Page 57Dance

Phone calls can come at the most inopportune or at the most perfect of times. And often it's hard to discern between the two. I partly don't like mobile phones because it's so hard to refuse them. Man is a social creature and when someone calls, we feel needed. And to fuel that feeling we want to pick up. An interesting conundrum that the mobile phone age has brought to our very pockets.

Something I've often wanted to be without.

With me being on edge and a little ill at ease with the feeling of someone spying on me, I literally jumped when the phone buzzed at me. As I picked it up, I noticed the time and smiled at how fast the time could go in a night.

"Yes?"

"Did you find the room satisfactory?"

I smiled. "Yes. Thank you."

I could hear the voice smile. "We have one more job for you this week, it has to be done by Friday."

That was rather a lot of time. I wondered how big of a job it would be. "Understood."

"You will receive the details in a moment." And she hung up already.

An interesting thought raided my mind, containing the possibility of jobs being tests to find out who I was. Seriph felt like the kind of person who would test the limits of things as much as she could. But it would be silly to think that she would endanger her own operation for doing so. So, maybe it wasn't as extreme as that.

A message arrived on my phone with some very short details. An address I didn't know and a location of an item inside the place. I had no idea how to read it, making a mental note to look it up later on. In fact, why not now? There was little else that needed to be done.

Was Esmeralda waiting for me to return though?

Probably not. She wanted to be there by herself and enjoy that place. I decided it would be better to leave her for tonight. So I headed for my house, smiling with a plan of something I hadn't done at all since I had become a vampire.

Being nude.

This is a little hard to explain, but I'll try anyway. I'm not that comfortable undressing around others, because I feel looked at and vulnerable. But alone, the feeling of freedom when being naked is like a gentle summers breeze. Lovely and wanted. I didn't do it much at home either, only in my own room usually when I knew there wouldn't be anyone else.

And now I had a room all for myself, where no one would disturb me. I took the high road there, for two reasons. I didn't want anyone else to be able to follow me and, much more important, I wanted to run the roofs. It was fairly quiet in town, especially outside of the outgoing district. A few cars in the distance, but in the part of the city I was there was only one person outside. An old woman taking her dog for a walk. A small yappy dog who glanced up only once before trying to look very inedible.

When I arrived home, locking the doors neatly behind me, I smiled and stretched my arms.

This was all mine.

Turning on the lights, I began to undress myself. First I removed my backpack, then my shirt and bra. Finally my shoes, socks, pants and panties and stepped out of them slowly and reverentially. I felt like a goddess being revealed to the world. My gentle curved body a sight to behold in the yellow light.

Had I grown?

Considering the bodies of vampires I'd seen, I doubted it. But there was something more grown up, more adult about me. Perhaps it wasn't the shapes themselves but how I perceived them. Dancing slowly and twirling gently in the room, enjoying how my brown hair flowed around me. With my hands I imagined I left sparkly trails of glitter in the air. Making beautiful complex shapes that flowed outwards from my movements like ripples in a pond.

And then reflect on the walls.

Soon, in my head, the whole room was a mishmash of glittering waves in the air that continued for a few more seconds after I'd stopped moving and just looked. I felt so strong then. My skin pure and smooth, my breathing not even slightly raised, my senses focused and sharp.

With a bit of a blush, I took another look at the windows, making sure the heavy curtains were in front of them, and decided I wanted a shower. It was so basic. Like a highborn elf being forced to shower in the pigsty of a local farm, I touched things lightly at first until I realized I was being stupid.

The shower might have been basic, but the water was clean and pleasantly warm. It took some adjustments to get the perfect temperature. There was no bath to fully relax in, but after giving the walls and floors a little extra spray, I could sit down and just enjoy the warmth of the blood flowing through my body, complemented by the water over my skin.

I don't know exactly how long I just sat there, enjoying it and humming gentle tunes in my head.

After I dried myself, I sat down in nothing but a towel behind my new small computer. Using the maps site, I typed in the address (without the number) to find where the street was. Close to the water, on the side of the city, industrial area more or less. It looked like she wanted me to get into a warehouse near docks and retrieve... something...

I hoped the directions to the item would make sense once I was inside. Which they probably would, as far as I understood warehouses. I decided to scope the place out from a distance first. It didn't look easy to get to unnoticed from the satellite view, but that remained to be seen.

Tonight I just wanted to relax.

Like a cat curling up in front of a hearth.