And, later, when the vision suddenly blurred, Leo looked immediately at the gash in his left arm, assuming the wound had congealed over again. But it hadn’t. Indeed, the blood was still dribbling freely, although with less reckless abandon.

  What was this?

  The visions had only blurred when his flowing blood had been staunched—or when the painting was complete. Neither was the case here. Leo paused briefly and closed his eyes and relaxed his tired lids. Maybe he needed a break. Already he had painted longer and harder than he had for any of his previous paintings.

  A moment later, he opened his eyes and the vision was mercifully still there, stronger than ever. Leo smiled. He resumed painting. He just needed to rest.

  An hour later, as an exhausted Leo compared the vision to his painting, he saw with elation that the painting was nearly complete.

  Nearly.

  Still, the apple tree off to the left of the young man in the painting was in sad shape. Leo spent a half an hour on the tree, adding minute changes here and there. And as he was about to add a touch of gator green to some background leaves, his painting hand hand finally began shaking.

  Shit.

  Never before had he reached the point where his painting hand shook. And as it shook, a voice inside him protested this madness. But not loudly enough. Mostly, the voice was tired and wanted to sleep. A long, long sleep. The big sleep. Still, it begged him to please, please, please look into the bucket, to please look at what he was doing to himself.

  So Leo did just that. He forced himself to pause long enough to glance into the mop bucket. It was seven inches full of his precious hemoglobin. If dumped into a bathtub, it would spread over the entire surface and take a minute or two to drain.

  I’m killing myself.

  Leo closed his eyes and told himself to finish the painting another day; after all, the painting was nearly complete. As it stood now, it was still a masterpiece.

  But it’s not finished.

  If Leo stopped, the vision would be gone, and the fine details would be lost. In particular, there was one last face to fill in. That of a young man, standing among the other, older men.

  The pause did Leo good. His right hand had stopped twitching, albeit briefly, and so he raised the brush, ignored the voice protesting faintly in the back of his skull, and dabbed some color from the palette and proceeded to add the details of the young man’s face. The face looked achingly familiar, but Leo was in no condition to plumb his memory for the reason why.

  He continued with the face and, once done, he touched up the rest of the painting here and there, sharpening images, enhancing colors, perfecting his vision.

  And then he was done. Or so he thought.

  As his heart beat so softly that he wondered if it was beating at all, dark fingers reached from behind his head and slowly covered his eyes. His painting hand dropped to the floor; Leo’s head tilted to one side, and he closed his eyes. Blood still trickled slowly into the bucket.

  But the demon muse that lived within him was not done with him. No, not by a long shot. It shone a burning spotlight into his nearly unconscious brain.

  It’s still incomplete, said the voice. You’re not done! Wake up! Wake up! You cannot die now with the painting still incomplete!

  And with a force of will that surprised even him—for Leo was always one who loved sleep more than life itself—the young painter managed to stir himself awake. He cracked open his heavy eyes and lifted his alabaster white face toward the magnificent painting before him. He spotted immediately what needed to be done. A fallen leaf was missing. A leaf, and no more. And it needed to be placed on the dirt path that led to the jeweled city shining gloriously in the far distance.

  And so Leo raised his arm, lifted the tip of the brush to the palette, found the colors he needed, and moved the tip over to the canvas. He flicked his wrist once, twice, and the perfect leaf appeared on the path, gleaming wetly.

  But, alas, Leo knew that he was still not done. The devil muse would not let him off that easily. Oh, no. The painting needed one last touch. One last personal touch. Leo finally understood.

  He commanded the fingers of his cold left hand to work. They ignored him at first, but finally jerked once, then twice. A corpse awakening. Now he commanded his fingers to grip the edge of the nearly full bucket. They did so, albeit clumsily.

  Leo stood on shaky legs. Darkness attacked him, like a massive black wave rising up before him. He fought through it. As he stood, lifting the bucket of blood, the painting before him seemed to recede rapidly. To Leo, it now looked like a tiny stamp at the far end of a long, black tunnel.

  With his last remaining strength, Leo heaved the contents of the bucket onto his painting. A crimson wave of death slammed into the canvas, knocked it over.

  Leo lost his balance and fell. The bucket landed on top of him, and the remaining blood spilled out from it and covered his face and mouth and drowned what little breath remained in him.

  Leo slept forever.

  ***

  In contemporary art history books one might find a sentence or two, perhaps even a whole paragraph, on Leo Dershowitz. In one such textbook, after commenting on Leo’s contribution to contemporary art, it finished with this: “Leo Dershowitz committed suicide soon after creating, arguably, his greatest work, a macabre vision of what many believe to be the afterlife. Populating the piece are many of history’s greatest artists, in which Leo, perhaps egotistically, included himself. In the painting, Leo can be found walking along a wooded, tree-lined path toward a jeweled city in the far distance, a city that many believe to be Heaven. The painting, amazingly, was doused with Leo’s own life blood, perhaps a statement of the price of art, of the sacrifice of art, and of one man’s devotion to his craft.”

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Blue Moon

  “It is rare to catch a glimpse of us. But when you do, be afraid. Or not. For we are not evil. Just hungry.” —Diary of the Undead

  I didn’t go into Starbucks very often, but when I did, I saw him.

  He sat in the far corner, his back to the wall, cowboy-like, as in, no one can sneak up on him. He’s your typical Starbucks geek. Laptop, headphones, wires everywhere. A too-big phone sitting next to him. Like most Starbuckians, he appeared to be hard at work on something, tapping away furiously, only sometimes pausing to look off into the near distance. Or the far distance. Or perhaps he was checking out an ass or two. How the hell would I know?

  Either way, he seemed to work as hard or harder than most of the other Starbucks geeks. Typing, typing, typing. Fingers flying, keys being hit with vigor, energy and confidence.

  He was also a big guy. Not as big as Kingsley—few are—but certainly big enough. He might have been handsome if not for his slightly-too-big head. Also, I didn’t like his half-ass beard, somewhere between a real beard and something Don Johnson might have worn in the 80s. Pick a beard or not, big guy. At least, that’s what I said.

  Anyway, the only reason we’d been hitting this Starbucks was that Tammy had developed a penchant for coffee. Go figure. The madness all started when a relative had given her a Starbucks card last Christmas. Who gives an eleven-year-old a Starbucks card? At any rate, her new favorite drink was a caramel macchiato, and so, these days, when I was in a particularly good mood (or if I’d recently cashed a client’s check, which was just as rare) she and I would hit up the local Starbucks.

  A vampire at Starbucks. Why not?

  Not often, granted. A nine-dollar coffee filled with enough sugar to fuel a Smart Car wasn’t something I was very keen on. But...my daughter liked them. I suspected sitting in a Starbucks, drinking her flavored coffee, also made her feel like an adult.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but she seemed happy, and I liked when my kids were happy. So sue me.

  Anyway, business must have been good this month because we’d been in nearly every week—and each time, there he was:

  The blond guy with the pseudo-beard and big head, his back to the wall, was pounding away at his keyboard again. Who he was, I didn’t know. But I found myself drawn to him. I supposed he wasn’t hideous to look at, but he certainly wasn’t my type. I didn’t generally go for blondes, and I most certainly didn’t go for half-assed beards.

  Still, there was something about him. I’d noticed it before, but had mostly ignored it. After all, I had enough men in my life. Too many, some would say.

  I was certain my interest in him wasn’t romantic. No, there was something else about him. Something intriguing...and familiar. I generally kept a low profile, and I was certainly not one for catching up with old friends. Old friends asked a lot of questions.

  Was he an old friend? I didn’t know, but I was sure I knew him from somewhere. And, as we ordered our drinks today—a caramel foo-foo drink for Tammy and a bottled water for me—I found myself glancing over at him again and again.

  And, yes, today I had cashed another client check. Wahoo! A nice-sized one, too, although my client, I suspected, had seriously considered not paying me.

  Bad idea.

  You see, I had been promised a bonus if I found something—a hidden treasure of all things—and I had. Except a crazy ghost had had other plans. Yes, a ghost...who very much didn’t want me to reveal the location of his treasure. So, instead of disclosing the location of the buried fortune, I had shown my client evidence of its existence. I had, after all, been hired to find the treasure, not reveal the location.

  Yes, a loophole in my agreement. My client had not been pleased. That might cost me a bad review on Angie’s List, but that was a price I was willing to pay. In the end, a dead man got his wish, I got my bonus, and now here we were at Starbucks. Life goes on.

  As Tammy placed her complicated order, sounding like a true Starbuckian, I glanced over at the blond guy writing in the corner. He wore one of those 1920s paperboy caps. Sometimes called duck-billed caps. Nerdy, but kind of cute, too. He wore his at a slight angle. Jaunty.

  As we waited for our drinks, Tammy launched into a rather elaborate and disturbingly well-thought-out plan to have Anthony, her younger brother, move in with their dad so that we girls could have the house alone. When she was done, I told her that a) that wasn’t going to happen and b) she would miss Anthony, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

  “I won’t miss his farting.”

  “No one would miss his farting, Tammy.”

  “Maybe he can live with Dad half the time.”

  “Or not.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Not even Anthony’s stinky butt.”

  Tammy giggled, and when our drinks were ready, I led Tammy over to a table and told her to sit and wait for me.

  “You’re going to talk to that man,” she said. My daughter, you should know, is a world class mind reader.

  “Yes,” I said, “and it’s not polite to read other people’s minds.”

  “Well, you keep looking at him.”

  “I know.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”

  ***

  “Hi,” I said, except I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear me. So I leaned down and waved just over his laptop.

  That got his attention. He gasped a little and looked up. He was wearing pink—yes, pink—headphones with the words “Virgin Airlines” written on them. He pulled them off, slipping them down around his neck. As he did so, I caught what might have been some New Agey music. I didn’t take the big guy as an Enya type, but go figure.

  “Hi,” I said again.

  He smiled and sat forward and promptly knocked his iced coffee off the table. As it went flying, I reached down almost casually and caught it before it got very far. I returned it to its wet ring on the table next to his keyboard.

  “You better be careful,” I said. “I hear iced coffee is hell on keyboards.”

  He stared at the coffee that, just a few seconds earlier had been flipping through the air. He looked up at me, his mouth hanging open a little. I got that a lot these days.

  “Er, right. Thank you...” his voice trailed off. “That was incredible.”

  I shrugged. “Lucky catch.”

  “No, I mean...that might have been the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Then you need to get out more,” I said. “This seat taken?”

  He blinked some more, then shook his head. He had been prepared to work today. He had been prepared to lose himself in whatever it was that he was writing. He hadn’t been prepared to have a nosy woman with superhuman reflexes sit across from him.

  I set his leather saddle bag on the floor beneath the table. Cool bag. I sat opposite him.

  “I’ve seen you here before,” I said.

  “I’ve seen you, too,” he said.

  This actually surprised me. Never once had I seen him look up from his keyboard.

  “Are you a writer?” I asked.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Either that or you really, really hate your laptop.”

  He grinned. I grinned. We studied each other some more. My inner alarm remained silent. Always a good sign. We did this for another twenty seconds. The silence was not uncomfortable or unpleasant.

  I continued studying him. Full lips, short beard, hint of gray in his beard. Lots of laugh lines. Could probably use some lotion on his skin. Strong hands. Nails chewed. Bad habit. He wore a v-neck tee-shirt. Chest hair poking out. A ring on his right hand. A thick squarish watch on his left. North Face jacket hanging on the chair behind him. Nice jacket. Nothing about him suggested that I knew him.

  And yet...I did know him. I was sure of it. “You’re probably wondering why I’m sitting here,” I said.

  He reached for the recently-saved coffee. As he drank, he continued to take me in, his eyes going from my hair to my face to my body, scanning. They might have lingered on my boobs a little. I’d give him a pass. This time.

  “I think I know why you’re here,” he said. I waited for it, expecting the worst. And by worst, I meant some cheesy come-on line. Instead, he surprised me by saying, “You think you know me, and it’s killing you.”

  I nodded, impressed. “Something like that.”

  “Or maybe you’re here because you like my beard.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He sighed. “Well, I like it.”

  “Someone has to.”

  “Ouch,” he said, but smiled anyway.

  He set down his drink and glanced at his laptop when a ping sounded. I would know that ping from anywhere. It was an instant message, or an IM. Fang and I had used IMs often in the past. The big blond writer ignored the IM. On impulse, I reached out with my mind to see if I could get a read on him and was surprised that he was completely closed off to me. Another immortal? Interesting, as only immortals were closed off to me.

  He nodded after a moment and said, “Yeah, you seem familiar. Actually, you seem really, really familiar.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “No,” he said. “Just the ones who sit across from me at Starbucks and who look so damn familiar that it’s driving me crazy.” He paused and pretended to think about it. “So, I guess maybe once a day.”

  I laughed. No, I snorted, which made him laugh. I heard Tammy giggling behind us. My telepathic daughter would be picking all of this up. Yes, my kids were weird. And, no, I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

  “Did I used to date you?” I suddenly asked.

  He laughed some more and looked me over again. To the betterment of his health, he didn’t linger on my boobs this time. Good boy. Someone raised him well. He said, “Oh, I would remember if I used to date you.”

  “Is that a compliment?” I asked

  “Very much so.”

  “Good, then I won’t have to give you a public noogie.”

  “A public noogie?”

  “Yeah, you want one after all?”

  He raised his hand and laughed hard. Easy to get along with. Effortless familiarity. God, I knew him from somewhere. I tried again to penetrate his thoughts. No luck. An immortal? Geez, he didn’t seem immortal. He seemed very normal. Too normal.

  When he was done laughing, he said, “You sound kind of badass.”

  “I have to be.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “I’ve got two kids.”

  He nodded. “Mad mom in minivan and all that?”

  “Close,” I said, thinking of my minivan parked just outside the doors here, a minivan with a fresh dent along the passenger side fender, a dent that was the result of me backing into a shopping cart. Lord knows my inner warning system goes haywire when someone has ill intentions for me, but far be it to alert me when I’m about to put a $700 dent in my van.

  Stupid warning system.

  I studied him some more. The beard. The blue eyes. The chipped front teeth. The overbite. Jesus, this was driving me crazy.

  “It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?” he asked, grinning. He seemed to be enjoying this a hell of a lot more than I was. The bastard.

  “Bonkers,” I said. I chewed my lip. Tapped my nails on the circular, slightly scarred table. I asked him where he went to high school. He told me. No dice. But his high school hadn’t been very far, just a city away.

  “What year did you graduate?” he asked.

  I told him. He shook his head, reached for his iced coffee. When he was done sipping from it, he set it back into the wet ring. Bull’s eye.

  We next went through friends, jobs, boyfriends, and girlfriends. There was no connection anywhere. No friends of friends. Nothing. His name, I learned, was Jon.

  “Maybe we sat next to each other on an airplane trip,” he offered. “Or shared a seat on a train.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe our eyes met across a crowded room, and we’ve never forgotten each other.”