Lindsay Brandt, “Vigil Security”

Vigil Security Firm– The sign said, hanging over a heavy wooden door and framed by lantern-lit windows. I wondered what kind of place this was, but I sighed and walked inside. It had, after all, been my uncle’s wishes that his grave be protected by this establishment.

Inside was a desk with clawed feet, and behind the desk was a woman with graying black hair and gold spectacles. She was wearing boy’s clothes and a green jacket with shiny gold buttons, which struck me as odd.

“Eva Vigil, at your service,” the woman said. “Who might you be?”

“I’m Delia, ma’am,” I said nervously. “My uncle- Cygnus- requested your services in protecting his grave.”

Eva regarded me with a strange, unreadable stare. “Cygnus is dead?” she asked. “How?”

“The plague. It was awful.” I was never that close to Uncle, but I still had never expected him to die.

“Do you mean that he died of the plague, or do you mean that they told you he died of the plague?” the security consultant asked me.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your question,” I told her. “Of course it was the plague. He’d been ill for a long time prior to his death.” At least, he said he had been in his letters.

Eva scoffed and muttered something to herself.

“Do we have a deal?” I asked her, somewhat apprehensively. “Money is no object- I can draw out of Mother’s bank account. I’m sure there’s enough there for whatever price you ask.”

“Oh, child, you don’t need to pay. Cygnus and I have been long-time friends, and any service to him will cost nothing. In fact, I will even pay you.”

“Pay me for what? Surely there’s no service I can do for you.”

She fixed me with another unreadable gaze, and I had the strangest feeling that she was looking straight into my soul. “For coming out with me tonight and helping to guard the grave.”

It was a strange request, coming from a certainly strange character, but somehow I felt I needed to accept. That night, at sundown, I took a carriage to the graveyard to help Eva with her guarding.

In my skirt and gloves, I felt out of place in the graveyard. Was it possible to feel in place in a graveyard? I wondered. The stones were pretty enough, but once you got to thinking of the poor people buried beneath, it was quite disturbing. Add that to the darkening autumn sky, and it seemed as though a phantom could appear at any time.

Looking around for Eva, I spied her near the corner of the cemetery. She looked just as she had when we spoke in her security firm earlier, except that now she carried a large leather handbag. She was sprinkling something from a box onto the earth.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Setting wards,” she explained. “Salt does wonders to keep the supernatural away, when combined with a bit of holy water and smoke.”

“The supernatural?”

“Indeed. Why do you suppose Cygnus hired me, rather than any other security firm? There are others who could get the job done better than I, for less cost.”

“But you said there was no cost.”

“There is no cost, but Cygnus had no way to be sure of that while he lived. The reason, then, that he hired me was that I have experience dealing with this kind of threat. What do you know of the Star Sapphire?”

“Nothing,” I said truthfully.

“I thought as much. The Sapphire is a powerful talisman that only comes to power once in a blue moon- and you’ll find that tonight is the blue moon. Cygnus was murdered for it, and now it’s buried with him. That is what we’re here to guard.”

“Ma’am, I have no use for your supernatural nonsense,” I told Eva.

She took a cloth from her massive handbag and used it to polish her spectacles. “You will,” she said simply and seriously, then went back to sprinkling salt.

Although I had rather a mind to leave the graveyard and return to my comfortable four-post bed at home, I’d stayed with Eva for several hours now. Earlier I had complained of being cold, tired, and scared, but at her urging I ceased. “You’ll attract ghosts,” she had said. “They love nothing more than complaints.” While I still did not believe for an instant that there was such a thing as a ghost, she was quite insistent and so I sat in silence.

The clock on the nearby church tower struck midnight. Eva reached into her handbag as though reaching for a weapon. The blue moon, previously concealed by thick clouds, began to shine down on the cemetery.

Eva suddenly sprang to alertness as though she were a hunting hound that had scented a fox, though I neither heard nor saw anything alarming. “The grave robber is here,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Always midnight. They’ve a sense of the dramatic.”

“There are no robbers here,” I told Eva.

She shook her head. “The wards never lie. There’s a robber somewhere here.” I agreed, if merely to satisfy Eva’s fantasy.

From the bag, Eva withdrew a long bronze rod with symbols etched into it. She strode confidently toward what I knew to be Uncle Cygnus’s grave, wielding the rod like a sword. “Show yourselves,” she said. “I know you’re here. If you want the stone, you’ll have to take it from my cold hands.”

A figure stepped from the shadows, dressed in a purple and yellow cloak that should have been plainly visible but wasn’t. Without a word, they (man or woman, I couldn’t discern) drew two swords and began fencing with Eva and her rod.

Both moved faster than I supposed was humanly possible, ranging across the whole cemetery with their duel. It was rather fun to watch, in all honesty.

While watching the duel, however, I noticed something else. Atop the grave of Uncle Cygnus, a large black animal had started digging with its paws. The creature looked almost like a dog, but not quite–there was something catlike about its face.

“HEY!” I exclaimed to the creature. “You get off my uncle’s grave!” The creature, ignoring me, continued to dig. I reached inside Eva’s handbag for something I could use against it.

A pistol? No, I had not the slightest clue how to fire one. A box of salt? I was unsure if it would affect the creature. A slice of cake? That wasn’t a weapon.

Finally, I found a small wooden stick- no, a wand. Holding the wand, I charged the digging beast. I poked it with the tip just as it scratched me with its claws. It howled and melted into a puddle of shadows.

Seeing that Eva had beaten the figure in combat, I ran to congratulate her. As I ran, however, I felt an intense pain where the creature had scratched me. Poison, I realized as my sight faded to shadow just as the monster had. I fell to the ground.

A warm blue light washed over me and I heard the voice of Uncle Cygnus saying, “You have done well, Delia.” The light felt so good I didn’t want it to go away, but it must have at some time because the next thing I remember I was lying in a soft, warm bed.

Not my bed, I soon realized. I was in the Vigil Security office, and what I had assumed to be a bed was in fact a claw-footed sofa. Although I had been up until midnight, and it was now before dawn, I was not at all tired.

Believing I had dreamed the whole experience, I stood and began walking back toward my home.

That’s when I noticed it for the first time.

As I looked in my mirror, I saw that my eyes, previously a rather dull brown, had turned to the blue of the moonlight and the sapphire. In spite of myself, I smiled at this–though, I wondered, had the talisman wrought any other changes in me?