Kiss The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

  Christ, was she already that bitter?

  Bitter.

  That’s probably the least of what Michael would think of her if he knew she hadn’t believed his story.

  Did he get a whiff of her suspicions? Did she leave the table too quickly?

  There’s a sparkling champagne flute sitting next to her empty plate, and when she takes her seat again, he gives her a smile as warm as the one he gave her when she first sat down.

  “I thought the whole cork-popping thing wouldn’t have been appropriate given we kind of started off awkwardly,” he says, lifting his glass. “But we can still do this part.”

  She returns his toast and takes a hearty slug of champagne. Hearty enough to cause Michael’s eyes to widen while he takes a polite, restrained sip from his own glass. He sets his glass down with a thud that sounds final. Laney sees the strain behind his smile.

  “You didn’t believe me, did you?” he asks.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Your face looks exactly the same. You didn’t splash water on it or anything.”

  CIA, here I come.

  “No,” she answers. “I didn’t believe you.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Yes. I did some research.”

  “Wow. That’s one hell of a bathroom they got here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Michael stares down into his champagne glass. Strike two, she thinks. One more strike and you’re—

  “So I guess a lot of guys have lied to you on first dates before,” he says with a lack of anger that surprises her.

  “Yes, but still…”

  “Okay. Let me just say a few things.”

  “I’m listening,” she answers, trying not to sound too relieved that she’s temporarily off the hook for explaining her suspicions.

  “You need to learn that cannot is not two words.”

  “What?”

  “Also, I encourage you to get a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and read the section on paragraphs, because sometimes you cram what should be about three paragraphs into one and it can make your papers confusing.”

  “You’re talking about my classwork? Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t aware it was a class in composition.”

  “If you didn’t have any talent for analyzing and discussing art, I wouldn’t be worried about your composition. But you do, so I am. Also, I know you’re a bigger fan of periods like Baroque and Rococo, but you’re going to have to stop leaving out all Renaissance painters when we do comparison assignments. Because whether or not their work appeals to you on a personal level, we can’t just ignore the entire Renaissance when we survey trends in Western Art that started in the Middle Ages.”

  “I see…”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, you’re attacking me because I didn’t believe your story.”

  “No, Laney. I’m proving to you that no matter what happens between us, I’ll still be able to do my job. At the end of the semester, you’ll get the grade you deserve, based on the work you’ve done in class. Not based on whether you let me do the things to your body I’ve wanted to do now for months.”

  What things? Tell me now. All of them. Each and every one. Tell me what you want to do to my—

  “I have a copy of Strunk and White,” she says, downing a shot of champagne.

  “As we all should.”

  “It doesn’t exactly make for sexy bedtime reading.”

  “You don’t strike me as the type who reads a lot of romance novels.”

  “You strike me as the type who does. For strategy.”

  “A woman who can’t handle criticism. I can handle that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Michael bows his head and holds up his palms in a gesture of defeat.

  “That was shitty,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  The sincerity of his apology dissolves the anger that’s been blocking her own. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe your story.”

  “I’m sorry so many guys have lied to you in the past.”

  Before either of them can be sorry for anything else, like the weather, perhaps, or the fact that humankind has yet to invent a flying car, the waiter brings their food. Once he departs, she realizes this is the moment when she should tell a story of her own, a revelation that could make up for her suspicions of his own, something that balances the scales, make her as vulnerable as he made himself.

  I’m already vulnerable, she thinks. And there it is, that hard knot of resistance that won’t seem to fade no matter what she does. No matter what he does.

  “I read a romance novel once,” she finally says.

  “Pride and Prejudice?”

  “No! It was contemporary. I can’t remember the name. It was sweet.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “Contemporary?” she asks, teasing him.

  “No,” he answers with a smile. “Sweet.”

  “Sweet’s all right, I guess.”

  “But you’re not a fan of happily ever after?”

  “Sure. If, you know, it’s earned.”

  “Earned? How?” he asks, eyes wide as he takes a large bite of food, a sign that he won’t be rushing to fill the silence if she doesn’t answer because he’ll be too busy chewing.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He chews and chews and chews.

  “Want to learn?” he asks.

  “I’ll answer after you swallow that bite.”

  He makes a show of swallowing his bite.

  “Well…want to?”

  “We’ll see,” she says.

  He shoots her a wicked grin, and when he attacks his plate again with a fork and a knife, she imagines it’s with the same force and passion he’d like to unleash on her body.

  This night can end however you’d like it to, Laney Foley.

  Isn’t that how he put it?

  She hopes he’s a man of his word because the only thing she’s sure of is the night’s not over yet.

  4

  LILLIANE

  Lilliane Williams isn’t afraid to walk the French Quarter alone at night, even in a black leather dress that flatters her curves, even while carrying a jeweled leather suitcase so shiny and ornate it could make the steeliest pickpocket salivate with desire. She doesn’t hesitate to cut through back alleys. She takes her time strolling lonely, shadowy side streets. Her primary concern isn’t assault; it’s encountering someone who might realize she hasn’t aged a day in fifty-six years.

  But if she were to run into someone from her old life, her life before she wandered into that strange candle shop in April of 1959, that person would probably assume she was a distant relative of Lilliane Williams. Maybe even a reincarnated version. But not the same woman who worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy white family in the Garden District for several years, the same Lilliane Williams whose disappearance wasn’t even reported by the local papers because back then the local papers didn’t report on the disappearances of black people.

  When she’s several feet from the opening of an alley, Lilliane senses the low, quick approach of a stalking human predator, hears something behind her that could either be the cock of a gun or the click of a switchblade. As soon as the man grabs for the suitcase, she wills him headfirst into the nearest stone wall. But whatever drugs are coursing through his system have made him impervious to solid concrete and oblivious to her show of supernatural strength.

  He whirls, gun raised.

  “Lord! Really?” she says with a groan.

  “Give it to me, bitch, or I’ll fucking put a bullet in you. Swear to God.”

  “If you insist,” Lilliane answers brightly.

  She sets the suitcase down on the pavement in front of her. Then, just as the thief goes for the handle, she stretches her arms out on either side of her and rises twenty feet straight up into the air, tendrils of gold dust spraying from her open palms like two small bursts of heavenly rock
et exhaust. Her miraculous self-propulsion flattens the flaps of her leather dress around her legs with a sound like giant wings beating the air. Perhaps it’s reckless to perform this trick right here, right now; just beyond the neon-lit mouth of the alley is a parade of tourists. But this display of power is working its intended effect on her would-be attacker.

  The shower of gold dust coats the suitcase, causing the guy to recoil in horror, and the sight of her rising into the air literally knocks him onto his ass. When Lilliane sees his gun spinning across the pavement away from him, she allows herself to sink back down to earth, but not before landing one swift kick to the young man’s jaw.

  “Run along now, little boy. I’ve got a date.”

  Reeking of fresh urine, he does as instructed.

  Lilliane picks up the suitcase and continues on her way.

  A date? Not really.

  More like a regular delivery. Sure, it sounds dry, far too mechanical to describe the miraculous contents of the suitcase she’s once again carrying confidently in one hand. But while the man scheduled to appear to her in twenty minutes’ time is most certainly handsome, there’s very little between them she’d be willing to call affection. So she shouldn’t call it a date, just as she shouldn’t call Bastian Drake a man.

  What an absurd name, she thinks. She’s fairly sure it’s not even his real one. But over the years Bastian, or whoever he is, has remained as closely guarded with the details of his own history as he was on that summer afternoon in 1959 when they met for the first time. Despite all their fights, he’s never once revealed what his life was like before he took that ridiculous name, before he became the candlemaker, before he became a… Silly that even now her mind trips over the exact word for him, as if just thinking it to herself amounts to some kind of confession.

  Ghost. Bastian is a ghost.

  Her plight is easier to manage when she’s angry, and there are other descriptions of him she prefers because they allow her to remain in a state of barely controlled, but energizing rage.

  Captor, owner, overseer, warlock. If he had told me that day what his candle could really do. If he had told me what the consequences would be if I didn’t—

  A few steps into Jackson Square, she slams into a pedestrian, some drunken little white boy whose wide eyes fill immediately with lustful admiration at the sight of the gorgeous, full-figured black woman in the form-fitting leather dress. She can’t lie to herself; she appreciates the attention, feels a deep, growling urge to take him to the nearest alley, strip him of his clothes, place her hands against his blushing, sweating cheeks and stare right into his soul. But she has made a commitment to use her powers in only the most secret and structured way, and only on the willing. That’s why she built The Desire Exchange. And performing a radiance on a fresh-faced college boy in the middle of the French Quarter on a Friday night is far more reckless than the aerial routine she just pulled on her would-be mugger.

  Those eyes, though. That sweet boyish face…

  The skinny little blonde who suddenly hooks the guy under one armpit must be his girlfriend. How else to explain her sudden possessiveness and the dagger-glare she gives Lilliane as she drags Lilliane’s not-so-secret admirer off into the crowd?

  As she watches the not-so-happy couple disappear, sadness blooms inside of Lilliane like ink meeting water. Sadness tinged with grief. Maybe they’re truly in love. Maybe later that night they will fight and scream and cry and then tearfully make up, their feelings for each other renewing, strengthening before exploding into a crescendo of fiery make-up sex. These things have all been lost to Lilliane, thanks to Bastian Drake.

  Well, not the sex. She can manage the sex just fine. Better than ever, in fact. It’s amazing how skilled you can become in the bedroom when you have all the time in the world to study the act of lovemaking and you suffer none of the costs of aging.

  But all the feelings humans tangle throughout the bedroom and beyond, all the emotions humans call love, those are gone now. They’ve been gone for decades.

  Lilliane pauses to catch her breath, to flush the poison of grief and regret from her system. She studies the tarot card readers, the street musicians, and the knots of drunken tourists. The brightly lit facade of St. Louis Cathedral rises overhead.

  She loves the French Quarter. Unlike many of her fellow radiants, she doesn’t leave the compound very often, but when she does, it’s to come here. She doesn’t have to work to blend in because in the French Quarter, all you have to do to blend in is dance with the chaos. Still, what must the people all around her assume she must be? A cocktail waitress, a street performer, or God forbid, a stripper?

  If they find her outfit strange, they’d find the real explanation for it even stranger. The leather dress is perfectly weighted to provide just enough drag to keep her on target when she takes to the air. Radiants can’t fly; they leap, and if they don’t posses the muscle-strength, or if they haven’t weighted themselves down properly, a leap can turn into something that looks like a zigzagging balloon after the air’s been let out of it.

  Suitcase in hand, Lilliane heads down Pirate’s Alley and into a long pool of shadows that rises up the cathedral’s side wall. She gives a quick glance in both directions. Confident she’s alone, she rises skyward until she’s crested one of the flat areas of the roof that sits on either side of the cathedral’s spire.

  5

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” These words are the first sounds Bastian makes as he materializes on the roof of St. Louis Cathedral. No doubt he’s referring to the expansive view. Lilliane studies the vast shadowed square below.

  At night, the high wrought iron gates, which usually grant admittance to the center of Jackson Square, are closed, leaving the proud statue of Andrew Jackson astride his horse alone in a sea of shadows. Outside the fence, the tarot card readers and street musicians she stood among only seconds before look like small, animated dolls. And just beyond the stream of traffic on Decatur Street, a cargo ship as tall as a high-rise office building glides past the city on the inky black waters of the Mississippi River.

  “And to think, most will never see it,” Bastian says.

  “See what?”

  “The view, darling. It’s not like there’s a viewing platform up here.”

  “Don’t attempt to mollify me with talk of my powers,” Lilliane says quietly. “I’m not in the mood, Bastian.”

  “Mollify you?” he asks, sounding genuinely hurt. “What a curious word.”

  She hands him the suitcase with enough force to knock a normal man back on his heels. But he is not a normal man. At what point are you allowed to stop referring to a ghost as a man?

  Bastian is suddenly silent as he hefts the suitcase. He goes about his usual routine; caressing the handle slowly, carefully running his fingers along the array of inset jewels along the top. To a curious onlooker he would look like some kind of leather fetishist. The truth is far stranger. Bastian cannot slip through the cracks in human time carrying any object he hasn’t handled for at least ten minutes. It’s one of the few rules of his existence he’s shared with her.

  “Yes, it’s lighter than usual,” she says after the silence between them becomes uncomfortable. She had expected him to mention it first.

  “And your mood?”

  “Normally, I bring you six jars. This time I’ve got two. You’ll make do, I’m sure.”

  “Your mood, Lilliane. What’s troubling you this evening?”

  “I normally seem pleasant during our little visits?”

  “Perhaps not,” Bastian answers, nonplussed as always. “But you rarely say anything as specific as I’m in a bad mood. So I thought I might take a chance and ask.”

  “I didn’t say I was in a bad mood. I said I wasn’t in the mood to be distracted with talk of my abilities.”

  “Distracted from what?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I see.”

  She could leap from the roof in an instant, ending this a
wkward little exchange. Bastian would have to stay right where he was. Unlike her, he doesn’t have the power to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and unlike him, she doesn’t have the power to simply vanish at will. But Bastian won’t go anywhere until he’s made enough physical contact with the suitcase to spirit it away. Away to wherever it is he goes; she knows better than to ask him exactly where.

  “There was a boy,” she says. “Down there somewhere.”

  “A boy?”

  “A college kid. In the square, just now. He gave me a look. A look that made me remember things. Things I miss.”

  “I see.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” she says quietly.

  “And someday, sooner than he thinks, that boy will be a man. Paunchy and middle-aged and stewing in regret over the roads not taken, and you will still be Lilliane. Youthful and powerful and capable of bringing a person’s innermost desires to life.”

  “I tired of these conversations years ago.”

  “Two jars,” he says.

  “Managerial difficulties. Don’t trouble yourself.”

  “Consider me troubled. I helped you build The Desire Exchange, Lilliane. And I did it so you’d have a sense of purpose.”

  “You did it to keep me busy,” she answers.

  “There’s a difference?”

  “You thought it would make me less angry.”

  “What happened, Lilliane?”

  “We were infiltrated.”

  “Infiltrated? By what?”

  “Humans,” she answers. “Ordinary, desperate, fear-ridden, beautiful, mortal humans. Humans with fake identities and guns.”

  “I take it no one was hurt?”

  “Well, you would have been able to sense it, right?” she asks. He has the ability to appear to any of them whenever he’d like, but beyond that, he’s never disclosed how much of a real psychic connection exists between him and his bastard stepchildren. Can he sense their losses? Their rages? The glittering unfurling of the powers they unleash inside of The Desire Exchange?