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It started with an email he hadn’t been expecting. Dear Mr. Walker, he read, and then scanned it to the baffling conclusion. His visa to travel freely in the Tri State Guild’s territory, encompassing New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, had been approved. Walker read it three times, feeling more confused every time. For a vampire to travel into another guild’s territory took negotiation, money, connections. It was one of the reasons he gave up touring. No matter how sweet the gig, if the bureaucratic bloodsuckers who claimed the territory decided to reject your visa, you canceled your performance. Trespassing was how you ended up in an unmarked grave with a cavernous bullet hole where your brain used to be. To spend a week in the Tri State Guild’s territory would require thousands to grease palms, and connections to know which palms needed to be greased. There must have been another vampire with the same name, and he got this email by accident. That was his best guess as to what happened.
As if compounding the mystery, a second visa acceptance email came in ten minutes later. The Vampires of Seattle graciously allow your safe passage for the night of Tuesday the 29th for the purpose of attending the Spring Music Festival. Right of passage in and out of our territory has been extended along route 5 from the hours of blah blah blah. His bemusement grew. What did it mean? Sure, he wouldn’t mind going to a music festival. Some of his old buddies were playing there and it would be fun to hang again. But he didn’t have the money, or the connections in Seattle to make that happen.
“Yo, Jimmy, you get those kegs taken care of yet?” the new manager asked. Corporate had sent the fucker over to replace the old manager two months prior, and Walker had not taken a shine to the guy.
Walker descended the stairs to the basement and began stacking the empty kegs for pickup. It was cooler down here, and the hum of the refrigerators drowned out some of the din of the crap that passed for rock and roll blasting from the speakers in the dining area overhead. Like most vampires, he was stronger than an average human, and even full kegs didn’t strain him. Like most vampires, he’d gravitated to a bartending job because it offered sun-proof protection and exposure to a lot of potential blood sellers. It didn’t pay well, but he thought he could make it work with his royalty payments and the odd job he did for Glavin. Most of the time the money was enough. It was just when something came up like this that it seemed suddenly too small of a job for him. The old owner wanted out of the business and Walker had considered buying the franchise just so he could run the place himself and not have some pissant human like this guy bossing him around. But then he found out how much it cost to buy a successful sports bar in a popular area of town. He was not anywhere in the right tax bracket to buy it, whereas this thirty-two-year-old shithead human from Spokane somehow had enough money to become the new owner, well, that was galling. He should have been running the place by now.
Walker had never once doubted that he was superior to other men. Becoming a vampire and training under someone as infamous as his old master had just cemented this belief. But the years had slipped past and what he’d intended to be a brief stop to figure out his next adventure had turned into a decade. And where was he now? Pouring shots and pulling beers in a sports bar in the far northwest corner of the U.S., as far from any action as was possible to be. And even here he didn’t have power. No Council seats for him. No siring warrants for him. Dogsbody for that prick Glavin as often as not.
Walker’s phone rang, and he glanced at it but didn’t recognize the number. He answered it anyway, because answering the third mystery of who would be calling him at midnight on a Tuesday was more interesting than doing grunt work for some corporate stiff who was young enough to be Walker’s son. For all he knew, he could even have been Walker’s son. It wasn’t like he’d been careful with all those groupies he’d slept with.
“Did you get the emails?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Who is this?” Walker demanded.
“You don’t recognize me?” she said.
And then he did recognize her voice, and along with it a memory of a summer concerts outdoors, hot grass and the smell of unwashed human bodies, sweat and beer. He thought about that inflatable bean bag behind the stage and the way she always wore eyeliner only on her lower lids. A name flickered into his memory.
“Candy,” he said, with genuine affection for the time she represented as much as for the leggy groupie who had spent so many thousands of miles helping to make his sleeping bag sweaty.
“It’s Candace now,” she said.
“God, Candy. It’s been a long time. How’ve you been? What’s it been, six, seven years?”
“Eighteen,” she said.
“How’d you even find me? I haven’t had this phone that long.” Walker sat down on a keg, but it was upright, so he turned it to one side. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights when he came down here, but he could see by the blue light of the emergency exit sign and LED on the thermostat. Not that there was much to see. The basement had a cracked and peeling vinyl floor, workplace safety posters, boxes of extra glassware, and a few roaches climbing the walls.
“Oh, it wasn’t hard. You might say I’ve kept tabs on you,” Candy said. She sounded older, but not just older, more confident, as if she were now the rock star and he was the groupie desperate for a tiny piece of fame. “Something has come up and I need someone with your skills. I have a proposition for you.”
“What kind of proposition?” Walker said, instantly suspicious. And then he remembered the conversation they’d had maybe a dozen times when she was travelling with him. She hadn’t been the only one. Maybe rockers only wanted one thing from groupies, but groupies only seemed to want one thing from him. “Look, Candy, we’ve been over this. I can’t turn you into a vampire. It’s complicated. Guilds have rules. Maybe it’s eighteen years, but things haven’t changed that much.”
“We can talk about that later. Answer my first question. Did you get the emails?”
“The emails? You mean the visas?”
“Yes, the visas. You need those to travel here safely. I arranged it.”
“You arranged it,” he said, emphasizing you, as if not sure he had heard correctly. How could a human arrange things with vampire guilds? No, she must be working for someone. She had another vampire she was dating maybe, or working for, and that vampire was using her to talk to Walker.
“I’m having a party,” she said breezily. “A few people out at our summer place. Clam bakes, night sailing, beer in the garden. There’s plenty of room at my house, safe for people like you, and we’ll make sure you get the blood you need. Make a week of it; it will be like a mini vacation. I want to introduce you to some people and they can tell you what we’re hoping you can do for us.”
Walker was having trouble reconciling the leggy tanned groupie with the confident woman on the phone. How old was she now? Close to fifty maybe? Late thirties? Mid-fifties? He realized now that his memories of her weren’t reliable. She’d been one of many edgy young fame whores he’d convinced to share his bed. Was she even the redhead? Maybe she’d been the other one, with light brown hair and the navel piercing. They all started to run together after a while.
“Do you need me to book a flight for you?” she said, and he heard the voice of the redhead in his head. Henna-bright hair back then, down to her waist, and knowing brown eyes. Were they knowing? She knew what she wanted, at any rate. She’d wanted to be a vampire.
“I haven’t said yes,” Walker said.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. “Jimmy? You down here?” The voice was followed by thumping as the new manager clomped down the stairs. He flicked on the light, making Walker wince. “What are you doing? You’re not due for a break. I need you to finish those kegs and then get back upstairs.”
Walker glared at the new manager, the bald little shit who thought he was tough just because he lifted weights once a week at the cheap gym at the end of the block. He wore sleeveless shirts with the gym’s logo on days he wasn’t wearing the bar’s promo polos. He had a way of looking at Walker as if daring him to pick a fight with him, which was ridiculous. Walker had literally survived being shot, stuffed in a box, and shipped in the belly of a bus for three days. This guy would die from something as simple as having his blood drained slowly as he hung upside down during a ritual ...
Walker shook the thought away. He didn’t want to think about those days anymore. That’s not who he was anymore. That chapter of his life was over.
“Did you hear me?” the manager said, puffing up as if ready to throw a punch.
“I’m going on vacation,” Walker told him, without taking the phone from his ear.
“Glad to hear it,” Candy said, and it sounded like she was typing. “I’ll find you a night flight. Can’t promise first class, but I can get you an upgrade for sure.”
The manager scoffed. “You don’t have any time accrued, and you’re already on a PIP.”
“I said I’m going on vacation,” Walker said. “And I’m done for the night.”
“You walk out that door, don’t bother coming back,” the new manager called as Walker ascended the stairs.
Walker slowed just long enough to flip him off.
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