Page 101 of We Were Eternal Once

They sing and people dance.

They sing and people cry.

Then the bar closes for the night, and the people get up and leave. They mill in the street and slap each other on the back. They laugh and tell stories under the haze of a single lamp.

“If you liked that, you’d love New Orleans,” says a woman from the shadows. Her piercing green eyes remind me of someone from long ago and I take a step back.

“Hold it, there,” she says, raising her hand.

“Who are you?” I demand.

“My friends call me Chickadee,” she says.

“I am not your friend.”

“Ah, in that case you can call me Naomi. If you’re trying to settle down here, I’m who you go through.”

“I am not trying to settle down,” I tell her.

“Good. Because there are rules, you see? And if you’re just passing through town, say on the way to New Orleans, then there is no harm played. But if you snack on any of them folks,”—she nods to the crowd still outside the bar, chatting and laughing—“you won’t make it to New Orleans.”

“Who made you?” I ask.

“You’re a rude thing, aren’t you? All you Europeans are. Don’t you have enough problems on your side of the pond to keep busy? Always gotta come over here and spread your rudeness.”

I turn to go to my car. If I want to make it to the next town with time to find a place to sleep, I need to leave now.

“Wait,” the other vampyr says. “Why do you care about my maker? You looking for trouble?”

“Trouble? I am passing through.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know.”

She eyes me up and down a few times, her face screwed up as if deciding something. Finally, she sighs and nods. “Look, just don’t be eating the locals. They’re family, and they have my protection. I am not kind to those who hurt my family.”

“New Orleans, you said?” I ask.

“Yeah. Lots of music, sights to see, tourists that no one misses…if you get my drift.”

“How far from here?”

“A few hours. You can make it before sunrise.”

“Thanks, Chickadee.”

“Oh, we friends now? How’s that so when I don’t know your name?”

“Melinoë,” I say.

“I’ll call you Noë, then. Seeing’s as we’re friends.” Then she turns to go back into the bar, and I turn my car toward New Orleans.

New Orleans, 2000

Salon of Shadows is a stupid name. I told the vampyr—who refers to himself as a vampire—that when he invited me one evening. I saw the others on my hunts, felt their watchful eyes on my back. If they saw me they waved or nodded, a sort of familiarity they did not earn.

The vampyrs of the United States were all that way, at least the ones made here. They felt connected by the experience of being one of us, as if that was enough to approach a stranger and invite her to a secret vampyr den.