see her eyes. I’d seen them before.
In the face of a woman of smoke who’d been conjured from a bonfire in the New Mexico desert. No wonder she hid them behind dark lenses. Those eyes would scare the pants off of anyone who looked directly into them. I was surprised I hadn’t been turned to stone. They held aeons of hate, centuries of evil, millennia of joy in the act of murder with a dash of madness on the side.
I drew my knife, threw it—I ought to be able to hit her in such close quarters—but she snatched the weapon out of the air with freakishly fast fingers.
“Shit,” I said.
Smirking, she returned the knife—straight at my head. I ducked, and the thing stuck in the wall behind me with a thunk and a boing worthy of any cartoon soundtrack.
I straightened, meaning to grab the weapon and leap over the bar. I had supernatural speed and strength of my own. But the instant my head cleared wood, she grabbed me by the neck and hauled me over, breaking bottles, knocking glasses everywhere.
“Liz?” Megan called.
I opened my mouth to shout, “Run!”, and choked instead as the woman squeezed.
She lifted her gaze to where Megan must surely be. I wanted to say, “Don’t look at her,” but speech was as beyond me as breathing.
I heard a whoosh and then a thud. Like a body sliding down a wall to collapse on the floor. Had the woman of smoke killed Megan with a single glance? I wouldn’t put it past her.
I pulled at her hands, tugged on her fingers, managed to loosen her hold enough by breaking a few to gulp several quick breaths.