Nightwolf

I stare down at my coffee, my heart sinking. “Even more so than I already am just hearing this?”

She sighs and gets to her feet and places her hands on my shoulders, holding me in place. “My angel. You are so beautiful and funny and smart and you always say what’s on your mind. You will find the perfect person out there for you, I promise you that. I just want you to be open to the fact that it won’t be Wolf.”

I lick my lips, avoiding her eyes. Ouch. “I know, I know,” I say quietly.

“And you can still have your fun,” she says, her hands dropping away. “Just go into it with purpose. Don’t use men as a distraction from the fact that you’re in love with Wolf. Instead, go in wanting, hoping, expecting to meet someone who will sweep you off your feet. Be open, be curious, all those things I know you are. But please make the conscious choice to start to move on. Save your heart for someone else, someone that can appreciate it.”

“You’re saying he wouldn’t?” I ask, glancing at her.

“I know he would,” she says gravely. “But he’s been around for centuries. He knows you’re not here for the rest of his life, you’re just here for now.” She pauses, letting out a heavy sigh. “It’s a terrible place to be, I know.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and take another sip of my coffee, managing a shrug. “I’m not in love with him, anyway.”

“Good,” she says, putting her arm around me and giving me a squeeze, the scent of her lilac perfume washing over me, making me feel comforted. “You’re stepping in the right direction already. Come on, we should head back to the house and start the clean-up before Mr. Stavig wakes up and makes a snide remark about me having missed a spot.”

I laugh at that, and we start walking away from Japantown. But even though the walk here did wake me up and made me less worried about last night’s spookiness, I’m now scared about something else entirely.

The idea of moving on.

Chapter 5

Wolf

In front of me the eucalyptus wavers in the mist, like pairs of bleeding hands. I stand in the middle of Alamo Square, taking in the night from the crest of the hill. It’s my favorite time of year, my favorite time of day. Autumn in San Francisco brings with it darkness and gloom, that ever-present fog pressing down on the city like a hand from a vengeful god. I feel more at peace, more at home, during this season where the world grows a little quieter, muffled, and life slows down a little.

Humans move too fast these days. They always have, for as long as I’ve walked among them, but in the last half a century they’ve leaped forward at supersonic speed. Always rushing, too busy trying to pay for a life that they’re too busy to start living.

And I get it. They only have so many years. Eighty to a hundred if they’re lucky. If they’re unlucky, death swoops in following a grave illness or a freak accident, cutting them off before their time. There’s no escape from it either. Death lurks at every corner. I understand the urge to keep moving, keep trying to fill the days, not knowing when you’ll be taken out.

Yet, they miss so much. They miss out on the fact that life isn’t about getting to the next thing, the next paycheck, the next high, the next rung of the ladder. It’s about the smaller moments, where there’s time to breathe, when this big impossible world whittles down to one thing.

But it’s that one thing that remains elusive to so many, including me.

Still, I stand in the middle of the square, letting the fog roll over me, the mist whispering things in my ears, music from the clouds and the ocean from where it all began. I feel plugged in, the sounds of the city dropping away, until it’s just me and the mist and I can’t tell where I begin and it ends. I am one with the dark, the way I’m supposed to be.

Laughter snags me out of my thoughts and my eyes open. Through the fog I can see a bunch of drunk teenagers, though they can’t see me. They’re far away, near the Painted Ladies. I can smell the booze on their breath, in their pores. Cheap beer, maybe Pabst, and one of them has been drinking a sugary vodka drink. In my gut I feel a pang of hunger, but I pay it no attention. It’s been a while since I fed and when that happens, even unsavory teenagers can stoke the appetite, but I’m not who I once was. Most of us aren’t. Even vampires evolve.