Ren eyed her as she sucked in her breath. It should have been obvious to her, because spirits just did not wisp out of people’s pockets, but it was at this moment Zoë understood something horrible had happened to Jackson Burly. She’d known it was possible to bind a human spirit using black magic, but she’d never imagined she’d see it for real. Fear tickled her skin as she looked at the men seated in front of her.
Ren’s more-than-human glare dripped with malevolence, as though warning her not to say a word. She shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice caught in her throat. How could anyone do something like this to a sentient entity? Tears threatened to fall as the spirit wailed in pain.
“Zoë,” Thomas asked quietly, as though he didn’t want to break a spell. “Zoë, what is wrong?”
Fury overcame fear. “What have you done?” she spat at Ren. She couldn’t keep the bitter accusation out of her voice. Zoë wanted to get as far away from this place as she could, but she couldn’t, no, she wouldn’t, leave Jackson Burly supernaturally bound to this awful, evil creature.
Ren seethed, but he gave no answer. He pointedly turned his head away and refused to meet her eyes. Josh looked scared.
She looked again at Jackson’s writhing spirit form. “Jackson, what has he done to you?”
“Zoë.” Thomas’ voice held a warning. He was their lawyer, she guessed, and maybe he didn’t want to know, but at that moment she didn’t care.
“Bound with a ring,” Jackson wailed. He spiraled around Ren’s head and pointed long, misty fingers into his coat pocket.
Without thinking, and certainly without planning, Zoë jumped out of her seat and threw herself at Ren. He flung his hands up to defend himself, as though he expected blows.
Thomas stood, and power rolled off him.
“Zoë!” This time it wasn’t a plea, but a low, rumbling command that blazed. One she had tremendous difficulty ignoring. It pulled at the very fiber of her. Every cell in her body vibrated, demanding obedience.
Ren struck her hard across the face, then when she didn’t let go, he began pushing at her with meaty hands. His strength astounded her. “You crazy bitch,” he said and shoved her hard.
Anger seared her. She held onto his jacket, reaching inside, not caring about the pain vibrating through her.
Thomas roared. Zoë trembled and fell backward, no longer able to refuse to obey. When she looked up, her shaking intensified. Her teeth clenched involuntarily and her muscles spasmed. Thomas towered over them. Zoë noticed, as she was thrown to the ground, that Ren and Josh cowered in front of Thomas. He had changed. He no longer bore any resemblance to anything human. Sparkling green and red scales covered his large square face and his teeth glistened in his mouth. He had six arms, each bearing long knob-jointed claws. She laughed hysterically, no longer able to control her reaction.
Her prize fell from her hand. She’d never seen a real fetish before. She’d heard about Vodoun gris-gris, but had no experience to tell her what one would look like. But this was certainly a talisman of a black practice. A length of rope, doubled several times, crusted with dried blood and in the middle of it all was a wide golden wedding band. When it hit the ground, Thomas’ power abated only slightly. He reached down with one of his lower hands.
“Don’t touch it,” Zoë screamed. “It’s evil.”
A deep laugh came from Thomas’ scaly chest. The air thinned enough to allow her to breathe again. She gasped for air and said, “We must free Jackson.”
Ren and Josh seemed to have recovered as well. They glared at Zoë, but when Ren looked up at Thomas, he must have thought better of anything that involved lashing out at her. Thomas reached down, and touched the thing with a claw. He easily slashed the twisted rope, and the ring fell to the ground.
The second it hit the carpet, Jackson’s spirit flashed, then shattered. “Jackson,” Zoë cried out, but she hoped he had merely escaped his prison. She had no way of knowing if he was all right, or if she had actually just witnessed the final destruction of a spirit.
She quivered weakly before the looming monster. “He’s gone. He can’t help you anymore.” She tried to stand, rallying every mote of strength she had. “So neither can I.”
Ren lunged toward the ring, and without even taking a moment to consider, Zoë fell back into a crouch and kicked him in the teeth. He made a horrible noise, and she felt sick when blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. The impact hurt her foot, but she would be damned if she was going to let it show. Well, she might be damned anyway.
Before anyone else could move, she scooped up the ring, as careful as she could be not to touch the bloody rope. She glanced up at Thomas, afraid, and hating it. “What are you?” she asked.
“I am Thomas,” came the growling reply.
She turned to him and shouted, “What are you?”
His yellow eyes blinked once, but he only said, “I am Thomas.” She wasn’t certain if he was angry, or if the fact that he looked like a cross between a dragon and, she had no idea what, made him appear less than cordial.
Zoë grabbed her purse and hugged it. “They are guilty.” She didn’t know of what, specifically, and it didn’t matter. They deserved to burn for what they’d done to Jackson, even if she had no idea how they’d done it.
“Who isn’t?” Thomas said. He looked at her intently, waiting.
She was sick, and furious, and more frightened than she knew she could be. Zoë leaped to the door, and stumbled through it, rushing down the corridor to the bar. When she staggered through the curtain, Alexander stood, and he too seemed bigger, more powerful than before, although he hadn’t changed form. “Zoë?” he said, but she ran past him.
“Leave me alone,” she shouted. “You stay away from me. All of you.” She stumbled to the outside corridor, and headed for the plain, ordinary, cement reality of the Civic Center BART station.
Trembling all the way to her car, reality soon hit her. She stood there in broad daylight and threw up in the parking lot. People passed, but they hurried on their way, their eyes averted. It took a long time of sitting in her car before she managed to turn the key and make her way home. Suddenly, she was grateful to be alone.
Chapter 6
Zoë paced her living room floor, sorry she had come home. But where else could she go? When her cellphone rang and she recognized Simone’s number, she hit the ‘ignore’ button, not feeling fit company for anyone and not wanting to explain her ordeal. Sure, Simone knew about Henry and Gran, but there was a limit to what she could expect her friend to overlook, and she couldn’t help but think morphing angels was a bridge too far.
Gran still hadn’t shown up, so Zoë was alone. She laughed bitterly, trying hard to hold back tears that threatened to break free. She must be the only person who felt more at ease with dead people around than alone in a creaky shell of wood and stone. An empty house made her feel lonely and exposed, as though hiding in a tent while a tornado sped in her direction.
She ground coffee beans, but the aroma that usually soothed her made her stomach twist. She put the grounds in the coffee maker but left the machine turned off. She flipped through TV channels for five minutes before hitting the ‘off’ switch and throwing the remote onto the sofa cushions. Zoë wanted not to think, to be oblivious, and she envied people who found solace in getting drunk. Alcohol had a terrible effect on her, probably due to her abilities, and the few times she had indulged with so much as one beer, she faced walking nightmares. Her casual acquaintances probably thought she was an alcoholic because she refused even a sip. She wouldn’t use mouthwash with alcohol in it and had refused a boozy trifle served at a potluck dinner once.
No, she was left to face stark reality, and for the first time ever, she wasn’t sure what life had dumped in her lap. Unable to stand the contemplation, Zoë went to the distraction of last resort. She donned rubber gloves, found a spray can of Scrubbing Bubbles and a sponge, and headed for the bathroom.
After an hour, the tiles sparkled li
ke they hadn’t in a very long time. The toilet and basin were clean enough to drink from, although Zoë couldn’t imagine a circumstance under which anyone would. Maybe if an earthquake shook the house and she was trapped, she would drink out of the toilet while waiting for rescue workers. She shuddered when she remembered the tiny spirit she’d seen in the ladies’ room at Fiskers and wondered why her thoughts had taken such a morbid turn. Oh yeah, angels turning into monsters. Check.
Zoë’s muscles ached from the effort, but she felt pleasantly tired. She peeled off the yellow rubber gloves, continued undressing until all her clothing lay in a pile on the bathroom floor, and stepped into the shower. Hot water flowed over her skin, washing away the tension. Tiredness crept through her limbs, and she felt more emotionally drained than she had in a long time, maybe since her father died.
For a little while, the horrors of the day left her. Zoë emerged from the bathroom in a white fluffy bathrobe, scrunching her curly hair dry with a towel. The clock told her it was only now coming up on six o’clock, but exhaustion plagued her, so she went to her bedroom, dropped the robe on her chair, and climbed under the covers, barely caring that going to bed with wet hair would leave her with a disaster to contend with in the morning.
A fierce chill and a tugging sensation woke her some time later. Groping in the pitch black, it took her a moment to recognize the here and now. She sat up and looked around her room. Squinting into the night she said, “Who’s there?”
Gran looked nervous, something Zoë hadn’t ever seen her do before. “There’s some people here to see you,” Gran said.
She broke into a wide smile. “Gran, I’ve missed you! Where have you been?”
The old spirit looked pleased. “You did? I thought maybe with that new beau of yours…”
“Don’t be silly, Gran.” There was nothing silly about it, but she didn’t want to think about their falling out. Slowly her brain started to function. “Who’s here?” She automatically reached out, scanning the house with her senses. Spirits. And lots of them. Their presence hit her like sounds of a near neighbor having a cocktail party.
“People have been hearing about what you did. I told them you needed to sleep, but there’s so many now.” And by “people” Gran obviously meant dead people.
“Okay,” Zoë said. “I’d better get dressed if we have company.”
Gran seemed happy with the pronouncement, and said she’d go tell everyone Zoë was coming down. Spirits, as a rule, didn’t mind much what living people wore, since they themselves never changed clothes. Displays of wealth meant less and less when one couldn’t actually possess anything anymore. On the other hand, some of the departed did concern themselves with manners. The least she could do was not greet her guests naked.
Zoë threw on jeans and a USC sweatshirt and ran her fingers through the tangles in her hair. When she was as presentable as she could be in the middle of the night, she made her way down to her living room, flicking on lights as she went.
Unlike TV ghosts, real spirits didn’t particularly notice if it was daytime or night, and didn’t care if the lights were on or off, at least in her experience. Zoë did admit, however, she wasn’t an expert on spirits any more than someone who visited an aquarium was automatically a marine biologist.
When she went down the stairs, she was stunned to find nearly a hundred spirits in her living room. Some were just sparks, which was what Zoë called those who didn’t have the strength to show themselves as fully-fledged embodiments. Some of the stronger ones present could have sent a chill through any human with the slightest spiritual sensitivity. These hardly even looked misty, merely pale, although they wavered faintly when she looked straight at them.
Zoë sought out Gran’s face, and found the old woman standing to the side of the crowd, facing her. “Gran?” she asked uncertainly.
“They’ve come to pay their respects,” Gran said.
Zoë nodded, at a loss for what to do. “But why?”
A man’s voice piped up from the back. “We heard about what you did for Jackson Burly,” he said.
Zoë walked among the spirits, who swished around her. When she reached her easy chair, she sat on its edge, stunned beyond speech. Pockets of cool air wafted as the spirits surrounded her.
They waited with palpable anticipation, but Zoë had no idea what they expected. She gave Gran a pleading look. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I did what anybody would have done. And, Thomas of San Francisco, a Free Angel, protected me.” She didn’t know why she said that. Maybe he was protecting her, and maybe he had threatened her. She still didn’t know for certain, but it didn’t seem right to take credit for something that wasn’t all that big a deal. It had been awful and nauseating and horrifying, but she’d done the only thing she could.
A collective shiver went through the room at the mention of the angel’s name. A gaunt young woman glistened brightly as she said, “Not everyone, Zoë Pendergraft, would have taken the risk. You showed great courage and compassion.”
“Has anyone seen Jackson Burly? Did he…make it? I saw his image shatter, and he vanished. I was afraid he was…” What? Dead? In truth, she didn’t want to think about the possibilities.
A young Native American man billowed in front of Zoë. His dark eyes pulled at her. “He will recover in time. We have taken him to a place of protection. We do not know if he will return to the other side.”
Zoë sighed with relief. “Please tell him how pleased I am he’s all right.”
Two little girls stepped forward: twins, as best she could tell. They dipped into a curtsy in front of Zoë and laid identical roses on her lap. She ran her fingers over the soft petals. Moving objects was a struggle for some spirits, and she smiled graciously. “They’re lovely. Thank you.” The twins looked at each other, giggled, and curtsied again. Then suddenly they dissolved in a glittery flash.
Spirits approached one by one. Some gave her tokens: a few more flowers, a button, an earring. One boy gave her a tiny toy soldier, and another spirit left a grainy brown photograph, and another a strange green stone. One dropped something heavy at her feet. The human-looking spirits who didn’t bring tokens bowed in front of her, and then only a few sparkling flashes of light remained. They danced around Zoë’s head a few times before flickering out.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Zoë said when all but Gran had gone.
“You don’t have to say anything, child. You did just the right thing. Most people want something from the dead. You’re one of the few who give without expecting anything in return. Hardly anybody would risk themselves for someone they didn’t know, especially if that somebody was so different.”
Different. What a charming way to describe “dead.” Zoë smiled. “Thank you, Gran. This was very sweet. I…I needed that, I think. It helps, knowing it matters.”
“Of course it matters, Zoë. This is a man’s soul. Nothing matters more.”
Zoë nodded and stifled a yawn. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m still so tired.”
Gran said, “You sleep. I’ll watch over you.”
Zoë didn’t know why Gran planned to sit vigil, but it made her feel better. She didn’t want to admit she was still shaken by her encounter with Thomas, not to mention the evil she’d glimpsed today. With Gran around, at least she’d get some warning if one of them showed up while she slept.
“Thanks, Gran,” she said. She shuffled upstairs to her bedroom and put her treasures on the dresser. The flowers and trinkets touched her more than she could say. Each of these things meant something to the spirit who offered it to her. She was certain of that.
This time when she climbed into bed, she felt safe, and instead of falling into an exhausted sleep of emotional turmoil, she found a comfortable place in her mind, and drifted away. During the night, when flashes of frightening, but nameless images came to her mind, Gran’s comforting presence soothed her.
Chapter 7
When the tinkling piano music
started, alerting her the day was about to begin, Zoë reached out and hit the alarm clock’s ‘off’ button with only a hint of reluctance. In truth, she needed to work and be around humans again. Gran still sat in the chair beside the bed, but she had her eyes closed, as though sleeping. Zoë knew this to be an affectation, since spirits didn’t sleep, at least not in the “shut your physical eyes” sense, but if Gran didn’t want to talk, that was fine with her.
She gathered the flowers the spirits had brought, took them into the kitchen, and put them in a short, round vase. They each looked as fresh as if they’d been cut moments before. They were an odd hodge-podge of colors and shapes, but they looked sweet together, as though someone had gone through a garden plucking the prettiest flowers, one from each type of plant.
As Zoë went toward the front door, her foot caught on something, and a metal object slid across the carpet. Kneeling down to search for it, she pulled back when she finally found it. It was a knife, not a kitchen knife either, but a hunting knife. It glowed.
With care, Zoë reached out to touch it, tapping it with one finger at first, almost afraid it would jump up at her. When her hand closed around it, a thrumming reverberated through her palm and up her arm. The sensation was not unpleasant, but unexpected. She turned the small, fixed blade knife, examining it. She slid it out of its sheath, and it hummed as she exposed the beveled blade. The sharp side curved upward, bringing it to a vicious point. The metal gleamed, but not from a reflective polish. Instead, it shone from within, as though constructed of blue ice. She balanced it and felt its weight. It snuggled into her palm as though it had been custom made for her.
She didn’t know why, but Zoë did not want to leave the knife behind, so she tucked it into an inner pocket of her handbag. She couldn’t remember which of the previous night’s guests had dropped it. Which one? The question niggled. The blurred memory brought back her fear. She still found herself perplexed when she thought of the strange ceremony. She’d never heard of spirits doing anything like that.
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