by Laura Bickle
“Leslie’s going there? How is she doing that?” Anya asked.
“Based on what you’ve said, I would guess that she doesn’t mean to. Some people, through sheer will or by accident, can slip into the astral while dreaming. You’ve described her as appearing in a sleepwalking state, so I’d suggest that it’s not intentional.”
“For all we know, she may have been pestering all her neighbors this way for years,” said Katie.
“Probably,” said Brian. He was tapping away at his keyboard. “I’m searching all Leslie Carpenter’s previously known addresses and cross-referencing it with reported hauntings in the regional database.”
Anya blinked. “What regional database?”
“I’ve been collecting reports of paranormal activity and cross-referencing them by time period and location. Newspaper reports, updates from other ghost-hunting groups, those kinds of things. It’s nowhere near complete, but it might be a great tool once it’s done.”
Jules rolled his eyes. “Do you ever sleep, man?”
Brian lifted his energy drink and swished it. “No sleep for the wicked.”
“Just keep my name out of it.” Anya knelt down to scratch Sparky’s belly. The salamander was snoring in the sunshine.
Brian continued. “I did get a hit. There was a reported haunting in an apartment building she used to live in. No details, other than at least two residents moved.”
“If she’s been doing this her whole life, what are we going to do about it?” Jules muttered.
“I don’t think there’s really anything we can do,” Katie said. “She’s probably been doing this for years. She’s not hurting anyone.”
“She’s scaring the snot out of little kids.”
“The world is full of scary things. They’ll cope.”
“They shouldn’t have to.”
“She’s innocent. She can’t help it.”
“Hey.” Brian toggled between screens. “I got something interesting in public records on Leslie Carpenter. Guess who’s the mortgage holder on her house?”
Anya shrugged. “Surprise us.”
“Miracles for the Masses.”
“Hope Solomon’s operation.” Anya blinked, absorbing that bit of information. Her thoughts struggled to reframe Leslie Carpenter: Was she a victim, or was she in league with Hope’s shady dealings?
“Perhaps she isn’t as innocent as you thought,” Jules growled.
Anya held up her hand. “We don’t know yet. Hope’s got some strange tricks up her sleeve. I was at her office yesterday, and accidentally-on-purpose released a ghost she’d been keeping in a jar on her desk.”
“What kind of jar?” Ciro asked.
“Something like this.” From her purse, Anya pulled the plastic evidence bag containing the fragments of the bottle she found at Bernie’s house.
She handed it to Ciro. He unzipped the bag and held the fragments with a quivering grip. In the early-morning sunlight, the glass and crystal glittered like rock candy.
“Oh,” he said, peering through his bifocals at them. “This is unusual.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a trap for spirits.” Ciro’s attention focused on her. “Let me explain. Are you familiar with the concept of the witch ball?”
Anya shook her head, but Katie piped up: “They’re orbs made of blown glass, with strings of glass on the inside. Sometimes antique fishing floats are used. They’re hung in sunny windows. The theory is that evil spirits have to count the filaments before they can come into the house, and that they get stuck in it.”
“Like bad dreams in a dream catcher.” Anya visualized the circular hoops spiderwebbed with woven fiber and decorated with feathers and beads. “Bad dreams get hung up in the web, and good ones pass through the hole in the middle.”
“Exactly. Only nothing gets out of a witch ball.”
“The spirit jar operates on a similar concept,” Ciro explained. “Only, these are much more powerful. A spirit has to count all the facets of quartz to escape. The quartz also acts as insulation or protection for the spirit. They’re also called witch bottles, genie bottles, reliquaries… you get the idea. An accomplished sorcerer could use the bottle to control the spirits trapped within.”
“How are they made?” Anya asked. “I get the idea of spinning a dream catcher, or blowing glass for a witch ball. But Forensics says that this crystalline structure is pretty much impossible.”
Ciro smiled grimly. “It’s old magick. Very old. It dates from even before the time of Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights. One theory is that the geodes found in nature are vessels that hold earth spirits. Once the geodes are broken apart, the spirits were free to wander the earth.” His eyes narrowed. “Where did you find this?”
“Bernie’s.”
Ciro sighed. “Bernie might have picked up the spell somewhere in his travels. That sounds like him.”
“If Hope was giving him money, I’m betting it was for those bottles.”
“I don’t get why she would want them,” Jules said. “Most people do their best to get rid of ghosts.” His expression was unconcerned; he didn’t seem too worried about the fate of the ghosts in the jars.
“They were people once, Jules,” Anya said. “They deserve to be treated with some respect.”
Jules shrugged. “This, from the executioner of ghosts. You pick and choose the ones that deserve to be obliterated. Is that it?”
Anya bit her lip, turned away. That struck too close to home.
Ciro clutched her sleeve, and his grip shook. “Be very careful, Anya. If Hope is caging spirits, there’s no telling how many she has or what she’s doing with them.”
After a long day of sifting through evidence in the DAGR astral projection case, Anya wanted nothing more than to crawl off into her own bed.
Well, perhaps there was one thing she wanted more.
Brian pulled the van into the driveway at Anya’s house. He paused, fingers lingering on the key in the ignition. Sunset streamed into the van, casting long shadows over the garage. The sun was so bright she couldn’t see the expression on his face, only the shimmer of the key in his hand and the slight hesitation.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked. A note of shyness had crept into her voice.
He switched off the ignition. “Okay.”
He followed her to the door in the blinding sunlight. Anya shaded her eyes as she unlocked the door, feeling the sun hot against her cheek. Red sun-shadows dazzled her vision as she crossed into the cool shade of the house.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand as the door clicked shut behind him.
She felt his lips brush hers in the glowing darkness. When she reached up to touch his cheek, it was still warm from the sun. And his kiss was warm, so unlike the cold spirits she swallowed. He felt solid. Real.
Anya pressed her body against his, craving that feeling of heat. Brian stepped back against the door but drew her with him. He wound his fingers in her hair and seared her lips with his, with a heat she felt in the soles of her feet.
Her craving, for this moment, eclipsed the fear she’d had of getting close to another human being. She didn’t want to let go of the moment. She stood on tiptoe to kiss one closed eye, then the other, letting her eyelashes brush his face as she slid up. She heard his breath catch and snag in his throat as her fingers reached in his jacket and planed across his chest.
The salamander collar around her neck stirred.
Not now, she thought, vehemently.
She grasped Brian’s hand, led him down the hall. With her free hand, she worked the salamander torque free of her throat. She hadn’t ever taken it off, but she cast the squirming collar, rattling, on the bathroom vanity.
“You—” Brian began.
She pressed her finger to his lips, pulled him into the shade of the bedroom. Red light leaked from around the blinds, casting stripes of sun and shadow across Anya’s bed. Across from her bed lay Sparky’s dog bed, which he never used, and hi
s toys. She felt a stab of guilt, and turned away to wrap her arms around Brian’s neck.
On one wall, the black portrait of Anya watched over her pearly shoulder as the real Anya tugged Brian into an ornate magick circle painted on the bedroom floor. The circle was unfinished: The south to southeast corners were left open. Anya kicked it closed with the sash of her robe. Once closed, the circle would keep all magickal creatures out. Even salamanders. She didn’t plan on telling Brian how she knew this little trick, how it had been taught to her by the man who’d painted the portrait of Ishtar.
Brian cupped his bare hands around her bare throat. She reveled in the feeling of his hands on her skin as they lovingly undressed her. He peeled her clothes away slowly, allowing her jacket to pool to the floor. Anya managed to clumsily yank his T-shirt over his head, and was momentarily transfixed by Brian’s chiseled abs. This wasn’t the body of a computer programmer; he had the sinewy frame of a soldier. Fascinated, she slipped her hands around his waist, feeling each ripple and twitch.
Her blouse slipped against her back, and the buttons were as hot against her skin as coins on summer pavement. Reflexively, she moved her hands to cover the scars on her chest, but he pushed them away, fingers and mouth exploring each rill and dent.
They fell to the bed in a tangle of clothes. Anya growled in frustration at being unable to unfasten the stubborn button on Brian’s jeans, succeeding on the third try when Brian rolled on his back and let her straddle him, and focus her full concentration on his pants.
“You,” he whispered, cupping her face with his hands. It was the single most loving, permanent, ordinary word Anya had ever heard.
He rolled over, stretching all the glorious heat of his skin against her body. She wrapped herself around him. A slat of sunshine slipped over Anya’s eyes, dazzling her as he moved within her.
In the shimmering heat of the setting sun, she forgot herself. Forgot spontaneous human combustion. Forgot DAGR. Even forgot the salamander cast outside the circle.
She forgot everything but: “You.”
Sun drained out of the day, leaving Anya with her head resting on Brian’s chest in the gray gloom of night. The regular beat of his heart was soothing, loud enough to drown out Sparky’s pacing around the perimeter of the magic circle. Once in a while, his snout would pop up within view as he stood on his hind legs, whimpering. She saw occasional flickers of light from the dog bed she’d placed in the corner of the room, as he patted and played with his Gloworm, one of the few toys he had that responded to his presence. Anya did her best to ignore him, pressing her ear more tightly against Brian’s chest.
Light from the street filtered in through the blinds, illuminating the Ishtar painting on the wall. Minerals worked into the paint sparkled in the dimness, like the quartz in Bernie’s ghost trap. As her face looked over the shoulder, cold, remote, powerful, it reminded Anya of who she didn’t want to be. But she didn’t feel like Ishtar now. She felt warm and safe.
Brian’s fingers explored her naked neck. “I’ve never seen you without that collar.”
Anya pulled the sheet around her neck. “I’ve been wearing it ever since I can remember.”
“So your mom gave it to you? Gave Sparky to you?”
“Sort of.” She bit her lip, weighing how much to tell him. Somehow, here, in darkness, it was easier to tell him, since she wasn’t looking him in the eye. She couldn’t even see the Ishtar portrait from here, that representation of her shadow self. Anya listened to Sparky pacing from the bedroom to the bathroom and back again, a nervous circuit, his toes ticking on floor like a clock. It was time to tell Brian.
Still, some part of her feared rejection, and it took a few minutes more to steady the quaver in her voice. “When I was twelve, our house burned down. It was my fault.… I snuck downstairs to plug the Christmas tree lights back in, and I fell asleep in front of it. When I woke up…” Her voice cracked, and Brian stroked her hair.
“When I woke up, the room was in flames. Backdraft pulled the fire up to the second floor, where my mother was sleeping. She didn’t have a chance.”
Anya bit her lip, listening to Brian’s quickened pulse, straining to hear the judgment behind it.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he finally murmured against her forehead.
“That’s what the priest said. ‘Not my fault.’ But it felt like it. Still does.” Anya rubbed at her nose, which was suddenly running. “The collar—Sparky—is the last thing I have from that life.”
“You grew up with him?”
“Yeah. He’s always been around. I don’t know where my mom picked him up. She told me that he slept curled up in my crib. He’s always been… a guardian. The night of the fire, he pulled me out of the house.” Anya blinked at her blurry vision, feeling a stab of guilt for exiling the salamander from her bed. She lifted her head, listened. Sparky had stopped pacing. He was no doubt sulking in some corner of the house, contemplating which wires to chew. Anya hadn’t thought of having a magick circle cast around the new television, but she considered it.
“He’s lucky to have you.”
Anya frowned. She and the salamander were tangled up together like socks in a dryer. She couldn’t extricate herself, even if she wanted to.
But for just this one night, she relished the silence and the naked chill around her neck as she slept.
Anya slept until the gray light of dawn. She wriggled out from around Brian’s arm and padded to the bathroom. Goose bumps lifted on her skin and she snatched her robe from the bathroom hook.
She switched on the light, reaching for the salamander collar on the counter. She slipped it around her neck, but it felt cold, empty. Panic pooled in her stomach.
“Sparky?” she whispered.
A soft chirp echoed from the bathtub, behind the shower curtain decorated with cartoon rubber ducks. Anya pulled aside the plastic curtain and gasped.
The interior of the bathtub was coated in a crystalline coating, like the interior of a geode. The salamander lay in the center of the tub, curled around what looked like a heap of marbles. He blinked up at her, tiredly, and trilled.
Anya knelt by the tub, reached in to stroke his sides. “What happened? Are you all right?”
The salamander licked her wrist and laid his head back down on the marbles. Anya stroked his side, felt his skin loose and wobbly over his ribs.
Gingerly, she reached down and picked up one of the marbles. It reminded her of the glass cat’s-eye marbles she’d played with as a child. It was rough as the skin of a stone, though, and warm to the touch. She held it up to the bathroom light, let the light shine through its rippled surface.
She nearly dropped it when she saw a tiny salamander inside it, curled into the fetal position.
“Oh, Sparky. What’ve you done?”
“YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT A salamander laid eggs in your bathtub?” Ciro set down his fork.
Anya sat on her couch and rubbed her forehead. Katie patted her shoulder and handed her a piece of cake on a paper plate. On the coffee table, a sheet cake displayed the words “Congratulations Anya and Sparky!” above the cartoon frosted image of a stork. The kitchen witch had a weird sense of humor. But at least the cake was chocolate.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” said Anya.
Ciro’s eyes gleamed with excitement.
A howl echoed across the bathroom tile, and a door slammed. Brian slunk sheepishly down the hallway, video camera in hand. “Did you know that your salamander can slam doors?”
“He never did that before,” Katie said, around a mouthful of cake.
“That’s not surprising,” said Ciro. “He’s likely highly hormonal, so his powers are elevated.”
“Stop pestering him,” Anya snapped. She felt guilty for letting the poor salamander give birth. All alone. In a bathtub. She turned to Ciro. “I, ah, thought Sparky was a boy. I mean… I never actually looked. How the hell did this happen? Is there a Mrs. Sparky?” Questions tumbled over one anoth
er. She was glad Katie had brought Ciro, and was even happier that she’d had the foresight not to bring Jules. Jules would probably try to kill them.
A glint of frosting showed on Ciro’s mustache. “For elementals, gender is really meaningless. You assigned him a gender once upon a time, and he didn’t rebel against it.”
“It’s sort of like angels,” Katie said. “Gabriel is variously depicted as male or female, but he/she/it is a genderless force. Sex is an illusion designed to allow us to relate and interact with them better.”
Anya’s gaze crossed Brian’s, and she blushed. “So where did the eggs come from? I haven’t seen any other salamanders crawling around.”
“Parthenogenesis.” Ciro licked his fork. “It’s actually relatively common in the natural world. Some species of bees, sharks, and lizards reproduce asexually when a suitable mate isn’t around. Komodo dragons do it, too. There are several species of New Mexico whiptail lizards that reproduce exclusively by parthenogenesis. As I understand it, the key thing is that there’s a biological need for reproduction to occur, and no suitable mate of the opposite gender available.”
“This is how salamanders normally reproduce, then?”
Katie cut another slice of cake. “According to legend, salamanders reproduce once every hundred years, and they mate when they feel that they’ve found a suitable guardian. It’s rumored the fires that burned Joan of Arc hatched hundreds of salamanders.”
Ciro wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Hadn’t heard that one.”
“I think that was a Crowley-ism.”
“Ah. That explains it. Crowley was often full of shit.” Ciro wagged his finger before Katie. “Never believe anything he says without independent verification.”
“I’m not Joan of fucking Arc.” Anya pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, unwilling to let the conversation degenerate into a discussion of which member of the Order of the Golden Dawn had the brassiest balls. “And I don’t want to be burned.”