Blood Memories

Downtown Seattle struck me as a cultural smorgasbord. Portland isn't exactly conservative, but the Seattle waterfront was like nothing I'd ever seen. The two of us fit in so well I felt at home immediately-not because we looked like everyone else, but because no one looked quite the same.

During the day, these shining glass skyscrapers housed brain-dead executives who wore twelve-hundred-dollar suits, but at night the doorways were crowded with starving bums hoping some heat would leak through the cracks. On every street corner stood some guy playing a guitar or trumpet, his case left open on the concrete sidewalk for donations. Prostitutes, drug dealers, and cross-dressers lived and breathed right in the midst of yuppie corporate sharks who earned four hundred thousand a year and wouldn't throw a quarter to a bag lady.

In a city like this, no one would even blink at a dead body. I'd never want to leave.

"Has it always been like this?"

"No." Maggie smiled. "Of course not. Places grow and change, like people. It started out as a logging town."

"Why did you come here?"

"New territory. None of us ever lived this far north. I wanted to be alone."

That made sense. This must have been a wonderful place to run away to. "What year?"

"What year?" Her dark eyebrows knitted. "In 1932, I think. Middle of the Depression."

"Where were you during the Civil War?" I asked, finding the tale of her past intriguing-as Edward's and mine had been so intertwined.

"New Hampshire," she answered. "You?"

"Manhattan."

None of this century's wars had affected us much, but in 1861 the Civil War hit America so hard even we couldn't help feeling its backlash.

I suddenly realized we'd walked quite a ways, and the buildings were looking dingy. "Hey, where are we going?"

"My favorite bar," she said. "Just watch me for a little while. I usually pose as a hooker from a wealthy but sordid past."

"Is that what you tell them?"

"Not really. I just drop hints. My clothes and accent do the rest."

"Doesn't anyone get suspicious when all of your customers turn up on the back of a milk carton?"

"Don't be dense. Of course they don't all turn up missing. I have to keep up appearances."

For a moment that confused me and then I stopped walking. "You mean you…?"

"I what?"

"You actually have sex with some of them?"

Her low laughter echoed down a dark alley. "For God's sake, Leisha. What did you think? If no one recommended me and all the men who employed me turned up dead, I wouldn't be in business very long, now would I?"

She thought me naive, and I found it humiliating. "No, that makes sense. I just never touch them unless I'm feeding."

"Really? I told you that you've been too wrapped up in William. I once lived with a professional baseball player for eight months."

Maybe I was naive, because that did stun me. "You lived with him? Did he know what you are?"

"Yes, but it didn't matter. He was in love with me, and he made me feel alive."

"Where is he now?"

"Dead. Things went sour after a while, and I had to kill him."

She related the last statement with all the passion of someone discussing the rising price of tomatoes. That was one basic difference between many of my kind. We all viewed death differently. Julian liked killing, Maggie didn't give it much thought, and I hated it.

"Here we are."

She stopped in front of a small, barely noticeable wooden door. The building was sandwiched between a run-down Chinese restaurant called Yan's and an H amp;R Block tax office. A sign above the blacked-out window read "Blue Jack's."

"Why here?" I asked. "It looks like a dive."

"You'll see."

For the first moment after she opened the door, all I could see was blue smoke and black leather. It hardly seemed like a place where Maggie would hang out. I had some expensive cocktail lounge in mind, like the Red Lion, or at least someplace popular like Neumo's or even Chop Suey, where she would look sad and down on her luck, someplace where she could make people feel superior and let them believe they were taking advantage of her.

The smoke cleared slightly, and we walked in. A guy with spiked hair and a pewter cross in his ear smiled at me. I didn't smile back.

"Maggie, I don't like this."

"You will."

The bar itself seemed bigger on the inside than on the outside. Large neon Budweiser signs glowed off the walls, and overworked waitresses in short skirts hurried from table to table as they laughed with one customer and then listened to the next one complain.

"Hey, Maggie! Where you been?" a deep voice called.

A huge man in a black T-shirt with a tattoo of a palm tree on his arm put down his pool cue and started walking toward us.

"Ben." She smiled. Her white teeth glittered through the blue smoke haze and a thick mass of wavy hair fell forward over one eye. "I've missed you."

"Bullshit. You never missed anyone in your…" He stopped at the sight of me. "Who's your friend?"

"Just a friend."

He shrugged and pointed to the pool table. "Hey, I got a game going. Come watch for a while?"