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menagerie.
    Witches don’t have to worry about zoning laws.

A woman with magical powers—skilled at martial arts and occult detection—who has a vampire as a lover with whom she fights the forces of evil in an urban setting where, unknown to most humans, there are many who are not human . . .
As familiar as that plotline may sound in 2012, this story was published in 1989 and introduced Diana Tregarde, an American witch whose witchcraft has a great deal in common with modern neopagan Wiccan beliefs. She is also a “Guardian”—charged with protecting the Earth and all its creatures—a designation that gives her access to more magical power than most witches. Protecting others isn’t a paying job, however, so Diana writes romance novels for a living. “Nightside” only hints at the characters and world Mercedes Lackey created for three novels— Burning Water (1989), Children of the Night (1990), Jinx High (1991)—a novella, and another short story. The novels were published by Tor as “horror ” and, according to Lackey, did not sell well. She declined to write more.
Diana Tregarde can be viewed as yet another in a long line of fictional protectors of humanity with occult powers, but she was also one of the first modern “kick-ass” heroines who are now so popular.
    Nightside
    Mercedes Lackey
    It was early spring, but the wind held no hint of verdancy, not even the promise of it—it was chill and odorless, and there were ghosts of dead leaves skittering before it. A few of them jittered into the pool of weak yellow light cast by the aging streetlamp—a converted gaslight that was a relic of the previous century. It was old and tired, its pea-green paint flaking away; as weary as this neighborhood, which was older still. Across the street loomed an ancient church, its congregation dwindled over the years to a handful of little old women and men who appeared like scrawny blackbirds every Sunday, and then scattered back to the shabby houses that stood to either side of it until Sunday should come again. On the side of the street that the lamp tried (and failed) to illuminate, was the cemetery.
    Like the neighborhood, it was very old—in this case, fifty years shy of being classified as “Colonial.” There were few empty gravesites now, and most of those belonged to the same little old ladies and men that had lived and would die here. It was protected from vandals by a thorny hedge as well as a ten-foot wrought-iron fence. Within its confines, as seen through the leafless branches of the hedge, granite cenotaphs and enormous Victorian monuments hulked shapelessly against the bare sliver of a waning moon.
    The church across the street was dark and silent; the houses up and down the block showed few lights, if any. There was no reason for anyone of this neighborhood to be out in the night.
    So the young woman waiting beneath the lamppost seemed that much more out-of-place.
    Nor could she be considered a typical resident of this neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination—for one thing, she was young; perhaps in her mid-twenties, but no more. Her clothing was neat but casual, too casual for someone visiting an elderly relative. She wore dark, knee-high boots, old, soft jeans tucked into their tops, and a thin windbreaker open at the front to show a leotard beneath. Her attire was far too light to be any real protection against the bite of the wind, yet she seemed unaware of the cold. Her hair was long, down to her waist, and straight—in the uncertain light of the lamp it was an indeterminate shadow, and it fell down her back like a waterfall. Her eyes were large and oddly slanted, but not Oriental; catlike, rather. Even the way she held herself was feline; poised, expectant—a graceful tension like a dancer’s or a hunting predator’s. She was not watching for something—no, her eyes were unfocused with concentration. She was listening.
    A soft whistle, barely audible, carried down the street on the