by Anela Deen
Alice sighed. “Pull yourself together. I’ve counteracted the side-effect immobilizing your legs. You can walk again.”
Oh goody. Now my lungs were broken.
She seemed to notice. “Oh, that’s right. This happens sometimes when I touch the living.” She crouched next to me. “You’ll need to calm down. Try not to force the air in so much as push the cold out.”
The idea was counterintuitive, but it’s funny how suffocating will make you open to suggestions. I switched from a pull to a push and expelled a white cloud of frosty breath into the autumn night. Then I gasped, the sound raw and rasping.
Glorious relief.
Alice nodded. “There, feel better? Let’s go.”
I suppose it was a lot to expect Death to demonstrate much sympathy. To buy myself a few more seconds’ recovery, I examined our surroundings. A candy-striped awning stretched above us. I shifted with a frown to look through the front window behind me. Inside I spotted a shiny metal counter top lined with stools over a tiled floor patterned in black and white checkerboard. Faux leather booths with coin activated jukeboxes on the tables lined one wall. The whole pace was decked out in a 1950’s motif replete with old photographs on the walls of dead Hollywood stars like Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.
I managed to get to my feet, glimpsing the sign post hanging off the side of the building.
Tommy’s Malt Shoppe
We were at the edge of the shopping district, just off Main Street. I knew this place, though I’d never gone inside before. Lactose allergy and all that.
“The malt shoppe.” I looked at Alice. “You brought us to a malt shoppe?”
“Come.” She passed through the glass windows as though they were made of air.
My body shuddered at the freaky sight. What next? She’d get off an elevator full of blood and comment on what a nice evening it was?
I went in through the door.
Inside the place was empty and the air was as cool as the ice cream housed under glass beside the steel counter top. The delicate scent of milk and sweeteners tantalized. Absolutely nothing looked out of the ordinary.
“Unless you’re in the mood for a strawberry shake, I don’t know what we’re doing here. There’s no witch doctor running the place. It’s been around for years.”
“No,” she said. “He is here.”
As if on cue, someone came in through a side door behind the counter. He was young, clean shaven, with blue eyes and blond hair moussed back in a sharp crew cut. He whistled a jaunty tune, tossing a rag from one hand to the other, and wore a white apron over a long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his elbows. When he noticed us, he stopped short.
“Hey there,” he gave a friendly wave. “I’m awfully sorry, but we closed up at eight o’clock.”
I fumbled for words and took a step toward the exit. “Oh, okay. Sorry.”
Alice didn’t follow. She eyed the guy behind the counter with disdain. “The lie cannot blind they who see only truth.”
Her words came like an order.
The lights dimmed. The music groaned to a halt like a stereo with failing batteries. The room about us shifted, the 1950s décor fading away as though it had never been. Dark paneled walls took their place, lined with shelves. The musty jumble of wooden masks, sealed clay jars, and little bags of snake scales crowded their surfaces. A sharp, insistent smell of burning herbs reached my nose.
The metal counter top had gone as well, replaced by a long table of grey stone. A hodgepodge of items cluttered its expanse: horse jaw rattles, strings of garlic, alligator heads, dried chicken feet and blank-faced dolls made of moss. Weaving between all of it, softly hissing, was an albino python. Judging by the size of it, the thing could swallow a man whole. A hand reached over and gently caressed its smooth scales.
The young, blue-eyed guy had vanished. Behind the counter stood a tall, long-limbed old man with umber skin and a scowl sour enough to turn wine into vinegar.
With the flick of his wrist the blinds at the front windows dropped with a bang.
“Alice,” he said softly. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter 6
“You know very well what I’m doing here,” Alice spat.
A smug looked breezed across his face. “Ah oui, I thought I felt a tinkering with one of my works.”
His inflection was French-African, though he said each word with precision, like biting into a crisp apple.
“I’ve told you not to interfere with my business, Moreau,” Alice said, staring daggers.
“The family appealed to my sense of justice.”
“You and your charity cases.” She shook her head. “This one had a contract tied to him. If I don’t send him where he belongs, they’ll come to reap him and you know that’ll make a mess.”
Moreau unfurled the fingers of one hand like a blooming flower. “Et alors? How was I supposed to know he had a contract?”
“By leaving it alone or checking in with me first.”
“I told the family they had no reason to worry, regardless of if their priest gave the wretch absolution for what he’d done, but you know Catholics. They didn’t want to risk it.” He raised his shoulders an inch. “De toute façon, how much harm could it have done?”
Alice’s gaze shifted in my direction.
Moreau’s dark eyes examined me with a focus that burned as hot as lit coal. “Unless you did something foolish, like try to open it without me.”
“I didn’t have a lot of time.”
“I sealed it to all but the hand of Dieu.”
“The hand of God was unavailable. This was the best I could do on short notice.”
“But he is too new. He has not even heard the call yet.”
“Obviously,” she scoffed. “He blew open every gate in the attempt. Everything but your door, that is.”
Moreau pointed one long, thin finger at Alice. “Ce n’est pas ma faute. I won’t be blamed for this, Alice. You leave my name out of it.”
“Like you left mine out?”
“Bah! Those were different circumstances.”
As oddly interesting as this spat was, light flickering through the slats in the blinds caught my attention. Neither of them noticed when I edged toward the window and peeked outside. The wind had risen and the skies overhead danced with lightning. I counted between each flash but no thunder followed, distant or otherwise.
There was something unnatural about it. At each eruption of white light, the jagged streaks scattered outward from different focal points, like cracked glass. They grew more frequent and intense as I watched. That couldn’t be good.
I looked back at the odd couple. They were still going at it. I caught the tail end of what was said, something about the Bubonic Plague and a misdirected hex, but I decided it was better not to know more.
“Hey,” I called to them. “Sorry to interrupt, but it looks like the sky is falling out there.”
Without a word, Moreau turned behind him and shuffled through a mess of objects, before hastening around the table. A large, amber amulet about his neck swung left to right over his maroon robes. In one sinewy hand he grasped a walking stick taller than he was. The thing looked like a tortured limb. In his other hand, oddly, he had a bunch of cinnamon sticks bound together by a loop of twine. I caught a whiff of their warm aroma as he scuttled past.
Alice gave a derisive grunt. “A lot that will do for you if those things push through.”
“One more protection hurts nothing,” he answered and used his stick to catch the loop on the head of a nail over the door.
“It would be more productive to simply come with me and remove the incantation that caused all this trouble.”
“I’m afraid,” he said, turning back. “I can’t do that.”
Alice became very still. “Why?”
“You have your rules, and I have mine, chère Morte,” he said. “I cannot break the agreement I made with the family. It was sealed with blood.”
A dark shadow gre
w about her as her fury rose. “I don’t care if you made a pulp of your own bones for the paper it was signed on. Have you any idea of the consequences if the doors are left open?”
“All too well.”
A dangerous smile spread across her mouth. “Have it your way. You have angered many spirits in your time. It will be so satisfying to finally claim you when they finished you off.”
He met her gaze head on. “Je suis sûr.”
Well, this was going gangbusters. Clearly these two had a colorful history that was interfering with the problem at hand. Not that I had a full grasp of it, but I had the gist.
Bad things about to happen.
Not much time to fix it.
Partially my fault.
Two raging entities blaming each other.
No resolution in sight.
Actually, it was a lot like an argument between my mother and Nana. It even had two languages…and a few extras.
“Isn’t there a loophole?” I asked.
My voice broke the impasse and Moreau blinked.
“A loophole?” He repeated the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Right, every agreement has some fine print,” I said. “Your part of the deal was to deadbolt the guy’s soul in a stone box forever. Sure. What was the payment?”
“A favor.”
“He trades in them,” Alice muttered with contempt.
“So, they haven’t done the favor yet?” I asked.
“Pas encore. Not yet. It is to be collected at a later date.”
“Then they haven’t paid yet,” I said, holding my hands up like two goal posts. “That makes you free to, say, override the deal with them in place of another offer.”
He rubbed his chin. “Technically, yes, that’s possible.”
“Sam,” Alice hissed. “I am not permitted to offer favors to someone like him.”
“But…aren’t witch doctor’s more like healers? Like shamans?”
She snorted. “He’s dabbled in so much bad medicine, he’s more like the dark spirits witch doctors ward against.”
Moreau glared at her, gimlet-eyed.
I scratched my head. “If you can’t do it, what about me?”
Moreau’s eyebrows rose with such interest I became uneasy. “A favor from one of your kind? Oui, that would be more valuable.”
“No,” Alice’s voice was sharp.
He gestured in my direction like a caterer offering a plate of hors d’oeuvres. “He is young, but he is of consenting age. And it would solve our little problem.”
“Moreau, he doesn’t know what he’s offering. He doesn’t know what he is.”
“Why does everyone keep referring to me like I’m an alien?”
“Be silent, Sam.”
The ground beneath us uttered a deep rumble and shook with a violence so sudden I lost my feet. Alice and Moreau were unmoved but looked about with growing concern. I crawled across the shaking ground and peered outside again.
A layer of ethereal green hovered just beneath the black of the night sky. It writhed and twisted like a floating serpent, growing steadily wider. The quaking gradually subsided, leaving car alarms blaring in the street while neighborhood dogs bayed. Several groups of people that had come out on the street huddled close to each other and pointed at the sky.
Why was it when something abnormal was happening people clustered nearby it like ants under a magnifying glass? The sight of them clinched my decision.
I picked myself off the floor. “The ectoplasm is about to hit the fan out there. You say terrible things are on their way. If a favor will save innocent people from getting hurt, then I’m putting one on the table.”
“Very good,” Moreau said with a deliberate nod. “Very noble.”
“You mean very predictable.” Alice shot him an icy look.
“What do I need to do?” I asked.
“Since we are short on time, a handshake will suffice.” Moreau extended an open palm toward me.
I stared at it, heart pounding.
“Okay. One favor.” I hesitated. “Nothing that will hurt others though.”
“But of course.” There was a glint in his eye I didn’t like.
“Sam,” Alice warned. “You don’t want to owe someone like him.”
A tremor ran beneath our feet and faded off.
“I don’t see much of a choice.”
I strode forward and took his hand. A shock, like a static discharge, zapped me on contact.
“Fool,” Alice mumbled behind me.
Moreau released my hand and clapped his together. “Now that this is settled, I will see to my end of the bargain.”
He started back behind the table.
“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Your end of the bargain is at Sunny Oak Hills.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, looking through a pair of cabinets. “You will need to…how shall I say it? Use your gift?...to close the gateways. Once I dispose of the incantation it is at your leisure to remove the soul within.”
He pulled out a vial of indigo liquid with what appeared to be a wriggling worm inside it. “Et voilà,” he crooned. “Please, go on ahead. I will arrive momentarily.”
“The thing is I left my truck back there and—” Alice appeared at my side. I cringed back. “No, no, no!”
It hurt worse the second time, like freezer burn on the inside of every vein. At least I knew what to do this round and didn’t have the added bonus of asphyxiation.
“For the love of hot dogs with cheese,” I gasped, rubbing the frost off my skin. “Boundaries, Alice. You’ve got to ask permission before doing that to a guy.”
In the hush of the graveyard, her silence was thunderous. I looked up to find her staring intently ahead, a deer caught in headlights. I followed her gaze to the mausoleum where a man leaned against the cement wall, casual, as if he waited at a bus stop. He wore jeans and a black leather coat with long, flaming red hair tied neatly behind his head.
He sent a side-long glance our direction and winked. “Hello Alice. Been a long time.”
Chapter 7
“Sebastian.” She whispered the name as she might a curse. “You can’t have been given permission to come for the soul yet.”
“Not yet, but your little misstep gave me a free pass.”
“That will be rectified soon enough. Go back now before your presence is known.”
“And cut our reunion short?” he grinned. “But we have so much catching up to do.”
“No. We don’t.”
Who was this bozo? The guy had all the appeal of a stalker. He seemed human, but the eyes were wrong. They didn’t look. They slid, and when they did, the color changed. Deep red when he watched Alice, venomous green as they touched on me.
“It’s not like you to use one of His favorites for your work,” he said as if he found the sight of me repugnant. “I thought you avoided them, given your history.”
“I do. This was a special case.”
“Right,” he said and thumbed at the graffiti behind him. “Because of the interference.”
He came away from the wall and moved down the steps. He took them languidly, one at a time, staring at Alice like a roast beef dinner after a long afternoon.
“You look different. Pale. I liked how you looked before. When you spent your time with me.”
Alice didn’t blink but I could sense something from her, like an exposed nerve. I don’t know why it bothered me. Being Death implied she was already dead, right? So, this guy couldn’t really harm her.
The thing was, I felt absolutely sure he could.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
He circled her, slowly. “And how goes your redemption?” He sniffed the air about her. “Cold. Numb to taste and smell. Denied breath and blood. My, how they love to make humility hurt, am I right?”
“I’m not going back, Sebastian.”
An ugly, sinister expression flashed across his face before the good-humored look returned.
“Why not? It wouldn’t be like before,” he said. “You have a lot of experience above ground now. He’d make you a lieutenant at the least. No one would get to taste you anymore.”
Okay, I’d heard enough.
I stood up. “Listen, guy, we’ve got business here. It’s about time you buzzed off.”
“Sam, be still,” Alice ordered. Her gaze never moved from Sebastian.
His head sunk low as he examined me, a crocodile eyeing a fawn who sipped at the water’s edge.
A sneer turned on his lips. “This one doesn’t know what he is yet, does he?”
This again. Wonderful.
“Leave it be, Sebastian.”
He took a step closer. “How delightful. I’ve never met one before the call. I can see why you chose him. I mean, no questions asked, right? Not like the ones who know enough to doubt you.”
He cocked his head to one side and spoke to me as he might an ignorant child. “Don’t you know who that is, little one?” he said with a nod towards Alice. “The last time she was close to one of your kind, his head ended up on a platter at her daddy’s birthday party. She used to be quite a dancer.”
Anger was an uncommon sensation for me. Annoyance, yes, all the time, but rarely anger. This guy got me there faster than an inflammatory news cast.
My hands balled into fists. “I think you should get out of here while you still can.”
Who knew where all this bluster came from? I was never a fighter but this was a bully. Plain and simple. He enjoyed pain.
He chuckled at my threat. “Please. You’re not even venerated yet.”
“I don’t need to be, uh—” What word had he used? “—vaccinated. Anyone can see how weak you are.”
This was the part where the bully was supposed to take a swing at me, miss, and wind up with his face in the mud before weaseling away with vague threats of retribution.
Sebastian’s lips peeled away from his teeth in a silent snarl and I realized with cold certainty that it wasn’t about to go down that way. I ought to run, but I didn’t. Once in a while there came a fight you shouldn’t duck. This was one of them.
I stood my ground.
He came at me, faster than I could blink. I expected a blow to the guts or temple. What happened was much worse.