“Good to know.” Sylvie giggled and walked out of the opposite door from her kit and into the long hallway that joio the three bedrooms. Taking the time to walk in and do a circle in all three bedrooms, Sylvie waited long enough for the deviorize and save the rooms' different figurations.

  Finally, Sylvie returo the plush carpeted hallway and stopped at the main bathroom entryway. “Alright, do your thing. I ’t see much really, other thatle gap of the tube lighting where it could just be the house settling. It is over forty years old.” She offered, with the embarrassment of talking to a puter having faded. Right when Sylvie looked at the natural looking gap, the yellow grid fred and started flipping through the spectrum aled on an ultraviolet outline. “What is that?” Sylvie muttered.

  “She, high resolution motion video camera made by Linzo-video for home use. only known as a nanny camera. Not used by professionals.” Code paused, “Wireless e feed twenty feet above at the edge of attic space, base reception located. One-One-Seven Fortune Way.”

  Sylvie watched as her neighbor's name pri the bottom,‘Carl Robinson’. Pursing her lips tightly, the vampire khe man must have installed the peeping camera when she’d hired him to install a new faucet. Climbing on her small ter, Sylvie plucked the camera from its spot and tur to dust between her fingers.

  Hopping down, Sylvie went bato the hallulled dowtle stairs to the attid traversed the length until she found the repeater. Shrugging and shaking her head, Sylvie ripped the traption free and also reduced it to nothing more than junk.

  -I’ll think of something for you ter, Carl.-

  Sylvie told herself and shut off the tact lenses as she walked into the one bedroom she used for her personal spabsp; Opening a drawer beside the bed, she found the small blue case that the tacts were held in, as well as the special liquid that Kody had supplied so that the eleics would stay . Unwilling to have any other eleic devices look at her while sh, Sylvie pulled the two flimsy pstic pieces out from her eyes and dropped them in the case where she watched them bubble for a sed while she secured the caps in pce.

  Pig up the pace, Sylvie grabbed a set of clothes. This included an athletic tee without any sleeves and printed across the chest, ‘Joker Blue Tequi’ with a couple jesters behind it iline of the pying card itself. Quickly digging out a full length pair of bck button-fly jeans, Sylvie took the buh her into the restroom and started the shower. While pulling off her watch, She shook her head and khat the promise of ten minutes was never going to happen.

  -I wonder what they are going to do without me there…this time..-

  Sylvie ughed to herself and stepped into the shower, enjoying the warm water as it rihe events of the prior evening down the drain. Dipping her short blue-gray streaked hair uhe hot stream first, Sylvie matted her hair down long enough to pull her night violet shampoo free of her basket and massage the gentle soap into her dyed hair. Breathing in the soft st of violets and jasmine bined with a hint of cedar sap, Sylvie smiled as the smell of sexual sweat and whisky faded away and down the drain. After rinsing the sweet smelling soap from her hair, Sylvie leaned against the copper colored tile in her shower and ran her hands over her attoos and sighed.

  -So much has ged in just a few months.-

  Sylvie reflected on her past self as the prophetess and fortueller of Phantasmagoria. It had been simple to hide in pin sight with her Native Ameri heritage, her long back hair and beads made the illusion e true. Dreamcatchers and gss beads sold food lud good dreams while she gave a picture of what was to e, even through little bites to her ers' palms. Things ged the night the Ripped leveled the building and all the vampires within it. She’d lost her eroupe and any hope of maintaining her fortuelling illusion to procure blood. Knowing that she o ge everything about herself, Sylvie had lightened her skin slightly and added three tattoos. Traveling the length of her left arm, she could still feel the ink as an anomaly and it took a fair amount of effort daily to remember that she wahe lovely picture of a bck rose with a matg bck stem and thorns that showed drops about to fall from the points. Behind the dark blooming flower a crest moon had been inked carefully with bd a certain white that gave the effect of the dust highlighting the craters. Topping off the look, Sylvie had instructed the artist to make little suars within the craters that dotted the moonscape for a touch of golden color.

  -Heaven knows I miss the sun. Two-hundred ay years without that warmth.-

  F the thought and memory to the recess of her mind, Sylvie pushed herself from the wall and loaded her handheld loofah with cucumber sted soap then washed her right arm and her sed tattoo. Uhe near monoe look of the moon, Sylvie had the artist create a blue-jay feather and color it cobalt blue, an egg white and a gray that matched her hair. Pulled away from the rachis, the barbs of the feather first floated off and transformed into birds before flying off.

  Always nervous that washing the st tattoo would somehow cause a vision to occur, Sylvie washed the rest of her body before she ed the top of her inked well formed breast. While she did like the artwork itself, there was a little part of her that questioned whether or not the decision to get it done was entirely hers. Uhe other two that were refles of herself in some way, the st one was a testament to her ability to see an unlikely future. Egyptian colors of bd silver made up the eye of Horus, where the circle of the god’s eye was pletely filled to show his dominance of the night and moon. Sylvie didn’t know why at the time, but she asked the artist to add gold rays as though the eye were actually the smaller part of a sor eclipse.

  -I am going to drive myself crazy if I stay here any longer.-

  Urging herself to stop refleg on the past, Sylvie pulled herself together and mao get dressed while leaving her room in a mess of wet towels and day-old stinky clothes. Sighing when she looked at her watch, she once again noticed that she’d wasted exactly aen minutes. Fighting off the urge to look deeper into the odd ce, Sylvie grabbed the keys to her bike, jerked a leather jacket from the peg in the foyer and locked the house.

  --

  Grateful that the city of ial Heights was retively small pared to others in the area, Sylvie casually rode her motorcycle from her street and onto Lakeview avenue and passed aary school with the matg hen a mile ter ehe parking lot where her bar was located. Erected ie 1970s and early 1980s, the semi-circur strip mall named ‘ial Pza’ once had a bustling popution of shoppers with a couple of big named anchor stores to bolster the smaller businesses within the rest of the strip. Sylvie rolled slowly through the lot and remembered the myriad of people that once flooded the ptil the i revolution. One by ohe big stores closed their doors, the small businesses gave way to bigger glomerates ahe little strip nearly devoid of activity. Low i and turnout was exactly the reason Sylvie picked the location for ‘After Dark’.

  Needing a pce that didn’t turn too many heads or raise too much fanfare, Sylvie bargained her way into ara rge spad created her version of a speakeasy. Unlike many of her decisions, the creation of her bar was not part of some vision, but rather a bination of things she’d learned from w with her te friend Livia Vegas.

  -“Get the girls ahe guys, darling.”-

  Sylvie had heard Livia tell her many times during their versations. Using that one simple phrase, Sylvie created a two seed pbsp; One side was designed as a heavy bar with dang and a live band or a DJ that served a limited menu of quickly prepared food, the other was a more quiet aaurant-like atmosphere that reflected the hushed tones of the old speakeasy’s of the 1930s. A rge kit with a full staff and sound proof walls like those of a rec studio made the pce a small success.

  Driving her bike towards her pce, Sylvie looked up and saw that her sign of the moon shifting through its phases every few seds and the purple letters were lit up and w properly. Waving at the few guys that had already parked their own motorcycles i for their nightly ritual, Sylvie heard the jeers and cps for her arrival on ‘Big Blue’. Pulling the heavy hog onto the sidewalk, she shut off the engine and pulled off her protective helmet.