Millie rubbed idly at the bandages on her arm as she hop-skipped down the steps of the parking garage to the street below. Blinking with surprise at how bright the sun was, she shielded her eyes as she turned onto a side street. Odette was in a lull at the moment, trapped between the morning rush and afternoon crowds when stragglers had all made it to their destinations and nobody was jumping the gun on lunch just yet.
She rounded the corner and slipped into The Railway, a diner which had been built and named long after its namesake had been stripped out of downtown. A quick scan showed it empty, save for a lonely figure occupying the bar; Hector sometimes found his way over when her shift was finished in that unerring way he had of making their paths cross.
Once she’d placed her order, she reluctantly peeled up the edges of her bandages, wincing as the adhesive pulled on her skin. The wounds left behind were no worse than a needle’s, the bruising a result of her own physiology rather than any rough handling by Olive.
Olive.
The name bounced around in her mind and her cheeks flushed when she pictured her face. Pale and with sunken, grey eyes she’d looked all the world like a living corpse, but there was a warmth to her, a softness that only a living body had. The experience had been nothing at all what she’d imagined when Hector had come into her life and warned her of things going bump in the night.
But Millie would be the first to admit she always had a weakness for a strong willed woman. For all the caution Olive had shown, there was a fire in her that was irresistible and her deferment to Millie’s directions was only a result of a well-argued case.
Mulling over the night’s events again and again as she sat at her table and received her food, she missed the object of her musings herself entering the diner. Not that she made herself easy to spot; Olive had bundled herself up in a high-collared coat and had a hat pulled down to nearly cover her eyes.
“Can I sit down?”
Millie visibly startled to hear a voice above her so suddenly and she gave a confused look to the figure now hovering beside her. “I— sure, of course.”
Olive slid into a seat opposite, eyeing up the plate of food on the table with a sort of longing before placing her hands flat in front of her. The moment she sat down, a strange pall or shadow fell around the two of them, and the diner beyond their seats became hazy, like it had shifted subtly away from them in time and space.
“What’s happening?” Millie whispered, her eyes fixed on the smear of color that was the waitress cleaning one of the other tables.
“It’s just… I don’t know,” Olive said, taking off her hat and running a hand through her hair. “It’s just something that happens when I don’t want humans paying attention to me.”
“It wasn’t like this in the hospital room,” Millie said, turning to face her.
A pair of haunted eyes met her gaze before Olive cast them down at her hands. “It’s based on emotion, I think.” She didn’t elaborate and instead picked at the ragged end of a badly broken fingernail; the skin beneath was healed, but the nail was a jagged shard.
“That looks like it hurt,” Millie said, gesturing at the finger with her eyes.
Olive blinked and held her hand out in front of her as if she only just noticed the damage. “Oh. I must have broken it when— earlier.” She folded her fingers into her palm and covered her hand with the other.
A few tense moments passed over the table before Millie moved toward her silverware. “Do you mind if I eat?”
A wan smile hit Olive’s face and she propped her chin up on her knuckles. “…no go for it.”
Resisting the urge to share her plate out of politeness, Millie took a few thoughtful bites before glancing at her table mate again. “How did you find me?”
Olive bit at the corner of her lip, delicately enough that she didn’t draw blood. “I can find anyone I’ve fed from,” she said, her eyes darting over Millie’s face, gauging her reaction.
“Oh. That seems… useful,” Millie faltered before letting out an awkward laugh. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
But Olive’s eyes rested on Millie’s face in an appreciative sort of way, she just seemed pleased to have the company. Behind the dulled color, Millie could tell they must have been a very strikingly warm brown before her turning. Her face felt hot and she smiled, looking away and down at her food.
“Am I bothering you?” Olive asked.
Millie raised her head suddenly and again met those eyes. “Not at all!” she said perhaps too quickly. “No, honestly. It’s nice to talk with someone outside of work.”
Olive pulled her ponytail out from the collar of her coat and ran her fingers through the length of it. A few times she breathed deeply, as if she was going to speak, but stayed silent. Finally feeling like she should say something, she sighed, “Yeah, I get that.”
“Is that why you came to find me?” Mille asked, gently prodding at the unseen block in the conversation.
Olive nodded and the dam was broken. She buried her face in her hands and clutched at a few loose locks of hair. “I’m just so fucking alone in that place,” she said, her tone of voice betraying none of the emotional turmoil plain in her body language.
“It isn’t just you there, is it?” Millie asked.
“It might as well be,” Olive said, and this time her words were tinged with bitterness. “I don’t expect anything from Baptiste, I’m not a fucking idiot, but Dog might—” She held her tongue, wiping viciously at one dry eye. “Whatever. Fuck both of them. Fuckers.”
“That sounds terrible,” Millie said, putting her plate off to the side.
Olive shrugged and folded down the collar of her coat. A tiny pair of pinprick scars were visible along her left jugular vein and she caught Millie staring for a beat too long. Rather than cover up again as she expected, Olive stretched her head to one side and flattened her coat, showing off her marks. “Courtesy of both of the fuckers in my death,” she said, flitting her hand over her neck.
“Both…?” Millie repeated with a bewildered look on her face. “I thought only one—”
Olive’s laugh was curt and mirthless. “Baptiste is my liege, but Dog… well, it was his idea. They have joint ownership over me.” She grew silent and grabbed for the salt shaker, twirling it on the table for something to do. When she spoke again it was much softer without any of her prior bravado. “Whatever. It was a long time ago.” It doesn’t matter or maybe I don’t matter being the message underneath it all.
The salt shaker made another half turn before it was stopped by Millie placing her hand over Olive’s. It was a silent gesture; she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t just take away from the moment.
“I don’t need you to pity me,” Olive said, casting her eyes down. Neither woman moved her hand away and after another tense silence, Olive looked back up. “What’s your story, morning glory? Why are you doing this?”
“Didn’t I already say?” Millie asked, meeting her gaze. “It’s my job to help. I want to help.”
“You’re a doctor, not a— a—” Olive faltered, grasping for words. “Priest. This isn’t confession.”
Millie let out a genuine laugh. “I haven’t been to confession since high school.”
“Yeah?” Olive replied, a light shining in her eyes. “I kept it up longer than I should have, probably, but church was a sort of familiar thing to grab onto while the rest of my life got rearranged.”
“After you were turned?” Millie asked, her eyebrows raised.
Olive snorted in laughter. “God, no, way before. I moved around a lot after I hit 18.” When Millie nodded, Olive caught her eye and tilted her head. “What made you quit?”
“Teenage rebellion, if you believed my mother,” she said with a shrug. “Mostly because I knew they wouldn’t accept me being a lesbian.” Here she fixed Olive with a mixed expression, one part anticipation and one part wariness.
“Did your mother think that was teenage rebellion, too?”
With a shuddering laugh, Millie let out the breath she’d been holding and propped her chin in her hand. “Maybe, if she knew. I’ve never told her.” Her smile faded as she contemplated a spot on the surface of the table. “I don’t want to hear what she’d have to say.”
The silence that stretched over the table was more thoughtful than somber. It was broken when Olive tapped her jagged fingernail against the table and said, “Sounds like her loss.”
Millie’s eyes met hers, warm brown against silvery gray, and she let her fingertips drift closer to Olive’s until they were touching. “You said that other people here can’t see us, right?”
For a moment, Olive’s hand twitched like she might pull it back, but she let it stay as she shook her head and leaned over the table. Her face was so close her features blurred together and heat colored Millie’s cheeks; she briefly imagined what it would have been like to have her neck bitten instead, and her face darkened more.
“No one can see if I don’t want them to,” Olive whispered. Her mouth was very close now.
But just as Millie leaned forward, she jerked back, turning her head away sharply. The look on Olive’s face was one of flustered confusion, as if she couldn’t understand why her own body had moved away.
“Was I—” Millie started before the restaurant and its patrons came back into sharp relief around them.
“You don’t want to get involved with me, doc,” Olive said, zipping her collar up tight to her chin. “I’ve chased off all of Dog’s partners, I’m sure he’d love to return the favor to me.”
Millie curled her fingers inward, her hand still stretched over to the other side of the table. “I don’t think it’s fair to tell me what I do and don’t want, Olive.”
“Carmen,” she uttered, and her eyes snapped over to Millie’s when she realized she’d spoken.
Pushing herself away from the table, her hair fell over her face and almost covered how flustered she looked. The veil fell back around the pair, more opaque this time; the diner and its patrons almost disappeared from sight. Unlike before, Millie got the impression this was intentional.
“Let me tell you something,” Olive — Carmen — said. “A story about a bartender down in Hays, six months out from active duty with the Coast Guard, finally feeling like she’s her own person in civilian life.”
Millie furrowed her brow and kept her gaze fixed on Carmen. “Coast Guard’s a hard program to get into,” she said.
“But I’d made it,” she said, brushing her hair away from her face, her expression darkly triumphant. “Sure I was doing scut work at some shit hole, but I was making it on my own. I had a life and it was mine.”
Unsure if she wanted her input, Millie stayed silent as Carmen examined a few split ends in her hair, twirling them between her forefinger and thumb. When the silence stretched on a bit too long, she reached her hand across the table again, warm fingers brushing cool ones.
“Then Dog showed up,” Carmen said, jolted out of her memory by the touch. “In a bar full of threes he was at least a seven because he didn’t spend the whole night staring at my tits.” She curled her lip at the thought and Millie felt some dormant protective instinct stir in her chest. “So I figured what the hell, why not? I thought him turning me down was the most decent thing a man had ever done for me.”
The silence that followed was heavy and electrically charged, as if a thundercloud had settled over the pair. Millie waited for the story to continue, her breath caught in her lungs, but no relief was coming. Even her hand clasped over Carmen’s wasn’t enough to stir her this time around.
“Carmen?” she said, aware of upsetting the atmosphere.
Her hand clenched tight to itself under Millie’s. “And then I died. That’s all.” She raised her head to face Millie, a few tears rimming her pale eyes. Her fist turned upright and she spread her palm to take Millie’s offered hand, her fingers trembling from the weight of memory. When Carmen leaned across the table, Millie welcomed her kiss even though she was afraid it might somehow break the spell around them.
But the supernatural curtain remained around the pair long enough for Millie’s free hand to find its way to Carmen’s soft hair and cool cheek. The woman smelled faintly of soap, of shampoo with tiny flowers on the label, and Millie felt a flush of embarrassment for her own lingering scent of sweat and hospital-grade hand sanitizers. After a moment, the two parted with deep reluctance, and Millie wasn’t sure which of them had broken away first.
“I’m getting some mixed messages from you here, Carmen,” she said, tilting her head in the other woman’s direction. Her tone was light and teasing, but she wasn’t about to forget the vulnerability the two had just shown each other.
In spite of herself, Carmen let out a nervous laugh and leaned away. “I’m—” she started, before stopping herself and biting at her lower lip. “You’re right I can’t stop you from wanting to do something, but this isn’t worth getting hurt over,” she said.
“You won’t hurt me,” Millie declared, holding her head up high.
“Not me,” Carmen said, looking her in the eye. “But trusting the wrong people got me killed. Just.. don’t be so quick to throw your life away.”
In the silence that followed, Carmen withdrew into herself, pulled her hair in front of her face, and stood. The diner around them was still obscured, the people all blurs and colors and muted sound. She hesitated at the table’s edge before the patrons and surroundings returned in sharp relief.
“Will you come and find me again?” Millie asked.
“When I need you, I will.” She lingered for a beat longer and Millie’s heart skipped when it looked like she would take her seat again, but the moment was gone. With a slow shake of her head, she turned sharply on her heel and strode out the door, leaving Millie alone again.