4. A Rare Moment of Reflection

Afew restless hours later, my eyes opened in the dark. Clive was at my back, his arm around me. Did vamps die during daylight hours? Clive certainly believed they did. Me, not so much. Given enough of an emergency, Clive could be roused. He wasn't on top of his game, but he was up. He believed that was due to his strength and age. I contended if he could move or speak at all, he wasn't dead.

When we were in New Orleans, I'd experimented on one of Laffite's vamps who had broken into our townhouse. Stheno had caught him and placed him in Clive's holding cell in the basement. When I did a deep dive into his mind, I found synapses firing. Slowly, sure, but there had been mental activity. I believed vamps were in a kind of regenerative stasis during the day, not dead.

All that was to explain how I knew it was daylight now. The vamps were out. The low level of resentment that hounded me every moment in the nocturne turned off when the sun rose. You'd think that would mean sounder sleep for me during the day, but you'd be wrong. The sudden absence of hostility actually made me acutely aware of how ever-present and exhausting it had been. Constantly bracing for attack was my life in the nocturne. I wanted to be with Clive, but it was a lot.

When I tried to slide out of bed, Clive's arm tensed, holding me close. See? He hated it when I left during the day. I grabbed my phone and headed to the bathroom. It was only a click past sunrise, but I was wide awake. A huge shipment of books had been delivered yesterday and I was looking forward to unpacking and processing them. I decided to use my restless energy for a good purpose.

Cleaned and braided, I headed for the closet. Whichever minion Clive had given the job to had been steadily filling the huge walk-in closet since I'd arrived. There were plenty of fancy duds mixed in, but I loved that whoever was doing the shopping had been given the memo that Sam wears jeans and long-sleeved tops every day. The jeans actually fit properly—a revelation for me—the tees were of a much finer quality, and the sweaters were soft as a dream, but they were all suitable for work.

The same went for shoes. There were pretty boots and high heels in here, but my personal shopper had given me a rainbow of running shoes, a pair to match every top or hoodie. I needed to remember to ask Clive who did the shopping. Whoever it was didn't seem to hate me.

Dressed and ready, I slipped silently through the dark house. Norma, Clive's human liaison who took care of business during the day, wasn't due to start work for a few hours. I considered standing outside Liang's door, as she did to us last night, so I could read her mind, but what would be the point? I knew she considered me riffraff, as most vamps did, and I knew she wanted to take my place in Clive's affections. None of that was worth losing my sight over.

My necromancer abilities meant I had an affinity for the dead—in this case, vampires—but it didn't come without a price. The way I understood it, invading another's thoughts or emotions threw the natural balance out of whack. In order to restore balance, a payment had to be extracted. For me, that payment took the form of temporary blindness. What I'd learned, though, I'd read in books. I needed to find a necromancer who would be willing to train me, preferably before my aunt succeeded in killing me. The problem was that necromancers were really freaking rare.

The nocturne was in Pacific Heights, only a few miles from The Slaughtered Lamb. Clive had been bugging me to drive one of his cars to work, trying to keep me safe on my commute. I'd been refusing, reminding him that I loved running. Werewolf. The thing was, though, I didn't know how to drive.

I knew I should've told him at the first suggestion, but I was embarrassed. He was this old, powerful, been everywhere, done everything, killed everyone kind of guy and I was a book nerd who'd been in hiding most of my life, one who'd been dumped in San Francisco to live or die on her own when she was seventeen. When would I have learned to drive?

Anyway, Dave had promised he'd teach me. I'd tell Clive once I knew how.

The early morning run was chilly and wet. Lots of houses along the way had holiday lights glowing steadily or just winking out. The cheery whimsy of colored bulbs lightened my mood. Too bad we didn't celebrate every season with colored lights.

When I got to the Slaughtered Lamb, I went straight to the kitchen in search of leftovers I could have for breakfast. Dave didn't disappoint. There was a covered plate of cinnamon rolls with a note reminding me to save one for Owen. Heh. We'd see.

I ate at a table in the bar, watching the ocean swirl against the wall of windows, the sky above still holding onto hints of pink. Sometimes it hit me out of the blue. After spending my childhood always on the run, always hiding, I had a home of my own, a stable one. For seven years, I'd had my very own place in the world. My aunt wasn't going to wrestle it away from me.

After I put my dirties in the dishwasher, I loaded the first few of many book boxes onto a handcart and wheeled them into the bookstore. It was like Christmas morning as I opened box after box, pulling out beautiful new books. I checked off titles against my order, entered them into the inventory software, and then organized them on carts for different sections of the bookstore.

I hadn't realized I'd been at it for hours until I felt a gentle pressure on my wards. I checked my phone. It wasn't time to open. There was a text from Owen, though, asking to be let in. He was early. I opened the ward and heard two sets of footsteps heading down.

"Sam?" Owen called.

"In the bookstore."

Owen and his mom Lydia appeared in the doorway. "Dang, you've been at it a while. What time did you get here?" Owen went to the carts and started picking up books, studying covers and reading the back copy, a true bibliophile.

"A while. Good morning, Lydia. Thank you again for your help last night." I emptied another box. "I don't know what we would have done without you and Lilah."

Lydia waved my thanks away, crossing the room to kiss me on the cheek. "I'm just sorry no one realized what was happening until after he'd attacked you."

Owen put down the books he'd been studying and came to stand next to his mom. "Listen, we're here early because Mom found you a necromancer."

"What?" My heart leapt at the idea of defending not just myself, but my friends against Abigail.

"I don't want to get your hopes up," she said, patting my arm. "She hasn't agreed to train you. She's willing to meet you, though, and that's a good sign. Owen will take over here so I can drive you."

"Oh." If she didn't think I was worthy or whatever, I was back to battling Abigail with only what I could learn from books. "When do we leave?"

"Now, dear." Lydia stood patiently, a stylish little handbag on her arm, a black trench over a sweater set and trousers, with pearls at her ears.

She made me miss my mom. Lydia was a very different woman than my mom, but the protective, mama-bear love was the same. Sometimes the pain and grief over losing mine hit like a physical blow.

"Owen, these three carts can be shelved. I haven't added the books piled on the counter into the inventory yet. Once you've freed up the carts, transfer these piles to the carts and tuck them back into the storeroom. I don't want people browsing through books I haven't processed yet."

"You got it, boss." Owen spun one of the carts and pushed it toward the memoir display.

"Thanks." I slipped an arm through my peacoat. "I'm not sure how long this will take. I either leave the wards open now or close them again until I return."

"Leave them open. No one will know to come early. I should be able to get the shelving done before Grim stomps down the steps."

Patting my pockets for my wallet and phone, I nodded to Lydia, ready as I'd ever be.

Lydia drove a safe and sensible sedan. Knowing I'd need to learn how to do this soon, I studied her every move. It wasn't until she got on the freeway that I thought to ask where we were going.

"So, who are we meeting?"

Lydia flicked her turn signal, craned to see in her rearview mirror, and then switched lanes. "Her name is Martha. She runs a bar—The Wicche Glass Tavern—in Colma, which makes sense. That's really all I know, and I had to do quite a bit of hunting to get that. She's a crone who keeps very much to herself."

"If she runs a bar, she can't be too cut off from the wicche community," I said. I'd hardly ever left my bar until recently, but all the supernaturals in town knew my name. When you run a bookstore and bar, people either know you because they're patrons, or they hear about you from friends.

"It's a fae bar. That's how I finally found her. Owen's cousin is dating a water nymph."

We weren't on the freeway for long before Lydia was exiting. "You said of course her bar was in Colma. Why? What's the significance?" Fog blanketed the town as Lydia took the offramp.

"Hmm? Which lane…" Lydia drove slowly, looking for arrows on the pavement. When she turned left, away from a mall, she responded, "It's been around since the early 1900s, an unincorporated area of nothing but cemeteries. I remember hearing, even now, there are more dead than living in Colma. There are houses and stores now, but this town is still known for its dead."

The road she drove down was filled with single-story mortuaries, religious supply shops, florists, a sandwich shop or two, a couple of bars. The street ended at a cemetery, one that went on as far as I could see, curving over a distant hill and fading from view. There was a guidepost on the sidewalk with the names of a few nearby cemeteries and arrows pointing in different directions. A Japanese cemetery was to the left, a memorial park directly ahead.

Lydia pulled to the curb in front of an out-of-business monument maker's storefront. The windows had a light washing of white paint on the inside, but you could still see the silhouettes of sample tombstones in the dark building.

She checked the address on her in-dash GPS system and then continued around the corner, pulling into a parking place at the Colma Historical Society. When she turned off the engine and got out, I followed, confused. Where the heck was this bar?

"Keep your head down, dear," Lydia whispered. "We're going for solemn and bereaved."

Right before we turned the corner back onto the street we'd driven down, she made a sharp turn, walking through—quite literally through—the rickety Employees Only gate, leading to the back of the out-of-business monument shop. It was a ward, like the ones at my own place. At the Slaughtered Lamb, mundane humans walked down the public steps to the Land's End overlook. Supernaturals winked out of sight at a turn in the path, continuing down the stairs and into my bookstore and bar.

Here, any passerby who was interested enough to look over the six-foot wooden fence would see an enclosed construction area with a chipped block of granite and a small, rusting forklift that had already been stripped for parts.

I followed Lydia through the closed wooden gate and found myself in a fairytale courtyard. A forest surrounded the clearing on three sides. White twinkle lights were strung from tree to tree overhead, lighting the sturdy wooden tables and chairs that filled the space. At the far end of the courtyard stood the biggest tree I'd ever seen in real life. It had to be at least thirty feet wide, with massive, gnarled roots that rose up through the ground, snaking around the dining area, separating it from the encroaching forest. Its branches, covered in thick green leaves with wisteria-like purple blossoms hanging down, formed a kind of canopy over the tables.

At the base of the tree was a split door, the bottom half closed with the top thrown open. Although it was midday out on the street, it was twilight here, with fireflies dancing in the surrounding forest. What I could see of the room beyond the door was dark, but light flickered in the curtained window to the right of the door, as though there was a fire banked inside.

"Hello?" Lydia ventured.

"Have a seat," a whispery voice responded. A moment later, the curved form of a woman who couldn't lay claim to fewer than a hundred years appeared at the door. Her thick white hair was in a long braid that hung over her shoulder. She was barely tall enough to look over the half door, but when she met my gaze, I stilled, caught in a fight or flight response to the power she held.

"You stay here," she said to Lydia. "We'll bring you some tea while you wait." Turning her gaze back to me, she said, "And you, girl, come with me."