Even If the Sky Falls by Mia Garcia

not played on a banjo. “Dude dies, everyone mourns, yada, yada, yada, life goes on. Skip to New Orleans around the 1920s to another man with similar behavior. Same build, life of the party, wealthy, liquid diet.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo one night this dude gets a bit . . . bitey.” He lunges at my neck for effect. I jump back, almost colliding with another person. I apologize before slapping Miles on the shoulder. “She escapes and gets the police—but by the time they get there he’s long gone. They search his entire apartment and only find bottles and bottles of what looks like wine. What a waste, why not have a drink to . . .”
    â€œThey drank it?”
    â€œOf course they drank it! It’s Orleans, it’s the 1920s Prohibition, thousands of people making homebrews, probably a horrible day at the office, moving on. When they drink the wine . . .” Miles pauses, waiting for me to interrupt. I should be annoyed, but there’s a playful nature to his pause. I motion for him to continue. “They quickly spit it out. Because it wasn’t just wine, of course, all the bottles were mixed with blood. And from there it’s just a hop and a skip to vampire lore and so on.”
    â€œDid he ever show up again?”
    â€œNah. Probably made his way somewhere else if he’s smart, like Jersey or New York . . .”
    â€œExcellent story, dear bard. But I don’t think that makes him a Louisiana vampire if he was born in France, right?”
    â€œLike the French and Leo da Vinci, we like to appropriate people.”
    We stroll around the square, walking around the dozens of tarot readers.
    â€œHow do you know all this history?”
    He shrugs. “It’s a story all the tour guides tell around the city. Sometimes you’ll be walking down the street and hear one story told, cross the street and hear it finished by someone else.” To prove his point he gestures to a group of people two blocks away, traveling in one large mass before stopping across from the cathedral. One of them breaks away and addresses the rest. She must be the guide. “Must be a dozen or more tours happening around here at once. Not hard to wander into a tale or two.”
    We smile at each other for a second before we sit there by the entrance to the cathedral, watching the people move around us. Those heading to or from Oak, tourists being pulled into doorways to have their fortunes told . . . so many tall, dark strangers to encounter that I consider for a moment getting mine read.
    â€œWhen I was thirteen I had my fortune told in one of those little shops that pop up by restaurants, the kind that start off with a neon sign, then carpeted stairs with giant dark stains all around.” He leans in close as I talk, and I shift toward him. “I paid twenty dollars to be told that Iwould marry twice but only fall in love once.”
    â€œTough news for the other guy,” Miles says. “Care to try it again?”
    â€œI’m not handing my cash to some dude who couldn’t bother to change out of his stained Bermuda shorts this morning.”
    Miles follows my line of sight to the older gentleman sitting in a beach chair. “Bet he gives more accurate readings than all the others though. Like, maybe that’s his curse, he knows the future but no one will take him seriously because of his pants.”
    â€œWhy wouldn’t he just change his pants?”
    â€œHe can’t. Those shorts are who he is, and he must be true to himself above all.”
    â€œMaybe he’s like Cassandra from the Greek myths.” I take a good look at the schlubby fortune-teller, a deck of tarot cards spread out on a small foldable table in front of him. Unlike his fellow fortune-tellers, he has no sign declaring his ability. Accompanying the shorts is a palm-tree-patterned shirt worn over a sleeveless tee and sandals with socks. “He knows the truth, but no one will