The Inside Man

by Nicole Peeler

  I sighed and walked to the bed, putting my face down to hers. “Shar! Wake up! I’m serious!”

  The walls dissolved again. This time, however, Shar wasn’t naked. To my pleasant surprise, we were all in our favorite dive bar, Smitty’s, laughing so hard we were doubled over. I grinned, remembering that night myself. We’d all been drinking—even Moo, who almost never indulged—after we’d wrapped up a particularly nasty kidnapping case. We’d found the kid, safe, and we felt pretty good about the world and our place in it.

  That had been a great night. And it was nice to know that Moo and I ranked up there with sex, in Shar’s memories.

  That didn’t stop me, however, from once again grabbing her dream ponytail and yanking. I also grabbed her dream drink from the dream table, splashing it right in her dream face.

  She yelped, and this time the walls around us didn’t dissolve into another setting. This time she looked at me, really looked at me, and then at the other Capitola sitting frozen as if her DVD were paused.

  “Cappie?” she asked, reaching a hand out. I knew what she needed. I dipped my head so she could pat my Afro.

  “It is you,” she whispered. “But . . .” She pointed at the other me sitting across from her.

  “That’s a dream me, and you’re a dream you. Trapped in a dream. It’s complicated. What do you remember?”

  “We were in the car. Then you were slapping me.” Her eyes narrowed. She’d get me back for that one, if I got her out of here. That’s how we rolled.

  “I had to slap you,” I said. “You’re trapped in some dream state. Only this isn’t even really you. Your body is still in that town. Do you remember the clown?”

  She frowned, as if something was tickling her memory. I didn’t have time to wait. So I gave her a quick recap and my very succinct plans. “We’ve got to free the souls and kill the clown.”

  “Kill the clown?” she whispered.

  “Yep. But first we have to get everyone out. If I leave your dream, do you think you can come with me?”

  She didn’t answer, just took my hand, her liquid dark eyes latched on mine.

  We had each other’s backs. That’s what made us good.

  So I did what I’d done before when exiting one of the shadow people. I sidestepped to the left, but this time I kept Shar’s hand gripped tightly in mine. For a second there was resistance. Then an audible pop, and then I was standing in front of my best friend. She was still a shadow, though.

  “Shar?” I asked, afraid she’d just stare dumbly at me again.

  Instead she nodded, then made a tight circle, taking in our surroundings and putting everything together.

  “Wow. All these people?”

  “Yes. And there have to be more, all the other people from the other towns.”

  “And Moo?” she asked, turning to our other friend. Moo’s face probably would look calm to a stranger, but we could see her agony.

  “I’m gonna have to do the same thing to her that I did to you.”

  Shar winced. “Need me to go with?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to risk losing you again. Stay here. Stay you.”

  She nodded toward Moo. “Be careful in there. Lord knows what you’ll find.”

  I didn’t answer her. Instead, I walked with purpose at Moo’s shadow.

  “Good luck!” Shar called as I passed into Moo’s memories. . . .

  —

  THE PRIESTESSES PREPARED me for my husband, the man I’d called father until yesterday and now was supposed to call lover. They commented over my body, congratulating me again on my budding breasts, still sore from my first bleeding.

  I ignored them, as I’d been told to. They were merely human and we were gods.

  Sit, who had been my friend before I learned she was beneath me, dared meet my eyes with her sad gaze. I nearly told her how afraid I was, how I hated this, how I wasn’t ready. . . .

  But instead I slapped her for daring to gaze upon my person, as I’d been told to do. I was Emuishere, the consort of the Sun God, and she had no right to defile me with her human eyes.

  Her whole face went red, not just her cheek, and she turned to fold the elaborately beaded shift that would be my bridal gown. . . .

  Drowned in the thousand flooding emotions of Moo’s impending nuptials to her own father, I nearly forgot I wasn’t her, that I was Capitola Jones, and that I was watching.

  I’m watching, I reminded myself, chanting that fact to myself. I’m watching, I’m watching, I’m watching . . .

  And just like that, I was standing beside the cluster of women working on Moo, no longer inside Moo’s actual memories.

  I also wanted to get out of here, desperately. Poor Moo. . . .

  I shouldered my way through the crowd surrounding her. They shifted apart as if doing so unconsciously. Moo still wasn’t aware of anything outside her nightmare.

  “Moo!” I shouted. “Moo!” I reached out to touch her, not wanting to pull her hair or slap her as I had with Shar. She was going through enough. But as my hand contacted her smooth dark flesh, she shuddered convulsively and the room spun. . . .

  We were in a dark room, and I heard grunts from its center. My eyes adjusted enough that I could see a low dais upon which a man hovered over another figure. He was the one grunting. My heart breaking, I moved forward, knowing I had to get to Moo to get her out of there, but not wanting to see this.

  Her face was turned away, toward where I stood, her eyes open and unseeing. I ignored what was happening and laid a hand upon her cheek.

  “Moo, this is a memory. It was centuries ago. Lifetimes. You’re not that girl anymore, Moo. . . .”

  A tear slid down her cheek, wetting my hand. I wanted to kill the bastard who’d fathered her, but before I could move, the room slid away again and there was Moo, a girl still, wearing a white shift covered in blood. She was weeping, holding a battered, bloody dagger.

  I hadn’t been the only one to want to kill their dad. Moo had, too, and she’d gone ahead and done it.

  “Moo,” I said, both hands on her cheeks now, willing her to look at me. “Moo, these are memories, you’ve got to focus on my voice. . . .”

  Again the room went black, and we were in that antechamber, the girls dressing her. Again Moo slapped her friend. Before I could reach her, her memories put her right back in that bed, enduring her first rape. Then we were back in that corner, her bloody fingers trembling on the knife.

  So maybe the gentle approach wasn’t working.

  I picked her up from that corner, her child’s body depressingly light in my arms. She was too small to be suffering any of this. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t shake the shit out of her. Not till her teeth were rattling in her head and her dark brown eyes had finally met mine, widening in recognition, did I stop. I’d do anything to get her out of her own mind, short of killing her.

  “Cap?”

  “Yes. It’s me. And you need to wake the fuck up.” My voice was rough. I wanted to hug her and cry for her and murder things for her, all at the same time.

  The room started to waver again, so she got another shaking.

  “None of that, Moo. This is a memory. You have to stay with me.”

  “A memory?”

  “Yes, and it’s over. You’re not this kid anymore.”

  She watched me with haunted eyes. “I will always be ‘this kid.’ ”

  I leaned my forehead down onto hers, my hands cupping her jaw.

  “And she grew up to be a fine woman, and my friend. Come back to me, Moo.”

  My eyes welled over with hers, our tears mingling down her cheeks to pool on the hands that held her cheeks. Then she was changing, her child’s body elongating and growing heavy in my hands till she was Moo again. My tall, strong friend whom I could always count on.

  My hands still rested on her cheeks. For a second she let the weight of her head fall against my touch before she stood up straight.

  “I am assuming we ended up falling in
to the same trap that befell Vince’s sister. How do you plan to extricate us?”

  That’s my Moo, I thought, love for her nearly overwhelming me for a moment. But I managed to pull it together, giving her a tight smile instead of the hug I craved.

  “First we have to get you out of here. You ready?”

  “Yes.” It was a short, sharp response. I can’t say I blamed her.

  “Take my hand,” I said. When she did, I gave it a squeeze. Then I pulled her with me. But before we made it, another hand came out of the darkness, grabbing her wrist.

  “Daughter, you’re mine” came a commanding voice that sent shivers down my spine. Moo cried out, an agonized shout like nothing I’d ever heard from her as the air around us began to swirl in sympathy to her agony.

  “C’mon, Moo!” I shouted over the wind. “You’re not his, and you never were!”

  I pulled on her hand, but the other hand pulled back. We played tug-of-war for what felt like an eternity, Moo nearly collapsed between us.

  “Girl, you’ve got to help!” I shouted, squeezing her hand. “We’re getting out, but you gotta help!”

  Her eyes flickered to mine, but her face was still collapsed with agony.

  “C’mon! You got away from him before! Now, pull!”

  I knew it was probably bad form to remind someone they’d committed patricide, but I was pretty sure the situation called for it. And it did the trick.

  With a growl, Moo yanked her arm away from her father, plunging with me out and through. . . .

  We found ourselves panting, crouched together. She was incorporeal, still, but she was Moo.

  She met my eyes. “Thank you.”

  I nodded, knowing she didn’t want to talk about what I’d seen. Maybe we never would.

  Shar, meanwhile, watched us with worried eyes. When we stood, she threw herself at Moo. I noticed they had no problem embracing, but when Shar tried to hug me I was treated to another quick vision of nudie patooties.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said, although she clearly wasn’t.

  “No problem,” I said, my mind already going a hundred miles an hour. “Wait, you can touch each other?”

  Moo and Shar reached out, touching fingertips. They nodded.

  I looked around, locating the hulking football player whose winning play I’d witnessed earlier.

  “We’re gonna have to channel the circus,” I said, seeing a plan forming in my brainpan. “Bring him.”

  I waved them to follow and Moo and Shar manhandled the beefcake football player till we all stood directly beneath the shimmering mirror in the sky.

  “That’s the exit. Moo, you need to climb on top of this guy. Shar, you have to climb on top of Moo and get out. Then pull Moo out.”

  “Then what?” Shar asked. “We didn’t stand a chance last time.”

  “Moo needs to keep our perp busy. You’re expecting him this time. Hopefully that will be enough.”

  “But what about you?” Moo asked.

  I thought of the mirror on its two spindly legs.

  “Tip it,” I said. “Tip it and shake us out.”

  “Is that going to work?” Shar asked, clearly skeptical.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

  The girls frowned, but they did as I said. First they positioned the man mountain, then Moo climbed up him, Shar helping, after which Moo pulled Shar up. I gratefully remembered all the times we’d forced Moo to play cheerleader when we were little girls, the Alfar our grudging anchor, as she was already an adult then. Channeling those childhood games, Moo boosted Shar up, her feet on the flats of Moo’s palms. And just like that, Shar popped up and out of the mirror.

  Then Shar’s ghostly hand reached down, clasping Moo’s. “Grab it! Grab it!” I shouted. A second later, both of my friends were free of the ghost world.

  The next few minutes were torture. This plan was as crazy as anything we’d ever tried, and we tended to be successful. But we also sometimes failed miserably, and failing now meant I’d be trapped forever with these shadows. . . .

  My negative ruminations were interrupted by the world tilting. I’d never felt anything weirder before or since, and I’d been through some weird shit. But to have the ground beneath you start tilting and never stop . . . My feet stuck on the ground, as if caught in the memory of gravity, but then the ghosts around me started to fall. I braced myself as I tumbled headfirst down toward the mirror. . . .

  I managed to tuck and roll at the last second, but pain still flared in my shoulder as I landed hard on solid ground. Solid ground where there was an evil clown lurking, I reminded myself, struggling to my feet. I took a few stumbling steps as my head cleared. What I saw was pure chaos.

  The orbs of light that had made such an orderly line when under the control of the clown were now whizzing around inside the tent. Some found their bodies, and a few humans were running around the tent, screaming, trying to find an exit.

  Luckily, for our purposes, the tent seemed to be self-sealing, and neither humans nor orbs could escape. We didn’t want people getting out and calling the cops before we could glamour their memories away. But having them trapped also meant that there were a lot more lives at stake. At risk were also all the souls of the circus’s recent victims from other towns—there must have been thousands of orbs floating around the high, peaked top of the tent. They were so tightly packed as to make a near solid matting of light.

  Even brighter, however, was the firefight happening between Moo and the clown. Good news: she was back in her own body. Bad news: she was losing.

  The clown was pouring some kind of raw elemental magic at Moo, who looked like she was caught in a maelstrom despite the powerful shields she’d erected around herself. Buffeting magic picked her up, shields and all, shaking her like a maraca.

  Shit, I thought, about to jump in to help her, although I wasn’t sure how I could.

  Before I could move toward my friend, however, someone goosed me. I jumped, turning to find a reembodied Shar behind me.

  “What do we do?” she shouted over the din of the flying magic. Around us milled the shadows, their corporeal counterparts still sitting in the risers, staring with unseeing eyes.

  “No idea!” I said. “But it’s gotta be one of Moo’s soul suckers she talked about earlier.”

  “So how do we kill it?”

  “I don’t know! I can try jumping it, but I don’t know if killing it will hurt the souls it sucked out.” Watching my friend battling a creature of unknown origin, I pulled out the only other weapon, besides the gun, that I had with me.

  My cell phone.

  A few tippie taps later, and it was ringing on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?” said a rough, deep voice.

  “Hey, Uncle Anyan?” Anyan was an old family friend and one of the wisest men I knew. He was also old as dirt. Before he could say anything, I asked my question. “Do you know how to kill something that traps souls, then eats them by ingesting their memories bit by bit?”

  A pause from the other end of the line. “What are you doing, Cap? Are you in trouble?”

  “I’m in the middle of something, yes,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “So if you could hurry . . .”

  “That’s some old magic right there,” he said, confirming what I already knew from my earlier nonreaction to the clown’s call that had felled my friends. “It sounds like you’ve got a gaki on your hands. They were children of Air, but they’re supposed to be eradicated. They’re bad news.”

  “Um, yeah, they are. How do I kill it?”

  “Kill it? You can’t. They’re Air.”

  I frowned. “This one looks pretty solid to me.”

  “What?” I’d made Uncle Anyan squawk, something I’d tease him about later. “You’re with one?”

  I watched as Moo rushed bodily at the clown, her shields so amped they were like a battering ram. But instead of its knocking him down, the clown’s arms swung forward, launching Moo at the
ceiling. She did some Crouching Tiger maneuvers, all charged with enough mojo that the tent rattled, then swooped down at the clown like a falcon.

  For a second I thought she was actually flying, but then I realized she was taking advantage of all the magic in the air by using her shields like a surfboard.

  Anyan said “Hello!” into the phone, bringing me back to our conversation.

  “Sorry. Yes, we’re with one, and it’s shaped like a clown.”

  “It’s in a body,” he said, all business now that he knew what I was up against. “They enter a body and take possession of it. Take out the clown.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t worry about the person they possessed. They killed that soul already, to power the possession. Just get it out of the clown.”

  “Then what?”

  “Trap the gaki. Do you have a soul catcher?”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s a soul catcher,” he said unhelpfully.

  I closed my eyes to count to ten, but when I opened them I found myself staring at the mirror.

  Duh.

  “Actually, I may have just that. So the plan is kill the clown and trap the gaki?”

  “Yes. I can be there today.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” I said, wincing as the clown stopped Moo’s airborne attack by swatting her into a tent pole. She hit hard, and she got up slow. “I gotta go, but I’ll let you know how we do.”

  “Cap!” I heard Uncle Anyan shout as I ended the call.

  “We have a plan,” I said to Shar as I pulled the gun still lodged in my jeans’ waistband at the base of my spine. “Can you lift that mirror?”

  She went to it, avoiding the mirror’s smoky surface. She nodded as she manhandled it awkwardly.

  “Good. Here goes nothing.”

  And with that, I ran toward where the clown was advancing on my friend. He held his stolen arms out in front of him stiffly, magic crackling between his hands like one of those electricity globes from the eighties. As she was still trying to regain her feet, Moo’s eyes accidentally flicked to my darting form. The clown caught that slight movement even as she corrected herself, looking squarely at him, but it was too late. He whirled, power booming out at me.