Always the Vampire

Not that I’m a miser, mind you. I’m merely cautious with my money. The treasure that had been secreted in the false bottom of my coffin—or rather the French vampire King Normand’s coffin—wouldn’t last without good management. I’d shared some of the loot with Maggie and Neil, sold a few pieces for capital, and invested. I also had my earnings from tour guiding, but I had expenses just like everyone else.

And, okay, I could shop my checkbook into the grave if I wasn’t careful. Yep, I’m a part day-walking, all night-stalking vampire, and my favorite prey is a bargain at Walmart. However, I’d learned the hard way that, if you find a goody you want in a St. Augustine shop, you’d best buy it on the spot. It will be gone when you go back, and it won’t be restocked.

I’d also learned that St. Augustine businesses appear to operate in a different dimension. If you get what you want three weeks late, you got it a month early. That’s why I put those extra tables and chairs on reserve with the rental company from the get-go.

Which reminded me, I had a list of wedding chores to make. Call rental company. Order more centerpieces from florist. Talk with Daphne about making the wedding cake bigger or ordering a second groom’s cake.

By the time I tucked the list in my binder, my backlog of interior design homework didn’t just beckon for attention, it bellowed. I buckled down and spent the next six hours finishing the projects due, plus the next weeks’ worth as well.

Snowball grumbled when I finally crawled into bed. Saber decidedly did not. Yep, the Saber I knew and loved was back.



Wednesday bridge club is a mixed bag of nuts, as Shelly Jergason likes to say. She’s the one who invited me to the group after we met at the historical society and I mentioned I was learning bridge online. No big stretch since bridge evolved from whist, but it was a boon to be accepted into the group. The two-table club includes youthful seniors, Maybelle and Shelly, and middle-aged movers and shakers, real estate agent Jenna Jones and perennial chairwoman Nadine Houseman. Our youngest members are artist Kathy Baker and elementary school teacher Missy Cox.

And, of course, our pastry chef for Maggie’s wedding, Daphne Dupree. We didn’t talk wedding shop at bridge club, though. Jenna held a grudge that she hadn’t been hired to sell Maggie’s condo.

The dress code is casual, so I wore black cargo pants and a white scoop neck T-shirt. We met at Kathy’s home in the Shores, socializing and admiring her new paintings from six thirty to seven then playing cards from seven until nine on the dot. About halfway into the evening, Maybelle and I both happened to be dummies and in the kitchen alone. I hesitated only a moment before I took the plunge.

“Millie told me you did an astrology chart for me last month.”

“Yes, for the anniversary of your coming out. I’d never run one quite so interesting.” She turned away to pour herself a cup of decaf coffee and motioned me closer. “I admit that the results surprised me enough that I consulted a more experienced astrologer I trust.”

“Millie said I disappeared from my own chart, but I don’t think that’s possible, is it?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking, but there is a rather major transit coming up for you.”

“Which means what?”

Maybelle leaned a hip against the granite countertop. “A transit is a transition. A crossroad, if you will. It’s a time when life challenges may change you so much that you’re nearly unrecognizable as the person you are now.”

The Void. Starrack. Maid of honor. Gee, pick a challenge. A shiver snaked up my spine.

Maybelle patted my arm. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, Cesca. Certainly, it’s no death knell. No more so than when the death card turns up in a tarot card reading.”

Death card? That wasn’t comforting.

“Maybelle, give it to me straight. Should I be concerned about this transit or not?”

She looked away and bit her lip, reflexive actions of a millisecond that took a dozen years off my afterlife.

“Transits can be tough, and this one could be a bear. You’ll have hard choices to make, and you should be careful in the next few weeks.”

That spine shiver became a full-body shudder. “But the transit will only affect me, right?”

The straw I grasped for dissolved when Maybelle grimaced.

“To be blunt, Cesca, I advise you to guard yourself and everyone around you. I may only be a dabbler, but my sense is that you’re in danger.”

Flipping pink flamingos. Like my life wasn’t complicated enough?

With that grand slam of cheery news, it was no wonder the next hour of bridge passed in a blur. Only Jenna bitched at me for making a bad play, but it was a good thing I’d be calling to cancel out of bridge for a few weeks. That would distance me from some of the people I cared about. I didn’t have specific plans to see Millie and the Jag Queens, so maybe they’d be out of the line of transit fire.

As for Maggie and Neil, I’d just have to do my best to keep them safe.

Then again, I doubted Starrack or the Void would be gunning for humans. Something to ask Cosmil next time I saw him.