Blind dates are excruciating. But when you are on the shady side of thirty and manless your married friends always want to fix you up, although I sometimes think they only do it because they want me to be as miserable as they are. I’ve been to barn dances with hard-handed farmers, to the ballet with poseurs, to rugby matches with boys called Crispin or Alexander, to tea at the Ritz with mummies’ boys…
Need I continue?
It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine how excited I wasn’t as I stepped out of my taxi at an exclusive venue in Mayfair. I paid the driver and trod the spotless pavement to where a thug in a tuxedo guarded the door. He leered cheerfully at me as I approached.
“Name?”
“Cerys Watson.”
He looked down at his smartphone and his grin widened. He turned to open the door for me.
“Welcome Miss Watson.”
His breath was hot on the back of my neck as I walked into the foyer, but he didn’t make the mistake of touching me.
A uniformed concierge surged forward. “Miss Watson. May I take your wrap?”
I allowed him to take the vintage mink and velvet confection – loaned for the evening by the ‘friend’ who had talked me into this latest piece of idiocy. As he handed off the cloak to a scuttling hatcheck girl I took a covert glance around, marking both the understated opulence and the exits against any future need.
“If you would be good enough to follow me.”
I chose not to challenge his overblown phraseology, following quietly in his wake and wondering why I could smell his fear. When he opened one leaf of the double doors I understood.
This Halloween ball needed no fancy dress. The club was chock full of vampires and their pretty pets. As we crossed the room I felt the cold assessing eyes of the bloodsuckers and the hot hostility of the blood sluts. 
My date occupied a prominent and advantageous table where he could both see and be seen. As we approached he stood to greet me. He was dangerously handsome in a darkly seductive mode that I found both interesting and challenging. As the terrified concierge effaced himself I found my hand taken in a cool, strong grip and lifted to a pair of perfectly sculpted lips. A pair of icy blue eyes assessed me from the toes of my black suede shoes to the polished crown of my head.
“Exquisite,” he breathed. “May I call you Cerys? My own name is Victor and it would please me greatly to hear it on your lips.”
“Victor.” I managed to manufacture the required blush.
He smiled, a smoothly polished seducer’s smile. “Will you take an aperitif before we dine?”
“A Tio Pepe would be pleasant.”
Our drinks were served by a silent-footed sommelier with a stick up his ass. He obviously knew what his customers were, but had decided it was beneath him to notice. The desire to shock him out of this sense of superiority was almost irresistible. Almost.
Victor’s antennae were very good, because he caught something of what I was thinking, although it was obvious he understood it as embarrassment. He lifted my hand to his lips once again, and this time I felt his tongue taste my flesh. He smiled. “The attitude of servants should be beneath the notice of one as beautiful as you.” 
A raised finger brought a svelte waitress bearing leather bound menus. 
I didn’t even pick mine up and Victor looked intrigued. “You are not hungry?”
Hungry, yes. Decisive, no. Will you order for me, please?”
His smug smile showed me precisely how much that pleased him. He must have thought a ripe peach had dropped straight into his lap. I lowered my eyes and kept my face and body demure. This evening might turn out to be more amusing than I thought.
He ordered steaks. Mine was to be rare. His blue. Oh yes, vampires can and do eat. For pleasure. Blood is, of course, both pleasure and necessity. Gourmet food and fine wines are an expensively enjoyable luxury.
The atmosphere in the club was calculated to promote casual excess, from the sharply folded linen napkins to the soft-footed waiting staff, to the live piano music.
We had eaten our excellent steaks and drunk a bottle of Bulls Blood when a small stir alerted me to a young woman who was quietly climbing onto the stage. For a moment I could not believe my eyes. It seemed that Dusty Springfield had been reincarnated. From the panda eyes to the beehive she was perfect and when she opened her mouth to sing the voice was pretty close too. She sang You Don’t Have to  Say You Love Me and I was transported. I was vaguely aware of Victor watching my face like a cat watches a butterfly, but I was too busy listening to care.
When the girl finished her set and slipped away a small dance band took the stage, complete with brilliantined crooner. After a couple of swing numbers the rhythm changed and they launched into Frankie Laine’s Jealousy in full Argentine Tango rhythm. Victor held out an imperious hand.
“Dance with me.”
We took to the strip of dance floor and it was as if we melded into one entity. From the first ochos through cortados, turns and crosses he led and I followed. I flowed into him with every crisp snap of my heels and he held me as if we had been lovers for a thousand years. When the music ended he let me go with extreme reluctance and led the way back to our table where a dessert wine so expensive it is only sold in half bottles awaited us along with petits fours and strawberries with chocolate dip.
Victor dipped a fruit and offered it to me. I ate obediently, but to be honest the strawberry was so tasteless as to render the exercise wholly pointless. The wine, however, was of a quality that makes the tastebuds sing. 
“Where,” he asked with elaborate casualness, “did you learn to dance.”
“Many places, sir. But the Argentine Tango? On the streets of Buenos Ayres. You?”
“Too many places for you to bother your beautiful head with.” He signalled with one long white hand and the waltz the band had been playing was replaced by the sultry seduction of the rumba. 
I needed no second invitation and we took to the floor, moving as one body in perfect rhythm. Let there be no doubt about it, the undead can dance. As we circled the floor, the lights in the room dimmed leaving just one spotlight  following us as we moved, linked inextricably together by the sensuous demands of the dance. 
As the last note dropped into the air, the light was extinguished leaving me in Stygian blackness held in the strong hands of a Master Vampire. He bent his mouth to my neck and I could feel the excitement run through his body.
“Mine,” he groaned.
“Not so fast, my friend.” I snapped my fingers and the room filled with an ochre-coloured pulsating light. Dropping the simulacrum of human beauty I stood there in my true form laughing.
I had always known I was dancing with a vampire. He, poor fool, didn’t realise his last ever tango had been in the arms of the devil…

©️Jane Jago 2019

This is the place.
Here.
Once it was full.
Life.
People warmed, working.
Here.

This was the place.
There.
Empty and bleak.
Dead.
No one left, useless.
There.

E.M. Swift-Hook

She awoke with the idea in her head that she had been asleep for a very long time. 

Sitting up gingerly she found herself in darkness. But movement must have alerted someone, because a dim light came on. Showing her a long room full of beds, like a hospital ward.

There seemed to be a window about halfway down and she forced wobbly-feeling legs to take her there.

Her suddenly nervous fingers fumbled with the blind, until she could look out. Onto a landscape of black rocks, red ‘plants’ and white sky.

She screamed until her voice ran dry.

©jane jago

Welcome to the Hotseat of Truth, a device in which your protagonist is trapped. The only way to escape is to answer five searching questions completely honestly or the Hotseat will consume them to ashes! Today’s victim is displaced mage, Raven, from Catalyst by Stephanie Barr

Raven is a powerful mage (half-dragon) who was left in the mundane realm after he helped tear the magical realm from the mundane one. He’s waiting for the Catalyst to show up so she can pull them back together. He and his familiar, Gypsy, have reincarnated innumerable times but they keep their memory and, while still magical, are generally stymied by the lack of magic manna in the mundane world. 

Question one: Has waiting taught you patience?

I thought it had until I met Chloe. I guess there’s more to this patience thing that waiting powerlessly. I guess sometimes it means not being in charge. That I hadn’t expected.

Question two: How does  powerful magic wielder cope with being trapped in a world where the magic is so weak?

I had to learn other skills. I tend to like working with my hands, so I usually take on craftsman-type jobs, learning new skills each life to keep it from getting boring.  And I can do little things, some telekinesis and sensing things, but I’ll tell you, getting back to where I really have my powers back is something I’ve more than dreamed of. I can’t wait. Well, I can, but I don’t like it.

Question three: What is the first thing you will do when you can return to your own world?

Well, we’re not really returning to my own world, more like, thanks to the Catalyst, the world is coming back to us, so we’ll all be one world where magic is as normal as gravity. But, yeah, I have plans. Probably check my hoard—it has been twelve thousand years—and then show Chloe what a naturally-born mage can do when he’s not dependent on her power to do magic. What spell will that be? I don’t know. After some of the stuff she’s managed, she’s not easy to impress. But I’ll come up with something.

Question four: Does reincarnation hurt?

Yes and no. Reincarnation isn’t inherently painful but death can be. My last death was pretty miserable dying from an overabundance of shock treatments. But it is inconvenient. You never know where you’ll end up and some families are pretty miserable to grow up in like this one was with an abusive father and a mother who was grateful he had another target. It’s also kind of tough to go through school since I have literally heard it all before, but there’s usually something new and exciting to liven each life up. I feel like I learn something every life when I live long enough to do so. I do get to make new mistakes since I have the chance to learn from my old ones. Hmm. You’d think I’d make less of them…

Question five: Is Gypsy a friend as well as a familiar?

Why would you have a familiar that wasn’t a friend? I mean, I can’t even remember when she wasn’t a big part of my life. She knows me better than anyone and she still sticks with me. We wouldn’t keep seeking each other out, life after life, if we didn’t care about each other deeply. Not that keeps her from telling it like it is. In fact, that’s the best part of our friendship. We can tell each other the honest truth without worrying about it destroying what we have.

“There has to be a formula.” Dianora glared at her brother. “There has to be an algorithm for writing a bestseller.”
“Ain’t” he grunted stubbornly. “It’s one of them wossnames.”
“Which wossnames precisely?” she placed her words as carefully as blades, but to no avail.
“The wossname that means there ain’t no rhyme nor reason, stupid.”
Dianora seriously considered physically attacking Adamo, but was deterred by the knowledge that he wasn’t a gentleman, was around twice her size, and perfectly capable of attacking her back.  
“So what do we do?”
“You just carry on writing the stuff that pays, and I keep on going to work five days a week. That’s what real life is all about.”
She got up and stomped around the room waving her arms in the air.
“And stop doing that or you’ll hit the wall and bruise your fist.”
Dianora laughed reluctantly. “Okay. I give in. Let’s eat.”

However, the idea of an algorithm had taken root in her head and whenever she had a spare few moments she input as much information as possible slowly, slowly building a picture of what would constitute the ‘perfect’ novel. She added character names, descriptions, traits, and sexuality. She carefully dissected storylines. She even read as much erotica as she could lay her hands on sourcing both terminology and description. Then she just looked at her work for a very long time, unsure if she dare press the combination of keys that would set her brainchild in motion.

It was a wet, cold Friday evening. Adamo was tired and frustrated after a particularly scratchy week, and he came in from work to find his sister clutching a bulky printout. It looked a bit on the thick side for one of the young adult novels that paid the rent, but he took it from her hands and dropped it on his desk.
“Any hurry for this one?”
“No, in your own time.”
He thought Dianora’s voice sounded a bit peculiar, but he was too tired to try and puzzle out the behaviour of someone who was, in his opinion, erratic at the best of times, and downright impossible when in a mood.

It wasn’t, therefore, until Sunday morning that he picked up the typescript and started to read. 
Three hours later he stomped into the kitchen and threw the pages down on the table with a bang.
“That,” he enunciated with careful clarity, “is absolute dross”.
Dianora turned from the pot she had been stirring on the stove and grinned widely.
“It is. But you couldn’t put it down, could you?”
“No. However did you manage to write something so horribly tacky and so completely compelling at the same time?”
“Oh,” she said airily, “I didn’t write it.”
“Well who did?” 
Adamo was getting snappy, which seemed to amuse Dianora greatly. She turned up the cover page and pointed.
‘Darkness of the Soul’ a dystopian love story from the pen of Arabella Churchwarden.
“Yeah, but that’s just your pet name for your computer…”
Then the penny dropped and he stared at her with his mouth agape.
“Yes,” she said proudly. “I wrote the bestseller algorithm.”

©️jj 2019

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

I am old, and my body attests
To a life full of action and zest
I won’t Botox away
The way I’ve lived my days
And I won’t shave the hairs on my chest

© jane jago

Gleb looked at the creature on his finger for a long time, amazed and heartened by the warm glowing gold of its tiny body. He knew it didn’t belong down here in the icy depths, and as soon as he had finished looking he would help it back towards the sunlit lands he heard about in his dreams.
Gleb heard Winter stirring, and felt the icy blast of her breath. Smiling gently, he took the fire bee to a place from which it could fly home.
That golden warmth would be something to think about in the cold of everlasting night.

©jane jago

We had humans here once. When they arrived, they were weak and lost and in need of our help and protection. The trouble was the humans couldn’t commune. They used odd sounds from their mouths to communicate with each other and when any iv’n’bos tried to commune with one, it would clutch its head and scream as if in agony.
Maybe it was. Maybe humans couldn’t commune.
So what to do with them?
In the Dark Season when nothing grew, they would all have died had not some iv’n’bo taken pity and left them food. But the gifts made no difference. The humans simply built an altar to some god and offered thanks there for the food gifts. As if they could not even conceive of the iv’n’bo offering help.
Some said they should be left to starve come the next Dark Season, but that would be against the Plan. The Plan spoke always of compassion for any sentient being and the iv’n’bo all believed and followed the Plan.
But the humans did not.
They had no compassion.
Despite the food gifts being plentiful, despite the bounty of the land and the trees being given freely to feed them if they reached out their hands to take it or stirred themselves to nurture the seeds in the soil. Despite all that, they armed themselves and went out slaughtering sentient creatures, laying them on their vile alter and devouring the burned flesh.
Then they forged blades.
They declared war on the iv’n’bo.
They left us no choice.
We had humans here – once.

E.M. Swift-Hook

From the eighth Fortune’s Fools book Iconoclast: Not To Be by E.M Swift-Hook which is now available for pre-order.

“I know Grim, he wasn’t lying. I also know he’s not a murderer. If he killed, he did so for a reason.”
“Every murderer has a reason,” Durban said gently.
For the first time, he caught a flash of anger in Panvia’s eyes. “Grim,” she repeated firmly, “is a man of principle. He’s got a rep for never using lethal force unless he’s backed into it. Ask anyone. Is not just me saying that ‘cos he’s family. If he killed, it would’ve been because he had no choice. Had no way not to do so.” She fixed Durban with her stare as if willing him to believe her. “You need to understand that.”
Durban nodded. “I hear you loud and clear.”
Standing up, Panvia drained her mug to the dregs then set it on the table. “I hope you do,” she said. “Now I need to go try help Ebon. You know where to find me.”
Rising too, Durban gripped her arm. “Thank you. Thank you for passing the message on.”
“Don’t thank me for it. I nearly didn’t, you know?” She looked sick as she spoke. “I nearly broke my word to my own brother.”
Durban released her arm, suddenly uncertain he had read things correctly. Before he could ask, Gernie spoke across him.
“Tell Ebon we’ve got his back on those repairs, will you?”
Panvia gave him a thumbs up and left the room, closing the door behind her. Durban sank back in his seat again.
“I don’t get..?”
Shaking his head, Gernie took a drink of the cooling mulled wine before he responded. “She loves her brother. Grim gave her a second chance and talked his twin into doing so too. Most of the people in her life before, well, before she wound up here, they didn’t. Even her other sister didn’t and still won’t.”
“I get that. What I don’t get is why that would make her reluctant to pass his message on to me.”
Gernie gave a brief laugh.
“Man! You know for someone who can read people the way most read texts, you can be slow on the uptake sometimes.”
Durban smiled at that. “So what am I missing?”
“Panvia knows you, Durban. She knows what you’ve done, the kind of people you hang out with, what they are capable of. And she knows how good they are at it. Right now, she thinks telling you that message has probably just signed her baby brother’s death warrant.”

E.M Swift-Hook

You can snag your copy of  Iconoclast: Not To Be on preorder now!

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

Being old means I’m quite without shame
I can swear, belch and f**t without blame
I can drink till I’m squiffy
Make jokes that are iffy
And call all my neighbours rude names

© jane jago