“I don’t think this will be a late evening,” I said. “We both look like we could use a good night’s sleep.”
A waiter took our order for three glasses of wine, and a sampling of house-made meats and cheeses. I added on a bowl of warm olives, and Lily asked for some bread. Once our drinks and small plates arrived, I quizzed my magical friends on what really was going on around me.
“You’re very lucky to live in San Francisco,” Lily said, licking a drop of olive oil off her fingertip. “This city is the most magical of any in the world.”
“You don’t mean picturesque, do you?”
Lily smiled. “Nope. I mean magical, with a capital M. After a while you will feel it. The land itself is part of it. Very early civilizations knew it, too, the Ohlone Indians, for example.”
Lily’s comments reminded me of something from my adventure the night before.
“I think I saw them,” I burst out, interrupting Lily’s sentence. “I saw them at Ocean Beach last night. I ran there after leaving the park. There were hundreds of people chanting, and I saw a woman—their shaman. I thought I was hallucinating.”
Both women exchanged glances. “You were having a vision, but it’s extraordinary that you saw the Ohlone,” Elsa said. “Your abilities are very strong, Olivia. You picked up on a very old memory embedded in the land.”
“You were amazing last evening, but I did have a brief scare,” Lily said, joining the conversation. “After Elsa left and you began to run towards the lake, I thought at one point that I’d lost you. You seemed to disappear from my line of sight, but then I found you again at the foot of the water. I think my eyes must have been playing tricks on me.”
“I was running around like a crazy woman, maybe a tree or a bush blocked me from view,” I said as I nibbled. “My memory of specific details about the evening is hazy, but I do remember one thing. I heard a man’s voice. He asked me to leave behind my old life and join him. I followed the sound of his voice all the way to the museum, but never located him. I’m guessing it was just a hallucination.”
My companions both laughed. “If we ever do this again, I will remember to brew a weaker tea next time,” Elsa said lightly.
Elsa shifted in her seat, and just for a minute I felt apprehension coming from her. Then, very quickly, the emotion disappeared from my radar, almost like a shadow that disappears from the corner of your eye when your turn your head to find its source. But it was clear that for the second time in one day, Elsa was hiding something from me.
****
CHAPTER 12
That night I slept deeply and did not stir from my bed for ten hours. I woke up feeling stiff, but otherwise remarkably well, considering my discovery that I shared my city with fairies, demons and vampires. At dinner, Lily had also briefed me on witches, who seemingly find San Francisco especially welcoming to their lifestyle. We are not alone, it turns out. We are all actually walking side-by-side on Valencia Street, although most of us have no idea. Few people realize they are stuffed into the N-Judah streetcar during commute hours with the undead.
What was I to do with this newfound knowledge? Was I supposed to return to my old life, knowing there were two worlds living side-by-side in San Francisco? I was prepared to let those questions percolate at the back of my mind as I got on with my day, but magic, it seemed, was in the air. No sooner had I turned on the Giants game on television, that I noticed that one of the pitchers was a vampire. With his long black hair and pale skin, this starting pitcher had always caught people’s attention. It was rare, I realized, that he ever pitched a day game, and now I knew why.
Sure enough, as the sun began to retreat from the plate and the shadows grew longer, his pitches gained in velocity. In the ninth inning, he was relieved and as I stared into the bullpen, I noticed one or two other members of the team were also Others. A vampire and a demon playing for a major league baseball team. It seemed the world I knew was really gone forever.