"Did he tell you if there were any other of the Enemy here?" I asked.
"No," Thais said. "But I didn't sense any others. I have always been sensitive to that sort of thing. 137
Your friend," he said, giving a jerk of his head to- ward the house. "He managed to stop something from happening a while ago. But the world has more than one point of entry. They are there waiting. Waiting for the moment when they can return."
"Did he say anything else?" I asked. "Anything at all might be important."
"Only that he's been waiting for you to come to him."
The sky was light now, moon hanging low against the horizon, looking strange and out of place so near the sunrise. We stood there in silence as the night fled from the day.
Aina sits before an old woman who has black witchy-hair and who wears gypsy colors. The air here is thick with incense and patchouli.
"Cut the cards," the woman says. Aina does so, feeling the coolness of the deck beneath her fingers.
The reading begins.
The cards lie face down-hidden and hiding their meanings. The first is turned up. The old woman gasps.
The Devil.
In a moment, he's crossed by the Moon and crowned by the Tower.
Aina shoves away from the table, unwilling to see what comes next.
"But you don't know how it ends, " the old woman says.
"Why should I want to know?" Aina says. "After all, they're nothing but a pack of cards."
18
"You must send me back," Thais said.
We'd returned to the darkened interior of my liv- ing room shortly after sunrise. Thais was not fond of the light. He said it was too cruel. 139
"Why don't you stay here with me?" I asked. Caimbeui gave me a sharp look, which I ignored.
"I cannot," Thais said. "And you know why. But there is something I will tell you. Ysrthgrathe is not the only one of the Enemy here. There is another, just as subtle and as deadly."
"But where… how…"
"Deal with Ysrthgrathe first," Thais said.
I tried to get him to tell me more, but he refused. Finally, I had no other choice than to send him back.
The house seemed empty after Thais was gone. How I wanted to spend time with him. Get to know him. Figure out his peculiarities. But I had denied myself that long ago. And there was no going into the past to fix things.
We closed up the house again. Sheets covered the furniture. The alarms were set. I didn't look back as we drove away.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
– Susan Ertz
She sleeps. And dreams. Safe happy dreams of times never lived and not imagined. They comfort her and calm her until she sinks. Sinks down into the long black darkness of her night.
Once, a human discovered what I was.
Like most curious men, he thought that the knowl- edge would gain him something. As though knowl- edge is a safe thing. Inert and powerless on its own.
It was 1998.
Fin de siecle fever was at an all-time high. There were riots and hysterical sightings of UFOs, messi- ahs, and dead celebrities. I'd bought my home in Scotland a few years earlier for an obscenely cheap price. An earldom, no less. Imagine, me a countess. It was to laugh.
I had settled into a smaller house on this property. The castle held no interest for me, being large and 'hard to maintain. I'd acquired quite a large fortune over my many eons. I could afford to take the, uh, long view on investments. There are some uses to being immortal-even if they're only financial.
It was from this vantage point that I was watching everything happening around me with great interest.
The signs were beginning. I knew it wouldn't be long before the magic returned.
So I began to gather together the things I would need to be prepared. For many centuries I'd hidden artifacts away, waiting for this time. It was on one such trip that I noticed him,
I'd just arrived from Scotland. The United States was still whole back then. The turmoil that would rip it apart was years away. Though I had spent many years in America over the last two centuries, I tried to stay away from the politics of the place. They seemed entirely too messy to me. But that's al- ways been the nature of freedom.
As I ran to catch my connecting flight to New Or- leans, I saw him. He was leaning against one of the pillars that lined the concourse in O'Hare. He wore a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans. A scuffed duf- fel bag lay at his feet like a lazy dog.
There was a look of intense concentration on his face, as though he were looking not at how I ap- peared, but at what was inside me. I didn't like it.
This was before the Awakening, and there was no way he could know what I really was for I'd found ways to disguise my true form. Oh, I appeared hu- man, for the most part. My features were more del- icate, perhaps, than most. And I was very thin. But my skin was as black as it ever was, and my hair was dark then, too. Some of the developments in the twenty-first century weren't all bad. I'd seen that blondes really don't have more fun, and I found that auburn really didn't suit me.
As I passed, the light reflected off his glasses, obscuring his eyes from me. I noticed that he had straw-colored hair sprinkled with a little gray. His beard was clipped neat and close, giving him an al- most scholarly look. But then I could see his eyes again and once more I had the sensation of being looked through.
Frowning, I turned and hurried on down the corri- dor. I wouldn't have given him another thought, ex- cept that he boarded my plane not more than fifteen minutes later.
He was the last passenger on, probably flying stand-by. But why was he on this flight? And why had he been standing there in the corridor, as though he were waiting for me?
But he passed by me, not even making eye con- tact. What an imagination I had, I thought. The idea that he was following me. It was nothing. A chance meeting of the eyes, nothing more.
Despite the air conditioning, the air was hot and soupy. The smell of beignets hit me as I walked through the airport. One of the charms of the New Orleans airport was the immediate realization that this place was like none other in the United States. That Puritan priggishness was utterly cast aside here.
Maybe it was the weather, or perhaps the strong hold the French had placed upon the place centuries before, but here there was no hand-wringing over drinking, or gambling, or eating. In short, it was heaven, of a sort.
I caught a cab to the Fairmont Hotel, a gorgeous place with nine-meter-high ceilings in the foyer, crystal chandeliers, thick rugs, and the almost phys- ical sensation of decadence. They also made the most fabulous pecan pie there. A southern confec- tion that I've never liked anywhere else.
As the elevator was closing to take me up to my room, I thought I caught a glimpse of Black T-shirt through the milling hotel guests, but I knew it must be my imagination.
The French Quarter was a five-minute walk from the hotel. New York was the only other place in America where history butts up so closely with the present. I went down Chartres Street, then cut over to Royal. The heavy smell of the olive trees in bloom sweetened the air and almost masked the odor of the river.
Lined in antique shops and small art houses, Royal was my favorite street in the Vieux Carre. Bourbon may have been more famous, but the smell of vomit every few steps always put me off. There were some beautiful homes at the eastern end of Bourbon, but they hardly made up for the foul smells and lingering air of dissipation.