The Phantom Touch

Shifting

In a world full of monsters, books anchored me to reality.

One of the greatest discoveries I made during my first month in the supernatural town of Whisper Valley, was that though their library carried historical documents from when Archmage Elizabeth Winchester founded the town as well as ancient texts with spells and rituals, they also had Jane Austen, Stephen King, and a wide assortment of books I remembered from my first life.

It became my safe haven, the thing that most closely resembled home. Sure, I was getting used to my apartment at Spencer's hotel, but there was this ever looming presence of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts just down the hall. Then, there were the four other humans I shared a hall with. The other Bodies in town had just one year to be converted or to find a supernatural sponsor, which meant they were often going in and out of their room at odd hours.

There was some solace in the quiet of my apartment, but it was hard to forget that only after spending a few nights in town, a zombie named Calista Nightgrave, who also went by the name River, snuck into my room through the window. Then, in the dark of night while I cowered in my bed, she pleaded with me to not report her vampire boyfriend after I caught him beating up another zombie, Bungee, behind a mage-owned diner. To make matters worse, there was also the terrifying fact, that for awhile I was living only a couple doors down from the man who "killed" Calista because he had been compelled to do so by his secret vampire lover.

It all felt fragile and claustrophobic.

But the books, I knew. The books had not changed from when I read them in my youth to when I found them dusty and unloved upon the shelves of the expansive Whisper Valley Library. I often spent an hour or two every day there, reading and appreciating the solitude. I did indeed see plenty of patrons coming in now and again to review a spell from an old text or to snatch up the latest racy romance shipped in from out of town, but they rarely lingered, especially if they saw me curled up on a couch with a thick novel in my hand.

The ghosts and mages that worked at the library, however, didn't seem to mind my presence. Out of all the clans in town, they were the most receptive to the company of an unsponsored human. Some mages might have looked down on us for not being able to wield magic, but most were about as close to human as you could find in town so there was camaraderie there. As for the ghosts, they often didn't pay much mind to anyone. They floated about with a distant look in their empty eyes. They seemed to be in their own world, their image simply existing in ours. Sure, there were ghosts like Mr. Spencer, who ran the inn, that was ever present in his business and very amiable towards all that approached him. However, I'd often catch him during the quiet times drifting through the halls with no clear purpose in his movements. In fact, sometimes he'd simply vanish, his incorporeal spirit dissipating with his melancholy.

To be fair, that day in the library, I was also looking rather like a ghost myself. I drifted through the numerous stacks, working my way down into the basement levels as I ventured into corners I'd never explored before. Not that what I was doing could be considered exploring. It was glorified moping. I had just visited Dr. Gregory Fair's office in hopes of getting a job. His sponsor, the Vampire Queen Kyra Torquata, had made him her feeder only a few weeks prior with the expectation that he would set up a human only health clinic in town since there was a severe lack of knowledge on the subject amongst the supernatural doctors.

Admittedly, he had also become her feeder because she had drained him of most of his blood in order to restore her strength so she may overpower and exile her child vampire, Bernadette Derosiers, who had used Gregory to kill Calista after Calista began a relationship with Bernadette's lover, Matias. So there was also that. However, it was that incident that had led me to believe that perhaps my best opportunity for finding a job when I didn't have a sponsor, was at Gregory's clinic. It was because of his actions that I had been called to Whisper Valley in the first place. Then, in turn, I had to either agree to the Body contract and remain in town forever or be killed in order to prevent the town's secret from spreading to the outside world. Seemed like he owed me, even if I didn't really blame poor Gregory. He, like many of the humans in town, was just another pawn in the intricate game the, often times overly dramatic, vampires played. Still, I needed a job if I wanted to survive without a sponsor, and so I was going to use whatever resources I had to secure it.