Timothy

When I reached some levels of consciousness after a deep dreamless sleep, I first became aware of a familiar presence by my resting surface.

I opened my eyes blurrily with a clear intention to tell Stump to return later, preferably closer to midnight. But as I got my eyes open, there was no one with me in a dark room, just spirits, flowing from shape to shape like smoke streaming from dozens of incense sticks.

I was inside the vault where Blizzard usually slept. I was alone. I wasn't a vampire. And he had closed the vault.

As alarming as it was to find oneself locked inside an old bank vault, my first thought went to the clear presence by my bedside. I lay very still, paralyzed by the knowledge that I had killed the man who now haunted my resting place.

The only real light came inside from a small hole in the vault door. It was close to the ceiling and cast the room in deep shadows. Last night Blizzard had drilled the air hole just for me.

I swallowed.

"Stump?" I asked the silence.

No response.

I had heard my share of spook-stories of ghosts coming back to haunt the living. But the only ghost I had ever encountered had been Clover's father, and while the encounter had made my hackle rise, it wasn't because the living would have come back to life with anything tangible. Valerian Shatter Hat's ghost hadn't felt alive by any measures. It had been transparent for this sixth sense that let me perceive auras and the fluctuation of life force in humans, magical creatures and places.

And Stump I did feel. Clearly, as if he had been standing by my bedstead in flesh.

As I rose from the bed and cast my gaze around the room, the presence retreated to the back of the room. It slipped to the other side of the huge metal barricade that separated me from the rest of the world.

With no clear intention in my apprehension, I took my robe from yesterday and followed it to the door. I placed my hand onto the painted metal. I heard and felt the immense metal bars retreating inside. A slight crack emerged between the door and the frame.

I pushed open the heavy vault door and stepped into the reception area bathed in dim daylight from a cloudy sky. No lights were lit.

There was no one in this room either, just the ghost I felt by me in silence. Around us I heard now the normal everyday sounds of a small apartment building in the south west Breasinghae.

I saw the slow spiritual flow around me with an ease I didn't remember from my time as an immortal shadow of the night.

Now the question was, was I an immortal of some kind? Or just turning mad? Had I survived an explosion and woken up from a cocoon in a Forest? Was Stump here?

I turned to face the place where I could have sworn he was standing.

Sweat broke.

There was no one there, just the vault.

I drew in a slow breath. Blew it out even slower.

Once Hellebore had told me to stop breathing, when I had been a vampire. I wondered now if I could have stopped breathing then. Would I have turned back into a glass skeleton?

Suddenly, I remembered a piece of a conversation, something Stump had told me:

"Oh. Just go and drop, won't you? You're impossible to talk to otherwise. And I don't have most of the answers."

But had that been in a dream? I felt as if the conversation had been recent.

I drew in another breath.

Stump's presence was still here, hovering near the vault's entrance.

I exhaled a lungful of air, concentrating and falling into alertness.

I had expected the presence to disappear once I searched for it after dropping, but it grew stronger. Stump was undoubtedly here. And it was now also obvious it had been him who had let me out of the vault as there was no one else in the room. I was very close to him, looking at him. I felt him here less than a meter away from where I stood. Clearly as any living human.

And quite as clearly, I could not see him. There were just spirits, transparent and shifting. Just smoke and shadows. Light and invisible currents that flowed past us.

"I shall be your guide, Timothy. I'll come with you. Someone should. As I understand it, you have been alone more than is healthy for anyone, vampire or human."

Such a curious memory. I couldn't place it on any timeline I remembered.

Then again. I had never heard of anyone more dead than I had apparently been. A skeleton made of glass. I remembered nothing of the months that had passed since last autumn. Maybe I had met Stump at the borderlands of oblivion.

The thought trailed away. Stump's aura had started moving. It drew my attention to itself as it went. I followed it to the door I knew led to a stairway.

It went past the door, pushed it slightly ajar as it went, and disappeared.

"What?" I asked.

The door was now slightly open, but Stump was nowhere to be felt, there was just the empty staircase at the other side. I took hold of the handle and opened the door to the stairs.

Then I stared.

The door hadn't opened into the main staircase of Blizzard's house. It had opened into an office.

I closed the door. Took three breaths to find again my balance and then opened it into...

Into the staircase.

Now I was confused.

I closed the door again.

Opened it again.

The staircase was the same as ever. I even went there to try it with a bare foot. I closed the door quickly again however as I heard the main entrance of the house opening. I didn't think I was supposed to be wandering by myself outside the vault. Blizzard had effectively locked me in there. And anyone linked to him would know he didn't wish me to escape his kingdom.

So I waited behind a closed door for the incomer to pass my landing to the upper floors.

While I waited, standing a few centimeters from the door, it opened itself ajar again.

The steps had retreated into an apartment above my head.

Bewildered, I opened the door once more. 

If I strained that sixth sense I possessed, I could perceive the staircase in front of me. But with my eyes I saw the office framed by white painted wood.

Before I could think twice again, I stepped through.

I came into the office and my sense of Blizzard's house disappeared. Instantly I knew even who's office it was, as I had been inside it once before. It belonged to the witch, Aconite Shatter Hat, and I was in the university.

I could also now sense Stump again.

It seemed that somehow Stump, whatever he was, was able to open doors and magical passages.

I turned to look at the place I had come from, a sturdy archival closet.

Its doors were still open and I saw shelves of folders.

However, in the closet, there was something else beside the folders. On a silver plate rested an odd growth of mushrooms.

Curious, I took a closer look. They reminded me of something I had recently read. I should have been able to identify the fungus. They felt very familiar. I could almost see the hand-drawn picture of them, they looked exactly like it.

The toadstools grew in a cluster. And on the same shelf rested a pitcher of indigo liquid.

Then it hit me. In the book of Futile Desires. There had been a hard to grow mushroom which could be fed the life force of someone else in hopes of expanding the life of the one harvesting them. I had paid special attention to the description, because it had been just modern enough for me to make sense of the lettering. Unlike all the passages before it that had been almost complete gibberish. 

And, I clearly remembered, the fungus required as a plantation surface the liver of someone living.

Aconite

I was holding a computer and a pile of papers in my lap after a lecture. I had given the class in the same building, and had thought a bag wouldn't be necessary and that I could get my equipment moved easier between places if I didn't pause to pack them first. Which was undoubtedly true, just very uncomfortable.

I minded my steps as I descended downstairs towards my office. I let a small satisfied sigh escape once I could see the door guarding my destination. Soon, very soon, my load would be safely laid onto the desk inside.

I had not locked the door, for the purpose of convenience. No one ever stole anything from me. I kept a charm against robbery in a drawer of my desk. It guarded against intruders better than any locks ever could. And the one door I wanted locked was held closed with a spell so tight even the elders of all thirteen Witch Towns couldn't get it open by force.

I managed to shift my load so that the two smaller fingers of my right hand could just push the handle, and I could shoulder the door ajar.

"Aconite!"

The lightweight laptop I was holding slid from my grip. Papers fluttered into a chaos around my feet.

I held a finger to the startled professor of French Philology.

"Let's try this once more."

I shifted time, just to the point where I approached the door to my office, and instead of reaching for the door, I turned away from it to the waiting Rosemary Scale Tongue who was just rising from a couch in the corridor.

"Rosemary," I greeted her, holding my load securely against my chest. "I haven't seen you for a while. How nice."

She smiled at me uncertainly, obviously unsure of whether I was being serious. We indeed hadn't talked for some time. Not for most of the spring. And it wasn't by accident. Ever since I had accused her brother of being a monster and then ran away, we had been avoiding each other.

"I...," she started. My face softened.

"Would you like to come inside?" I invited. "I have tea in a thermos. We could catch up in peace."

Rosemary heaved out a long sigh with tension leaving her body.

"I would like that very much, thank you, Aconite."

I nodded.

"If you could maybe open the door for me...?"

However, immediately once she flung the door open, my heart stopped, for there was an unexpected visitor. A young man had seated himself on a chair and lifted two leather bound shoes on my table. He was clad in a jacket of vivid violets, and poured tea from my new thermos into a mug I had bought a few months ago from an artisan market.

"Afternoon, dad," Laurel greeted me. "Quite the secret you've got there."

He gestured to the cabinet which had its doors flung wide open.

I froze. And felt like the very blood inside my veins stood still. All thought abandoned my mind.

"Should I, maybe, come later?" Rosemary's voice came from somewhere far, beyond seas and foreign lands.

I couldn't do anything but stand paralyzed on the threshold.

If I bolted now, and ran as fast as I could, through as many passages I knew, could I escape? Would the vampires hide me? After all my services? Or Hellebore, out of loyalty?

No. Not out of loyalty, no. But I was an integral part of their plot. They would shelter me for the information I held in my memory.

I licked my lips that had suddenly become dry, when Laurel continued:

"I am surprised you use them. I thought they were twisted and untrustworthy. Dozens of witches have gotten stuck, died or lost their minds in the mazes the City offers. Takes a lot of magic to even find them, I hear."

His words sank slowly into my consciousness.

I walked to the closet.

It was indeed wide open, but the interior wasn't visible. Instead, I could have stepped through into a white painted room that seemed distantly familiar.

I felt vertigo and lifted a cool hand to my eyes. With the same free hand I reached to close the doors protectively over my secret.

"That's a new one," I said, turning to Laurel. "I think I'll explore it later."

He narrowed his eyes.

"Why do you sound relieved?"

I shook my head. And with a gesture invited Rosemary to proceed inside.

"What do you want, Laurel?" I asked. "As you can see, I am busy."

I felt much steadier now and could look my eldest son in the eyes.

"Actually," he said lazily "I came to ask your help."

"My... Help?" I repeated. "I find it hard to imagine what I could do for you?"

A dark cloud appeared over his gaze, and just for a heart beat I regretted my own rudeness. But only for a second, because then he continued:

"I need someone who has read the book of Futile Desires."

A short silence fell.

"Beg your pardon?"

Laurel rose to his feet and came to stand in front of me. I had unobstructed view to his face, and the fluctuation of emotions displayed on it, when he said:

"I need someone who has read the book of Futile Desires. Because the readers are connected. And I want to find Alfonso Moura. I am not sure why, but grandma Fern seems to have lessened her search of late. And I want to find Moura and kill him before he does something unprecedented that puts us all in danger. I don't want to strike a deal with the Alchemist, and I doubt the Queen of vampires is interested in my proposal."

"So you are here, why?"

"Because I know you have held it."

I searched his face in silence.

"Why do you say such a thing?"

"You can turn time," he answered levelly. "By more or less a day, if I am not mistaken. And that is something that cannot be done. It's, so to say, a futile desire."

I laid my laptop and papers on the corner of the desk, breaking the eye contact.

I could have said I didn't have a clue of what he was implying. But my extraordinary sense of time was a well established fact, and a reason for why I had gathered a sinister legend around myself in Witch Towns.

"It's a spell," I started formulating a lie.

"Then teach it to me," he demanded. "Because I have used all my life in libraries trying to find it."

"I'll think about it," I said. Then, glancing at Rosemary, I repeated a bit more strongly: "Yes. I really need to think about this."

I stood in the corridor, holding a lightweight laptop and a pile of papers. Rosemary lifted her face from her cellphone to look at me as I approached. I smiled at her.

"It is nice to see you. It's been a while. Would you like a cup of tea at the Fair Marquise? I'll just leave my stuff in and come in a few minutes."

I left her in the corridor waiting as I strode into my office to face my son

Plume

I rose from the table and walked to the railing to look down into the hall below. Two adults were leaving. They were not holding hands, and there was awkwardness in the pleasant conversation, yet they were walking so close to each other that every now and then the light fabric of their clothes touched. I doubted any of the students milling about noticed it.

I leaned onto the rail in deep thoughts and let them go out to spend time somewhere, not on a date.

Last night Timothy had returned. Blizzard had sent me a text just before dawn. That had been many, many hours ago.

I lifted my gaze to a statue nearby. Yet, Aphrodite wasn't interested in my gaze, she looked away, with her white chalky eyes cast aside. But I studied her features, her naked, girlish body. Mo would have been proud of her unabashed nudity.

I turned back to study the people below me, the few students crossing the hall's checker floor.

I had never been able to drop, not even for a few seconds. I was hot-headed and impatient, as Blizzard had once put it when he had been particularly frustrated with me. Yet the Queen didn't really seem to mind.

"He has a strong heart, it knows right and wrong. Even if his head might be easily confused. He'll surprise you one of these days."

I wasn't sure if the words had been meant for me, or to pacify Blizzard, yet I carried them like a compass when I felt I fell short around other vampires and some links.

I had a strong heart.

Even when my head felt confused.

Very confused.

I didn't remember anything of this Timothy. And yet, still, at seeing the message on the electrical glass screen of my phone, I had felt hope. It was a tentative feeling. I wanted to see this Timothy, with all my heart.

Even though I couldn't guess why.

When Valentina and Blizzard had been linked, the old vampire had told me we had always hated each other. I apparently couldn't stand Timothy, a vampire who had easily slipped into submerged stages and could stay clear of emotions for dozens of minutes at best, when for an average vampire four minutes was stretching it. And he had disliked me, for in return I, to all appearances, enjoyed vampirisim with no reservations, while Timothy had felt conflicted.

Even when of course I had my difficulties. I carried a vampire's heart, a vampire's shared shame, a vampire's complicated relation to life.

But something had changed.

Something in my heart must have shifted in the time I had spent with him last autumn.

Because I was glad the cocoon had hatched.

And I was more than interested in seeing him. I could hardly stay put here, at the university.

And it was precisely my own eagerness that kept me waiting.

I didn't know what kind of a bond might have formed between us. I didn't know if Timothy, who had despised me before, would now welcome me to his side.

I ran my long pale fingers against the rail.

As I did, a man appeared onto the hall's checker pattern. He had come from downstairs, where the offices were located. But I had spent enough time in the building to know he was not a teacher here. Plus, the man wore an oddly vividly violet coat. He hugged the sides of the hall, and turned to the upstairs leading stairs.

I waited, to see if he would climb to the third landing.

He did.

A fair young man with a violet coat and leather shoes stumbled up the stairs and almost collided with me. But only almost. As his eyes found me standing still and waiting, my sixth sense found his odd aura. A witch?

He looked disheveled. As if someone had taken hold of his midsection, given him a good shake, and then set him back to his two feet.

He opened his mouth to give an automatic apology for almost walking into me, but then recognition suddenly ignited in his eyes.

"You're Plume."

Not quite the words I had been expecting. I pushed myself off the railing to face him. For one reason or another, despite being a witch, he was not wearing any type of a talisman against me.

"And you are...?" I asked smoothly.

He clearly considered the question. There was something familiar about his face, even as I could have sworn I had never seen him in my afterlife.

"Hasn't my father mentioned me?" He asked, instead of answering the question out right.

"Father?" He gave me a moment to think, but as we were above Aconite's office, it didn't suddenly take much mental effort to figure out whom he was referring to. "Mmm..."

Aconite had two children. One was a lovely young woman I had never met. And then there was his very unfortunate older son. I didn't remember the younger one's name. But the first born I had committed to memory, for more than one reason.

"You must be Laurel Shatter Hat then, the Witch Town's current assassin."

While his face didn't alter, his aura experienced a quickly passing shock of startlement.

"He really has told you that? You must be closer than I gave him credit for."

I didn't correct him or let him know it had been the Queen who had told me who Aconite's son was. He was important and dangerous.

Laurel came closer. He propped himself against the rail, as if he hung around vampires every other day, with not a care on his mind.

I considered leaving him by himself and flying away, but Laurel's next words caught me off guard:

"Must be tough seeing your lover taken by a human woman. If you are harboring revenge up here, I am in."

"Beg your pardon?"

Laurel glanced my way.

"That sounded exactly like him. You two even share mannerisms."

But the implications of the previous sentence were still reverberating inside my skull. I felt I was being studied. And I could do nothing about it. I crunched my teeth and wished fervently I could think clearly even for a few seconds.

As things stood however the only thing I could do was to place a threat:

"That woman is my sister. I will always guard her back and wish her all the happiness she might get. Even as I am disappointed that it might be found with a witch who flings his heart to left and right every few years. And just so we are clear, Master Aconite is my friend."

"Not a lover?" the witch pressed.

"What game is this?" I hissed. "I dislike witches out of principle, but this is simply disrespectful."

I took a step closer. I knew it was unwise. And that the taller of us probably hadn't come to our conversation unarmed. Yet, I was angry with him. I didn't care what he thought of my and Aconite's relationship, or I wouldn't have cared, had he not mixed Rosemary into it. But implying I was somehow romantically interested in the same man as my sister was too much for my nerves that evening.

And suddenly I saw him.

My anger turned to surprise and alarm.

I had drank from him once. I had woken up with him almost on top of me, in a house that had blown up. And I had sunk my teeth into the intruder and almost drained him dry before I came to my senses. Had he been a human, he would have died then in my lap.

"We've met," I told him.

I could see he was suddenly seeing me too, and connecting a real memory to my face.

"But where was that?" he asked, obviously before he could think twice about what he was saying. "I was reaching for the book of Futile Desires, but you were guarding it. That I do remember. It was almost in my grasp, but the goddess was simply toying with me."

I very nearly almost asked the witch what book he was talking about, but caught myself just in time. I didn't wish to continue the conversation. I knew more about our encounter than he did. I knew where it had happened. I maybe didn't remember it first hand... But I had been told it was Timothy's house.

What I would have liked to ask was why he had been there in the house with us. Had it been to retrieve the book he was talking about, or something else? Yet, if it was related to Timothy, he probably couldn't remember.

And I needed space to think.

I remembered almost nothing of what had happened in the house when I had been there, though I did remember the house itself. The curiously spacious hall, the narrow passage to the kitchen and living room. I remembered the wallpaper in the upstairs corridor and the PlayStation in one of the rooms. The slanting ceiling and an embedded window that cast the room in natural light.

I started walking away, to a corridor that led to an open window.

"Hey! Wait! Where was that?"

The witch caught my sleeve.

And suddenly my anger flared. The moment I had woken up–my mouth full of intoxicating witch's blood–came back in full color.

I took a firm grip on the hand holding my sleeve. Instinctively Laurel grabbed a hold of my shirtfront as I jerked him towards me, then away and onto the ground with a loud thud that echoed in the walls.

He yelled. Out of pain or surprise or both. The hand holding my shirt hadn't come loose, so I placed my knee onto his chest and pushed down, effectively emptying his lungs. His fingers fell like autumn leaves.

I let him catch his breath.

There had been no one else on the third landing, but now curious students were searching for the source of the racket. There must have been more elegant ways of dealing with the situation. But I was still reeling. And it took a lot of self control not to stay and at least punch him. Maybe just to break a nose.

But I couldn't be seen. I came and went from the university as I pleased, because people didn't pay attention to me. But a participant in the fight would be remembered.

So I fled.

Troubled, I sored to the darkening sky, flapping furiously with the wind. Enjoying the great aircurrents guiding my weight. I could still smell his blood. The memory had come back with color and texture.

I remembered going out, for a real satisfying kill. I remembered coming back to the house. There had been spirits playing in a cherry tree in the small backyard. For some reason I hadn't gone to the Castle after the kill. I had returned to the house.

And then what?

Then what?

I felt tired because of the mental stretch I was trying. The day was turning to evening. I had woken up early and my daydrugs were pressing me down.

I plummeted, caught myself. And for a moment let myself be taken by the wind's spiritual, playful flow. For a long while I thought of nothing, just let myself be taken by the moment, flew for flying's sake.

Then I found myself landing onto the roof of Blizzard's house.

I became a man again, and sat my back against an old weather vane. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to see him. I even considered lying flat there on the roof and simply falling asleep. It would have been an easy way out.

Then again, Blizzard would probably find me there by nightfall. I wasn't sure the old vampire appreciated me sleeping on his roof.

I had a good room in the Castle. And while I couldn't sleep in the form of a raven, and thus trees were out of question, I could choose any other roof in the city or out the city. It just needed to be high enough so that no random passerby would see me.

I should have gone to see the Queen, or Blizzard, for advice.

Instead, I circled my legs with my hands and rested my chin on my knees in a tight ball against the metallic vane, feeling both childish and helpless.