A VIPER IN THE DARK

        Espresso exploded out into a shower of scalding caffeinated liquid and steam. I stared at the ruin of a latte, final dregs swirling at the bottom of a mostly empty cup.

        “Shit,” I said, slamming the cup down. Pure white porcelain cracked into three large pieces as it struck the stainless steel prep-counter. It’s accompanying bang echoed into the converted Civil War-era house and drew more eyes than my latte explosion. Covers of modern pop songs played flamenco-style strummed through the cafe’s speaker system, adding a strange soundtrack to the clack of keyboards and continuous murmur of discussion in the crowded seating area.

        Instead of glaring the patrons into submission, as I wanted to, I mimed being slightly stung by the boiling water and steam. It didn’t hurt in the slightest. Hundred-degree- plus espresso and water dripped down my arms, sticking hair to skin, below the rolled sleeves of my white button down. I spun away from the crowd to pull up the folded top half of my apron. The heated liquid made the shirt translucent, but I was less concerned for my male modesty and more for the mundane gawkers wondering how their barista wasn’t crying from third degree burns. Faintly pinked skin faded quickly back to my base pale hue with olive undertones.

        I caught a few customers’ looks, soft confusion pinching their features. I waved a mute apology, appearing to have dodged the worst of the problem and they went back to their tasks. No one stared in wide-eyed shock at the miraculously unburned human.

        Not that I was human.

        Sunlight and damnation. Five horrible coffees, three broken cups, and some hippy’s dinky car in my owner’s spot on top of a supremely delayed flight and too many hours sitting in a lightless box on the Atlanta airport tarmac. Now, I smelled like a used coffee filter on top of the musty, air-cargo scent from that flight.

        Considering the list I had, I might have pissed off a luck diety. Except all the originally curious looks were turning back to their screens and companions. No one screamed that their barista was a centuries old vampire. The diety wasn’t that pissed.

        I shook my head. I’d blended in from Spain to Constantinople, from China to the newly minted United States. With the mistakes I kept stacking up tonight, I might as well make an announcement and end my suffering.

        I swept the pieces of porcelain into a nearby garbage can and moved to pick up a different cup. Maybe I should stick to the disposable cups for the rest of the night regardless of aesthetic.

        A towel hovered into my line of sight as I measured another shot of espresso.

        Soren, long-suffering and reliable, was the only staff for the night. He held the other end of the towel on the opposite side of the bar. His midnight dyed hair showed its lighter roots again, but dark eyeliner cut lines like envelope wings even after a double shift. I gave him a look advising him to keep his mouth shut when I took the towel. As I wiped the remaining liquid from chest and face, he spoke anyway.

        “Nathan, dear boss, how many cups are going to die tonight?”

        “As many as it takes.” I checked his attitude to make sure he didn’t hold any lingering concerns that I held superpowers over boiling liquid. He gazed blandly back at me, only a slight wrinkle to his nose he noticed how ineffectual the towel was. There was no recovering the shirt and my last replacement was the one I was wearing. It was going to be a handful of long, sticky hours. I gave him a reprise of the I don’t need any commentary look. “Don’t you still want to be employed tomorrow?”

He smiled. “Of course. Hate to get laid off in this economy because you had to buy more dishes.”

He dropped another list of drinks on the bar to join the eight or so I still needed to work through. If I didn’t find a rhythm soon, I was going to throw out the lot of them. The humans, a few supernaturals, and Soren.

        I flung the used towel back in his face. “Go do that bothering thing you do that those people seem to like.”

        “It’s called customer service.”

        “I don’t care. Make them think about you instead of their drinks.”

        “I didn’t wear the right outfit for that.” He pushed back from the bar with a grin. Customers stood, patience wearing thin as they waited for their drinks. I ignored them to watch Soren walk away. His skintight black jeans had an order pad sticking out of the right back pocket. A black button up tucked in only on the front so the back swung as he walked in his platform boots with more buckles than sense. He was still the age where he didn’t have to work at being runway-model fit. Thanks to a little vampirism, I didn’t have to exercise ever to keep my same look.

        That was his not-trying outfit.

        I shook myself with a mental chastisement. He was help, not a convenient blood donor. Or anything else. After so many different businesses, through almost a dozen centuries, it was common sense that you don’t eat good help. Even sassy good help was better than the alternative. Although, if I kept letting him get away with it like this, I was going to end up letting him run the place.

        Soren headed towards the stairs where extra seating in the rooms above held even more customers.

        A new paper cup in hand, I plodded through making the latte like a new barista instead of someone who’d been around since the inception of coffee as a beverage. A line of twelve drinks waited on me, and more coming if the night kept up like this.

        I swirled the milk frothing on top. Done. I set it with the order paper where Soren would know to grab it and went to the next one. The bell rang as more customers entered the cafe. I nodded at them as they queued up, staring up at the menu board.

        “Be right with you.” I started the drips for the next three coffees and then moved to take their order. While I waited for them to quit diddling over whether they wanted half-fat or fat-free with a thin facade of patience on my face, I traced the chair railing around the room with my eyes. Solid metal poles, painted with artistic ivy wrapped around a cream base outlined the old entryway and load bearing walls I’d demo’d to make room for the open concept cafe. The stairway’s rotting handrail had been replaced with a beautiful custom piece of ironwork that had cost me two favors and a rare manuscript. Where most cafe’s targeted their hipsters with local artists and other eclectic kitsch, I curated my rooms like museum pieces. I had a few local artist mixed in, if their art blended well.

        This downstairs floor was Renaissance and generally European. Mainstream for the everyday coffee buyer. The separate meeting and study rooms upstairs varied from Navajo to Persian to Ming Dynasty. Every thought the art and other decor pieces were stellar copies.

        I mean when you’d been there, you picked up a thing or two along the way.

        After the new arrivals came to a consensus on their orders, I finished up the three I’d started. Made three, gathered three more. Net zero progress.

        Soren swooped back through, only one additional order. He picked up the others and headed off to deliver them. My phone buzzed with an incoming message. I paused in between concoctions and thumbed through the text on the screen.

        An order from the coven in Chicago. A little snippy, but I’d ignored their other requests since I would out of country at the time. Everyone had an attitude tonight.

        I scanned the list as I poured and stirred. A few specifics read demon summoning spell. Never a good sign. I’d thought they were smarter than that. I whistled as I read their offer at the end. A very sweet deal and suspiciously high. My clients knew they didn’t come to me for bargain basement, blue-light specials. They weren’t getting these things locally because they didn’t want anyone to know they needed them.

        I wasn’t the world’s police or father. Vélos could deal with it, if that’s what the Chicago witches ended up doing. Maybe they only wanted to be a little spooky for Beltane.

        I doubted it.

        I sent back a quick agreement and then forwarded my standard contract through the electronic service I used. I had sent letters by pigeon, messenger horse, and steam- liner, but email and digital signatures were as welcomed a luxury as indoor plumbing.

        Four lattes, three macchiatos, and not nearly enough of the fresh brewed Ethiopian drip coffees, I raised my head again to check the scene. The next three were pour- overs, such pretentious orders. Soren came back by, so I handed the tedium over to him. He rolled his eyes at me again, but I ignored it to slip out and make my rounds.

        Anyone who had seen my slip had since rationalized away that clearly, the water wasn’t that hot, or it hadn’t landed on me so much. Neither were true, but humans spent a significant amount of their brainpower convincing themselves that the monsters in the dark were made up. There wasn’t any other explanation for the level of smart phone usage and the ability for people to still believe that fairies and werewolves were only tales.

        For all of written history, it was agreed upon in the supernatural world that we would let the mundanes believe we were simply tales and we would regulate ourselves to make sure that stayed the status quo.

        Like all tales which get bigger by the telling, as a vampire I didn’t have any hypnotizing skills or transforming into a bat capabilities. I carried a little vial of powder, crafted by some very fine witches, to wipe memories in the past hour or so.

        If any were still suspicious about me, a little forgetting time, and pop, back to normal without any Vélos needing to know a thing.

        The first floor carried the boring hum of human distraction so I ducked outside before taking back over for Soren. After being locked in what I distastefully referred to as my shipping container on the tarmac following a much delayed flight, I needed the space. Brisk fall air carried less of the humid heat of the early day, hinting at the frost that would strike by All Hallow’s. I had heat lamps in storage which I’d bring out as late southern autumn began to take over.

        A wrap-around, antebellum porch stretched another six feet out and around the two front corners of the building. Beyond the six steps down, a small parking lot held six cars, and all spots were full. Streetlights cast a hazy orange over the sidewalk and street. The gas station catty-corner on the left glowed a bright white with vehicles arriving and leaving. Other quaint boutique shops in the strip were already closed or closing for the night.

        More than one table was sticky from an afternoon of teenagers ditching homework and parents’ rules alike in favor of caffeine and sugar. I turned to my left and wipe them down with a rag I kept in sanitizer on the porch when I caught the outline of a familiar figure in the shadows of the corner.

        “Trennor.” I gave the pixie a nod.

        “Evening.”

        The scent of hoarfrost and mold danced over my senses. Most vampires had no skill for scenting the type of supernatural a person was. But unlike most other vampires, I’d had a very long time to practice. No one I’d ever met had seen the true face of a graveyard pixie. As a more undead offshoot of their tinkerbell-style cousins, they kept their glamour up even if they shifted from look to look like some women exchanged purses.

        After “Night of the Living Dead” came out, I pictured something humanoid with dragonfly wings and cobwebs. The picture matched the scent in my head.

        “Haven’t seen you about lately,” I said, continuing to clean around him.

        “Haven’t had any jobs.”

        “Been out of town for a bit. So, slow month.”

        He nodded. His hands, which were folded on his stomach, moved to shift the sugar caddy out of my way. “Cafe seems good.”

        I hummed noncommittally. Without work for him, I wasn’t sure why Trennor has come to visit. I shifted to another table.

        “Heard that Liang Mae is coming in for a visit.”
        Pausing, I checked my mental calendar. “Another year. They go by like blinks.”
        “I hear they keep going faster the longer you’re alive.”
        I side-eyed Trennor to see if he was attempting to imply more with that statement. Even if he had seen the debacle with steam hot-enough to take off skin, he already knew I was a vampire. That wasn’t a problem. I just had to keep the amount of time I’d been a vampire under wraps. He continued to thumb through the sugar packets in their little caddy, unfazed by my examination.

        “When I crest another half-century, I’ll let you know.”

        The pixie grinned. Then he kicked back his heels and stretched out in the metal chair, making it creak gaily. “Sounds like a deal.”

        Contrary to popular human fiction, vampires typically didn’t get to live forever unmolested. When the Magnum Councilium formed, our version of a world-wide United Nations, some stipulations were put in place. About the same time as the agreements to stay under the mundane’s collective consciousness, it was also determined that vampires were a danger to exposure. Because, after a few hundred years, given a slight margin of error, the human mind degraded enough and whatever made vampires, vampires, lost their ability to exist in society like rational beings. Vampires grew feral. Violent creatures run by their hunger and disregarded human society.

        After one too many mobs and genocides, the Councilium reached a compromise. Any vampire over three hundred years was put to death regardless of whether it was feral or not. Any vampire which appeared feral was put down immediately.

        And the Councilium had their own peacekeeping troopers to carry out their peace — read, assassinations — the Vélos.

        I didn’t have any good reason why I didn’t succumb like every other vampire I’d known. What I did know, miracle or not, no Vélos or any other supernatural was going to test my sudoku ability before meting out an immediate death-sentence. One to be carried out with extreme prejudice.