Chapter Text
Nocturne City, 1999:
6 Hours Until Sunrise
Death is a curious creature.
"Stupid flesh. Stupid pain. Stupid suffering ... The rotting foundation of every relationship, right? "
A pink fluorescent light buzzes in the nightclub’s bathroom. Everything here is damp and disgusting, but Jinx doesn’t mind. She’s perched cross-legged in the empty sink, smeared mascara streaking her porcelain face, blood on her neck and collarbone.
A frame lies slumped against the wall. Jinx smirks and keeps talking to it.
"Tick….tock, tick-tock. Don’t tell me that I deserve better , I don’t. And complaining about my boyfriend in a sweaty nightclub bathroom isn’t gonna change anything because I was the one who dumped him."
She sighs. Music booms behind the door. People are laughing, singing.
And she’s here, hating herself for it. Because she can't even enjoy that a living person wishes her a Happy New Year.
"So no, I’m not sorry. I don’t wanna be fucking sorry."
Her eyes flick up to the cracked mirror as she makes eye contact with herself.
"Some nights he’s like, ‘Jinx, please stop with the chaos, the blood,’ blah blah blah. And other nights he’s practically on his knees begging, ‘Don’t stop.’ It's honestly kind of a turn on but also exhaaaaauuuusting. Why can’t my boyfriend just trust me for five seconds?"
Jinx leans back, head bumping the mirror.
"Example: When he says, ‘Did you eat today?’ I’m just like Obviously genius I ate. But nooo, he gets all quiet and want me to say ‘No, I haven’t eaten, I survive on gum’ . And when he looks at me like that…like- like he’s trying not to see me, I start wondering—In his dreams... Am I even there? 'Cause I love him , Chuck. Gross but true. But gross. I love his stupid face so damn much it breaks stuff inside me. I don’t wanna be the monster in his nightmares. But I didn’t choose this. I am the nightmare. Life sucks. Well, life haha. You know what I mean, right?…Chuck?... Chuck, are you even listening?"
She drops down from the sink. How dare he not listen to her when she poured out her heart — and what she has left of a soul — in that rant.
As she walks toward the wall, her eyes find Chuck’s lifeless ones. He is indeed slumped there.
She kneels down and gently nudges his pale face with a finger, but his head almost detaches from his body because his neck is torn open.
Jinx blinks, then pouts like a guilty child. She licks the blood from her deadly, pointy canines.
So yeah, death is a curious creature. But on Jinx’s tongue, it tastes… incredibly good. And that’s what’s tearing her apart. Because there was something worse than liking the taste of death:
Wanting death to pull you in to end the cycle.
New Orleans, 1930:
Nights in New Orleans were special. It was the only place where one could hear jazz playing faintly in the distance while witnessing a young woman with long, wild hair step onto the edge of the Mississippi bridge.
Jinx had been trying to kill herself for quite some time. Ending her suffering felt like ending everyone else's, too. But the whole "eternal being" thing turned out to be pretty much real and it wouldn’t let go of her. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. And tonight, she was soaked to the bone from another failed jump into the river.
“Plannin’ to jump, or just hoping someone’ll stop you?” a voice says behind her.
Jinx’s eyes snap back to see a woman, a bit older than her, with a figure just masculine enough to scandalize the weakest minds.
The woman leans against the railing, wearing a cocky grin and a sharp-eyed gaze that makes Jinx think that if she tries to jump, the redhead will catch her. Judging by the look of her, she has enough muscle to carry two of her without breaking a sweat.
“Why don’t you worry about your own buttcheeks?” Jinx hisses through her teeth.
“That’s some nice embroidery you’ve got there,” the woman says, gesturing toward Jinx’s off-white dress with blue stripes. “Your mama sew it for you?”
Jinx scoffs. “Not the mom talk.” She rolls her eyes at the pathetic attempt to win her sympathy. “Get out of my face.”
“Trying to build a little trust, that's all.”
Jinx glares at her. “You shouldn’t talk to strangers you know?”
"Why?"
"I could kill you."
The woman laughs. “The name’s Vi.” She extends a hand, not so much to introduce herself but more as a gesture of help.
Don’t they teach kids anything these days? What kind of survival instinct was this? Who walks up and chats with a woman in a soaked white dress in the middle of the night, on a dark path at the edge of a bridge?
“I’m serious,” Jinx says, as Vi keeps chuckling. “Leave me alone.”
“I would. But then you'd be thinking you got the saddest story in town. And I’m pretty sure I’ve got you beat.”
“Wrong. Now leave before I change my mind and kill you.” She’s just about to take a step into the void when Vi stops her with:
“I like girls. Romantically.”
Silence.
“Not you, you’re too young and definitely not my type, but yeah, that’s my sob story.” Vi says.
Jinx steps back from the edge, caught off guard. There’s vulnerability and fear in Vi’s eyes even if she seems tough around the edges. That kind of confession could get her killed, no question.
It made Jinx wonder why she would risk her life over a complete stranger who, up until now, had been nothing but ungrateful toward her.
Jinx was beginning to feel something other than the usual bitterness she had carried all these years, her dear old friend, empathy. She didn’t particularly like the feeling, as it made her feel exposed, but she figured she wasn’t as vulnerable as Vi in the present moment. For some reason, it made her want to reveal a piece of herself to Vi.
“Fine.” Jinx sighs, “My father sold me to a vampire for two bottles of whiskey.” She sarcastically says.
Vi shakes her head. “Come on, I open my heart and you tell me fairy tales?”
“Unfortunately for me, it’s not.” It’s half the truth.
“You’re one of those kids with a big imagination, huh?”
“I’m not a kid.”
She’s one hundred years old. Maybe stuck at eighteen, but still.
“My town’s pastor tried to ‘exorcise’ me with boiling water,” Vi confesses, rolling up her sleeve to reveal burn scars twisting like vines.
Jinx’s eyes scan the tattoos on Vi’s arm. They were cleverly designed to cover the damage. She reaches out and gently brush her fingers on Vi’s skin. For the first time in over a century, she feels honestly sorry for a mortal. She had learned to become numb to their suffering because there was simply too much of it, and dealing with her own pain had already been enough of a torture.
“There was only one place where I could really be myself,” Vi says softly, “without being afraid of the world coming for me.” She smiles. “I think you’ll like it.”
Jinx raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“I’m inviting you to a party.”
Jinx stares at her like she’s insane. “Huh?”
“There’s a speakeasy under the old cotton warehouse. Real dirty jazz, live musicians, bad liquor, but good people. You can be truly free there, nobody asks your real name…”
“Jinx,” she says, flatly.
“Jinx.” Vi doesn’t even look surprised.
“And if I say no?” Jinx crosses her arms.
Vi sighs and sits down. “Then I’ll wait here ‘til you fall. But just so you know, I’m extremely annoying company. So… what do you say? You in?”
Jinx stares at the river. Then at Vi. Then down at her bare feet and think that maybe this change in her routine will be worth it.
Slowly, she steps down.
Vi extends her hand again. Jinx grabs it.
“If the booze is cheap,” she mutters, stepping back onto the red dirt road, “I’m killing you.”
“Deal.” Vi grins, “But you’re buying the first round.”
A few minutes later, Vi and Jinx were stepping down the speakeasy’s narrow stairs. It’s a place unlike anything Jinx has ever seen : A crowd of Colored folks mixed with white folks. Most of them are dressed in extravagant clothes, colors stretching as far as the eye could see.
Here, they all seem equal.
Lively laughter mingles with music and the clink of glasses. It feels too good to be true.
In all her years alive, Jinx has lost more faith in humanity than she’s ever gained. Even as the world moves forward, there’s always a group ready to drag it backward. She’s learned—against her will—that she can’t destroy them all.
Back in her first town, when she started cutting down men like a blood-hungry avenger, they eventually unmasked her for what she was: a vampire. And there’s nothing more humiliating to her than the idea of dying under the pitchfork of some dumb farmer who thinks women are beneath him.
If she ever has to meet death, she’ll do it on her own damn terms.
Vi leads her with a cocky smirk, tipping her gavroche hat toward familiar faces as they pass. Yet she keeps a side eye on a woman whose neck is wrapped in pearls, gloves clinging to a martini glass. She doesn’t look like she belongs on this side of town.
Hopefully, she’s not here to buy something. Or someone.
Vi leans toward Jinx’s ear to be heard over the jazz swirling around them. “Welcome to the only place in New Orleans where nobody gives a damn who you kiss or what you are.”
Jinx doesn’t answer.
Instead, she scans the room with a predator’s stillness, thinking that there has to be a traitor somewhere in this crowd. Someone who’d sell them all out for a few dollars or some twisted sense of righteousness.
Because there’s always a traitor.
Her eyes drift to the bar, and pause. The bartender is leaning over the wood, wiping a glass, when he looks up.
They lock eyes. Just for a second.
Maybe she’s losing her mind because she finds him attractive but he looks at her like she’s his entire world.
As if pulled by a force, she walks toward him. Behind her, Vi is playfully punching the shoulder of a saxophone player she clearly knows and engage in a conversation with him.
The bartender polishes a glass as he watches Jinx approach.
“I need advice,” she says, sliding onto the stool with her eyes fixed on his sharp jaw. The kind she wouldn’t mind running her tongue along. “And your strongest drink.”
He pours an amber liquid into a short glass and sets it gently in front of her. He notices her wet curls clinging to her cheek and seems about to comment on it, only to stop after an internal battle with himself.
“You’re asking a stranger for advice?”
“That’s what makes bar advice the best kind,” she shrugs. “ Someone who can watch the situation with fresh eyes, no old fish bone, no judgement.”
Amusement flickers across his face, and for a moment, her unbeating heart almost lurches. What the hell is wrong with her?
She takes a sip of the drink and it tastes like human food usually does. Like nothing.
His eyebrows rise, clearly surprised her small frame can handle a pour that strong without flinching.
“Thing is,” he says, “I used to give advice. But drunks have a habit of doing the exact opposite of what you tell ‘em. So I retired from wisdom.”
“That’s a boring preacher’s excuse.”
“A preacher’s excuse?”
Jinx shrugs. “You sound like one. That voice could talk a crowd into walking off a cliff. I’ve met your type before.” She leans in with a crooked grin. “Gotta watch out for men with holy voices. Dangerous types.”
He chuckles and shakes his head like he’s half-defeated. “I was raised in this shit, my father’s a preacher. So I guess you’re not wrong.”
“See?”
He tilts his head slightly. “So. What kind of advice you need?”
She forgot. All she wants now is to learn everything about him.
“You got a name, preacherboy?”
“That what you’re gonna call me all night?” he asks, and somehow that sounds like an invitation.
“Depends.” Jinx raises a flirty eyebrow. “You’re gonna tell me your name?”
He smiles, eyes on her soaked dress, “Sure, if you tell me why you look like you’ve been dancing with the Mississippi on a rainy day.”
Jinx leans back, eyes glinting. She wasn’t expecting him to match her back and forth punchlines. He’s got more jokes than she expected, and she’s not mad about it.
They smile at each other until a man steps up to the bar asking for a drink. The bartender nods, moves to pour it, and returns a moment later with a rag tossed casually over his broad shoulder dusted in muscle under the rolled-up sleeve. Jinx’s eyes keep drifting to it. She tries not to think about how badly she wants to sink her teeth into it.
“It’s Ekko,” he says, nodding. “My name.”
“Jinx.” She gives it like a challenge.
“You’re interesting.” He’s still looking at her with that disarming sincerity, as if he could see straight through her and somehow doesn’t flinch. It’s stupid to think that about someone she’s known for ten minutes, but she can’t help it. “I like interesting folks.”
“You say that now.” She scoffs, thinking he’d probably run like the rest of them if he ever knew what she really was. ” But wait until you find out that I haven’t seen the sun in centuries.”
Ekko doesn’t blink. His gaze softens but not with pity. “That ‘cause you work nights?”
Silence.
That’s a layered question.
Perhaps he thinks she’s offering her flesh as a means of survival. Living off the unspoken pleasures of the night was almost always the fate of women on the edge. In a sense, she did — traded her body. Desire and damnation are one and the same after all.
She lets out a faint, ironic smile. “Something like that.”
Ekko glances away, hand running through his hair. The gesture is casual, but Jinx catches the intention. He’s trying to change the subject. “Did you hear,” he starts, “some rich white folks been getting their fancy paintings stolen?”
Jinx hides a grin. Boredom lately had pushed her toward some… recreational rebellion let’s say. “Huh. Tragic loss for humanity.”
Ekko leans on the counter. “The thief steals the art, then leaves doodles behind. It’s silly.”
“SILLY?” she almost screams.
He catches the shift in her tone and stares at her. Jinx looks away, fingers tracing the rim of her glass like it holds the most fascinating secret in the world. When the silence stretches a little too long for her liking, she gives a small shrug.
“Whoever it is, they’re an artist,” she says before hoping down from her seat. “Anyway, you dance?” She extends an inviting hand.
Ekko raises an eyebrow.
“Come on.” Jinx rolls her eyes, “I wanna know if your feet are as smooth as your mouth, preacherboy.”
Ekko hesitates for half a beat but then takes her hand and she drags him onto the dance floor.
A century ago, she promised herself she would never fall in love with a mortal. But it was 2 AM and she was dancing and laughing far too hard in his arms. For the first time in her long lifeless life, she felt happy. And she knew she was screwed.
He was sunshine. She was a moonless midnight, unable to witness dawn.
And as she was laughing in his arms, she still didn’t understand how an angel had managed to claw his way through the burning depths of hell just to find her.