Excerpt:
“No one will ever love me again. I shall die alone with naught to mourn my passing.”
Jessie MacCaverty stopped wiping down the bar top to raise an eyebrow at the chestnut curls belonging to the adorable and devastatingly handsome yet extremely annoying, melodramatic vampire who flounced through the door in a swirl of early autumn air and leaves before dramatically collapsing on a stool in front of her. Her bartender and apprentice Caroline rolled her blue eyes before going back to pouring beers for the amused regulars at the other end of the bar.
“Get your head off the bar. I just wiped that spot,” Jessie tucked a long, silver-gray curl behind her ear, completely unsympathetic to her friend's plight, whatever it was this time.
Nicodemus shot up on the stool, outrage and wounded betrayal reflected in his honey gold almond shaped eyes. The younger of two vampiric siblings, he was as beautiful in death as he had been in life as a long dead king’s military advisor and member of a noble family.
“You! You who are supposed to be the one I hold most dear, the most treasured of my bosom companions, have you no mercy on my poor soul? My wounded heart?”
“Not when you start talking like the bastard child of a Hallmark card and Harlequin romance, I don't.” Jessie was extremely unimpressed-- and unsympathetic.
“So be it,” he huffed, slumping back down to prop his elbows on the oak bar top that had been lovingly polished over the decades until it gleamed forever. “Take away my poet's soul. See if I care.”
Jessie beamed. “See, isn't that better? Now, do you want a drink while you calmly and sensibly tell me what's going on without all the histrionics?”
He scowled before relenting. “Fine. But none of those weird, fruity, sweet things the kids are drinking everywhere! Those colors should never have been put into anything consumable,” he shuddered in disgust.
“Caroline, make him a Manhattan, will you?” Jessie called over her shoulder.
“Sure thing, boss,” Caroline replied cheerfully, tossing her long, blonde, curly ponytail over her shoulder as she deftly flipped a martini glass over and grabbed the bottle of rye.
Nicky studied Jessie as she settled down next to him. She was tiny. Long gray curls framed a slightly oval shaped face, high cheekbones, and huge, piercing blue eyes. She lived for broken in jeans and obscure band or bar t-shirts that were so soft and well worn, they were one stitch away from falling apart. Like all witches, she stopped aging in her mid forties and was eternally in that stage of beauty when the laugh lines enhanced the late summer glow of youth.
“Now. What happened this time?” she asked, settling in for the long haul.
He heaved a melancholy sigh that sounded like it came from his toes. She resisted the urge to follow Caroline's eye-rolling example.
“I thought I met the one. He was so perfect. The gargoyle of my dreams!” Jessie choked on her tea.
“I'm sorry, the what of your dreams?”
He looked affronted. “Gargoyle! I told you about him last week!” ”
Jessie barely managed to hide a guilty look. To be fair, when he started on the love interest du jour, it could get a little... repetitive. It wasn't her fault if it was easier to tune him out and concentrate on inventory. Bits and pieces of his hours-long recitations of adoration started to come back to her.
“Oh, right! That gargoyle!”
Jared, Jessie's other apprentice and barback, a tall, young man with impeccable style and skin the color of dark chocolate and who had lined up a promising career in role playing game production, stopped with the ice bucket in midair to stare at Nicky.
“Dude! How does that even work?” He demanded, fascinated.
“Well, if you must know,” Nicky drew himself up haughtily, “Gargoyles are only stone by day when they revert to their... less attractive but more widely known visages.”
“So, what, at night they're hot?” Sometimes talking to Jared was like talking to the blunt side of a hammer and about as subtle.
“If you must put it that way, yes, they can be. Are. Usually are.” Nicky would have blushed if blood pumped through his veins. Jessie realized that he hadn't fed recently. He must really be enamored with this guy.
“Did he ghost you?” Caroline asked with a sympathetic glance. “No offense, Charlie!”
“None taken.” Charlie was the bar's resident ghost. When Mary Jo Sutton, who was still the town’s most beautiful and seductive succubus at the age of fifty, had propositioned him in the bathroom, he had neglected to mention that he had a heart condition. He swore the resulting heart attack was worth it. She still felt guilty about the whole thing.
“Ghost me? Ghost me??” Nicky was stunned, floored, flabbergasted that anyone could even consider such a thing. Jessie gave in to the urge to roll her eyes. Trying to hold back was exhausting.
“Focus!” she slapped her hand on the bar harder than she planned and instantly regretted it. “Where were you supposed to meet?”
“Well, here, tonight actually. I wanted him to meet you.”
Jessie blinked at him.
“So you're telling me that you just waltzed in here and immediately went into hysterics without even bothering to see if he was here first? I mean, we're not exactly balls to the walls over here, but it's not like we're dead either! No offense, Charlie.”
“None taken,” Charlie replied with a burp. One of Jessie's neatest (in his opinion) little pieces of spellwork involved creating a mug that acted as a portal that gave whatever it contained the ability to exist on the spiritual plane. At the moment, that happened to be beer. No one was entirely sure if the belching was necessary, but not even Jared was willing to ruin Charlie's contentment by asking and possibly ruining the experience.
Nicky looked faintly abashed. “I don't see him though! That's understandable, right? I mean, I even came late on purpose!”
Jessie dropped her head in her hand and shook it with the long suffering patience of one who realized a long time ago that their friend genuinely did not have a clue how personal relationships should go.
Nicky squirmed on his stool.
“Well... it seemed like a good idea at the time. But he didn't stick around, so it doesn't matter! And besides, I was only about fifteen minutes late!”
Jared shook his head as he walked toward the back to put away the ice bucket.
“Man, even I know better than that, and I can't keep a girl around to save my life. No offense, Charlie.”
“None taken,” Charlie replied with equanimity. He had never realized how many turns of phrase involved life or death until he himself switched from one side to the other.
“Hey, Jared, check the bathroom for trash and toilet paper on your way back, please,” Jessie called before turning back to the matter at hand.
“Admittedly, I don't really remember seeing a stranger hanging around tonight. What does he look like? And what’s his name? Also, have you tried calling him or do you have a picture, she asks, knowing that of course you didn't, you just immediately broke down into hysterics and started talking like you came off the cover of the best selling romance novel of the decade?”
Now Nicky rolled his eyes. Jessie felt herself get twitchy as she resisted the urge to pop him on the arm.
“I do not talk like that,” he protested.
“Well, no, not when you remember what year it is,” Jessie replied. Nicky pulled out his phone.
“His name is Warsaw, and unfortunately, I can't take a picture. Gargoyles turn into stone in front of a camera,” he showed her a picture of him kissing a stone... lion? dog? on the cheek while gazing coquettishly at what was obviously a phone camera perched at the end of a selfie stick.
“You carry a selfie stick? Of course you do. Why do I even ask?” She snorted in amusement.
Caroline snickered, grabbing the phone,“You're such an adorable couple! Do you think your kids would have your eyes or his density?”
“Ha ha!” Nicky glared as he snatched the phone out of her grasp. “You're so funny.” He tried-- and failed-- to regain some control of the conversation. By this point, Caroline was giggling uncontrollably, and Charlie laughed himself through his stool.
“Okay, okay, let's calm down,” Jessie grinned. “Try to call him. See what happens.”
“Fine, if it will get you all to stop cackling like a pack of hyenas,” Nicky huffed as he hit a button and held the phone to his ear.
“Wait, did you hear that?” Caroline switched from hilarity to alert in seconds. Jessie was way ahead of her.
She met Nicky's eyes with a growing sense of dread. Out of nowhere, a phone had begun to ring, a muffled sound that could only come from behind a closed door.
At the same time, they heard Jared's scream and the thud as he fell over backwards, scrambling away from the bathroom. Inside was a lifeless body that once belonged to a shy, love struck creature who had, for one brief, shining moment, thought he could have everything his heart, which would never be stone, had ever longed for and found in the deep, deep love of a whimsical, sometimes overly dramatic, slightly narcissistic vampire.
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