The Sunflowers are Bleeding

Café Sangue is a place. A place so unlike others it can barely be held down by adjectives to describe it—it just is. For starters, a quick Google search will tell you that Sangue is Italian for blood, which is an odd name for a place selling food and drinks. The owner claims it’s a funny little nod towards their other unorthodox trait: they are only open from dusk to dawn. Café Sangue is for the local vampires and night-crawlers (“insomniacs and night-shift workers”) who need a bit of a pick-me-up when no other comfortable place is open. A one-of-a-kind kind of place, that so happens to make some damn fine merchandise.

Though not a vampire, Faiza is a bit of a regular. Once, the staff got concerned about her sleep schedule when she showed up so frequently, but she promised them that she had things under control, and it wasn’t their doing. On the contrary, Faiza had spent most of her adult life drifting about in her home with nothing to do while the world slept. She’d always been a night-owl, preferring the quiet of the moon to go about her business. Maybe it was the writer in her that preferred the pseudo-isolation of midnight to paint pictures of people and places far beyond reality. Or maybe her circadian rhythm was just fucked from the start. But when Café Sangue opened its doors, she finally had a place to go, to talk to people and get writing done beyond the walls of her too-familiar home. And to get some crumpets.

She’s there every night, like clockwork. She knows all the staff, all the regulars, all the semi-regulars; she knows the menu by heart and the staff know her cravings by the look on her face; she has her space, a corner seat tucked just out of sight of the entrance but right where she can watch people come and go, with shelves of books both written by her and recommended by her. Café Sangue is known for a lot of things, and one of them is Faiza.

So, when a new face walks into the doors after a glance at the welcome sign, Faiza is there to witness and observe.

The bells emit their soft chime as a door opens, and both Faiza and one of the baristas are already looking over to see who it is. It’s a stranger, a woman with an imposing figure cut beneath the fancy red-soled stilettos and the maroon pantsuit, her shoulders broadened by the black coat lazing over them. Her hair is tied up into a knot, but Faiza can see the unruly curls spilling out in a way that only adds an air of casual elegance, like she had meant to make it look that way. Perhaps she did. Her bronze skin glows under the soft light of the café’s lamps and fairy lights.

Saffron greets her with a smile as he takes up post beside the register. “Hello, welcome to Café Sangue.”

The woman peruses the menu posted behind him. The chalkboard is covered in all sorts of colors and handwriting, but the owner only allows those who have legible writing to contribute. Faiza has had the pleasure of adding to the milkshake menu, and her work still proudly displays all the offered flavors in neon pink. Though it’s technically a café, Sangue has a working restaurant-grade kitchen in the back along with a bakery and creamery for the sweets, each staffed with amazing chefs. Faiza isn’t sure how they can afford all that, but they haven’t gone under yet, so she won’t complain and will keep giving them her money.

Faiza jolts out of her thoughts at the sound of a silky-smooth voice. “Sangue is an interesting name for a place like this.”

He’s heard this a thousand times already, mainly because of Faiza, so Saffron only smiles and shrugs. “Boss thinks he’s funny, and it’s good for business. Makes people talk.”

“That it does.” Eventually, the woman makes her order and Saffron gets to work. Faiza watches as the woman moves to the side to wait for her order, straining to see if she can get a glimpse of her name from the cup that Saffron is steadily filling with coffee. Alas, from this distance, she can’t get a good look and gives up when the coffee and bag of sweets are handed over. She goes back to her laptop and wiggles her fingers over the keys, willing them to work with her on this latest chapter. No luck.

“It’s Estela.” Faiza startles and looks up to see the woman looming over her, a knowing smile pulling at her lips. “You were trying to see my name.”

Fuck. “No, I—” Faiza sighs and flicks her fingers. “Fine, yes. I was curious.” Nothing more, nothing less. It’s natural for people to be curious about intruders in their usual haunts.

She thinks that’s the end of it, but the woman apparently takes that as in invite to sit down across from Faiza, and her eyes—a rich mahogany brown framed with sharp winged liner—scan the empty cup sitting off to the side. “Fay-za, then?”

“Fai-za,” she corrects, more than a bit irritated. She normally says it before people can read and mispronounce it, but the woman—Estela—has her rattled for reasons beyond comprehension. “Like eye.”

Estela hums and drops her chin onto laced fingers. Her full attention is on Faiza, and it’s unsettling. “A beautiful name, but I quite like Fae for you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t.” Faiza attempts to block her out with her laptop screen, but her sly eyes peek just over it and continue to stare. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but I’m human.” It’s a stupid and absurd comment, but Faiza can only think of the supernatural counterpart of the nickname, and how it feels like that’s what Estela is meaning.

And, as expected, those eyes squint with humor. “Oh, I’ve noticed. You blush too much to truly be fae. It’s cute.”

Faiza does not flush red and resolutely keeps her stare on the blinking cursor. It mocks her with the last words being ‘blushes and moans’. “If you don’t mind, I have work to do, and your food will get cold if you keep talking to me.”

“Of course.” Estela rises, taking her coffee and bag of sweets with her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Fae.”

It’s a miracle that Faiza doesn’t throw a fork at her retreating back.

**

“Hello, Fae.”

“Fuck off, Estela.”

The woman does not, in fact, fuck off and instead takes a seat across from Faiza again. This time she has a flask that she takes a sip out of, but no scent of alcohol leaves her lips as she sighs. Another fancy outfit, another perfectly imperfect updo. “What are you writing?” she asks, as if Faiza hadn’t said anything at all. And, damn it all, it’s the perfect question because she can’t resist gushing about her stories and the fictional characters in them.

“My latest book,” Faiza says, lowering the screen so that she can face Estela without cowering behind the shield. It’s a little daunting, with how intense Estela’s attention is, but she works through it by thinking of her work. Gesturing to the shelf closest to them, she continues, “I’m an author, mainly an author of fiction, and I’ve been working on a series of standalone but interconnected books that all center around supernatural romances. This one is the second in that series, and it’s centered around vampires. The first was werewolves, and not the cliché type, I promise.”

Estela gives her that gentle but amused uptilt of her lips, the most of a smile that she seems to ever give but works anyway. “I wasn’t worried. So, vampires? What made you choose them as your next adventure into the supernatural?”

Oh, she just unlocked a rant. Faiza fully closes her laptop and her hands start flying along with her words. “They’re the romanticization of danger, right? Death, undeath, whatever, but they’re dangerous. Seductive. They literally feast on blood and stories have been told for ages that they kill their prey. But people still want to fuck them, still want to believe that they can be the sole provider of sustenance to these predators, to have their full attention on just them and be worshiped by something otherworldly. It’s, like, dancing with the devil almost. People by nature want to tangle with a bit of danger even if it means the end.”

She pauses to take a breath, and Estela takes that opening to smoothly cut in, “I thought they were the personification of endless greed and hunger.”

“They are,” Faiza allows, “but in a lot of modern interpretations, they can go one way or another. Either you have the big bad vampires that want to kill everything, or you have the vampires that just want to survive. And people love both of those ideas, so I wanted to play with that. Present a character that is, objectively, a monstrous being but has a hidden depth, and neither conquers the human nor gets conquered. They just exist as a vampire and happen to have a human partner in the end. An anti-hero, I guess.”

Estela hums and picks up her flask, swirling it around as she considers Faiza’s rant. After she takes a quick sip of it, she wipes her lips clean and says, “I’d read it. And, if I may be so bold, it almost sounds like something you would like to play around with.” Though it’s exactly what Faiza had said before, the emphasis and the added hooded look twists it into something much more personal, and her heart kicks up a beat against her will. Estela’s gaze flicks to the side for just a moment, quick enough that Faiza is sure she imagined it landing on her neck, before it continues to stare down her soul.

“I—I just said that,” she stutters. If she’s blushing, she refuses to admit it. “Plot-wise, it’s an interesting trope to mess with, and I’m excited to see how it unfolds.”

“You’re the author,” Estela points out, then takes another sip, “Surely you know how it ends.”

No, no she doesn’t. The thing with being a writer is that characters take their own paths, and even intended endings feel much different on the page than they do in floating thoughts and intentions, especially when Faiza has no experience to draw from. Obviously, she’s never been in love with a vampire before, so she has no idea the logistics of a relationship like that. Most of her past girlfriends hadn’t been so keen on her either, so the idea of total devotion is foreign. But, the art of writing is the art of bullshitting, and she’s gotten werewolves published, so she has hope for this next one.

Faiza shakes her head and opens her laptop again. “I can’t be sure until I get there. No experience, either, so not like I can predict how things will end up or how they’ll go.”

“Mm.” Something in the tone of Estela’s hum makes Faiza glance up again at her, and those mahogany eyes are surveying her. “Would you like experience?”

Idiot. Moron. Absolutely fucked in the head. All those words accurately describe Faiza when she stupidly blurts out, “Are you a vampire?”

But Estela only gives her close-lipped smile and raises her flask in salute before standing. “See you tomorrow, Fae, and good luck on the writing.”

**

Now that the idea is in her head, Faiza can’t get rid of it. Estela is ethereal, elegance incarnated with every step she takes and every blink of an eye. She comes by Café Sangue every night, almost exactly once the sun is fully set and not a moment before. Every day, she sits with Faiza and incites a conversation that always leaves Faiza rattled and off-balance before slipping away into the night. Looking her up proves no results, not even a stray obituary on a poorly made sham site. She is a beautiful midnight ghost, one that drifts in and out of Faiza’s life just enough to leave her wobbling.

Her book, consequently, suffers. Focusing on that has become second to pinning down Estela’s nature. Saffron and the other workers humor her pestering questions, but even they have unhelpful and dodgy answers. If the supernatural is real—something Faiza never had a doubt about—then there is a good likelihood that Café Sangue is a beacon of community for them. It literally says so in the name.

Estela is also useless, of course. Faiza starts ordering garlicy foods to see if the woman avoids her table, but all she does is smile that stupid smile and politely refuse any offerings to share with the excuse of not liking the taste of garlic. Testing the invitation theory is a bit difficult, but she has noticed that Estela always glances at the welcome sign before coming in, so either it’s a force of habit or the roundabout way of getting permission to enter the café.

“Are you religious?” Estella asks one day as she sits in her usual seat. Faiza plays with the cross around her neck and makes some sort of noncommittal response. “Never thought you the sort. You remind me more of a believer in everything, and thus a believer in nothing.”

That’s not where Faiza thought today’s conversation would go. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It’s coffee this time, and cookies that get wordlessly split between the two of them. Estela considers the steaming cup in her hand. The bronze coloring makes it hard to parse out if she’s deprived of sun or not. “I mean that, your faith in anything being possible makes it utterly impossible to stick to one specific human faith. I’ve looked into a few of your books, and you dabble in quite a few beliefs without much favoring. You believing in just one God is… odd, to say the least. Out of character, if you will.” Estela’s smile is dashing and lopsided, her one tell that she’s making a joke and making sure it lands. Faiza likes it far too much.

“Ha ha,” she says, instead of voicing the warm butterflies in her stomach at being so weirdly known. Lying feels like an affront to whatever hangs between them, though, so she admits, “I got it from a friend, don’t know if I like it or not as an accessory. Was just trying it out.”

Another scrutinizing stare, and after so many Faiza has started to become—not immune, per se, but used to it. It’s less unsettling and more of a warmth in her chest at being seen. “Well, I think it doesn’t suit you. It’s a falsehood, and you’re no good at those, just—”

Faiza rolls her eyes and interrupts, “Just like the fae, I know. This nickname of yours is kinda infuriating, just so you know. It’s not even how you say my full name.”

Estela lifts a shoulder and picks up a cookie to hand it over in a silent offering, one that Faiza can’t resist. “It suits you better than a cross chained around your throat does. Besides, you like it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t answer to it.”

Another eye roll to distract from the heat flaming over her face. “Whatever. So, you really aren’t bothered by the cross at all? Personally, not just how it fits me or whatever?” Estela has a gift for dancing around truths and taking advantage of wording, and Faiza is determined to get to the bottom of her private investigation.

In answer, Estela reaches out and touches the cross. The backs of her fingers ghost over Faiza’s skin, and they’re cold, but not unbearably so. A bit of body heat or a warm coffee would warm them in no time. Faiza’s breath shallows as Estela studies the cross, then gently yanks. The thin chain breaks, but Faiza doesn’t care. She’s never worn it before and never will again.

“Faith is tricky,” Estela says, setting the cross down onto the table with an elegant gentleness that is just so perfectly her. “Everyone has their own thoughts. But no, I’m not bothered by it.”

That had been her last resort, but Faiza is resilient, and maybe even a bit of a masochist. When Estela starts to move like she’s about to leave, Faiza reaches out and grabs her wrist to stop her. The woman glances up at that, no hint of being displeased by the delay. “Would you… You always leave so early,” Faiza says. An author, but can’t find the words to ask a pretty woman to stay and hang out with her.

Estela, though, always knows what lies beyond Faiza’s spoken words. She settles back down and leans across the table. “What would you have me do?”

Stay with me. Keep knowing me. But she can’t say any of that, so Faiza frantically searches for some kind of thing to say. Her eyes catch the gleaming moon, a softer and gentler counterpart to the hidden star in the sky, and she gets an idea. Estela, with her equally as soft and subtle smile, waits with unwavering patience. Faiza meets her stare and says, “Grin at the sun.”

She means later, means to make the woman stay with her until sunrise on that excuse and flimsy grasp at proving herself right. But Estela is never a predictable creature, even with her drink orders, and Faiza should’ve known better than to expect the supposedly only answer to her demand.

Across from her, Faiza sits stock-still with delight and that otherworldly chill of trepidation as she watches Estela sit back and grin at her—with fangs gleaming in the moonlight.