La Vida Vampire

I took my test but couldn’t settle into anything else. Not the lecture I’d printed to review, or my new mystery novel either. Deciding it was time to blow the cobwebs out of my brain, I pulled a light gray hooded sweatshirt out of the closet. It matched my sweatpants and didn’t clash with my tennies. What kind of fashion do you want at two in the morning? I snagged my cell, key, and my aqua zippered change purse with the five-odd dollars I keep handy. Hey, even a vampire needs emergency money. With all I needed in my deep sweatpants pockets, I maneuvered my bicycle out of the storage area in the outer foyer and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

At night the wind usually dies down, but it had risen more in the hours I ’d been home from bridge. It blew from the eastnortheast over the bay and into town, which made it cooler than it had been earlier. The surf should be bitchin ’ when I met Neil at dawn. Rip currents might be stronger, but I could handle that.

I rode north toward the area now called uptown. Past the ancient Castillo de San Marcos, a fort of massive coquina stones that the British had barely dented when they bombarded it. Past the Huguenot Cemetery and Nombre de Dios, site of another cemetery, a chapel shrine, and a 208-foot cross erected where the first Spaniards had purportedly landed. Maggie’s under-construction Victorian was on a side street near the Fountain of Youth complex, but I didn’t go by it. I’d spent enough time underground there, listening to other people live their lives. To tell the truth, I wasn ’t sure I’d like living aboveground not fifty feet from where I’d been buried, but Maggie was excited we’d still be neighbors. It would be an insult to move away, even if I could find my own safe place within five miles of her.

I rode on, reveling in the wind, the hum of bike tires on concrete, and the quiet of the small city all but shut down for the night. I cruised to San Carlos Avenue where the carousel stood in tiny Davenport park. The carousel itself dated from the late 1920s, and I loved the brightly colored horses. I turned west for a block, hit U.S. 1, and rode back south toward King Street. The bars closed at one in the morning, most restaurants, earlier. Cars whizzed past me, but not many at this hour. Walgreens and Wal-Mart were open all night, but I hadn’t brought enough cash or a credit card to seriously shop. Besides, if I went to Wal-Mart, I’d need my truck to haul stuff home.

I turned east onto King to complete my big loop and grinned at the wind lifting my hair away from my neck. I still felt antsy, though, and pedaled by the plaza half looking for Cat. No sighting, no head-splitting meow. I wasn’t tired enough to go back home, so I decided to cross the Bridge of Lions to the island. That ’s Anastasia Island, and it’s the temporary bridge at this point. The Bridge of Lions had been deemed unsafe, but the city wanted to save it, so a temporary bridge spanned Matanzas Bay while the 1920s structure was being fixed. The island is where I used to sneak off to as a teenager. Take one of my papa’s small boats and row to the beach. Not that Matanzas Inlet was a straight shot from the ocean to the bay back then. I’d rowed around and through shoals to get to the beach, but it was worth it. Especially on a moonlit night.

The moon was dark now. Low clouds raced across the sky, and darn it, I hit a piece of glass on the sidewalk near the British Pub.

The nearest open gas station was the Gate station on 312 more than three miles away. The tire didn’t seem to be losing air, and the station was only a short detour.

One of the guys on duty at Gate was a surfer I’d seen on the beach.

“How’s it going?” he asked when I entered.

“Good, except I need to check my bike tires.”

“That’s fifty cents, and we don’t have gauges.”

Another guy glared at me as if air weren ’t worth buying, and I had to agree. I added two boxes of mints to the bill and pocketed the change and receipt. Within five minutes, I’d inspected for damage (nothing I could see), aired up a little anyway, and headed east to the St. Augustine Beach pier.

I left my bike in the covered pavilion and walked under the pier. The beach had eroded somewhat in all the hurricanes and storms of the past few years—so much for beach renourishment—but it was low tide. I sat on the fine, cool sand and let myself think about what I’d been avoiding.

Cat, Jenna’s California client, and the disappearing shack. Faeries. Magick.

Triton.