Chilling Cadence

One

Cadence could hardly keep herself together as she drove, with her hands so tight on the steering wheel it was like she’d stitched them to the worn leather. Holding her hands in a tight fist helped a little with the nerves. She was certain that if she let go, even a little, her hands would start to shake again and she’d be reverted back to the nervous wreck she had been before she had gotten into the car and began heading for Glasskeep.

She hadn’t stopped at all since she began her drive eight hours ago, and although her bladder protested and her stomach protested its hunger, she wouldn’t let herself stop.

Early that morning they passed the sign alerting them they’d entered Glasskeep, and right away, Cadence felt the magic holding the town together. Old Magic, she realized. The kind her Grandmother used to use.

In the passenger’s seat, there was movement and Cadence let her eyes shift quickly over to the movement. Her familiar, Grimm, was standing on his hind legs, his paws pressed against the foggy glass and his yellow eyes narrowed as he stared at the sign that alerted them they had passed into Glasskeep.

He dropped back down and Cadence could feel him looking at her.

“You’ll be safe in Glasskeep,” he told her.

He had said that many times. The first was when she had been panicking, wondering where she was going to go after narrowly escaping the attempt on her life. The second was as she had purchased the empty house, the third was as they had packed and now he was saying it again.

She wasn’t annoyed, though. Cadence had no right to be annoyed with Grimm. If he had gotten to her a moment later, she was certain that she would have died. He was the only reason she had escaped thoroughly injured but still alive.

She took comfort in his voice. Not quite human and not at all as gentle as a cat’s meow. It was low, gravelly, and inhuman. But that was to be expected given Grimm’s nature.

“How do you know so much about Glasskeep, anyway?” Cadence asked. Partly in the name of genuine curiosity and partly to take her mind off of the events that had caused her to flee her home.

“A long time ago…I went…to Glasskeep…” he explained. “The magic…is strong here. The residents there…protect their own. You’ll be safe…in Glasskeep.”

Cadence’s curiosity sparked even further, but she knew better than to ask. Grimm hated talking about his past, and she never blamed him for it. She hated talking about hers, too.

The next thirty minutes were quiet after that, reverting back to the quiet of before. Cadence didn’t like the silence and yet, at the same time, she welcomed it. Grimm was curled up in the passenger’s seat, sleeping silently, the rays of morning sunlight glinting off his shiny black fur.

And then Cadence saw it just as the woman who had talked to her over the phone had described it. Right there, under the street sign that read Churchill Drive and Witchlight Road, rested the little town of Glasskeep.

It was surprisingly New England-like, she thought. She spotted a diner, an auto-repair shop, a nail shop, a book shop, a coffee shop. It all seemed to go on and on, a couple of houses—coated with neutral-colored paints—splattered here and there throughout. Across the street from the bookshop and the coffee shop, she saw her own shop.

Taken aback, Cadence let the car roll forward slowly as she stared at it. She had only contacted them nine hours ago and they were already getting things done. There were two men hefting up the sign over the roof. Inquiring Siren, it read. Again, Cadence was surprised. Usually, it took more than a week to get a sign made, and yet they seemed to have done it in under a day.

Shaking her head in amazement, Cadence parked her car in the little house directly across the street. It sat right in between the bustling coffee shop and the peaceful quiet of the bookshop. Looking up at it, she recognized it from the pictures and she was grateful. It looked exactly as it had online. Even if it had been dilapidated, she still would have lived here.

“We’re here, Grimm.” She reached over and scratched him behind his ears, which flickered.

Without warning, Grimm’s head shot up at the same moment a light knock sounded on her window. Grimm looked at the person who had knocked on her window with careful, narrowed eyes.

When Cadence turned to see who had made Grimm so wary and who had slipped under her radar since Cadence was usually able to sense people pretty well, she was surprised to see it was a woman. A really pretty woman. And then Cadence really looked at her. And she froze.

This was no woman.

Her skin and lips were so pale it was like someone had taken a can of white paint and ran it all over her skin and lips. And her eyes, framed by thick black lashes seemed to glow like two pools of liquid blue fire. The more Cadence stared into those eyes, the more muddled her mind seemed to become.

She was a Vampire.

Immediately, Cadence was a little freaked out. Vampires were infamous for the viciousness, especially against Witches. After all, hundreds of years ago Vampires had turned human attention to Witches in an attempt to get mortals off their backs. There had been a back in forth back then. Witches using humans to kill Vampires and Vampires using humans to kill Witches. Most Witches had forgotten about it, after all, it had happened before most of their times, but Vampires lived forever and their memories were long.

They didn’t forget.

When a Vampire set their sites on a Witch, they were typically ruthless in the way they killed them.

While Cadence was deliberating whether or not she should roll down the window, the woman moved. It was a languid motion, smooth and sinuous. So fascinated by that movement, it took Cadence a moment to realize she was holding out a key in her long, white fingers.

She was the landlord, Cadence realized suddenly. And then, after realization came dread. If she was the landlord, Cadence had no choice but to talk to her.

Taking a breath to steady herself, Cadence readied a spell that would bring this Vampire to her knees long enough for Cadence to escape. As clumsy and unpracticed as she was with magic, she knew enough to give herself simple protection.

She pushed open the car door, and the Vampire stepped back, giving her the room she needed. It would be better to be out of the car, she decided. Spells worked a lot better when you had a lot of room.

Grimm made a little noise under his breath and Cadence could feel his eyes watching.

Cadence studied the Vampire in full now. She was really deceptively beautiful. Thick black hair that tumbled down her shoulders in a gorgeous dark waterfall. She was dressed head to toe in black—to help block out the sun, Cadence realized—and in one hand, she held a parasol made of black lace and silk over her head, combating the harshest of sun rays. Underneath that shade, her eyes seemed even more eerie.

“You’re Cadence, I presume.”

Her voice sent a shiver down Cadence’s spine. It was a shiver that was somehow many things at once: pleasant, terrified, disgusted. Her voice definitely wasn’t the one Cadence had heard over the phone.

Like she had read Cadence’s mind—and maybe she had—the woman said, “You spoke to my sister yesterday. She runs the diner over there.” And she tipped her head in the direction of the diner Cadence had passed before.

Cadence didn’t look away from the beautiful predator in front of her. She knew what they did to Witches. She had seen it with her own eyes once when she was younger.

The Vampire woman looked back at her and it was all she could do not to flinch.

“Anyway,” continued the woman, either not noticing or not caring about Cadence’s obvious discomfort. “Here is your key.” And in another eerily languid motion, she held the key out to Cadence.

Swallowing the bile that was rising in her throat, Cadence wiped the sweat from her palms and took the key from the Vampire, taking great care to make sure their skin absolutely did not touch.

“Rent is due on the third of every month. You can deliver it to me at Bibliophile. I live in the basement there. If I’m…indisposed, give it to Ruth or her son.”

Cadence nodded. “Um…thanks.”

The Vampire woman studied Cadence for a moment, and Cadence genuinely hoped she wasn’t deciding when she’d drink her blood.

But all she said was, “Welcome to Glasskeep,” before she turned and headed in the direction of the bookstore beside Cadence’s new home.

Cadence watched her until she was gone, burning those languid yet graceful movements into her mind’s eye. She had never been so close to a Vampire before, her hands, gripping the key, still shook with nerves.

She turned to her car to see Grimm sitting in the driver’s seat, his paws pressed against the glass, his yellow eyes gleaming.

Pulling her cardigan tighter around herself, Cadence opened the car door, allowing Grimm to hop out and onto the ground. He looked at the bookstore and then he looked at Cadence.

Whatever he saw on her face prompted him to say, “You’re safe…in Glasskeep. Lorelei…would never harm…a resident here.”

Cadence’s eyes popped out of her head a little and she stared at her familiar in wonder. “You know her?”

“Lorelei…founded Glasskeep…many centuries ago,” was all he said by way of answer.

Cadence thought about that for a moment before she blew out a heavy sigh.

“Let’s just get settled in. We’ll worry about all the other stuff later.”

Underneath the early morning sun, Cadence brought in what few belongings she had into the house that was now hers. It was a quaint two-story house painted a pretty pale blue. And the inside was, as the ad had stated, fully furnished. Cadence was grateful for that. She’d had to leave behind most of her things; she’d only had the time to take what was truly important.

Grimm watched, perched on the porch railing, as Cadence moved back and forth, his tail swishing this way and that. Sometimes his yellow eyes looked at her, sometimes they took in their surroundings with a serious sharpness.

Once, as Cadence passed him by, struggling with a particularly heavy suitcase, she shot him a semi-dirty look and said, “Thanks for the help.”

Grimm replied, “You could always…use magic.”

The very thought struck terror in her. She didn’t want to use magic unless she absolutely had to.

“You know I can’t.”

Grimm had looked at her for a few moments, let out a gravelly sigh, and went back to watching their surroundings. She knew how much Grimm despised her decision to not practice magic, but it was all Cadence could think of. To use magic you had to dip into the well of the soul, and the stronger the spell, the more you had to take from that well. Once you had taken too much, the soul would be gone forever and all that would be left was a Witch who could love nothing and want nothing.

Cadence liked her soul just the way it was. Even if feeling was painful sometimes, she preferred feeling to not feeling anything at all.

When everything had been settled into her house and all the suitcases had been placed in the room upstairs, Cadence came back down to stand beside Grimm. He was looking at the men as they finished up with Inquiring Siren. A few of them were rummaging around inside and two of them were finishing up their repairs on the door.

After a few minutes, a bald man stepped out. Even from across the street, Cadence could see the sweat glistening on his forehead, emphasized in the late morning sunlight. She saw his gaze land on her across the street and he raised a hand, waving. Cadence waved back.

The bald man started across the street toward her. Dread started to curl into her stomach. It was no fault of the man’s, though—who, as he got closer, she could see that he was actually quite old. Cadence had just been through so much and she was honestly so tired. And after meeting that Vampire woman Grimm had called Lorelei, Cadence was even more wary of Glasskeep than she had been before.

She thought about the old church she had seen before. The old gothic one that didn’t fit in with the New England vibe the rest of the town gave off. She decided she should go and stock up on Holy water. Just in case.

Her eyes squinted, taking in the man carefully. No too pale to be alive skin, no glowing eyes, no deceptive beauty, no languidly graceful movements. He wasn’t a Vampire. Still, since he lived in Glasskeep, he was most assuredly not human and if he was, he was running from something.

When he was close enough, he looked up at Cadence where she and Grimm stood, looking down at them from the porch.

“Hey. You must be Cadence.” His tone was friendly enough and, given that he was not a Vampire, Cadence put her guard down a little. Just a little.

She smiled back timidly. “I am,” she said.

“I’m Odell. I run the auto repair shop down the street. I’ve helped with fixing up a lot of businesses, too. So, you don’t have to worry, your shop was in good hands.”

“Nice to meet you, Odell.”

He smiled and hooked a thumb over his shoulder where her new shop sat.

“It’s all done,” he told her. “She all yours.”

He dug into his pockets and fished out a key. He reached up and over, holding the key out for Cadence to take. And even though his movements were nothing like the Vampire woman’s, Cadence could still recall those spidery white fingers and found herself cringing internally. Still, she bent carefully over the railing and took the key from him.

“Thanks.”

The man nodded. “So, what are you selling in that shop of yours, anyway? My wife’s been curious all this time. Hell, we’ve all be curious.”

“I sell salves and charms,” she explained. “Things that help with different areas of life. Love, protection, things like that.” Spells that don’t take large portions of my soul that I can’t get back.

She saw something flicker in Odell’s eyes for a second. She could almost see him thinking, Oh, so you’re a Witch. Cadence kind of cursed herself at that moment. She knew Glasskeep was a place where mostly non-humans lived. Humans only moved here if their lives were really bad and they were running to escape something, after all. But, now that she knew a Vampire lived here—and possibly more than just this Lorelei woman—it was dangerous to be found out as a Witch.

Why hadn’t she thought of something else? Maybe getting a job at the coffee shop beside her house or the bookshop on the other side? Still, selling potions and charms was all Cadence knew. Her Grandmother had taught her everything she knew in potion and charm making and Cadence, the over-achiever she was—had taken that and amplified it by ten.

Besides, people purchased well-made potions and charms for a good sum.

Odell said nothing about her heritage, though. Instead, he mused that his daughter would probably love some of the charms at the shop. He assured Cadence that her business would take off in no time before he waved and went on his way.

After he was gone, Grimm looked at her and said, for the fifth time. “You’re safe…in Glasskeep.”

This time when he said it, Cadence didn’t feel like it was true. But she was safer in Glasskeep than anywhere else.