Maybe it had been a bad decision to leave Vegas in such a hurry.
It was eight o'clock at night, and Cassidy was fumbling for her sunglasses to put them on against the glare of streetlights as she made her way down the sidewalk. She was hung over, and she'd been hung over for a couple of days now. The problem with hangovers was that only more booze could ease the pain,and she found herself relying on the bottle to get her through even those short days. A drinking problem at forty. How unoriginal.
She could hear the tide going out, and she padded down to the sand. Her rental was close enough to the beach that the early tide woke her up, but she'd been avoiding the outdoors. She'd been half-drunk when she made the plane reservations, and caught her flight on a wave of schnapps-fueled indignation. Can her, would they? Well, she didn't need them. She still had her looks and her talent. She'd get by.
The question was...how.
Cassidy rubbed the back of her neck, disliking the feeling of self-pity. Hard not to feel sorry for herself, though. Maybe she needed another drink after all.
Avery looked at the newspaper under the light of his dashboard and frowned. The attack on the campus of Florida Keys Community College had been reported. The girl claimed she had been mugged and stabbed in the neck. The vampire thought that wasn't fair. He would never stab anyone, and anyway, he hadn't taken her bag. He had kindly returned it to lost and found. "The nerve of some people," he joked under his breath, folding the newspaper and setting it beside him on the passenger seat. Slipping the keys into his pocket, he exited the vehicle and stretched.
He had embarked on one of his aimless driving sessions, but there wasn't much of Key West that he hadn't seen. He had already read the graphic novel Mallory had suggested, and was planning on giving the little shop another visit soon. Anything to help the economy, he figured. Avery's father would have been pleased.
He breathed in the sea air, even thought it wasn't necessary for him to take in oxygen. It was still nice, like feeling the texture of real, solid food in his mouth, even though the taste was dulled. Avery frowned again, but this time it wasn't out of annoyance. He thought he smelled the faintest trace of alcohol and perfume coming his way.
Cassidy had made her way further down to the water and found a place to sit where the sane was dry. No blanket to keep the loose grains out of her jeans, but she didn't mind that. She and Richie used to go to the shore when they lived in Atlantic City, mostly just to see the boardwalk. She wondered where he was now. Probably married again, this time to a hairdresser or something. He'd never been comfortable with her ambitions, as minor as they might have been.
The night was clear and cool, and she looked up at the slice of moon where it shone through the small clouds. She could figure the serious stuff out later, all she wanted was to get rid of this damned headache.
Avery followed the invisible trail. His shoes sank into the sand. He was able to avoid the small landmines of broken glass and driftwood, and evade a snarl of seaweed that rested on the beach. The vampire saw a woman sitting on a dry patch. Her posture was that of discomfort, and something about her did not really fit in with the landscape.
His voice was soft when he spoke. "It's a good spot for thinking, isn't it?" With a sweep of a pale hand, he gestured to the beach, to the inky water that was, for now, placid. Waves turned into flat currents long before they reached the shore.
"I forgot how the ocean smells," Cassidy said thoughtfully. No surfing on those waves, not even farther out, but it was nice to look out at the water. Peaceful. Maybe she hadn't been doing enough thinking lately. It certainly wasn't planned for her to end up down here. Then again, it was hardly in the plans for her to end up jobless either.
"Where are your parents, kid?" He was half her age, if that old, the peach fuzz on his unshaven face making him look scruffy. His folks were probably at one of the hotels and he'd wandered away from them for some breathing room. She had never wanted to go on vacation with her parents when she was his age either. "You slip the leash?"
Avery sat down, too. Not close enough to the woman to be imposing, but not too far away, either. He looked out at the water and scratched his ear, the polite smile on his face slowly fading away. "My parents are long gone and far away from here," he replied. Even as a human, he bristled at being referred to as a kid, which only served to amuse people. So he shrugged it off.
"If you forgot how the ocean smelled, you must not be from around here." He glanced at her briefly, enough to create a mental profile. She was older than the vampire in appearance only, obviously. Through the years he had gotten less adept at judging age. Late thirties, maybe.
"There's not much chance to see the shore in Nevada." She mentally upgraded his age from eighteen to around twenty, maybe twenty-one. Not old enough to drink, though. "Well, excuse me," she said, her voice slightly sarcastic. "Wasn't aware I was dealing with someone so mature."
She shifted on the sand, then added, "But yeah, I haven't seen the waves in a while, not since I was married. Thankfully that was a while ago, the married part. The things we do when we're young and dumb,y'know?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Maturity is relative." Despite the sarcasm, she wasn't altogether unpleasant. Avery sat Indian-style, dusting sand off of his knee. Then his fingers dug in and picked up a handful, letting it sift back down again. "In Nevada you get the beach but not the water," the vampire remarked.
He didn't ask what happened to her husband. There weren't many scenarios to choose from, or maybe there were too many. Either way, it was a pretty personal question. Divorce or death, it was a touchy topic. "So if you were young and dumb then, what does that make you now?"
"Jaded."
It was as good a descriptor as any, and Cassidy looked back over her shoulder at the lights from the road. Not much traffic at this hour, but the lack of cars made things blessesdly quiet. It'd be good sleeping weather once she made her way back to the house. She looked the guy over again, taking in the clothes he wore and how young he seemed. "What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't. It's Avery." He looked at her fully, familiar enough now for more than just quick glances. A breeze swept through and ruffled his hair, and he tried to pat it down. He ended up getting sand in it instead. "What's yours?" There were still many hours left before sun-up, so he was content to meander there for awhile, chatting about nothing. For the vampire, that was much easier.
"Cassidy." Avery. Her father's brother had been named Armin. Both names had an old-fashioned quality to them. It fit him and she couldn't say why. "Do you live here by yourself, Avery? Seems like a strange spot for it. Usually the younger crowd goes for bigger cities. No offense."
Avery smiled, genuinely this time. "Yes, I live here. I've seen the bigger cities, and I wasn't really impressed. Besides, this place has a lot of, well, character. Or characters, either one." He untucked his legs and stretched them out in front of him, leaning back on his palms. "Where did you live in Nevada? Vegas?" It was a guess, but he figured that was a good place for those young and dumb mistakes Cassidy had referenced.
Not that mistakes were geographically specific. Look at him and Margot.
"For fifteen years." Give or take a few months, anyway, but she had stopped keeping track. "Before that it was Atlantic City. If you've never been to Jersey? Don't bother. Not unless you like smokestacks."
Her headache was gradually letting go, and she took a deep breath of the clean, salty air. "Well, you can't be from here, if only because of it being such a touristy place. Where were you born?"
He bit his lip, but the knowing grin slipped out anyway. "I'm...from Jersey, actually. Princeton, to be specific. Never spent much time in Atlantic City, though." Avery didn't mention that was because when he was younger, his father told him to stay away from there. And after he was turned, he never had much motivation to visit the place. Gambling was never his thing.
"Everyone's a tourist at one point in their lives," the vampire pointed out. "I don't mind them."
The former stripper covered her mouth as a definitely unladylike snicker escaped her throat, and she said, "Whoops. Sorry. I guess the state as a whole isn't really that bad, but some of the cities leave something to be desired. Still, like you say, its got....character."
She looked back out at the water, watching the distorted way the moon reflected on it. "So you're not a bum because your clothes are clean. Where do you work?"
"Truthfully? I don't." Avery knew that answer wasn't very popular with women, but his aim wasn't to pick anyone up. "I just saved up for a really long time, partially with help from my parents." The vampire also knew that didn't help his 'I'm not a kid' case, but there wasn't much to be done for it. It was a small city, with very few places to lie about working at.
"What about you?" She had a waitress-y sort of vibe. He wasn't sure why. Something to do with customer service.
Her smile sharpened a little, and she wondered how this boy with his old-fashioned name would react if she told him the truth. No matter what he said, he was too young to have gotten into any of her shows, and she could only imagine how much he would have blushed if he had. She directed her attention towards the pier where it stretched out into the ocean.
"I used to be in show business," she said, sounding wistful. Back in Nevada, she'd have just been getting ready to take the stage. How the hell was she supposed to start all over? "It was decided for me that I should try something else."
"Show business? Never met anyone in that line of work." Avery's sneakered heel dug into the sand. "So...they fired you?" He shot her a tentatively sympathetic look. Tentative because the vampire knew some people didn't really react well to sympathy.
He wasn't completely naive. He knew some of what constituted show business in places like Las Vegas. He also knew the world had changed a lot since he'd been alive, but some things always stayed the same. "What exactly did you do?" There wasn't judgment in his voice, but genuine curiosity.
"What I did exactly was strip," Cassidy said, watching his face with a half-smile. There were other terms for it, and most of the younger crowd had taken to calling it exotic dancing, but that always seemed like too much of a metaphor. Sure, stripping was more than taking your clothes off, but there was no need to be too precious about it. Maybe she was just old-fashioned.
"At least until they told me I was too old for it," she added with an eye roll. "Big of them to tell me after they made the decision, wasn't it?"
Avery frowned. "That must have felt...not so good." He had never been fired, but then, he had never really had a job. The vampire was silent for a moment, before gesturing to the surf. "Hey," he said. "Do you want to walk over there?" He felt slightly awkward just sitting there in the sand, and he wanted to stretch his legs. Walking gave him something to do.
Normally she wouldn't have, because he was a stranger, but her butt was going numb and she probably had sand down the back of her pants by now. Maybe she really was getting old, because he just seemed like such a kid.Cassidy got up, using her arms for balance against the loosely-packed sand. "So what do you think of Florida?"
Slipping his hands into his jacket pockets, he walked alongside her. "It's nice, I suppose. Warm." Avery watched his footprints sink into the wet sand as they crossed the dividing line. "And colorful. I live next door to a house that's painted pink and blue." It was quiet except for the soft sound of the waves hitting the shore. The vampire concentrated and picked out the almost imperceptible beating of Cassidy's heart.
"Did you have a fake name for your job?" The question came to him out of nowhere.
She chuckled. "I thought about it. A lot of the girls I worked with called themselves things like 'Peaches' or 'Satin', and one insisted on being called 'Rainbow' even when she wasn't working so she could get used to hearing it. But I never went through with it. It's not totally unlike being an actress, I guess. You're...playing a part, filling a role. Usually what I'd end up thinking about by the end of the night was whether I had any chicken salad left in the fridge, or if I'd need to stop for gas on the way home."
The light of the moon made Avery's beard stubble more pronounced, and she regarded him in silence before asking, "You're not a drug dealer or anything, are you?"
"No," he laughed good-naturedly. "Definitely not." Avery gave her a sidelong glance. "Why, would that bother you?"
The vampire wondered what she would think of him if she knew the truth. He could easily show her, but that usually led to screaming, or running off in terror. There was no need to ruin such a pleasant evening. "What are you going to do now? Are you, you know, going to try to find a job here in that...field?"
"When guys in Las Vegas say they don't work, its generally because their jobs aren't exactly legal," she responded. "And you're too young to be in the mob." She refused to answer the other question, whether or not it would bother her. They didn't know each other well enough yet.
Giving the last thing some consideration, she had to admit to herself that she didn't know the answer. What passed for nightlife in the Keys didn't exactly measure up to the Strip, and that was even taking for granted that she could get hired in a similar job down here. Forty couldn't be the twilight years, could they? Not seriously?
"I don't know." And saying it out loud made her uncertainty worse. "They bought me out of my contract, so I've got money. What I do now is kind of a blank, though. At least I picked a good place to think it over."
"Yeah," he replied softly. Water seeped into his shoes, but Avery didn't really mind. It was around 60 degrees, mild weather. He would drive home, change shoes and probably go back out again to hunt. Then he'd sleep away the sunlight hours and start his 'day' all over again.
"I'm sure you'll figure something out," the vampire tried to assure her. "You seem like the self-sufficient type."
"You're sweet." It was probably a poor choice as a descriptor, but she had become distracted by the view of the ocean. She should get back, it was past one in the morning. "And it's late, which means I need to get home. So should you." Couldn't help sounding a little mom-like, despite the fact that she had zero maternal instincts.Cassidy turned back towards the buildings away from the shore line.
"Have a nice night, Avery."
"Night," he replied, a hint of a smile edging past his lips, but unseen away from the lights along the beachfront walk. He turned in the opposite direction. It was getting late, and Avery supposed he should just go home and stay there until the next sunset. He had nothing but time.