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    Abbie had always felt sorry for the spirits that Hurricane Katrina had disturbed so roughly and who were now doomed to wander forever in search of a decent pot of gumbo, not to mention a final resting place. She knew some of them had found their way to Atlanta. It was pretty obvious when the headless chickens started showing up, lying in a pathetic heap of shiny, blue black feathers at the crossroads of two wholly innocuous southwest Atlanta streets along with the first wave of displaced New Orleanians.
    Around the same time, a tiny, dimly lit candle shop opened on the outskirts of West End, carrying everything from black cat bones and High John the Conquerer incense to a dizzying array of roots, herbs, and various potions guaranteed to get the job done, whatever that job happened to be. There had even been a few reports of headless goat carcasses showing up in city parks, but
vampires
? That was something else altogether.
    Standing at the kitchen sink in the small apartment that had been her first home in Atlanta, and that she now maintained as a kind of informal West End Women’s Center, Abbie felt nervous in a way she never had before. She hardly noticed the colorful bunch of flowers she was carefully arranging in a big, blue vase that matched the color of the walls in “the ocean room,” as she called it, at the front of the apartment. She was glad Blue was on his way over to tell her what was going on.
    She took a deep breath and headed back down the hall. Abbie placed the vase carefully on a table in the center of the sunny ocean room, and sank down gracefully on one of the deep purple meditation cushions that made this space a favorite among the women who came to her seeking solace or enlightenment or both. She loved this room, painted floor to ceiling in the most beautiful shades of blue, from turquoise to navy to the palest gray with touches of just-before-dawn pink. She had told Aretha that she wanted it to feel like the ocean and that’s exactly how Aretha had painted it.
    Abbie closed her eyes and took another deep breath to calm herself. She was surprised she hadn’t picked up some kind of disturbance in the air indicating the presence of something as unnatural as vampires, but why would she? They weren’t the same at all. She and Blue liked to call themselves
reincarnates
. They had died and returned many times, but there was no real connection between them and these strange creatures who never died and, according to Blue, never cracked a smile.
    That would be awful, she thought, to live forever without any possibility of laughter. Abbie loved a good laugh. One of the things that had drawn her to Peachy Nolan and kept her by his side for the last four years was his sense of humor. The sex was great and the company was terrific, but the glue that held them together was their laughter. They laughed when they cooked, when they made love, when they watched the sunset, or toasted their good luck in finding each other. What if she’d been a vampire and missed all that? Abbie wondered, and she shivered a little.
    At sixty-five
plus
, Abbie was in her prime and she knew it. Fit enough to turn cartwheels on her favorite Tybee Island beach whenever the spirit moved her, she had greeted the first signs of approaching menopause with the confusion and dread that seemed to be expected of women. But she had emerged on the other side, with determination and deep trust in the wisdom of her own natural femaleness, a self-described visionary, vital and invigorated, who could not only look deeply into her own heart and soul, but could help others navigate that often unknown territory as well.
    She had been wrapping this new role around herself as if it were a gossamer shawl when Regina had emerged from a disastrous love affair, shell-shocked and shaken to the core. Abbie eagerly embraced the opportunity to bring her new gift of wisdom to bear on the life of her favorite niece, and they both emerged stronger from the