by Stec, Susan
"So how do you get away with not killing your host?" I ask bellicosely.
Gracie's squinty eyes jump from the big puffy pillows strewn around the rug in front of the fireplace, to me.
"I can't kill them, and I won't stop doubling up. The elders can't really charge me unless I screw up," she says and turns to the frigging kitchen again.
Damn her all to hell. This creature is bringing the worst and best out or me. I feel like I'm on a human's amusement park ride. My spine shifts, fingers tingle, and my heart fights the cage of ribs holding it back.
The compressor of an air conditioning unit kicks on. Cool air rises from a vent on the floor beside me. I step over it. The forced air gives me time to gain control of the beast rising inside.
Contemplating the palatable woman on the red couch, I think of my wendigo father looking at my aswang mother with the same feelings. The thought tames my sexual desires.
I clear my throat and ask, "What do you mean, unless you screw up?"
"If my double gets seen with the real human and creates an issue." she says.
My brow wrinkles.
She sighs and continues. "Back when fledglings were left to fend for themselves, a small number developed a depravity, killing—a dispassionate passion enjoyed by the strongest and darkest of our breed. For most, death was rejected. Today, the council placidly feels it's becoming a necessity to kill our hosts. They feel it's almost impossible to pass off two identical, unrelated human beings seen in two places at the same time. So they discourage letting the host live and strongly rebuke those who get caught doing so."
"And no one questions seeing a human after death?" I ask, appalled with the mentality of this creature's benefactors. Yet, here I am the brethren of those who kill for sport.
Gracie laughs. Her gaze juts toward the kitchen even though she's clearly trying to bring her face toward me.
"Ghosts," she says. "A great majority of humans can justify these sightings by believing in spirits, angels, and even demons."
"It is laughable," I say, "that humans cannot entertain the possibility of all otherworld creatures, yet covet a belief in Jehovah that they take to their deathbeds. But they do."
A smile spreads into Gracie's eyes. "Anyway, so far I've been able to double up, stay in relatively the same area, and not attract the attention of local humans, but if I break the anonymity of our kind..."
She frowns at the kitchen.
I smile at her shyness.
"Well, at least there's not a creature that can destroy you," I say, relief in my words.
"Except my own." Gracie's brown eyes lock on mine.
I freeze, shaken with a fear I haven't felt since leaving home. "And the outcome of your conduct doesn't concern you?" I ask. "Wouldn't it be safer to just—"
"No! Zeus and Artemis would roll over in their godly slumber! Consumption of the Identical be damned if they think they can make me a more hideous mythological-known creature than I already am! Or turn me into something with a tenth as much freedom as punishment for my beliefs, like a marble statue on which doves coo, mate, and defecate. I'd rather be consumed by my brethren and Become No Longer."
There is no room for discussion in her voice, and my anxiety is worse than personal fear. I have never been this concerned for another. I feel an overwhelming need to protect her . . . IT... "Damn it all to hell!"
Gracie jumps inches off the couch.
"Do you have a name? I mean a real name?" I blurt out before I can catch my words.
She turns away, but not before I catch a sadness enter her eyes. "I'm a myth, no name, sex, identity, nothing . . . until I dress in another."
"Well, what say we give you one?"
"A name?" She turns Gracie's eyes on me, lipid pools threatening to spill over her lower lids. "How about Penny? Penny Dreadful?"
I pull her into my arms. "First of all, you're not dreadful. And you're something pretty important to me, even without a human covering your body." I tighten my grip and run my lips up her neck and over her ear.
The host sucks in a breath. Gracie moans and exhales.
"Can you feel my arms around you?" I ask, pecking kisses behind her ear. "Are my lips warm on your throat?"
"Yes," she gasps.
I whisper, "I want to call you Luna. Luna Bella, because you're the moon clothed beautifully in darkness."
She whimpers and leans into me, her back facing the kitchen. "If we go any further, you may not be able to control yourself. We might lose Gracie."
"Would that be such a bad thing?" I ask, and kiss her host's temple.
"But she's special," she says, eyes closed and lips parted.
"They are all special," I pant, my lips covering hers.
Gracie's eyes pop open. Both hands on my chest, she pulls away and shakes her host's head fiercely. "Not like Gracie! She's a witch . . . and a necromancer."
I look down at her. "How do you know this?"
"Her grandmother is standing by the kitchen door."
NINETEEN
Gracie
"Why didn't you tell me you were seeing ghosts?" Gaire says. "I thought you were trying to avoid me."
I'm under the shower in Gracie's bathroom. Gaire is in her bedroom outside the open door, and he's shouting over the sound. The water is so hot, steam rolls over the top of the shower curtain and coats the overabundance of glass candle holders Gracie has lined on a shelf that circles the back of the claw foot tub.
I felt Gracie's love for her bedroom the minute I entered. It's located on the northwest side of the house and probably gets a fair share of beautiful sunsets. It's painted sage with cream trim, and has large French windows that open inward. I could almost smell the small garden circling a large magnolia tree with roses, jasmine, and lavender, just outside the windows.
The bed is high and puffy, with a flowered cream and peach duvet and sage striped sheets. Pillows are propped against a lovely metal headboard. A book of poems by Anaïs Nin shares a place with a soft colored stained glass lamp on a nightstand by her bed.
When I first entered the bathroom and opened the linen closet to look for a clean towel, the soft smell of peaches greeted me. I could love and die in this room.
I scrub Gracie's hair with lavender scented shampoo for the third time before slathering it with conditioner.
"The conversation was important to me," I shout back, "I didn't want to interrupt, but it seems I did exactly that."
"So the fact that this ghost can communicate with her granddaughter doesn't bother you?"
I don't answer. It bothers the hell out of me, as Jane would say, for several reasons. I shut off the water, pull one of the towels off the rack inside the shower and wrap it around my hair.
"Can you hand me that terry robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, please?" I reach out from behind the stark white shower curtain.
Gaire growls, and a few seconds later the robe plops over the top of the shower curtain instead of into my open palm.
"Thank you. Be right out," I say, as I finish scrubbing my body with the other fluffy white towel.
"You're not going to answer me?"
"Well, it's a very open-ended sentence," I calmly say and then wing the rest of the answer, because there is no need to make him anymore tense about my biggest concern, at the moment.
"I mean, you could be asking if I'm afraid of ghosts—that answer would be no. You could be concerned that the ghost hears, and most of all, sees everything we do. Now I can see where that might make you uncomfortable with intimacy, so I just didn't mention Nan right away."
There, not actually a lie. Damn, I'm getting really good in a tight situation—thank you CeCe and Jane!
I step from the shower, robe cinched around my waist and a towel wrapped around Gracie's long brown hair.
Gaire is across the room, standing in front of the bedroom windows, staring out into the back yard.
While I slather lavender body lotion on my legs, I cautiously change the subject. "I hope
Mother is Down Under. I really should have checked in with her sooner. Making her worry is not nice." For the love of a still warm body, I sound like and adult trying to teach her child a lesson.
"I don't see why you feel the need to do this at Purgatory," Gaire says mulishly, as he struts across the bedroom, and opens the bathroom door wider.
I grab a blow-dryer off the wall and flip the switch to high.
"Come on, you know I have to hit the sewer to check in. I meet Mother there all the time. And putting it off will just attract attention," I shout at Gaire as the blow-dryer tosses my host's hair around. "Besides, we agreed, Purgatory is the perfect place to tell Mother, and anyone who will listen, that you died in the fire with Vuur."
I flip my head over to reach the last of the dampness, fingers raking hair forward until I feel it's dry, and then thumb the off switch and hang the blow-dryer back on a hook by a shell-shaped sink. Hiking Gracie's terrycloth robe above my hips, I struggle with a pair of tight jeans.
"What if he isn't dead?" Gaire stands rigid in the bathroom door. "What if the dragon is out there waiting for you?"
Gaire's eyes are locked on my face, not Gracie's pristine-white bra peeking out of the unruly robe. I pause for a second to choose my words. "Look, I was born nineteen years ago looking just like I do today. I've been below and above the sewers doing what I do, and never—"
"I don't want to hear what you did. I'm more interested in what you're about to do. What if you run into the assassin, you know, the dragon-guy you partnered up with to find me and then totally pissed off by helping me get away?"
"You haven't called me Luna once since I got out of the shower," I coyly taunt.
Gaire rests his hip against the door frame, right jawbone fighting anger, blue eyes looking stormy, and fisted hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans.
Trying to make light of the matter is not working. I use Gracie to blow a long calming breath, and then smile at him.
"Sweetie," I use the word sarcastically, "I'm a doppelganger. I can deal with Vuur. He's a dragon—all hot air, fire, and steam. You can't fight smoke with fire. And I do believe I mentioned, several times, there isn't a Down Under creature that can kill me, only destroy my host. Worst scenario, I lose Gracie."
I grin, zip the jeans, and shuck the robe for a black, short sleeved polyester tee. I don't know what he's thinking.
"What about the raping, murdering doppelganger? The one we know is still out there," Gaire says. "You know, the only creature that can kill you, Luna."
I raise my eyebrows and, while Gaire is grinding off molar enamel, pick up discarded clothes, use them to wipe condensation off the bathroom mirror, and then toss the shorts and shirt into a wicker clothes hamper by the tub. My eyes can't help but wander to the crystal balls clutched in the clawed feet on the tub. I smile a Gracie smile.
I hang the terrycloth robe on a hook behind the door. "I doubt the jerk would try to kill me—strict rule, no doppelganger can off another without approval. While the elders won't do a damn thing about what, why, and how he kills humans, he'd be the one with a price on his head if he attacks me, so chill."
"They'd have to find him first, Luna," Gaire rumbles with the tenacity of a Chihuahua.
"Believe me, if they have to call in a ticket to find him, he's toast." Gathering Gracie's long hair, I wrangle it into a hair-tie. "And they will find him, Rogaire."
Completely ignoring the usage of his full name, Gaire paces in front of the bathroom door. "I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not," I carefully say. "My mother smelled you all over me the night I . . . um, tried to seduce you." I scratch a payback mark on my mental notepad.
"And she didn't warn you?" he asks.
"She was very vague."
"Won't she smell me on you now?"
"I don't think so. This is Gracie's home. Her scent is all over it. Besides, I changed my clothes and showered with enough lavender to throw a hellhound off your scent." I stop fussing with Gracie's hair and look at Gaire. "Just don't touch me."
"You test my control, Luna," Gaire says and tries not to smile. The corner of his mouth fights his stern eyes. "I wanted you earlier, and although Gracie's body agreed, you did not."
"Wipe that grin from your face, big guy," I gibe. "You only stopped because Gracie can find out if Vuur is dead. She'd be toast if we went any further. I just need Nan to help me summon his spirit."
Like he wasn't all up on it if I didn't back him down—I scratch up another payback mark.
"Are you sure Gracie-carbon-copy can do this, even with Nan?"
Now he's getting all smartass male-ego on me, and damn it, he's right. I don't know for sure.
"No," I admit. "But Vuur told me his full name. That's all a necromancer needs: a summoning circle and a full name. I'm going to give it a try when I get back from the sewer."
"Even if we find the dragon is dead, neither a ghost nor a carbon-copy Gracie can kill the psycho doppelganger," Gaire grinds out.
"Guess what Nan can do?" I'll be damned if I'm going to admit he's right again. When he just glares at me, I poke him again. "Come on, guess."
He raises both hands and says, "I give up."
"Detect anything dead, or demon-ish, around or inside someone's body." I pause for that to sink in. When he says nothing, I fan my hand up and down Gracie's body. "Hello! Demon-boo-boo over here. Nan spotted me right off. Even I can't do that. I'm taking her with me into the sewer."
Gaire's throat is making sexy alpha noises.
"That does not . . . console me," he says as I breeze by on my way downstairs to pick up Nan and hit the storm drain.
A few minutes later, I step into the cement tunnel behind Gracie's house and wave at Gaire standing on the porch, arms crossed over his chest. Nan is quietly hovering beside me. She hasn't said a word since we left.
As we duck into the storm pipe and make our way to the end of the first tunnel, I inhale deeply. The doppelganger feels at home, but Gracie is scrunching her nose with the smells that I find comforting.
"Why are you helping me?" I ask the ghost. "You know Gracie will be back in a week. I have no intention of stopping that."
As we take a left, Nan says, I'm tryin' to decide whether my granddaughter and I should help you afterward.
I stop and gawk at the apparition. "You mean, you think she'd let me keep wearing her when she gets back?"
Its pitch black in the second tunnel, but my Down Under vision kicks in and I can see Nan's lips move. It's only a few hundred feet until we can climb out and hit a sewer entrance. I hear her voice clearly, but it doesn't echo off the cement walls like mine does.
Honey, we're witches that communicate with the dead. It's what we do. You and your gentleman friend seem to be tryin' to right somethin' needs rightin'. Nan floats ahead of me, and I scurry to catch up. Gracie loves gettin' in over her head. One gander at you, and . . . Well, never mind, girl. You'll see."
My mother's words come back and bite me on Gracie's ass. Do as you wish, dear. I can't stop you. Just remember . . . They can.
"Nan, can others Down Under see and talk to you?" I ask jogging to keep up as the ghost glides along.
Some have, but most can't, and usually the ones that do, they have the gift. Her transparent face leaves a smoke trail as she turns hooded eyes on me. Or wears someone who has the gift.
"Can your granddaughter summon up ghosts that speak to the creatures Down Under?"
What are you getting at, child?
"Okay, it's just that if you tell Gracie about me, and she doesn't like it, I could be in serious trouble if she can somehow take this to my elders."
Nan stops, hovers, and stares at me. She may be a translucent dull image, but I can see the hurt in her eyes.
Well, she says, it looks like you're gonna have to put your trust in me like I've chosen to do with you, now aren't you, missy?
I don't trust anyone, anymore. Must be the Jane in me.
We silently navigate the storm
pipes at a steady pace, one turn after the last, until we come to the exit I'd been searching for; the one that we take to get to a sewer entrance above Down Under.
We head toward the scent of human civilization: air heavy with exhaust fumes, over-used cooking oil from fast food restaurants, hot rubber on asphalt still holding the afternoon heat, trash bins filled with decomposing food, and the smell of humans—salty, sweet, stale, and seasoned with the acrid odor of sickness, minty fresh toothpaste, or lunch breath.
I scurry up a hill, run down a dark alley, and muscle open the lid to the sewer tunnel by Lake Square Mall. We drop into damp, cloying, fetid darkness. I could have used a wish token—would've been there sooner—but spirits can't use tokens, and I didn't want to tell Nan I would meet her at Purgatory. Better I keep an eye on the spirit. I need her.
"Nan, can you tell when a human is dead or alive if an otherworld creature is wearing them?"
No, sorry, child. That's why I wanted you to let go of Gracie's body at the house.
"But you can help me do the summoning of a ghost, right?"
As we talk and move along the ledge, an occasional ray of streetlight comes from sewer drains overhead. One ray slices Nan's center and makes a small deposit. For a few seconds, she looks like a frightful nightlight plugged into the cement around us.
If the ghost is out there and you have his full name, yes, Gracie would have no trouble summoning it, without my help. You're just wearin' her body, remember—might not work. But we can try, dear.
We hear the bar before we see it—riotous ruckus tames to chaotic, whispered echoes by the time it finds us. When I pause, Nan does as well.
Is this where you expect your momma to be hiding? Nan's body is circling mine, head level.
"Okay, hold on. She's not my momma, or even a close relation. She's my appointed guardian, and I am required to call her Mother. Doppelgangers don't have family. We're a demon's blun—"
Yes, child, I know. You needn't explain things to me. I've known as much as you do right now before I was out of diapers, passed it on to Gracie, too.