Home The Midnight Work Links Miscellaneous Contact	Excerpt from the upcoming novel, The Midnight Work, by Kassandra Sims: [See cover art] City life was such that strange strangers and odd behavior tended to be below noticing or simply gaped at and forgotten again instantaneously. Sophie knew that, and yet was still surprised at how totally oblivious people could be. Take, for example, a beautiful man standing on a street corner turning in a widdershins circle reciting Shakespeare in pig-latin while his female companion wiped blood from her neck with handy-wipes at exactly midnight. Perhaps remarkable while being witnessed, but not nearly the weirdest occurrence in the day of a city-dweller. Not when, upon second glance, they were gone anyway. Sophie wasn't sure how she'd react herself to witnessing such a thing; last week maybe she'd have been a little freaked out for a minute, and then walked on. Now she was the female companion, actually doing the weird things. "Who would have known you were fluent in pig-latin?" Sophie gazed around what appeared to be an art gallery connected through vaulted arches into other galleries on either end. "It took me forever to memorize that password. I think I got an extra hard one since I pissed the guardian off once." He ran a hand through his hair and approached one of the doorways, touching a mark etched in the wood. Sophie gazed at the nearest painting hanging on the beige wall directly in her line of site--a village at night, thatched houses set close together with candles burning in each window, when she squinted she could make out three figures hanging in the grey sky, astride brooms--when the painting faded and recongealed into a macabre scene of a woman in habit with her neck set at a strange angle, blood pooling between her legs. The picture next to it was a child's scrawl of a Dracula character, complete with blood dripping from its fangs onto the ground. "What is this place?" She turned to Olivier who was already watching her ogle the artwork. The art here was almost as scary as Norah hungry. Next to the kid's sketch was a parade of men and women, most with one or both of their eyes gouged out, hobbled at hand and foot being led by men on horseback dressed in knightly regalia, Templar crosses emblazoned on pennants and surplices. "All of the art in the world." His face gave away nothing. "We're somewhere in the gallery I haven't been before." His voice sounded off slightly, the pitch wrong, neither his crushed velvet whisper nor his sexy-stranger timbre. Sophie considered that for a second. Why not? Who knew what the guy thought, really? "How does that work? Seems like a lot of art has been made in all of time." The answer was, naturally, magic, but she was curious how he would explain it. "Some things are so beyond comprehension pondering them leaves you with more questions than you began with." Waving his hand for her to follow, he exited the gallery and strode through the next. Sophie spotted a child's drawing of what appeared to be a pear tree with an ax embedded in the trunk, a half-recognized tableau of fruit, pomegranates and apples, in a bowl with a hovering fruit fly, and a brace of dead rabbits next to a couple of leeks, before they emerged into a completely different sort of gallery. Fire blazed from the confines of every frame in the room. One depicted a ship alight in the midst of a night battle. Various public buildings and palaces burned in every state of immolation, from recently alight to near collapse. Directly to her right was a twenty-foot tall tableau of a witch burning, the victim's mouth open and swallowing flame. Sophie watched Olivier purposefully stand with his back to that work. In the center of the room a real fire burned low in an open ring of stones containing several bricks of coal. Olivier approached the stones and coals and fire. Sophie followed him and watched as he dropped a wondrously detailed sketch of someone's ear into the coals. She blinked rapidly as a tiny figure coalesced amid the shifting flame. Its torso burned a white so bright she had to avert her eyes to its extremities where the flickering limbs waved first blue then yellowish orange at the very tips. The creature leapt from a coal directly onto the paper Olivier had dropped with what seemed to be considerable glee. In a flash the drawing was nothing but ash as the tiny, flaming feet rushing over it, stomping out a fiery jig. "You bring me the best gifts." A voice like snapping wood rustled out of the creature. He turned a mainly indistinct face to Sophie. "Oh, her! Let me burn her again!" He stamped around his coal floor in a circle waving his arms above his head. Olivier's expression turned blank, hard, unreadable. "Your jokes don't amuse me. Words like those will cause me to leave you without my gifts forever." "Poor blood-drinker, lost them all to the flames." The coal the imp stood upon glowed orange where his feet made continuous contact. Sophie couldn't tell if he was mocking or commiserating with Olivier. "I will always have you here with me." There was so much going on Sophie didn't understand here. Her mind tripped over her thoughts trying to order the questions she had. Burning her again? Again? Olivier lost everyone to fire? Who was everyone? In the painting on her left, a picture of a dancing bear kicking a gypsy into a bonfire melted into a portrait of a very angry-looking Luc done in superb Italianate style. She focused, came up with a coherent question--Olivier could paint like that?-- then decided she was better off not thinking about any of this. "Those you can't consume with your vicious dancing." Olivier's voice was colored by a mocking thread, a tone she had never heard him use. This was not the same man who was patient and curious, but always kind. Except for that whole turning her into a vampire and stalking her part. Which could be his version of patience. Tiring of crouching over, Sophie dropped to her knees next to Olivier. "True, true. Did you come to tell me a story?" Hopping from coal to coal, the imp stoked up the fire enough to make Sophie uncomfortable. "Give me more to consume, more, more, and I will answer a question!" Olivier grinned and pulled out two more drawings. These were far more detailed and perfectly rendered than the ear. The one in his left hand was of Sophie sleeping in a chair, her head back exposing her neck, her hands oddly clasped together politely. The one in his right hand was of Norah laughing uproariously at something, Luc's hand on Norah's shoulder, her posture bent in mirth. The imp jumped in place. "Yes, yessssss. Those. Give them to me!" "One question for each picture. One for me, one for her." He waved the papers in the air. "Yes, two questions! I agree." Almost the entirety of his miniscule body glowed white and blue at the prospect of the sketches. Olivier dropped them both in at the same time, and the imp whipped around in circles, cackling, his feet beating out a rhythm only he comprehended. "He enjoys destroying beautiful things." Olivier's murmur zinged her straight in the belly. Sophie watched the paper curling into ash from the center out, each little footprint smoking as the fiery creature raced along. "Not destroying--consuming." She could see that; he fed on the sketches like they fed on blood. Needfully, heedlessly. "Why is he here with all the art in the world? That seems pretty stupid." She turned her eyes back to the painting of Luc dressed in a black velvet smock shot through with silver thread and beaded around the neck in pearls. His anger flared in oil and egg tempura, in perfect shading and light on dark contrast. He was a masterpiece. "This is his jail. He's serving a sentence for one of the great medieval fires. I don't know which." Olivier drew a breath, and the imp shrieked. "ROME ROME ROME!" The crackling voice remonstrated. Sophie tore her eyes away from the fearsome Luc, the after image of the imp's figure still flashing in front of her retinas, and gazed on the figure sort of sideways. "I give her my question. She has them both." Olivier whispered in a low, gravelly tone. "YES!" The imp hopped up and down. "Ask him a question." Olivier nudged Sophie. "Like what?" What did one ask a fiery critter that appeared to have limitless knowledge? "Anything you want." "Have I lived another life? Is this the first time I was born?" The dreams, she'd always had the dreams, since she could first remember she'd wondered if they were more than that. Olivier looked extremely peeved. "Auto-de-fe!" The imp did a somersault over that thrill. "You have lived before, blood-sucker, as have all of your kind. Over and over and over!" "Ask him something else," Olivier grated out. The anger throbbed off him; she could taste it bitter like lemon peel. "Is my friend ok?" The flames stilled somewhat, the flickering slower. He leapt in place instead of running in circles. "Ask something more specific." And that wasn't reassuring. More specific how? Was it the work "ok"? "Is she in danger?" She couldn't bring herself to ask if she was alive. The feet began to move again, round and round, the flames that simulated hair flickering orange. "Danger!! No one you know is not in danger! He will come! Oh, yes, he will come! She can't save you. NO!" Sophie's skin turned to gooseflesh even as she sat inches away from the glowing coals of a living fire. He? Everyone was in danger?