by Harvey Click
“No wonder everyone’s looking for you,” she said. “You’re a handsome hunk of hunkiness.” The library door started to open, and she put a finger to her lips and said, “Shh.” Her image faded, but Dexter could still see her Cheshire cat grin on the screen.
Grimes put a plate on the table with a sandwich and a pickle. “You haven’t eaten since you got here,” he said. “Liverwurst and mustard, excellent food for the spirit.” He was trying to light a cigar when the woman started to sing:
“When the Humbug of Cinci grows lusty,
he waves his wand long and trusty.
He thrusts it in boys
who bring him such joys,
his scepter shall never grow rusty.”
Grimes kept flicking his lighter, but it wouldn’t work. “Damn it, Letha, I’ve told you a thousand times to knock,” he said.
“Maybe so, but you always keep your thimble open for me, don’t you? By the way, your barn door’s open too.” Letha grinned while Grimes glanced down and zipped his fly. “It makes me sad to think of all the tiresome hours you spend casting your dusty old love spells and hoping I’ll visit,” she said. “And then when I do show up, you pretend you don’t want to see me.”
“I daresay you spend your tiresome hours thinking up new ways to annoy me,” he said. “You’ve succeeded, so you may leave now. I’m very busy.”
“I can see that,” she said. “You have attractive company for a change. Have you warned him about your incurable venereal diseases?”
Grimes finally got his cigar lit. “This is my attorney, Jonathan Harker,” he said. “We’re discussing real estate.”
“Sure, that explains his sweaty tee-shirt,” Letha said with a smirk. “And to think, this disgusting perversity is all my fault. After a man has known me, no other woman can satisfy him. Aprez-moi, les garçons.”
“You’re right,” Grimes said. “After knowing you, no man could find any woman attractive. Mr. Harker, it’s time for you to go to the living room—no?”
Dexter grabbed his shirt and jacket and started to leave, but Letha said, “Sit down. I’ll bet my best pair of lace panties you’re Dexter Radcliff, and I’ve been just dying to meet you. So are a thousand other people, but they’re not as nice as I am.”
He sat down and found two puzzle pieces shaped like long, delicate brushes. They looked like her eyelashes.
“Michael, I really do wonder why you’re entertaining this particular man in your house at this particular time,” Letha said. “If you’re hoping to get your hands on a particular something, you’re a few brain cells short and a couple days late.”
“It’s none of your business,” Grimes said. “Now be a good girl and go haunt someone else’s house.”
“Well, at least your taste is improving,” she said. “This one is much better looking than your gypsy housefly.”
“How would you know?” Grimes said. “You’ve never seen Burne.”
“I’ve seen him many times,” she said. “He sneaks in here when you’re asleep and lifts the thimble off your ruby. Always peeping at your books and your doo-dads.”
“No he doesn’t. He’s unable to enter the library.”
“Your worn-out old spells don’t work on him anymore,” she said. “You’d be surprised what Burne does behind your back. What do you think he’s doing right now?”
“He’s buying groceries.”
“Rumors say he’s buying rat poison,” she said. “You better put on your ears and see what he’s up to.”
“We’ll discuss this some other time. Now say good-bye like a good girl.”
“Good-bye, Michael. Please shut the door on your way out.” Letha smirked and turned to Dexter. “Mr. Dexy, you’re kinda sexy. Tell me, do you like women?”
“Yes, very much,” he said. The fragrance wafting out of the screen made him think of soft skin and silk sheets.
“Michael doesn’t,” she said. “He prefers horrid young men. Did you know you’re in the clutches of a notorious homosexual?”
“That will do,” Grimes said. “I’m asking you nicely to leave. Maybe you don’t want nice.”
He aimed his walking stick at the screen, and Letha giggled.
“Tell me, Michael, I’ve always been curious. Aren’t all those penises hard on your hemorrhoids? I mean, at your age—”
“That’s enough,” he said.
A swarm of black hornets flew from the end of his stick and buzzed angrily around Letha’s face. She smiled and blew them a long, slow kiss, and they dropped to the rug and squirmed on their backs dying. She touched a blue earring, and an ear-splitting ray of pure blue light rang out of the screen. It coiled around Grimes’ arm and made him tremble like a man clutching a high-voltage wire. He dropped his stick and stumbled to his knees.
The shrill light faded slowly like the sound of a bell. Letha grinned while Grimes got up.
“What’s the matter, your arthritis acting up again?” she said. “Look there, your cigar ash is burning a big hole in the rug.”
Grimes cursed and stamped out a fire that Dexter couldn’t see. He picked up his stick and limped toward the screen.
“I can see a second lesson on projection rubies is in order,” he said. “Dr. Radcliff, the ill-mannered witch you seem to find so enchanting is nothing but thin air. Like all women, she’s more illusion than substance. The thinner their substance, the louder they shriek.”
Letha giggled. “Oh, I like that! Your lessons are so informative. Tell me, Dexy, why are you playing with those little old screws and rusty pieces of wire?”
He watched the puzzle tarnish into a pile of rusty scrap. Grimes capped the ruby with his thimble and hobbled back to the table, but Dexter could still hear Letha’s voice vibrating in the bits of bent wire.
“Don’t waste your time playing with this worn-out rubbish,” she said. “I can think of much nicer things to play with.”
Dexter thought of nicer things too. Her silky fragrance lingered, and it smelled good.
“So she made you see old screws, did she?” Grimes said. “I daresay that’s no surprise. Letha is the world’s expert on the subject of old screws.” He banged his fist on the table and made the rusty junk look like silver again.
A phone was ringing in a distant room. Grimes limped to the door and glared back at Dexter. “You’ll never be a warrior,” he said. “You’re too easily deluded by women.” He slammed the door behind him.
Dexter picked up a piece shaped like a little curved dagger. He rubbed off its silvery sheen and saw dull gray stone. The solution to the puzzle was obvious: these were chunks of lodestone. They stuck together like magnets and absorbed the sorcerer’s influence for a while and resembled whatever he willed them to look like. His will is the law called Logos, and his word gives shape and form.
Dexter concentrated and tried to make the crescent-shaped stone look like Mary’s solemn mouth. He made it glow pink like lips, but they weren’t Mary’s. The little dagger squirmed in his hand and smiled at him, plump and pink and sexier than any lips he’d ever kissed. It was Letha’s smile, and it made him remember sweaty silk sheets in faraway bedrooms where he’d never been.
He went to the window and saw the voider crouched beneath a tree with a rock in its hand. Half its face was bare bone, empty eye socket watching Dexter while the good eye watched a squirrel chew a nut.
Its hairy arm swung fast, and the rock hit hard. The squirrel lay chittering in the grass and couldn’t get up. The voider shuffled over and twisted off its head and guzzled blood from the spurting neck like a caveman chugging a can of beer.
***
Bitter Ember had been dreaming of her father mixing up a big bowl of his green healing salve, and it took her a moment to recognize where she was. She was in a lumpy bed in a motel in New York. She wore nothing but bandages and antibiotic ointment except for several places where she also wore stitches. There were enough drugs in her that she shouldn’t feel anything, but she felt every cut and bruise and a deepe
r wound that no doctor could ever stitch shut.
She got up and hobbled to the refrigerator and got out some bread and cheese but didn’t feel like eating. She sat at the table and stared out the window at the parking lot, late afternoon sun slanting low, could be in Canada now driving through the mountains, pretty soon set up camp and spend the night curled up naked against Dexter in a nice warm sleeping bag, too late now, stupid wasted life.
She called Grimes, and at least he answered instead of that fuckwad Burne.
“Fiasco,” she said. “Everyone’s dead, Lizzie, Josh, Hayes, Kane, Naomi and her housekeeper, everyone’s dead except Ryver, and he’s got the Horn.”
“So I’ve gathered,” Grimes said. “I’ve been trying to reach you but your phone’s been dead. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m just fucking dandy. I saw a doctor and she sewed everything up good as new. I charged it on your card.”
“That’s quite all right,” he said. “You may repay me at your leisure.”
“Thanks, Grimes, you’re all heart. So that’s my report. Is Dexter there?”
“Yes, and he’s quite safe.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Don’t be silly,” Grimes said. “You know that’s impossible.”
“Don’t call me silly, you bastard. You know how many dead people I looked at yesterday? You sit there on your ass and move all the pieces, and they go out and do all the bleeding. How many bandages are you wearing right now?”
“I’ve worn my share,” he said.
“No you haven’t. Now let me talk to Dexter.”
“No,” Grimes said, and she could hear that he meant no. “You wouldn’t enjoy talking to him in any event,” he said. “I daresay his feelings toward you aren’t the stuff valentines are made of. Do you imagine he would forgive the woman who robbed his aunt? And now that she’s been murdered, do you imagine—”
“I don’t imagine anything,” she said. “I just want my fucking tit to heal. It got sliced in two, and maybe you can imagine how that feels.” She scratched the itchy bandage on her knee and wanted to rip it off. “My whole life’s turned to shit, can you imagine that?”
“Do I detect a threat of suicide in your voice?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he gave her his annoyed sigh. “You’ve always had a pessimistic personality, even as a girl,” he said, “but it’s time to outgrow these childish pouts. There’s still work to be done, and I should hate to lose you to a foolish temper tantrum. What was that your father used to say? ‘Always remember, Bitter Ember.’ You may continue using my credit card until I cancel it.”
Grimes hung up.
Always remember, Bitter Ember.
She laid her face on the table and wept.
Chapter Twelve
A few minutes before Mark Burton arrived, Toya Jones decided to change her clothes. She took off her blue jeans and plain cotton shirt and put on a silver rayon blouse and blue silk skirt. She had to dig through the back of a closet to find her only pair of dressy shoes. Not her style, but she didn’t realize whose style it was until she looked in the mirror. The skirt and blouse were even gifts from Linda.
Imitating the dead was a natural part of grieving, she thought, especially when the dead person was more than just a friend. She found some lipstick and tried to paint her lips a little more like Linda’s. Not much she could do with all that frizzy hair; it always did its own thing. Her white cotton briefs showed through the clinging silk skirt, so she pulled them off. At least that was something modest Linda wouldn’t do.
Mark had called her this morning to see if she was feeling any better. In fact her head had been aching ever since yesterday’s séance, but she told him she was fine. Then she said, “You’re all alone there feeling miserable I bet,” and he said, “Something like that,” and she said, “Well, you could fix me dinner tonight and we could try again.”
“Try what again?” he asked.
“You know, try talking to Linda again.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said.
“Suit yourself, but she needs us, Mark. We gotta help her through this.”
Those were the magic words to make him say yes. Linda had always said he would do anything for her, and Toya wondered what it was like to be loved that much. Then she wondered if dressing up like Linda was some sleazy unconscious effort to hook Mark. Didn’t make much sense since she preferred women, but she decided she better put her blue jeans back on. He knocked before she had a chance.
She pulled on a dressy gray blazer that Linda had given her and opened the door. Mark stared at her as if he recognized the clothes, and his eyes looked so sad that she felt embarrassed.
“You look nice,” he said, staring at the buttons of Linda’s blazer.
“You do too.”
He smiled, but he still looked sad. Easy to see why Linda liked him so much, thick sandy hair, sensitive blue eyes, manly face that was boyish too.
“I like the jacket,” he said.
Toya followed him to the Miata and said, “Hey, kicking set of wheels.” She ran her hands over the soft leather seat. She didn’t get to ride in many nice cars, and she hadn’t been in a convertible since she was a kid, and that one belonged to one of her mother’s boyfriends who wanted to be Toya’s boyfriend whenever Mommy wasn’t looking. Too bad it wasn’t warm enough to put the top down.
Mark drove fast, shifting gears and handling the wheel like Steve McQueen in a cop movie. Toya drove so badly herself that she’d stopped doing it. A lot of things that everyone else found easy, she found just about impossible. Too damn weird for this world.
“I found out something,” he said. “Last night I drove by that place where Linda said she bought the locket. There was police tape across the door, so I went through a pile of newspapers. Turns out the owner was murdered in the back of his shop. It happened Thursday, probably not long after Linda was there.”
“Jeez,” Toya said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I called the police, but they sure don’t tell you anything.”
“Maybe Linda can explain,” she said.
“I’m not so sure another séance is a good idea,” Mark said. “You had a seizure yesterday, and that’s nothing to mess around with.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “It was just from feeling how scared Linda was. She isn’t able to accept her own death, so she needs our help.”
“Is it really possible to help the dead?”
“Sure it is,” she said. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.”
But she hadn’t, and she didn’t know why she was so intent on talking him into this any more than she knew why she’d invited herself on a dinner date and was wearing Linda’s clothes. All day she’d been feeling like a little bit of Linda was still in her head and the séance was still going on. Too damn weird for this world . . .
The bright evening sun was making her headache worse. She reached in the glove compartment for a pair of sunglasses and put them on before she realized they weren’t hers.
“How’d you know Linda keeps her glasses there?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know, I guess all women do.” She took them off and started to put them away.
“They’re yours now,” he said. “She won’t need them anymore.”
His condominium was near a nice old village a few minutes out of the city. Toya was opposed to expensive new suburban developments, but she liked his clean modern furniture and the healthy green potted plants in his spacious living room.
“Some crib,” she said, thinking some people have all the luck. “Tres chichi.”
“Thanks. Better turn the sauce back on. It’s been simmering all afternoon.” Mark went to the kitchen.
Toya touched the giant TV screen and wandered over to the sliding glass door and gazed out at the hot tub on the deck. She pictured how nice Mark and Linda must have looked sitting naked in the steaming water. She sat on the couch and caressed its soft brown leather.
She glanced at the OSU Buckeye emblem and the framed posters on the walls, ads for ski resorts and beer and Harley Davidson. Kind of dorky, but at least there were a few art prints, a couple Paul Klees and a Picasso, probably Linda’s touch. Toya imagined where she’d put her own paintings if she lived here. Strange feeling, like she’d been here a hundred times before.
Mark came back in with an expensive-looking bottle and two wineglasses. He filled them and handed her one.
“Thanks,” she said. She avoided red wine because it always made her sneeze, but this tasted a lot better than most.
“So where’d you come into all this loot?” she asked. “Don’t you sell insurance or something?”
“I’m an actuary.” He sat across from her, looking uncomfortable like a little boy in a body too big for him. “I get paid for figuring out when people are going to die,” he said. “Give me a sixty-year old smoker with clogged arteries and I can date his obituary almost to the day. But now I’m more interested in what happens after that. I guess that’s your specialty.”
He sipped his wine and squirmed. He seemed to be making a point of not looking at her.
“I don’t even have insurance,” she said. “If I ever get sick, they’ll just haul me to the boneyard. Don’t have much of anything, never had and never will. Born under a no-credit sign, know what I mean? Tried every kinda job you can think of, but I’m all thumbs, too weird for the world. Nobody wants to buy my paintings, so the only money I make comes from talking to dead people. I call it working the graveyard shift.”
She felt a drop of wine dribbling down her lip ring. She licked it off and noticed Mark looking at the silver barbell on the tip of her tongue.
“Like it?” she asked. She banged it against her teeth and grinned.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s very attractive.” He stared at his wineglass.
He looked like a sad little boy, and Toya wanted to cheer him up. She remembered something that always worked, even after their worst quarrels. She went over and kneeled by his chair and unbuttoned her rayon blouse. She lifted his hand and pressed it against her breast.