The night is cold.  Certainly not as cold as some of the December nights back home.  But cold enough.  Perhaps she’s gotten used to the balmy warmth of this Southern city.  She’s supposed to be dead, so how come she’s still just as susceptible to heat and cold and the vagaries of the weather?

Deirdre wraps herself tighter in the worn leather jacket, drawing her shoulders down.  This kind of weather, and the streets are practically empty this time of night.  Most of the usual stragglers who hang about the city streets have by now escaped to whatever shelter they could find.  The soup kitchens and homeless shelters will be doing a brisk business.

She’s not sure she exactly knows what compels her at that thought to turn the corner and walk down on a narrow litter-strewn side street.  Her footsteps echo on the pavement, and the night-time roar of the distant city is loud in the silence around her.  Old buildings of crumbling red brick rise around her like ancient monoliths.  A labyrinth of masonry, a prison of solemn destitution.

A scratchy, tinny voice floats down from above and she glances up.  Despite the cold, a window stands slightly open, a small radio sitting on the windowsill just inside.  Some late-night preacher reads from scrïpture, his voice a whiny, insectoid sound at this vantage.  In the window she can make out the silhouette of an old woman in a rocking chair, face plump and doughy and hanging off the bones.  As Deirdre passes below the old woman turns to follow the girl with her eyes.  Deirdre can feel them on her until she passes out of range.

Another block or two and she’s there, the sign of peeling white paint leaning against the concrete building.  As she expected, the shelter is pretty well full.  By now they’ve stopped serving soup and the homeless and vagrant have hunkered down on cots or foam mattress pads.  A small child, still hungry, squalls somewhere in the concrete hall.  There is coughing, muffled grumbles and groaning.

Deirdre wanders the little maze of warm, huddled bodies.  The large concrete room is still cold, but at least it offers some protection from the wind, and the bodies to you will give off some warmth.  There’s a great susurrating vibration in the air from the dozens of bodies breathing and trembling and sighing.  The room is a waste of greys and browns and faded black.

As she passes by a corner a shock of color catches her attention.  She stops.  Sitting in the crook of the walls is a young girl – not really yet a woman – with a mass of tangled rust-red hair.  There’s something familiar about her.  No, Deirdre has never seen the girl before.  There’s a deeper kind of familiarity.  A familiarity that goes beyond physical recognition.

The girl notices Deirdre looking at her and the two lock eyes for a few long moments.  Then she turns away almost guiltily.  Deidre turns on her heels and takes the few short steps and crouches in front of the girl.  Her searching eyes lift the girl’s up to her and they lock once again.  Yes, there’s a very deep familiarity there.  The girl can’t be more than half a dozen years younger than her…well, not half a dozen years younger than when she had died.

“What’s yer name?” Deirdre asks in a soft voice.

“Callie.”  The girl’s throat sounds dry and hoarse, parched.

“Where ye from?”

The girl shrugs.  “Doesn’t matter.  I’m here now.”  The words are weak with hunger and exhaustion, but Deirdre can detect the sorrow and staunch resoluteness behind them.  It’s a voice of hard-fought independence won at great, painful cost.  Deidre knows the voice well.

The girls face is soft, resigned.  The eyes sad and hungry but hard and determined too.

“Well, yeah ye’re here.  Fer what good that’s doin’ ye,” she gives the girl a weak smile with what warmth she can muster.  Deirdre looks about the room with its collection of cold, hungry, sick bodies.  This girl doesn’t belong here.  She’s not one of them.  If Deirdre had to guess, she’s some runaway who had high hopes of making it on her own, only to realize the world is a lot harder and a lot crueler than she’d thought.  She doesn’t know what comes over her, and she knows she’ll probably regret it later, but she offers her hand to the girl.  “How ‘bout you come wi’ me?  I have a place ye can stay at which’m sure is better’n this hole.”  She tries smiling again at the girl.

The girl, Callie, just stares at her for a few more moments.  She’s obviously suspicious.  You learn that pretty fast on the street, or you don’t last long.  Deirdre knows she could use her supernatural powers on the girl to allay that suspicion, but she doesn’t want to do that.  She wants this to be honest, of its own accord.  Not coerced.

“Listen, how ‘bout I jus’ buy a little somethin’ else t’ eat?  An’ if ye d’nae feel comfor’able af’er tha’, then ye can come back here.”  There’s an imperceptible change in the girl’s expression, and Deirdre knows that the mention of food has struck a chord, as she hoped it would.  The girl couldn’t have gotten a very filling meal at the soup kitchen.  

A few more moments of silence pass before the girl nods.  “Ok.”   That’s all she says.

Deirdre stands and offers her hand.  Reluctantly, the girl takes it.

Deirdre and the girl wander for awhile looking for some place still open this time of night.  The best she can do is find a rundown, all-night Taco Bell, but she doesn’t expect the girl will be particularly picky.  She asks what the girl wants, making it clear the food is on her.  She just mumbles something, so Deirdre takes the six or seven dollars she has in her pocket and buys as much food as that covers.  The pair find a booth in the corner, the grimy glass looking out on the cold city night.

Deirdre watches as Callie scarfs down the tacos and burritos, biting into them with loud crunches, sauce and refried beans dribbling down her chin.  They don’t speak a word.  She just watches as the young girl feasts on the cheap excuse for Mexican food.  They didn’t really have Taco Bell in Dublin when she’d been alive, and judging from the looks  of the stuff Deirdre doesn’t really think she’s missing much of anything.

Finally she speaks up.  “So, how old are ye?”

The girl, Callie, continues munching for a few seconds before speaking through a mouthful of ground grade-F meat.  “Nineteen.”

Deirdre smirks.  “So ye’re sixteen…seventeen.”

The girl glances up, glaring at Deirdre for a moment as if she’d just uncovered some great accusatory secret.  “Yeah.”  And she goes back to eating.

“Ye ran away from home…yer reasons are yer own.”  The girl looks up at Deirdre again as the woman begins speaking.  “An’ ye got t’ the big city, or mayhaps this is jus’ ‘sposed to be a little stop on yer way somewhere else.  Whate’er th’ case, ye fell on harder times ‘n’ ye thought.  Not that ye thought ‘twould be easy – ye’re not that naïve – but somethin’ happened that screwed up yer plans ‘r maybe ye jus’ ran out o’ money sooner ‘n’ ye thought.  So now ye’re penniless ‘n’ ye have no place t’ go.”

“Yeah, how did you know?” Callie’s voice is deadpan and a little sarcastic.

Deirdre shrugs.  “Been there meself.  I’d like t’ say it all works out, but I’m still figurin’ that out meself.”

Callie just snorts in response.

“I d’nae really care if’n ye believe me.  But if ye’re up t’it I can offer ye a place t’ stay fer awhile.”

“And why would you do this for me?”  The girl obviously doesn’t sound like she believes the generosity.  There has to be some kind of catch to it, obviously.

Deirdre just shrugs.  “Maybe I’m jus’ a nice person.  Maybe I see a little o’ me in ye.”  She shrugs again.  “Ye can take it ‘r leave it, I d’nae really care.”

“And it’s alright with you?  If I stay?  I don’t know how long it’d be for, I mean…”

“If it weren’t alright I wouldn’a offered now would I’ve?”

“Guess not.”

“Well, I guess that settles that then.”

They arrive at Deirdre’s apartment.  Deirdre throws open the door and stands aside for Callie to enter.  The girl stands just inside the doorway, looking around, as if she’s still debating leaving.  Deirdre doesn’t apologize for the perpetual mess the place is in:  the papers scattered about the floor, the weak yellow bulbs which somehow give the apartment the lighting equivalent of the color and consistency of butter.  

“Be it ever so humble…” Deirdre says, trying to muster a bit of humor on the girl’s behalf.  Callie takes a few nervous steps inside.  Her eyes glance to the battered circular thrift store coffee table in the center of the room…and the little bundle of capped needles sitting on it.  Deirdre follows her eyes and walks into the room.  “Bit o’ advice,” she says.  “Don’t do drugs.”  She gathers up the needles and stuffs them in her pocket.  “Ye can sit anywhere ye want…make yerself at home.”  Callie stands around for a little bit more, and finally crosses the room and sits gingerly on the olive green couch.  The cushions almost suck the girl in, and she scoots herself forward to sit on the edge before she’s completely enveloped.

“So…who are you?” Callie finally asks.

“No one in particular,” Deirdre says and crosses into the barely-used kitchen.  

“And you make a habit of taking in strange homeless people?”

“Actually, ye’re the first one,” she smiles.  Opening the refrigerator, she looks around for anything.  Then she remembers that the refrigerator is unplugged because she never has a need for it.  She gets a grimy glass that was left behind by the flat’s previous owner and rinses it out before filling it with tap water.  She walks back into the living room and puts it in front of Callie before sliding into a ragged easy chair opposite the girl.  They remain looking at each other silently for a few minutes.  “Yeah, ye can tell this is me first time doin’ anythin’ like this.  I have no idea what t’ do now.”  Deirdre finally stands and gestures down the short hall to the bedroom.  “There’s a bed in there if’n ye wanna sleep.  I’m sure ye’re tired.  D’nae worry, I’m not goin’ t’ rob ye…in any case I’m sure you don’t have anythin’ worth stealin’.”  Yeah, the humor thing isn’t really her strong suit.

Finally Callie stands, taking another glance at Deirdre and walks into the bedroom.  Deirdre leans against the wall of the living room, arms crossed over her chest.  Why did she do this?  What was in her head?  She knows she can’t stay here during the day now.  She can call Harry and stay at his place, she’s already used it as a back-up before when she’s stayed over too long into the early morning hours.  She’s not too worried about the girl making off with any of her things.  For one, there’s not really much of any worth to steal.  And she doesn’t really think Callie is that type anyway.  Not that she’s ever been much of a good judge of character before, but she feels it in her gut.  And if she’s wrong…oh well.

She stands there leaning against the wall, thinking of nothing in particular.  Thinking of the past.  Finally after some while she turns and walks into the darkened bedroom.  The girl is lying on the bed, a threadbare blanket just barely thrown over her.  She breathes soft and heavy and contentedly.  It’s probably the best sleep she’s gotten in several nights.  Deirdre stands over the bed, the amber light from the small window making the girl’s hair shine a fiery copper.  She can’t help but brush her fingers over the tangled strands.  They’d be beautiful, once she washed and combed them out.

Her fingers slide down the girl’s side, over her shoulder and down her arm.  Why was it she was always into redheads?  Was it something innate…or was it just because there had been that one redhead…

Still looking at the girl’s peacefully sleeping face, Deirdre lifts up her arm.  Her skin is grimy and unwashed, but would be smooth and soft once she’d soaked in a tub or taken a shower.  Nothing’s for free…

Deirdre brushes her lips along the girl’s wrist before softly sinking her teeth in.  Callie squirms in her sleep and let’s out a moan.  Deirdre closes her eyes, feeling the warm liquid slide down her throat.  She tries not to think of the girl, tries not to think of the game she’s played.

But it’s not really a game, it’s not really a lie if you plan on going through with it right?  This is just a little…payment.

Deirdre takes just a little more blood than she normally would.  Nothing to do any serious damage, she hopes.  But enough to keep the girl drowsy for most the day.  She drops her wrist and with one long look leaves the room.  

When Callie wakes up, afternoon light is streaming in through the window.  Deirdre is gone, but there is food on the counter.

Deirdre returns after sundown.  She finds Callie sitting in the living room, reading over the sheets of paper Deirdre has lying all over.  The girl looks up as she enters.  “Good news,” Deirdre says.  “I found ye a job.”