Love.
My . . . darker half drove him to do things against his nature. To kill. And enjoy it. The consequence of that was madness—and an undying passion to kill
me
.
He tried, but killed his captain instead. Kenneth Cooper.
That’s when I started seeing the skulls. Death masks. I’d seen them before—on people—when they were about to die. Now I saw them on everyone. I didn’t go out much anymore. Not in the daylight. I didn’t want to see them. Not anymore.
A week later, I learned I no longer needed to go OOB to go Wraith. And Archer was there. Waiting on me.
Daniel was insane and committed to an asylum. Out of state. Away from me.
That’s my life experience. Getting one’s heart ripped out and stomped on a few times. Oh yeah—and condemning one’s soul.
Oh—but we haven’t confirmed that one yet. That whole condemnation thing. Seems to be one of those vague provisos in small print. In a language nobody speaks anymore. Except for Rhonda. And a guy named Dags.
Dags.
No, no, no . . . not going
there
. That boy is gone. Out of the city. Out of my life. No thoughts to him. Nope. No, sir
eeee.
I
moved a good one hundred feet or so above the reconstruction of the Bank of America Building. I sort of blew it up a month or so ago when I rejoined with my darker half. The Abysmal part of me. The media said it was a tornado.
Man . . . my life’s so screwed up. Most women when they have a bad day throw clothes all over the floor. Me? I screw with construction. Can’t say it wasn’t my fault. Because it was.
TC moved closer to me, dressed in a long black trench coat, drivers’ gloves, and dark glasses, hovering eye level with me. Vin Diesel—with a smirk. “I lost it.”
His smirk deepened. “Because you’re not
looking
.” He pointed past me to my right. “There.”
I turned my entire body, my wings working independently to keep me afloat in the air. I saw it, an iridescent paper-covered blob moving below us, back into the building. I dove down after it, managed to go incorporeal long enough to move
through
the building’s walls, then
through
the offices, right on its tail.
Stay with it,
TC said in my head. That was getting annoying. One of these little new things that kept cropping up since rejoining with my Horror self. Oh . . . might need to explain that too, huh?
Maniacal laughter echoed through the halls.
Uh, hold that thought.
Wasn’t sure if the laughter belonged to the Fetch—or something else. The little fucker blasted past me and through a door at the end of a long hall. I willed myself forward, imagining myself as a bullet, and sieved easily through the door. Wood. Easier. Though . . . I always felt like I needed to pick splinters out of my teeth afterward.
I stopped abruptly. The thing wasn’t moving—just hovering in the center of some schmuck’s office. A piece of toilet paper fell from its body and drifted to the floor. In the darkness, the Fetch glowed a soft aqua green through the paper. Usually, whatever it attaches to itself forms into some sort of face—and this one was no exception. The paper looked as if it’d been moistened and molded into some old bald guy with a look of surprise. Made me think of a sand sculpture on the beach.
A beat later, I realized the face wasn’t looking at
me
, but up at a point above my head. It looked as if it wanted to scream, to bolt out of there—but it was frozen in place.
Every Wraithy hair on my back and arms shot up as I was overcome with the freaky factor—
There was something
behind
me. Above me. Something this Fetch was so scared of it couldn’t move.
TC—
Get out of there!
came his reply in my head—his response so loud I felt it reverberate against my skull.
I turned just as something struck the side of my head, the force sending me to the right of the Fetch and into the wall—oops—I’d forgotten to go incorporeal. But then—I was a little preoccupied with whatever it was that’d just knocked the shit out of me.
I landed on top of the office-desk bureau, doing some serious damage to the wood, then bounced forward onto the wheeled chair, which popped out from under me. I settled on the floor with a cracking thud.
Ow.
Laughter filled the awkward silence after my ten-scoring nose-dive, closely followed by the scream of the Fetch. How did I know it was the Fetch screaming? I’d popped off a few of them. There is nothing more disarming than their cry of pain. Imagine taking a million nails and pulling them down a chalkboard.
Your hair standing on end now?
That’s what I heard as I moaned and righted myself, feeling my wings pull in and vanish. I could tell from the dark charcoal color of my taloned hands I was still Wraith—sans flight apparatus. Twisting my neck to the left and right, I started to push myself up from behind the desk.
“Stay down!” TC yelled, and the mental force of his warning yanked me back into a crouch.
I sensed that the Archer was in the same room—and peered up over the side of the desk as I heard the sound of scuffling. For me, seeing at night was the same as seeing in the day—only with the added shadows and wispiness. I could see TC wrestling in midair with—
My eyes bugged out.
What the hell is
that
?
From what I could see, he was doing an alligator death roll in midair with—
red hair?
Standing up to my full height—which is nothing to sneeze at—I moved closer, waiting for the opportunity to wail on the big red hair ball. Seriously—it looked like the comic character Dawn’s red hair had walked off her head and was attacking Vin Diesel, wrapping itself around his neck, his body, his arms and hands.
But he wasn’t exactly losing though. He was yelling at the top of his lungs, yanking the hair out by its roots. Of course when he let go of it as if to throw it away, it just got right back up and rewrapped around him.
“Zoë—”
I blinked. “What?”
“Kill it!”
“How?”
“Yell at it!”
Well now, how in the hell was I supposed to do that and
not
hit him?
Boy . . . that was a reversal of roles. I could remember that night months ago—with Daniel’s broken body at the base of that building—taking aim at this asswipe and screaming him into oblivion.
And now I was
afraid
of just nicking him.
“Zoë!” he bellowed. “Stop fuck’n around!”
Asshole.
I held out my arms, took in a deep breath—
Abruptly TC was tumbling in midair toward me. I squeaked and went incorporeal just before he sailed through me and into the wall behind me, physically smashing into the bureau I’d already mangled. I winced as I re-formed and looked around for the thing he’d been fighting.
But—it wasn’t there. Besides the creak of wood and TC’s muttering, there wasn’t a sound. The shadows that usually moved like liquid mercury along the periphery of my vision crept out from their hiding places. A sure sign that whatever that was—
It was gone.
I moved to the pile of gooey, gloppy toilet paper and pointed. “Ew.”
TC righted himself, his shades gone from his face. He looked like he wanted to wrap a tree around someone. As he stomped closer, still muttering, I pointed to the floor. “Uh . . . Fetches don’t usually do that when you kill them.”
He was looking back at the pile of cheap pressboard and bent over to retrieve his glasses. Finding them, he plucked them from a pile and turned to me, wiping them on the edge of his black silk shirt. “I’ve told you already—you can’t kill anything Abysmal or Ethereal, you just sort of pop it out of the form it—”
TC stopped when he stood next to me and looked down at the pile. His eyebrows arched, and he hooked his shades on the back collar of his coat. In silence, he knelt beside what was once the Fetch and rubbed at his chin. I knelt beside him, looking at him, then looking at the pile, then looking at him.
“Well?”
He continued rubbing his chin. “Well—” He looked at me. “This is bad.”
“Bad as in ‘wow, whatever that is kicked this shit’s ass,’ or bad as in ‘uh-oh, we’re all gonna die’?”
He pursed his lips and gestured with the index finger of his left hand. “The last one.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected. “Wha’?”
TC looked up at the air, his expression serious. Now, let me really drill home how odd that was to see a serious expression on the Symbiont’s face. Normally, TC’s expression rests between mildly annoyed to annoyingly smarmy. Angry—he does angry well. And pissed off. Smirking too. The king of smirking.
Though Dags had a nice smirk.
Phhhtt . . .
Watching this lack of anything definable on his face made those hairs on the back of my neck rise. “TC . . .”
“I—” He was shaking his head as he looked at me. “I don’t know what that was.” He shrugged, the leather shushing. “I’ve never felt or seen anything like it. The closest in smell is . . .” And he looked at the pile. “I don’t know. It’s like it had the darkness of the Phantasm’s soul, but it had the strength of an Ethereal.”
I searched his face. “Like a Horror?”
“No . . . not a Horror. This was something . . .” TC sighed. “I need to find out what it was. Because this . . .” He nodded to the pile in front of us next to my killer bunny slippers. “This ain’t right.”
“Did it kill it?”
“Yeah. It did kinda kill this Fetch. It mutated it. It’s all but dead. It won’t ever corporeally form again. I’m not even sure there’s much of a sense of being left in it.” He raised his left hand, and a red light sparkled from his palm. Within seconds, the thing pulled and twisted into that light until the only thing left was damp toilet paper. And by the time TC lowered his hand, even the paper was dry.
“Won’t that give you like . . . indigestion?” I asked.
He shook his head and stood. I stood beside. And no matter how big being a Wraith made me feel, he always managed to make me feel small. “I don’t think it will. I’ll give it back to the Styx when I leave.”
At that moment, my watch went off. I cussed and lifted my left wrist, looking at my Harry Potter watch—the only watch of its kind that could move with me through the planes and still keep on ticking. My best friend and magical MacGyver, Rhonda Orly, had fashioned it for me. In the beginning of my Wraithdom, I’d used it to warn me when I’d been out of my body long enough so I wouldn’t experience the lethargy and illness that always seemed to accompany staying out after curfew.
“When’re you gonna tell ’em?” TC said as he moved to the office window. The moon was waxing, close to full, its glow making an ethereal halo behind him, casting his face in slight shadow. He looked . . . impressive.
I pushed the alarm button. “Soon.”
“You said that last week.”
“So this is this week.”
He shook his head. “You sure they have no idea you’re sneaking out at night moonlighting with me?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“And you’re sure they don’t know you can go Wraith—without slipping your mortal coil?”
“No.” Which was the truth. I really didn’t know. But I doubted it.
He reached behind him and retrieved his shades. Sliding them on, he turned his face to me. “I wouldn’t be so sure, lover.” He smiled, but I could tell he was thinking about that hairy thing he’d just fought.
“So sure about what? Mom’s and Rhonda’s reactions?” I made a noise. “Oh, I’m sure they’d be pissed and try to exorcise me.”
“No.” He shook his head. I couldn’t see through those shades. “Don’t get comfortable, Wraith. Palling around with me isn’t safe. You’re still a threat to the Phantasm, which makes you a threat to me. You shouldn’t trust anyone—especially me.” He gestured to the window, and the glass shattered outward—freezing in midair just outside. He didn’t have to do that to leave—he just wanted to make an impression. “And you won’t find the answers to your future on that old society’s books.”
“Will you tell me what you find out—about what that was?”
He looked back at me and faded away. The glass fell straight down to the asphalt below.
Don’t trust me, Wraith. Don’t trust anyone.
2
I
felt like I was twelve again—sneaking back into my room while Mom slept. And I knew she was still sleeping ’cause I nearly jumped out of my body when I heard her snore.
Yes—I live with my mom. And it’s not what you think. I did have a condo a few months ago—but after Archer took Mom’s soul when her body was hijacked by a rogue spirit whose body was destroyed (Charolette and Bertram—otherwise known as Bonnie and Clyde), I had to tuck her body into a long-term-care facility.
Not cheap.
So I sold the condo and moved into the Botanica and Tea Shop. The shop itself was a converted house on Euclid—with two stories, a basement, and a wraparound porch. I forget the name of the style of house. Ask Tim and Steve, Mom’s resident ghosts and the former owners of the house. They could tell right down to the exact type of paint you need.
Since Mom’s return—and all the other disasters that’ve cropped up—I haven’t spent a lot of time looking for a new place. I need one. This being in one’s twenties and living with Mom sucks. Especially because—well—I’ve gone through a few more changes since the last time we spoke about my being a Wraith.
There are three bedrooms upstairs. Mom’s master is to the left of the steps if you come into the house in the more traditional manner. It has its own bathroom tucked inside. The other two rooms share a bath to the right. Sometimes Rhonda stays over—but having seen her new palatial digs with her uncle’s group, the Society of Ishmael, I can’t understand why she’d want to. I mean, she’s got a tub the size of my bed!