Free Woman King by Evette Davis Page A

doesn’t give off any emotion,” I said as
he passed. “Only that pecking sensation.”
    Elsa laughed. “Vampires don’t feel emotions
the way humans do. It has something to do with the absence of a
beating heart. If you ever get to know a vampire well, you will
learn to read their feelings more closely.”
    “Wow, a vampire and a demon, all in the last
hour in San Francisco,” I said, shaking my head. “I never imagined
it was possible.”
    “And now?” Elsa asked.
    “I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “But I do
know that everything I thought I knew has changed.”
    “That is a good beginning,” Elsa said,
putting her hand on my arm. “Let’s go find a place to meet Lily for
dinner.”
    We settled on Bar Tartine, a quaint bistro on
Valencia Street. Lily arrived at about 5:30 looking exhausted.
Seeing her made me realize how tired I was, too.
    “I don’t think this will be a late evening,”
I said. “We both look like we could use a good night’s sleep.”
    A waiter took our order for three glasses of
wine, and a sampling of house-made meats and cheeses. I added on a
bowl of warm olives, and Lily asked for some bread. Once our drinks
and small plates arrived, I quizzed my magical friends on what
really was going on around me.
    “You’re very lucky to live in San Francisco,”
Lily said, licking a drop of olive oil off her fingertip. “This
city is the most magical of any in the world.”
    “You don’t mean picturesque, do you?”
    Lily smiled. “Nope. I mean magical, with a
capital M. After a while you will feel it. The land itself is part
of it. Very early civilizations knew it, too, the Ohlone Indians,
for example.”
    Lily’s comments reminded me of something from
my adventure the night before.
    “I think I saw them,” I burst out,
interrupting Lily’s sentence. “I saw them at Ocean Beach last
night. I ran there after leaving the park. There were hundreds of
people chanting, and I saw a woman—their shaman. I thought I was
hallucinating.”
    Both women exchanged glances. “You were
having a vision, but it’s extraordinary that you saw the Ohlone,”
Elsa said. “Your abilities are very strong, Olivia. You picked up
on a very old memory embedded in the land.”
    “You were amazing last evening, but I did
have a brief scare,” Lily said, joining the conversation. “After
Elsa left and you began to run towards the lake, I thought at one
point that I’d lost you. You seemed to disappear from my line of
sight, but then I found you again at the foot of the water. I think
my eyes must have been playing tricks on me.”
    “I was running around like a crazy woman,
maybe a tree or a bush blocked me from view,” I said as I nibbled.
“My memory of specific details about the evening is hazy, but I do
remember one thing. I heard a man’s voice. He asked me to leave
behind my old life and join him. I followed the sound of his voice
all the way to the museum, but never located him. I’m guessing it
was just a hallucination.”
    My companions both laughed. “If we ever do
this again, I will remember to brew a weaker tea next time,” Elsa
said lightly.
    Elsa shifted in her seat, and just for a
minute I felt apprehension coming from her. Then, very quickly, the
emotion disappeared from my radar, almost like a shadow that
disappears from the corner of your eye when your turn your head to
find its source. But it was clear that for the second time in one
day, Elsa was hiding something from me.
     
     
    ****
     
     

CHAPTER
12

    That night I slept deeply and did not stir
from my bed for ten hours. I woke up feeling stiff, but otherwise
remarkably well, considering my discovery that I shared my city
with fairies, demons and vampires. At dinner, Lily had also briefed
me on witches, who seemingly find San Francisco especially
welcoming to their lifestyle. We are not alone , it turns
out. We are all actually walking side-by-side on Valencia Street,
although most of us have no idea. Few people