PART I

John Lubbek sat at the desk of his small sixth floor San Francisco office, looking out the window at the overcast sky. Today the morning fog had overstayed its welcome, wrapping its wet fingers around the buildings in the financial district and casting the busy streets below in a hazy, solemnent gray as it fought against being burned away by the afternoon sun. In the distance he could hear the fog horns in the marina lowing to each other quietly across the bay, just like they had on that wet summer afternoon when he had first stepped out the doors of the McAllister street courthouse, riding on the high of having won his first defense.

It was such a shame that on the anniversary of that day, he was sitting in his office with nothing to do.

The first few days of respite had been nice: he'd finally been able to catch up on his paperwork, and had even managed to read through the backlog of Legal Monthly that had been piling up on his desk. But it was coming up on his second week without a new case, and he was starting to get restless. He didn't need the money, of course--decades of careful financial planning ensured that he wouldn't have to work at all if he didn't want to, and he wasn't the money-hungry type anyway--but he knew the kind of boredom that arose from being idle for too long, and the type of thoughts that came with it. Even his last few cases had been hard-pressed to keep his interest. In his latest one, it had been clear from the onset that his client had been discriminated against for being Genetically Diverse, and the plaintiff's attorney had settled with them out of court after a minimal amount of hassle; it had tainted the satisfaction of another victory with the hollowness of easily-earned success.

A sharp ring pulled him out of his thoughts, and he picked up his work phone eagerly at the prospect of a potential case. "John Lubbek, attorney at law."

"Hello John, hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Dezzie, it's nice to hear your voice." He'd been hoping for a client, but a friend was a welcome distraction nonetheless. "We've missed seeing you at the past couple of Sanguinarian Society meetings--where have you been?"

She sighed. "It's a long story, and...well, I'd rather talk to you in person if you don't mind."

"Not at all! We can meet up later tonight if you're not busy, go out for a drink or two--"

"Actually, I was wondering if I could meet you in your office?"

"...Sure, what time were you thinking?"

"Would right now work?" A shadow appeared against the frosted glass of his office door, followed by a knock.

John put his phone down, hiding a smile as he opened the door. "That was quite fast," he commented as she stepped inside.

While some would call Dezzie's look outdated, John found it comforting: the heather gray pencil skirt and blush-pink blouse peeking from underneath her heavy wool coat reminded him of his Weimar years, long nights spent in hazy cabarets and dancing to muted jazz with strangers. As her dark round face smiled up at him from under the brim of her maroon cartwheel hat, he knew she felt the same familiarity in his broad-lapelled pinstripe suit, two kindred spirits of a bygone era thrown into the modern world.

"I was coming up from the lobby when I called," she admitted cheekily, tucking her phone away into her pocket with a white-gloved hand.

"I'm surprised you took that chance," he said, offering her the client's chair before sitting back down at his desk. "I'm usually pretty busy, you know."

"I know." She took off her hat, revealing a head full of pincurls. "But I also knew you weren't busy right now."

"Oh?"

"You wouldn't have picked up the phone if you were."

John laughed. "Too true, my dear." He leaned back in his chair, smiling at her from across his desk. "So, how have you been? Last I heard, you were helping your sister recover from her broken hip, is she doing better?"

Her face was all the answer he needed.

"Oh, Dezzie, I'm so sorry." Augusta had been Dezzie's only living relative, and he knew what it was like to suddenly lose someone so close.

"I'm sorry I haven't made it to the Society meetings," she murmured, "but after she passed last month, I just...well, you know how some of the others feel about getting too emotionally attached to humans."

"It's alright, I understand." He reached across the desk and gave her hand a squeeze. "If there's anything I can do--"

"Actually, that's part of why I'm here." She reached into her purse and pulled out a manilla folder. "This is her will--I'm the executor."

John opened the envelope and began to peruse the documents. "It looks like you're the main beneficiary as well," he noted. "Have you filed the petition yet?"

"I can't, which is why I came to see you first."

"Why not?" He raised an eyebrow.

She flipped to the first page, pointing to the first line. "What's the name that's written there?"

"Desdemona Lauralyn Schifflit." He looked back up at her. "That is your name, isn't it?"

"Not legally, it isn't." Dezzie reached again into her purse, handing him her driver's licence. Deslyn Amelia Schaeffer, it read.

"I see." This was a bit of a problem. "I'm assuming the Covinus forced you to change your name?"

She nodded. "That's not the only issue either. Look at the date of birth."

"1985? That's what, seventy five years too young?"

"Eighty, actually--I was born in 1909."

"And I'm guessing you don't have a copy of the name change documents."

She shook her head. "I got documents from the Scriptorium, not the county clerk."

"Hm." John laced his fingers together in contemplation. "What state were you born in?" he asked. "Maybe we can dig up some birth records for you and doctor the date on them."

She laughed bitterly. "John, I was born in the same sharecropper's shack that my grandmother was a slave in," she said. "Didn't no one care enough to give us the time of day, let alone birth certificates."

John nodded; it had been a long shot anyway. "Well, I hate to suggest it, but it might just be easiest if we make the documents ourselves. I know of someone that might be able to get you a decent copy, and as long as it doesn't have to go under too much scrutiny, it should be fine."

"That might be a problem, then." She reached into her purse again and handed him a legal envelope. "I got this a few days ago in the mail."

John frowned, immediately recognizing the letterhead as being from one of the largest litigation firms in the Bay Area. "Well, this certainly complicates things a bit," he said, skimming through the text.

"I hate to ask, but I couldn't quite make sense of what these people are after--think you can translate from the legalese a little for me?"

"It's a notice of caveat," he said, laying the paper flat on his desk so they could both see. "Apparently this Mr. Aubrey Schifflit believes that the will isn't legitimate, so he's filing a motion to contest on grounds of...let's see here...'undue influence based on suspicious circumstances', 'lack of testamentary capacity', and 'fraud'. Quite ambitious, if you ask me." John doubted they had actually filed all three; the way the document was worded made it clear the opposing counsel was hoping to scare Dezzie into acquiescing before having to step foot in court.

"That gator-faced four-flusher tryin' to get me to go like I'm some kind of dumb Dora." She smacked her hand against the side of the table as if it had been what had slighted her. "He can't scare me away that easy, I'll tell you what."

"You know this Aubrey, I assume?" asked John, hiding his amusement at her colorfully out-of-date outburst.

"I sure wish I didn't. He's my sister's good-for-nothing grandson, is who he is, and it looks like he's still jumping salty that he got cut out of her will."

"Does he know who you are?"

"Aggie told him when I moved in with her ten years ago--despite my telling her not to, mind--but she insisted, him being 'family' and all."

"So I'm assuming he knows you're a vampire, then."

"What he's been told and what he believes are two different things, and he believes I'm a fraud, apparently." She shook her head. "It was his own damn fault he did the one thing she promised would get him disinherited, and now he thinks he can just walk right in and claim all her things as his, stupid boy."

John refrained from indulging his curiosity as to what exactly Aubrey had done, instead turning his attention to the bigger problem. "Well, I hate to say it, Dezzie, but unless we find some way of proving you to be Desdemona Schifflit, your grand-nephew has a solid chance of winning his case." He folded up the letter and handed it back to her. "Unless you need the money that badly, I'd say it's just not worth the trouble."

A sudden desperate look flashed across her eyes. "Isn't there anything we can do? I can't just let him walk all over Aggie's wishes like that, John, not like that."

"What's this really about, Dezzie?"

She leaned over and flipped through the pages of the will until she reached a section titled Disposition of Property. "Do you see this entry here?"

John followed her finger. I leave all works, rights, royalties, original materials, and manuscripts both published and unpublished belonging to Desdemona Schifflit and Mildred Hayes in my possession, as well as the lithograph signed by Carl Van Vechten, to my sister Desdemona Schifflit. If she does not survive me, the aforementioned assets are to be donated to the Museum of the African Diaspora of San Francisco, CA.

"You had your picture done by Van Vechten?" He could understand why she would want that back, at least.

She nodded. "When I got turned, I had to leave everything behind. I thought it was gone for sure, but my sister kept all of it over the years--every single scrap of paper, every photograph, all my journals, the articles I wrote for the local newspaper..." she trailed off for a moment, then sighed. "More importantly, she kept all of my letters to Millie."

"Did she keep the ones...?"

"Where I told her about becoming a vampire?" Dezzie nodded. "Why do you think my sister believed me when I told her? She had it all in writing from my wife." She sighed. "And before you ask, no I can't steal them back--she kept them in her lock box at the bank."

"Well this is quite the problem," murmured John.

"Any thoughts on what we can do?"

"Well, my own moral thoughts on the issue aside, It's not a good idea to forge documents for a court of law, not when there are large sums of money involved." He tapped the will. "Even if they were to pass a close scrutiny--and there's no guarantee of that--there'd be a paper trail to worry about covering up."

"What if," she began slowly, "you just proved that I'm actually Desdemona?"

"And how would we explain your age?"

"I could claim to be GD," she countered. "Surely the court would buy that?"

"I'm not sure they would, Dezzie, not without some kind of documentation."

"The letters," she said. "They have my name on them, my signature--I can prove my identity that way, along with the pictures."

"Signatures and pictures can be forged," he countered. "Besides, the letters clearly say you're a vampire, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to get them back in the first place." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't see a way this is going to work."

Dezzie fell silent, staring down at the papers between them. John sighed; maybe it would be worth it to talk to his contact about making forgeries, if he was careful about it there was a chance that--

"Would fingerprints work?" She asked suddenly, knocking him back into the moment.

"Fingerprints?" echoed John. "I guess that would do the trick, depending on when they were dated. Don't tell me you're thinking of dusting the letters for prints--"

"No," she said, "I...well, I was arrested, actually. Right before I got turned."

"You were arrested? Whatever for?" Dezzie was the last person he would have guessed to have a record.

"I participated in the Harlem riot in 1935. They booked me, took my prints, and then 'transferred' me along with about fifty others to what was supposed to be an overflow facility, but was actually a Covinus lottery. I was the only one who survived the turning..." she trailed off, and for a moment, John could see that she had gone somewhere else. "Anyway, those records might still be there," she finished quietly.

John thought for a moment, considering the possibility. There was a solid chance he would be able to find said records with a bit of digging--then again, it wasn't unheard of for the Covinus to cover their tracks, and that kind of query could draw unwanted attention. Still, it was the best shot they had: fingerprints weren't an easy thing to forge, and a police record even less so; with a bit of paperwork, maybe by calling in a favor from Dr. Zhao, her age could be explained by being GD.... "Alright, I'm not making any promises, but I'll look into this and see what I can do." Hopefully he'd be able to scare the plaintiff into dropping the caveat, but at least now he wasn't going into this mess completely empty-handed.

"Thanks John." Dezzie gave him a beaming smile as she picked up the papers and dropped them neatly back into her purse. "I know Aggie'll be happy, wherever she is."