Page 5 of Road Trip with a Vampire
After seventy years in this profession, though, it was getting old.
Travel was great. But endless travel? Less so. He liked plants,had even tried growing some, but a person with no real home had little chance of keeping anything alive.
To say nothing of all the meetings. He’d had no idea just how many interminablemeetingsthere would be when he’d gotten his first contract. If he’d wanted to spend the rest of his existence in meetings, he’d have chosen a different profession.
Maybe he could retire after this next job was over. The Pacific Northwest sounded delightful. Beautiful but overcast. That last bit was important. He’d had enough exposure to sunlight to last several painful lifetimes.
But he didn’t have time right now for daydreams. He had to be focused, he had to bePeter Elliott—the man who inspired complete trust in his employers and always got the job done.
He glanced at his watch. He still had ten minutes before he was expected downstairs.
He took a last look at himself in the floor-length mirror in his hotel room and nodded approvingly at his reflection.
Peter knew, after countless furtive glances shot his way from across crowded dance floors and airports and restaurants over the years, that people found him attractive. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a body people could tell looked good beneath his clothes was athing, apparently.
Especially when he wore an expensive suit like this one.
If it were possible to do so, Peter would thank the human he’d once been for doing enough regular manual labor to give himself a torso and arms that would be muscular and sculpted for eternity.
If people found him attractive? Fine. It made his work easier.
Satisfied with his appearance, Peter glanced at his watch again.
Time to go.
He hoped this new assignment would be worth his time.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
In. Hold.Out. Hold.
It was just after six, and I sat cross-legged in one of the pink plastic chairs in Yoga Magic’s lobby. My first students would be arriving soon, but there was still time for me to get in my morning breathing exercises.
Box breathing had been my introduction to living with mindfulness back when I’d taken my first Yoga for Beginners class with Becky at her old studio. I’d only wandered in that day for lack of anything better to do with my time and had still beenGrizeldain all the ways that mattered except for name.
Becky, of course, didn’t know who or what I really was. Witches and vampires existed in a precarious equilibrium with mortal humans. The more people who knew we existed, the riskier it was for all of us. Becky was one of my closest friends in my new life, but like with all human acquaintances I’d made over the years, I kept her largely in the dark.
Regardless, I never could have imagined how much what Becky had taught me that first day would change my life. Breathing exercises were second only to my candle ritual in effectiveness when it came to managing my symptoms. The sun was now halfway up the horizon, and I gazed at the pinks and purples of the lightening sky as I again turned my focus inward towards the flow of oxygen through my body.
In. Hold.Out. Hold.
In. Hold.Out. Hold.
I could feel my mind going empty, releasing. The energy that had built up within me overnight seeped out with every exhale.
After five more minutes, I was ready to start the day.
I stood up and pulled my hair into a ponytail so it would stay out of my way. The last thing I needed was for it to be plastered to my face and neck while I taught. It was supposed to be another scorching day, and the building’s insulation was designed for coastal California weather, not this heat.
I was just unlocking the doors to our three yoga rooms—whimsically named Maple, Walnut, and Sweetgum, after Becky’s favorite deciduous trees—when the Early Crew began arriving. They wore matching Lululemon outfits and designer flip-flops like team uniforms and carried their rolled-up mats beneath their arms.
The women in the Early Crew were all in their fifties and sixties and had left other, very different lives to start over in this beautiful part of the world. They’d been some of our first students when we’d opened the studio and were still among our most dedicated. Back in the earliest days, when Becky and I hadn’t been sure Yoga Magic would survive in a region where new yoga studios sprang up like weeds, they’d been our bread and butter.
Katie Chadwick was the first student in the door. Katie was a fifty-eight-year-oldrecovering attorney, as she called herself, with long, fashionably graying brunette hair that I’d never seen out of a high ponytail. She’d sold her law practice in San Francisco nearly ten years ago to move up here for what she’d hoped would be a less complicated life. She was a bookseller now at Redwoodsville’s used bookstore.
I wasn’t sure whether Katie’s new life wasactuallyless complicated. There was an asshole ex she’d left when she’d fled San Francisco who still caused her grief. But Katie’s word of mouthin our earliest days had played no small part in the studio’s continued success. I owed it to her not to pry.
“Is Morning Bikram Yoga happening in the Walnut Room?” she asked.
