‘Florence?’ Cam says, so loudly that it’s obviously not the first time he’s called my name. It makes me jump, shocking me back to awareness. When I look at him, there’s a faint smile on his face, a small twist of concern to it. ‘You ok?’
I nod, stalling for time while my thoughts quieten. ‘Just in my own world for a moment,’ I manage to say.
I notice the man behind the bar then. He’s one of us; I can tell by his aura. We all have it, but his is faint, just flickers of light that halo around him as he moves. Tattoos span the length of his arms and stretch up his neck, beyond his collar, a stark contrast to his pale skin.
‘This is Bram,’ Cam says, as I consider the tall stranger. ‘He’s a friend of Elias.’
That tracks.A friend of Eliasmight as well be shorthand forundead. He must surely know every one of us in the world. I’ve never met a vampire with tattoos before, though. We tend to heal so fast that the ink doesn’t stay put. I’m just trying to puzzle Bram out when he grins, revealing the worst pair of fake fangs I’ve ever seen.
I can’t help my hoot of surprised laughter, and at the sound of it, he smiles more widely.
‘It’s the teeth, isn’t it?’ he asks, green eyes sparkling as I nod. It just seems so unlikely that a real vampire with presumably real fangs would need to wear such terrible fakes.
And that’s the moment I realise what he’s doing.
‘It’s actually kind of brilliant,’ I say, returning his smile. ‘Between that and the tattoos, you almost had me fooled.’
He hums, a low rumble which I can feel vibrate through my body. ‘They were pre-existing,’ he explains. ‘I’m only a newbie– just about sixteen years in.’
That surprises me. He has such a presence about him that he could be ancient. It definitely explains how faint his aura is, though. Cam must be delighted. He’s always been the most recently turned of anyone we’ve known, but he looks like an old hand now.
‘Anyway,’ Bram says, sliding a drink to each of us over the bar. ‘Welcome to Bitten.’ His face turns serious, dark brows pinching. ‘You’re safe here. With us.’
He doesn’t clarify, but I know what he’s getting at. He doesn’t mean physically safe– we’re immortal, after all, with far more physical strength than the average human– but more that there’s a perfect cover here for us to be our real selves. To let our guard down for a little while. It’s a luxury not often afforded to us. Not in public, anyway.
I accept the glass of red– actual wine this time– and lift it in a toast. Cam does the same and we clink our glasses gently, my eyes darting over his shoulder to take in the bar beyond.
It’s predominantly black, but in such a way that it feels styled, with embossed relief on the walls and rich velvet details. The bar top is more rustic, a worn-in wood that makes me think of church pews. And there’s a stained-glass window fashioned into the wall at the far end of the bar which is glowing somehow, despite the fact that the sun set as we were walking here.
I accidentally catch the eye of the raven-haired woman working further down the bar and she smiles widely at me before turning back to the customer she’s serving. I try not to stare but I can’t help being fascinated by the whole look she’s got going on. She dresses like Queen Victoria in the 90s.
1890s, I mean. Obviously.
Movement catches my eye on my other side, and I turn to see Josiah’s ghost open a door just next to the wall of ruched velvet and vanish through it. It draws my spine up straight, a buzz of awareness flooding through me. I’m still looking at Bram, trying to make it look like I’m listening to the small talk he’s making with Cam, but every scrap of my attention is laser-focused on that door. It’s him, I’m sure of it.
In my periphery, I see Josiah re-emerge and stride back behind the bar, pushing through that same old door at the very end of the bar. But a few moments later he’s there again, clutching something small and shiny in his hand as he disappears through the ornate door a second time.
That’s when I know I have to follow him. It’s a decision I make in a split second and I excuse myself, slipping off the barstool I’m sitting on. My mind races as I follow him, weaving through the scatter of people drinking and chatting until I’m standing in front of the door I saw him vanish through.
God only knows what’s behind here, what could be of such grave importance to someone from the spirit world that they would need to visit twice in such quick succession. I brace myself as I reach for the handle. It does kind of look like the entrance to a crypt, but when I swing it open it becomes clear that it just leads to the toilets.
Now, I don’t spend a great deal of time hanging about in toilets, having minimal need to use them, but the last I knew, they weren’t a common hangout spot for the spirit world.
Although now that I’m looking, there is another door a little further down the corridor. It doesn’t have a handle, just a small metal lock with a key poking out of it and a faint glow of light underneath. It sounds like there’s acommotion in there, a series of soft thumps followed by muttered curses, which confuses me even more.
In fact, I’m still trying to figure out what the hell could be happening when Josiah himself stumbles out of the door, hugging a stack of toilet rolls to his chest as if they were a baby. When he sees me, he stops, rearing back in surprise. Astrange expression crosses his face before he masks it with the faint hint of a grin.
Does he recognise me, I wonder? I wait for the sound of his voice in my ear, but it doesn’t come. So instead, I stare. I stare so long and so hard that it should embarrass me, but it doesn’t. It can’t, I’m too locked in for such trivialities.
I take him in: the sharp cut of his jawline, softened only by the scruff of his stubble; the chaos of his hair, falling every which way on his head; those blue-green eyes, which always reminded me of the water. He looks so familiar that it makes my heart feel like it’s burning in my chest.
I want to hug him and slap him and kiss him until my legs give out, and shout at him for taking stupid risks and depriving us both of our happy ever after. My heart, which has been silent for years, suddenly kicks out a few beats before it fades to a low hum. The whole thing is so overwhelming that I’m not at all sure what to do with myself.
‘Can I help you?’ he asks. His voice sounds a little different from the voice in my head, the voice I remember him having, but I suppose that’s to be expected. It has been well over a hundred years, after all, which he has spent… well, dead. It throws me off so much that for a moment or two, I don’t process what he said.
Can I help you?
Is he joking? Those are really his first words to me after seeing me in the flesh for the first time since the nineteenth century. Something like anger bubbles in the pit of my stomach. I’m not sure what I was expecting from him, but it was sure as hell more romantic than‘Can I help you?’