Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Fifteen: Family Matters

I couldn't imagine wearing such a slinky dress to such a solemn event, but I supposed my fiancé and I could argue about that tonight. I dressed in the bathroom—in the skirt and sweater I had laid out for the day, —very conscious of the fact that there were no windows in the bathroom and that things such as walls were no barrier to the vampire who slumbered in the closet just beside.

I took comfort in the assumption he couldn't poof in on me as long as I kept the electric light on. He'd said he traveled the shadows, hadn't he?

Troy was waiting for me, outside the room, and he escorted me to the main floor, directing me toward an empty dance hall where he said Minnie overseeing preparations for the evening. I promised I would stick with her like glue.

"He might eat my throat if I let you run away again," Troy told me anxiously.

"He's my fiancé now," I showed Troy my ring. "I have no reason to flee him."

"Right," Troy muttered sullenly. "Please don't get me killed."

I found Minnie in the deserted club, up on the stage, talking with a handsome man attending to a cluster of jazz band instruments.

I halted in the back among the last ring of tables that surrounded the dance floor, suddenly realizing that I might be intruding. The man—he must have been one of the band members— busied his hands with polishing a saxophone. Minnie sat in front of him on what appeared to be some kind of very old-fashioned amplifier—the only one on stage, presumably to raise the singer's voice over the instruments.

Minnie was playing with the folds in her skirt, her head inclined but tossing this way and that as she spoke, while a coy look colored her animated speech. Whatever she was saying, I couldn't hear, but the handsome man certainly could. When a tender smile broke out on his face and he reached forward to touch her hand with two long, elegant fingers, I realized how badly I was intruding. I tried to ease away, but I bumped the table.

Minnie and the saxophonist leaped to their feet and away from each other in such surprise that I knew I was right: Minnie and this man were sweet on each other.

From the alarmed look on his face, I imagined it was probably a forbidden romance. Minnie was a wealthy unmarried young woman from a prominent family, and the saxophonist, well, I didn't know a thing about him, except he was obviously African American, and it was 1924.

In 1924, the color of his skin might possibly be the only criteria her family of menfolk would need to automatically disqualify him as a possible romantic interest for their darling Minnie.

Then again, half of Minnie's family were vampires, so perhaps they didn't share the prejudices of the time. Or possibly, because they were from another, earlier time, their ways of thinking might be even old-fashioned and bigoted than twentieth-century views.

I didn't know, and it probably wasn't my business, but Minnie looked so unlike her sassy self—so shocked and alarmed at my intrusion—that I decided right then and there to befriend this girl and support her, in whatever ways I could, for however long I was in Sanguine Springs.

I gave a small wave and a friendly nod to the saxophonist. "I'll just be in the lobby. Please come find me when you can, Minne. I have orders for us from Evander," I rolled my eyes and I turned to go, but Minnie had recovered herself by now. She was smirking.

"Grandma!" she cried with open arms. "Welcome to the family!"

Now it was my turn to be alarmed. Minnie followed my glance toward the saxophonist. They exchanged a look I could not read, but whatever he saw in her face caused to him to relax visibly.