Page 4 of Road Trip with a Vampire
The stress of the day and the strangeness of my encounter with Peter fell away as soon as I crossed the threshold into my living room. But that niggling ache deep in my bones, the tingling in my fingertips—they did not. No,theyhad been with me when I’d woken up that morning, only growing more insistent as the day had worn on.
Sighing, I tossed my keys onto my rickety old entryway table. Then I stripped, leaving my workout clothes on the floor where they fell. Normally I prided myself on keeping my home neat and tidy. But I was tired and feeling gross from the unseasonable heat.
I’d pick my clothes up later. One perk to living alone? No one was around to see my mess.
My shower’s water pressure was god-tier and much better than you’d expect from the slightly run-down state of the rest of the building. I turned the water up as hot as it would go, then stood beneath the spray for long minutes as I scrubbed my body clean.
I tried focusing on how good it felt, willed my mind to go quiet and empty with the mindfulness skills I’d honed since becoming a yogi. Sometimes that was enough to do the trick. But it didn’t work. No matter how many deep breaths I took, no matter how much I tried to focus solely on the pleasurable sensation of hot water sluicing down my back, the physical need to expel some of my power churned through me, impossible to ignore.
After long minutes I dried off, wiping the steam from my bathroom mirror with a corner of my towel. My reflection—orZelda’sreflection—stared back at me.
Technically speaking, my body and my face were essentially the same as they’d always been. I still had the same smattering of freckles across the bridge of my nose, that same star-shaped birthmark just beneath my right ear that no amount of concealer—or magic—had ever been able to completely hide. I’d stopped dyeing my hair garish colors a few years back to let my natural auburn shine through, but my hair itself was still the same wavy texture and thickness it had been in the seventeenth century and every decade since.
Yet despite everything about me that had not changed, the person I used to be would hardly recognize the person staring back at her now.
I kept an old picture of myself on my bedside table to remind me how far I’d come. But I didn’t need to do a side-by-side comparison between that picture and my image in the mirror to note the differences. I held myself differently in my new life. Took up less space somehow, even though my body had not really changed since I’d reached adulthood.
Maybe the peace I’d found since assuming this new, magic-free identity was the reason for it. There was no more fleeing in the middle of the night because angry villagers with pitchforks had learned who and what I was. I never woke up in cornfields anymore, unable to clearly remember what had happened the night before because I’d been so intoxicated with magic and gods only knew what else when I’d passed out.
Here, there were no magical practical jokes that went so awry that the guilt would haunt me for years.
Or maybe I simply held myself differently because Northern California weather was just that damn good. I had no way of knowing.
Unfortunately, though, there were also drawbacks to my new lifestyle.
I wrapped my towel around myself and pulled shut the lacy blue curtains covering my bedroom window. If someone was out at this hour, I didn’t want to risk them seeing what I was about to do.
With a flick of my wrist, I conjured a row of six squat candles on the low table beneath my bedroom window. Another flick, and a flame the size of a match head appeared at my fingertip. Impressive work to some. To me, though, it was as easy as breathing. I was an elemental witch who could create thunderstorms on a sunny day and burn down a house with a snap of my fingers. Magicking up a few candles and then lighting them was such a tiny fraction of what I could do, it defied mathematics.
I touched the tip of my lit finger to the first candle, then moved down the line, lighting each one in turn. Then I sat on my bed and watched the candles flicker in my darkened bedroom. I already felt lighter, the ugly static pulsing through my bloodstream mellowing into a quiet, manageable hum. My hands no longer shook. If I tried to put it into words, I’d compare this feeling to the relief that comes when you finally exhale after holding your breath a few moments too long.
What I hadn’t known ten years ago, when I’d vowed to permanently leave magic and my old life behind, was that my power was too deeply rooted in me to ignore altogether. Ten years ago, I could go months without tapping into the raw energy that made up who I was. The length of time I could comfortably abstain had dwindled over the years, though. Now I couldn’t go morethan twenty-four hours without an impossible-to-ignore, intolerably jittery feeling that sometimes bordered on pain setting in.
And if I ignored it too long, sometimes things got destructive. About six months ago, the buildup inside me had grown too much, and I’d accidentally set a greeting card display on fire, right in the middle of a drugstore. Fortunately, I’d been able to act quickly, extinguishing the fire and disposing of the ruined cards before the half-asleep cashier had even noticed.
In fairness to me, the cards had been cheesy as hell. Burning them may have even done the poor cardstock they were printed on a favor. But it didn’t matter. The whole experience had rattled me so badly I’d vowed to use at least a little of my magic every day so nothing like that would ever happen again.
I wanted nothing to do with my magic anymore. But if doing a simple candle-lighting party trick every night was the compromise I had to make to keep the predictable, easy life I’d built for myself here, so be it.
The person I used to be would have been horrified at everything I’d just done. She’d have called these candles, the yoga, every single detail of my new life, a bunch of cottagecore bullshit.
But I wasn’t speaking with that person anymore.
She’d never once led me in the right direction.
Two
Two months earlier
Peter took one final lookat the paper that listed the time and place for his meeting before tearing it into six even pieces.
He tossed them into the trash and closed his eyes.
He could do this.
Peter enjoyed some of the perks of his job. The opportunities for travel were unparalleled. He got to use some of his morenoteworthyabilities in ways other situations would never allow.
And though he was not a boastful man, he knew he was good at his job. Some people in this line of work were charming, equipped with an innate social awareness that allowed them to easily slip out of sticky situations. Peter didn’t have the social skills the devil gave a cockroach. What hedidhave was a quick mind that kept him at least two steps ahead of everyone else.
