by Trisha Telep
***
In the morning—or what passed as morning in Purgatory: just a different shade of night, as far as anyone could tell—Velvet piled her dreads atop her head and bound them in strips of leather from her suitcase. She smeared her face and arms with ash where it rubbed off on the flimsy pillow overnight, covering the soft glow of her flesh. Outside of her quarters, there was movement, a scuffing against the cobblestone path.
The dorm coming to life, she imagined.
Freshly gray souls gathered themselves up for the day, readying to bind paper, go on collection runs through sanctioned cracks into the world of the living, or join up with their salvage teams, lining up to get instructions for the day from their Station Agent.
She found she missed Manny and her friends in the Latin Quarter dorms, but most of all Luisa, one of the twin poltergeists on their team. She’d have helped her to think this whole Nick/Amie thing out.
Velvet peered up at the towering pagoda; its faded red paint chipping away like dry skin. She noticed a faint hue on the cobble at her feet and wondered if the whole of Vermillion were sprinkled in the color, if it all came from the pagoda or if there was something else at play here.
She wondered lots of things.
Whether Manny and Howard met in Purgatory or whether they knew each other when they were living. She imagined that the card players in the courtyard were previous participants in the World Poker Tour that seemed to be on TV every day when she’d come home from school when she was alive.
But mostly she wondered about anything, just to stop thinking about Nick.
It was a pleasant morning otherwise, and she found herself wandering uninterrupted into the secret paper orchard behind the temple compound. Gravel grated under the soles of her combat boots, and the paper leaves and wire branches crinkled in the dark breeze. Overhead, the sky glowed with passing souls, like shooting stars. There seemed to be thousands that day, speeding past. Constant reminders that the rest of them were all stuck in the City of the Dead until their time came to dim and fade away.
The souls mocked her—all blinky and happy. She imagined them flipping her off as they passed on to heaven, or wherever.
Jerks.
“They’re beautiful,” Nick said as he stepped into the garden.
Velvet said nothing.
He didn’t try anything as stupid as touching her. He had enough sense to know she was still angry. But he did keep talking. “I don’t know what you heard last night Velvet, but you have to believe me, I was asleep.”
She shrugged as though she didn’t care. As if the whole thing were behind them and they’d moved on to a strictly business relationship, for that was all it should have ever been.
For chrissakes, they worked together.
“We have a job to do,” she said and strode off in the direction of the little bronze door.
But when she got there, she realized she’d have to disrobe in front of him. In front of the one who’d wronged her. She suddenly felt vulnerable and clenched her arms around herself.
“You’ve got to give me the benefit of the doubt here!” Nick lunged in front of her, forcing eye contact.
Or attempting to.
She looked away. Did she have any doubts? Was there reason to believe he hadn’t been involved?
Only one.
Amie had gone straight to him, after Velvet had shot her down. That part didn’t make sense. But the stuff she was saying was so ugly. And, well, she had been as topless as a diseased stripper, too.
She shook her head and opened the wooden hamper next to the metal door in the wall. Starting to pull her boots off, she nearly fell over, but Nick was there to steady her. His strong hands on her shoulders, his breath on the back of her neck, lips so close to that sensitive flesh.
“I love you, Velvet,” he whispered. “And this thing with Amie isn’t going to change that. And your doubts aren’t going to change that. And Amie sure as hell isn’t going to change that.”
Something in her softened and she craned her neck a bit and nodded that she’d heard him.
Softened but not accepted.
Velvet stuffed her clothing into the box and used the key to open the little door, revealing the portal crack behind it.
***
A moment later they were speeding through the freshly cleaned kitchen. Hair-netted sous-chefs chopped onions into piles like anthills, and pots of sauces were lined up on the stoves bubbling with salty tomatoey lava and rich cream. It must have been lunch. Fewer customers ringed the white tablecloths, and only a handful of waiters bustled around, none of whom was Emile, hiding his bruises behind sunglasses.
“Where are we headed?” Nick spoke in as delicate a manner as someone as deep in crap as he was should.
He was getting good at this part, Velvet noted. Meaning: dancing around the issue at hand. Of course, he’d said everything he needed to, regardless of its implausibility. And to be honest, Velvet’s doubts were gaining on the circumstantial evidence. No matter how she played it out, the timing seemed off.
What was the girl up to? Trying to seduce both of them?
That was just plain weird, if not the most slutty thing ever.
She didn’t answer and, instead, swept through a door marked office and straight to the single file cabinet in the dark room.
“Whatcha doin’?” Nick asked.
Velvet traced the word employees on one of the drawers and forced her head through the metal, cramming her hands in the sides of the cabinet. Ghosts don’t glow enough to draw attention to themselves in the daylight, but in a pitch black space, it was enough. She thumbed through the files until she found Emile’s address and withdrew.
“2622 Colonial. Let’s find the waiter.”
She ran from the room, an idea starting to form in her head. Why had they been called to find Abner Conroy, when clearly Amie was not a busy salvage team? Why couldn’t Amie’s team find him themselves? Why couldn’t Amie’s team provide some, even a little, protection to Emile?
“If Amie and Vermillion really needed our help, why has she been so mean?” Velvet asked as they ran down the street. “And then alternately so aggressively sexual ... and not just with you?”
Nick’s brow arched.
“What do you mean?”
Velvet stopped, shrugging limply. “Before I caught her in your room, she’d come to mine.”
He shook his head, the idea not quite catching. “Amie came on to you? What?”
Velvet ignored the panicked tone in Nick’s voice and, in one smooth sidestep, plunged into a stranger waiting at the bus stop, asked a passerby for directions to 2622 Colonial, and stepped back out, leaving the person only slightly confused.
Velvet stared at the woman she’d just recently possessed. Her face was scrunched up like she thought something was wrong but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
And that was it. That was the thought bouncing around in Velvet’s head, just underneath all the Amie-anger.
“She’s trying to confuse us,” she said.
“Sexual subterfuge!” Nick shouted.
Velvet shook her head. “What?”
“It’s like this,” he said, suddenly animated and waving his hands around wildly. “You watch enough spy movies, and you start to catch on. Amie is like Mata Hari.”
“Who’s that?”
“She was a double agent in World War I. Seduced guys on both sides of the war and funneled information back to Germany. Eventually they beheaded her.”
“I know someone in need of a good beheading.” Velvet started in the direction of Emile’s apartment.
“So yeah. She’s using both of us, but for the same purpose.” He said the last words emphatically, as though he’d figured everything out and was exonerated entirely.
Velvet didn’t have the venom in her to correct Nick—it wasn’t like Amie was getting valuable information from them, nor were they on opposite sides of a war. She waived it off. “And what about Abner Conroy? Or
Emile? How do they fit into all this?”
Nick shrugged, sheepishly, scurrying along beside her. “Don’t know.”
“Well then, we better find out because I’ve no intention of spending another hell night in Vermillion.” Velvet stomped back toward the restaurant. “This ends today!”
Emile was just leaving his apartment as Velvet and Nick slipped through the wall. Nick stared at the sheer amount of bruises on the guy, and they both noted he was walking with a limp as he stepped outside and locked the door behind him.
Emile’s studio was simply decorated, a futon on a wooden frame seemed to function as the only seating in the place. Besides a TV and a small dresser with a few framed photos, the place was bare.
Nick wandered over to the photos and stood there, mouth hanging open.
“What?” Velvet asked.
He simply pointed at one of the photographs.
In it, Emile was all smiles and bruise-free, his arm around a petite Asian girl, her black hair pulled back in a tight chignon.
Amie.
***
At about five o’clock, Emile and his sunglasses limped into Il Fortuna and gave his jacket to the coat check girl with a wicked wink. Her response was a likewise lascivious meow, which grossed Velvet out but coaxed a saucy “ooh,” from Nick.
Velvet spun around and elbowed Nick in the ribs, or through them, actually. “Follow him!”
They popped out from their hiding place inside the coat-checked coats, and Nick ran straight through the girl’s desk after Emile, while Velvet took a moment to come up with a plan.
She knew she was going to have to possess the girl—Willa was the name on her name tag—but for what purpose? Velvet thought a moment, and then a broad grin spread across her face. Obviously Emile and Willa had some sort of relationship. She’d use that to get the goods on Amie, once and for all!
She hunched down beside Willa’s back and thrust herself up, through her and inside her as if Willa was a tight-fitting dress that Velvet had to shimmy into. The girl twitched a bit, but that was to be expected—Velvet was a big girl.
Good thing ghosts don’t cause stretch marks, she thought.
With no more than a “What the...?” from Willa, Velvet constricted Willa’s thoughts into that imaginary box and took her over.
“So easy,” Velvet said. The voice came out child-like and irritating to her ear. “Oh God. Nice baby voice.”
She glanced down behind the desk and found a sign that read, be right back, amicis. Velvet left her post and skipped toward the dining room.
There she saw Emile running; being chased was a more accurate description. A man in a mustard-colored blazer and a bushy goatee rushed toward the waiter with a fork, eyes blazing like someone had set fire to his brain.
Must be Abner.
“Abner!” Velvet screamed, but neither the man nor the ghost inside him seemed to hear anything.
They bolted, one after the other, through the swinging door into the kitchen, followed by an opaque presence she hoped was Nick. Velvet scrambled after them and bolted into the busy kitchen in time to see them all pass through the metal exit door.
There was a brawl going on in the dank shadows of the dusky alley. Colonel Mustard, both possessed and incredibly pissed off, pummeled Emile with fists the size of Easter hams. Emile, defending himself valiantly, seemed to have picked up a ghostly passenger of his own. His eyes radiated in the shadows, freckling his bruised cheeks with rays of light.
Nick?
“Stop it, Abner!” Velvet shouted at the goateed Colonel Mustard. “We’ve got you now.”
Emile ducked another punch, bobbing toward her and getting enough of a gap between him and the other guy to shout, “That’s not, Abner,” in a thick British accent.
“Why are you talking like that, Nick?”
“I’m not Nick, I’m Abner!” The ghost inside Emile shouted.
Velvet flinched. “Then where’s Nick?”
At that precise moment, the door banged open and a little girl rushed out, fists balled and ready for a fight, the blunt end of pizza crust bouncing from the corner of her lips like a cigar.
So if Abner is in Emile, who’s in the Colonel ... and the kid?
Colonel Mustard stopped dead and exploded into laughter. “You’re all ridiculous. You should hear yourselves.”
Abner/Emile rushed forward and pushed the Colonel through the open doorway and back into the kitchen, pulling the door shut and bracing it closed with a broken piece of board from a stack of pallets so the Colonel was trapped in the kitchen and couldn’t get back into the alley.
“So what’s going on here?” Abner asked. “Who are you? And who’s this?” He pointed at the little girl.
“My undertaker, Nick, is my guess,” Velvet replied, staring at the girl and shaking her head, judgmentally.
The little girl pushed up her sleeves, as though she was about to start throwing punches. “We know everything, Abner.”
“And what’s that? What do you think you know?”
Velvet interjected. “We know that Amie had some kind of relationship with the body you’re possessing. If it’s some kind of sick domestic violence thing then, seriously, you two couldn’t have played that out without getting an innocent living person involved? That’s really low.”
“No doubt,” Nick said, shaking his head. “Do we haul you back to Vermillion, or get you a guest spot on Oprah?”
Abner scowled and reached for his belt as though he’d go after the little girl/Nick, but the door behind them boomed and clattered. The board shook and shifted, threatening to fall loose and unleash the big brute from the kitchen.
“She’ll break through soon.”
“She?” Velvet echoed.
“Amie.” Emile/Abner sighed and shook his head.
Abner shook his head. “I’m protecting this body.”
“Just not very well?” she asked.
“Listen, Amie and Emile were together ... before she died. After she was gone, she couldn’t let him go. She found a way back earthside, through that crack you two traveled through, and when he wouldn’t accept her advances—she’d possess a variety of different girls to try to tempt him—she started to act out. Violently. So I intervened, of course.” He shrugged. “Well, as often as I could.”
“But why are you even here, Abner?” Velvet asked. “You could guard the crack from the other side, you know? Or even tell someone and get the crack filled in. Alerting Barker about all this might have been helpful.”
“I—” Abner started.
“The whole thing is pathetic,” Nick said, balling the little girl’s fists up and scowling furiously.
The little girl looked like she was going to throw a tantrum, and Velvet almost giggled at the thought. She wished Nick could see himself and the spectacle he was creating, but in that moment, a crackling sound issued from the kitchen, and while the door didn’t move a bit, Velvet knew someone was about to pass through it. Someone terrible.
Someone slutty.