“Beri, maybe he isn’t here,” Blythe whispered, biting her lip. She’d started shuffling from one foot to another.
“He’s here,” I said. “But I don’t think we’re meeting a vampire. Do you smell that?”
She nodded, still bopping on her heels. “I smell flowers. Sweet ones.”
“Yeah, lots of them.” As I spoke a bee buzzed around my ear. Then another. I lifted an eyebrow, surprised. They’d been coming out at night more and more and without the sun or bright lights, I didn’t know how they were managing to fly. Or even live in this winter temperature. They were cold-blooded insects.
“Not the damn bees.” Elsa, who unfortunately was afraid of the insects that loved me, hunched her shoulders. “Not now.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. Couldn’t really do anything about it. The bees would come, no matter where I went. They followed Castor too. “I know a little about flowers and these aren’t the types people put in a regular garden. That lemony scent is from evening primroses.” I inhaled deeply and smiled. “The jasmine-like smell comes from nicotianas… I’m not sure of the others until I see them, but no vampire I’ve heard of tends gardens.”
Of course, these were night-blooming flowers…
“You’re saying there’s a garden in this warehouse? And nicotianas?” Blythe’s shuffling grew faster. “How do you know about nicotianas? Are you into flowers or something?”
“Or something. I thought witches were into nature too.” I narrowed my eyes at her, then hissed. “What’s your problem? Stop dancing around like that.”
“Can’t help it. I’m nervous. When I’m nervous I have to pee. I told you that before.”
Phro snorted, earning her the usual glare from Blythe.
I briefly closed my eyes. “So go pee. Hurry.”
She looked around. “Not here.”
I followed the path of her gaze, seeing some large crates about five feet away. We’d hear, of course, but oh well. “Don’t know what your problem is. Go behind those boxes. I’ve gone in worse places.”
She just shook her head and continued her own personal rendition of the pee-pee dance. Kind of a sideways jump with a quick, tapping boogie. I’d seen similar moves in whacked-out crowds at techno concerts. Not that I often frequented techno concerts, but it was surprising how many of the night creatures loved the music.
I was about to insist she scoot behind the crates when there was a soft
click
and the door swung open.
Chapter Two
I pushed the door open wider, expecting to see a vampire like the last one I’d had the misfortune to cross, but no one was there.
There was a garden all right. I stepped into the room and forgot how to breathe.
Never had I seen anything more beautiful than this night-blooming, man-made paradise. Huge glass panels formed the ceiling, so crystal clear it looked as if nothing stood between me and the sky. And those suckers had to be thick to survive up there, but they didn’t seem thick. They looked as fragile as paper. Ordinary means didn’t support those slabs of glass.
With the thought came the crawly sensation I get when there’s magic in the air. I put my hand out to stop Blythe, who was wandering from flower to flower, smelling them so hard I expected her to pass out any sec. Guess she forgot she had to pee. “Shh. Be still.”
I held out a hand to keep Castor and Elsa behind me as well, then closed my eyes to begin peeling back the dimensional layers. I’d become so good at this I could do it fast now. Opening my eyes, I looked around, yet still saw nothing. Nothing except a faint stream of glittering dust in the air. I frowned. The magic here had a taste. Woody, a little green, natural with a hint of dark, dark acid. “This isn’t vampire magic.”
“How can you tell?” Elsa had come up beside me.
“Tastes kind of like green bananas.”
Blythe stopped sniffing flowers. “You can taste magic? But you aren’t a witch.”
“I noticed. Can’t usually taste magic either. Can you?” I asked.
She shook her head no. “Some of us can. I can only feel it. There is magic here, but it could be all this healthy nature. Just look at the glorious flowers.” She spread her arms wide and pirouetted.
Frida, her seven-foot, male spirit guide, sneezed. Blythe hadn’t come up with a new name for him yet. I kind of hoped she didn’t. Frida was funny.
“I would expect vampire magic to be darker, sharper. Not something lush like this.” A huge beehive filled one corner of the warehouse. I hoped Elsa didn’t spot it, but she couldn’t miss the large number of bees present. Here it was warm and well lit. “Yet…” Turning my attention to the garden, I was struck again at the precision of the planting, the mingling of scents. This was a special kind of garden. An evening garden. The kind put together by someone who loves the night. All the flowers were night bloomers. Evening primroses with their yellow flowers. Moonflowers climbed trellises around the room and my eyes flew open wide as I finally realized the unique scent that pushed its way through all the others.
Ah, there was the anomaly.
The corner of my mouth turned up as I walked over to the plants. Their beautiful, white trumpet-like flowers were all open to the night sky.
Datura.
A well-known hallucinogenic plant. Datura’s scent is hard to explain, but it isn’t like the scent of any other flower I know. And these were slightly different—beyond sweet, like candy…
Eyes still wide, I followed the dangerous flowers with my gaze. Row after row—I’d never seen this many in one place at a time.
“Oh, what is that heavenly smell?” Blythe, apparently pee-less now, danced her way to the center of the flowers. She turned a full circle and took in a deep, deep breath. “I’ve never smelled datura flowers this strong before. Oh my. It’s just lovely, lovely, lovely.”
Yep, they were datura flowers all right, and Blythe was already higher than a dotty-on-the-verge-of-psychic witch should go. Smelling the flowers shouldn’t make her high, but I had the feeling these weren’t the ordinary plants. Something else was with us—I felt its presence—but I didn’t let on that I knew we were no longer alone.
Phro walked up to stand with me. She wore a skin-tight, short black dress. Pearls snuggled against her neck in a choker that met in the center of her throat to form a V. Her black hair was pulled tight and gathered in a bun on top of her head. She watched the spinning witch for a second, a slow grin forming at one end of her mouth. “Back in my day, we used this as a poison. Maybe we should get the little twit out of here.”
“Thought Fred was the twit,” I murmured. Did I mention that datura can be deadly as hell?
“He’s not here.”
I didn’t like thinking about that. I hadn’t seen my true spirit guide—or the person I’d grown up
believing
to be my true spirit guide—since before the battle with the Dweller on the Threshold. “She’ll be all right for a minute. She’s not eating the stuff. Jeez, I bet she can’t even take aspirin. She’s obviously very susceptible if the smell alone is making her, uh… What is she doing now?”
Castor’s grin was huge. “Jumping jacks?”
We watched her spunky exercise routine for a sec.
I pulled them a little ways from Blythe. “This doesn’t feel like vampire magic, and this garden is screaming fairy or pixie. Just look at how healthy everything is. It’s in a warehouse, not out in the open. It takes a special kind of skill and magic to create something like this inside a building. And I can’t imagine anyone but a drug dealer growing this much datura. I’m not sure we have the right place.”
“You might.”
The new voice didn’t make me jump. I’d learned early in my investigations that it’s better to let the creature show itself first. Let it think the first move was its choice. It never was, but being prepared and aware was the way to go.
There was a slight buzzing near my ear and before I knew what was happening, a few low lights clicked on around the room. I saw a brief glimpse of tiny, flapping wings and I followed them to a corner where someone had set up a home. I tilted my head and took in the very human, albeit small, items arranged on a large, formal dining table. No pixies I’d ever met went for lush, human surroundings.
Especially, red. Lots of red, lush, human surroundings.
When the speaker finally landed, I got it.
Then wished I hadn’t.
I opened and closed my mouth, trying to wrap my head around what I saw. I stared—couldn’t help it. “Uh, you’re, um…you’re—”
“I am the oldest of my kind.” He interrupted in a voice of mini-thunder.
“And the smallest,” Phro said. Thank goddess the vampire couldn’t hear her.
“I didn’t think fairies could be turned into vampires.” I’d found my voice.
“I am not a fairy.” He sniffed. “I am a sprite. You said yourself it takes a special kind of skill and magic to create beauty such as this.” He waved his hand toward the garden. “You think a fairy could do this?”
A vampire sprite. I mean, really, could anyone imagine something like this could exist? He was maybe half a foot tall, with pale-green skin and round, black eyes. Tiny fangs protruded over a nearly missing lower lip. I had to squint to see them. He was actually wearing a cape.
A cape!
That whole Bela Lugosi thing was just movie fiction. Real vampires liked to blend. Their survival depended on it.
Of course, this little guy couldn’t blend if he tried.
I eyed the tiny tuxedo, the stink-bug-colored skin. He’d even slicked back the miniscule cap of turquoise hair on his head!
Oh, this was just plain creepy.
“How do you think he feeds?” Phro asked, curious as always. She bent over the creature. “His mouth is so small. Maybe he feeds on bugs or something.”
I wrinkled my nose. The same thought had just occurred to me. What the hell would a sprite vampire eat? Sprites were creatures of nature. Kind, sometimes mischievous, but inherently good. Sprites despised anything evil.
He had to be one mixed-up little fucker.
“Are you going to stare all day or are you going to ask me the questions? My time is very valuable you know.” He snapped his cape. “I assume you are here because you have need of my great wisdom. It was only your recognition of my wonderful garden that got you inside. When you acknowledged my skill”—again, he waved his hand toward the flowers—“I decided you worthy of a few questions.”
Blythe wandered over to join us. She had this baffled, stupid expression on her face, obviously still stoned out of her head. She grinned at me. “I can’t find my purse. I have cookies in my purse. Cookies and Tic Tacs.”
“Okay,” I said and reached out to pat her arm. I watched her look change as she caught sight of the sprite. Those already huge eyes went global, her mouth dropped open and what little color she’d had bleached away.
Hoping she’d stay stunned silent, I turned to the sprite. “Our time is valuable as well,” I said. “So, I’ll make this quick. We need your blood.”
Turquoise eyebrows that resembled pencil smudges lifted. “That’s a switch.” He flew over to a chair and sat. It was red of course. He seemed to favor the color. I didn’t wonder why. He spread his cape over the arms of his chair.
I glanced at Blythe. She was still standing dumbstruck. Her lips started moving and I felt a clutching in my chest. What was the idiot doing? Was she muttering a spell right now? Her magic had been warped since the Dweller battle and it hadn’t been so great before. I glanced around just in time to see a tiny table catch fire.
“Oh my goodness!” Blythe said in a breathy voice. “I’m so sorry.” She rushed forward to put it out, slapping at the table with her hands. I rolled my eyes and plucked a rug off the table, er, floor, and draped it over the fire. It went right out.
The little sprite, all affectations gone, fluttered into the air to assess the damage. He floated around the table, clucking, wringing his hands. “That rug cost me fifteen thousand dollars.”
“No it didn’t,” I said. With some people, or beings, lies are obvious. To me anyway.
He turned, his little face furious. “It was made especially for me over three hundred years ago by the fairy queen herself.”
“Then why did you have to pay for it?”
He opened his mouth and shut it. His eyes narrowed to mere slits. “Just tell me why you want my blood, then get that witch out of here.”
Elsa had stuck her gun back into her pants. It would have been interesting to watch her try and hit the little vamp. She crossed her arms. “Awfully small to be giving orders, aren’t you?”
He sneered. “I was on this planet before your ancestors evolved.”
Phro snorted and I sent her a warning glare. Yeah, he couldn’t see her, but if she got riled enough, she’d pull energy from his healthy garden and start shifting his small furniture around.
The vampire tilted his head, his attention suddenly more intense than before. “You are a seer.” He stood and walked to the edge of the table. “I knew, of course, there are spirit guides in the room with you. I know there’s one I can almost see, which makes her not of spirit but something else.” He squinted in Phro’s direction before his eyes went wide. “Is that a goddess?”
“You can see her?” I asked taking a step forward.
“You can see me?” Phro asked, also moving forward.
He stared for several seconds. We all held our breaths—even Blythe who I worried might take it to extremes. “I can manipulate dimensional sight some. Takes a second for my eyes to adjust. I can see you. And hear you now. And I think I know who you are. Goddess of the moon, right?”