But Mom was looking at Rhonda. “You think it’s a brand?”
“I won’t know till I figure out what Trench-Coat is.”
“I thought you said he was a soul thief,” Tim said.
“No, that was your assumption. Tanaka just said that Trench-Coat wouldn’t steal his soul,” I said. “Mom, answer me.”
“Calm down, Zoë. You’re not well.”
“You’re not gonna be well if you don’t start telling me what you three are talking about.” I was getting dizzy, standing in front of my sink, in my kitchen, in my bathrobe, bear-claw slippers, and holding two towels with coffee painting the floor a light chocolate.
I was also incredibly thirsty.
Rhonda tapped her lower lip with a black-painted nail. “I think I need to find out more about what Trench-Coat is before I know what he’s done to Zoë.”
Done to me? Was I right in thinking something had changed? Well duh, girl. You went all corporeal while out of body. I’d call that changed.
I stared at the floor as I recalled last night. He’d been corporeal. He’d cast a shadow. He’d held a real gun and shot Tanaka. And then he’d been insubstantial again as he’d chased me in that building.
Oh damn. Damn, damn, damn.
“The secretary called her a Wraith,” Steve said, glancing up from the statue.
Rhonda held up her right hand. “Okay—whoa. What secretary? Wraith? Called Zoë?” She looked at me. “I think I need to be brought up to speed here.”
Mom took the towel and cleaned up the mess as I gave Rhonda and Tim a blow-by-blow of my afternoon in Hirokumi’s office. No one spoke. Not even Tim.
When I was done, Rhonda took the dragon and moved it into the living room. It was still in the house, but at least I couldn’t see it anymore as I tried to enjoy another cup of coffee.
“I’m sorry, Zoë,” she said as she came back into the kitchen. “I didn’t know you’d gone through that. But you should have told us Trench-Coat touched you. I’m going on the assumption that he’s housed or anchored in the Abysmal plane. You were astral. He should not have touched you. That’s breaking the rules. Those are two separate planes of existence.”
I looked at my arm. “Well, he did.” I leaned back against the counter and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. Tired. It was dark outside, moving on toward seven o’clock.
Tim shook his head. He’d moved to stand near the counter again. “Well, that theory about the planes being separated doesn’t really stand very well. Steve and I live on the Ethereal, if your theory is right. And yet you see us. I can manipulate physical things if I wish.”
Rhonda nodded. “Right.” She held out her hand. “Touch me then.”
So Tim reached out and his hand passed through Rhonda’s. “Ah—okay, need a little enlightenment here.”
“I’m housed, or my spirit is anchored, in the physical plane. Your spirit is in the Ethereal. The two may see one another. And even interact, as we do. We can both expend energy to manipulate physical, inanimate objects, but that’s the limit. You ever tried picking up a cat?” She shook her head. “The cat wouldn’t let you. That breaks the rules.”
“So Trench-Coat broke the rules.” I sipped my coffee. It really wasn’t what I wanted. I was craving something sweet. Like orange juice.
“Yes, I’d say he did. And somehow that’s changed you.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “And you didn’t sense or hear anything when you passed through this Mitsuri?”
“Blanko. Ice bitch. Nada.” Orange juice was really sounding good about now. Or maybe a liter of Coke?
“And she called Zoë a Wraith.” Tim shrugged. “I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Wraith before. You think it had something to do with that buildup of power we saw a minute ago?”
I moved my attention from the door of the refrigerator to look at Tim. “Is that what you three were ogling over?”
He nodded. “Just like you can see auras and things when you travel astrally, Steve and I see them all the time, because we live on the plane within which they exist. Normally you’re all oranges and reds (go figure). But this morning you seemed to be more…”
I leaned forward. He was going to say black. I knew he was gonna say black.
“Shadowy.”
Ooh. I was close. “Shadowy?”
“And earlier when you got angry, your colors all flared, and then dimmed. Sort of like a vacuum just sucked all the color out of you.” Rhonda looked around the kitchen, then stepped out toward the living room. “I need to get my laptop and do a bit of research. I have to find out what Trench-Coat is, and what Mitsuri is before I can really put pieces together.”
“Well.” I moved past Tim and into the living room too. “Look up that article on Rollins and Visitar too. See what you can dig up. Oh, and what the hell is a Wraith?”
“Where did you get it?” Steve asked, so I never got my question answered. He pointed at the statue.
“A friend over at the Phoenix and Dragon bookstore,” Rhonda said. “I have little pockets of informers all over the city. They let me know when something odd’s been happening. Said some Asian chick came in the other day asking if they had one. Even called it by the proper name. They had two of them and sold her one. My friend bought the other one.”
“And she just called to tell you out of the blue that some Asian woman bought one?”
“No, it was odd that right after she put the second one away for herself two men came in the store and asked about the same item. When she told them they were sold out, they demanded the names of the buyers.”
“And?” I asked. My interest was piqued, though my initial terror at seeing that thing had hardly disappeared. I eyeballed the fridge again. Did I have some juice in there?
And why was the living room tilted?
“She didn’t give it. Against policy. So they left.”
I shook my head—to make a point but also to clear the cobwebs. Rhonda’s image was blurring. “I’m still unclear why she felt it was important to call you and tell you about it.”
“She didn’t. I called her to see if they’d gotten my Runix de Soul tome.” Rhonda took in a deep breath and looked me in the eye. “She told me two guys had come in. One looked like Vin Diesel in a black trench coat.”
Oh. Hell.
I dropped the second cup just before I hit the floor.
MY head hurt. I couldn’t sleep—as exhausted as I was—so I took a shower while Nona made dinner.
I could smell the aroma of pork chops, fried potatoes, and green beans through the perfumy smell of my shampoo. Of course I didn’t actually have those things in my fridge—she’d gone out and picked them up.
My stomach echoed against the tiled walls.
After a healthy sampling of dinner and three full glasses of orange Tang, I curled up with my SpongeBob slippers and my fuzzy blanket on the couch for a night of Ghost Hunters on Sci Fi with a towel over the statue.
I’m afraid I didn’t make it past the opening credits.
I found Rhonda still in my condo the next morning. She’d curled up on the couch. I had no idea how I’d gotten into my bed, unless Mom put me there. Didn’t matter. I felt better, but I was sore.
Over a breakfast of fried eggs, toast, butter, and grape jelly, and bacon, Rhonda gave me her theory about my physical symptoms as she pounded away on her laptop.
“It’s proven you get pretty darn tired when you’ve been AFB for a while.”
I swallowed some juice. “AFB?”
“Away from Body. You know, like AFK?” She grinned. “Away from Keyboard?”
Oh good grief. “Go on.”
“Well, I’m thinking your astral body, AB, draws power from your physical body, PB, much like a battery. And you have to recharge that battery with food and sleep.”
I nodded. Though I wasn’t sure I was liking or getting the text message abbreviations. “That’s proven, yeah. The longer I’m away from my body, the harder it is to get back in as well. Or I mean, the more painf
ul.”
“And there’s that lethargic aftertaste.”
Uh. Yeah. I nodded.
“I’m figuring in order to make your astral body physical, it has to draw more power. So the battery burns out faster, using up your time quicker. I’ve made some charts to give you a visual representation of your power consumption based on your experience yesterday, calculating for time spent astral prior to going solid. I took this all from the watch upgrade I added yesterday.”
She turned her laptop to face me. My head was still dizzy from the explanation, let alone understanding what I was looking at. “So…bottom line is what?”
“I’d say your endurance went down forty percent.” She turned the laptop back around. “For right now, I’d try not to go corporeal. You were physical for approximately twenty minutes?”
“Yeah.” I knew this because I’d kept looking at my watch.
“You started feeling bad about forty minutes earlier than you should have. See, that’s where we’re fuzzy again. I’m not sure how long you would have lasted if Nona hadn’t of jerked you back in.”
True. Well, I’d experiment later. I agreed and sipped my juice. It was my third glass.
It was really good.
Rhonda scratched at her head. Her stiff, moussed black-and-blue tresses sort of stood on end. On her it looked cute in a just-woke-up sort of way. On me? My bunny slippers would run and hide.
“I’m wondering if that white streak you’ve got going is some sort of physical reflection—like Trench-Coat’s handprint.”
I put my hand up to my forehead. “Is it whiter?”
“Not so much whiter—there just seems to be a few more. I’d say you’ve got about ten or twenty white hairs all in that one spot. It’s kinda weird.”
Hrm. Did I have a bottle of hair color around here somewhere?
Rhonda was staring at me—but not really seeing me. I decided to draw her attention back to the corporeal thing.
“So if I want to be physical when I jump, then I need to pace myself. Not do it in long stretches like I did with Daniel.” Now I just have to figure out how I did it. Was it thought? Desire?
A sneeze?
Rhonda grinned, then looked all shy.
“What?” I finished off my juice and poured another glass. That finished up the pitcher. “What was that look for?”
“Oh.” The goth chick shrugged and toyed with her own glass, rubbing her index finger over the rim. “I can’t remember the last time you talked about a guy this much.”
“That’s because I spent a lot of time with him yesterday. And for some reason somebody wanted me to spy on his conversation with Hirokumi.” I hadn’t forgotten that small bit. I still had a report to write up and e-mail. That client had paid me in spades.
But do I tell him the truth of what I’d seen? Do I tell him about the faceless secretary? Or Hirokumi’s apparent belief that he knew who had killed Tanaka?
I thought again about what Hirokumi told Daniel. In hindsight it sounded to me as if the man had warned the detective. That he had been protecting him. Telling him to be careful when looking for who had killed Tanaka.
“That bad, huh?”
I blinked and looked at Rhonda. “Not bad. Just all a bit confusing. I saw Tanaka killed by a…well, Trench-Coat for lack of a better description. Hirokumi seemed to know what it was and tried to warn the lieutenant. But the lieutenant thinks it was the Reverend Rollins that killed Tanaka, and he did this because Visitar bought something he wants.”
“Oh.” She held up her finger. “I almost forgot.” She stood and retrieved her black book bag from the couch. It was decorated in hand-painted skulls and arcane symbols. I had no idea if the symbols meant or did anything. They did look kinda cool.
She fished out an Atlanta Magazine and handed it to me. It was the same issue Lieutenant Frasier had had. “Your mom had this. I read the article.” Rhonda returned to her chair, her book bag now occupying one of the empty chairs. The larger of the skulls stared at me over the table.
I thought about offering it toast.
Checking the table of contents, I flipped to the cover article.
Not that I needed to. Rhonda had every intention of filling me in on what she’d found.
“Apparently there is something—the what is not exactly given in that article—that Rollins is furious about Visitar buying. Actually, the article says Visitar acquired the rights to whatever it is, not purchased. So I’m thinking it’s like an intellectual property or something.”
I skimmed the article, making plans to read it better later. Rhonda was right. It was almost as if the reporter skirted around revealing what it was, or just didn’t know himself. My bet was that the Reverend didn’t want anyone to know. Which, of course, just hooked that old curiosity problem of mine.
Daniel obviously didn’t know what it was either. Or so I suspected. If he did, I believed he would have mentioned it. But he was convinced of Rollins’s guilt.
Me? I wasn’t sure. I knew Rollins himself hadn’t killed Tanaka. But had he hired someone to do it, and that someone had sent in the bald spook?
I stared at the article’s lead picture of Rollins. The camera angle was sort of warped, as if the photographer had been lying on the ground aiming up, which only made the man look taller. Behind him was his church, a monstrosity rebuilt out of an old Target building. I’d never been inside it, but I’d seen it. Couldn’t miss the neon signs off of 85 North just outside the city’s perimeter. OTP.
The Word, he called it. And that’s all there was of the name, except for a neon red cross above and between the e and the w. Made the thing look like it was on fire.
Rollins wore his usual tailored suit with his trademark blue shirt and white collar and cuffs. The cuff links were tiny crosses (oh how gauche) and his tie was red. Not the bright red of his church’s “flaming cross,” but red enough to make me think of blood.
I thought about this man hiring a killer. I could see it. Though I wasn’t so sure I was ready to believe the good Reverend would hire a demonic one.
Rhonda’s friend claimed she’d seen Trench-Coat, which made him corporeal. And if I’d not done the trick yesterday, I’m not really sure I’d believe it myself. But the friend reported there was someone else. Unfortunately, Rhonda’s friend couldn’t describe the other guy.
She was a Vin Diesel fan. Couldn’t see anything else.
I’d have noticed. Unless the other guy looked like Brad Pitt, then I’d have been in trouble. With the state of my underworked libido, I might have jumped over the counter at him.
I preferred cute little blue-eyed detectives with hair.
Thinking of Rhonda’s friend brought the memory of the artifact back to me. I sat up and looked around the room. “Where’s that thing? Did you smash it up like I asked?”
“No, I didn’t.” Rhonda took the magazine from me and started leafing through it. “I brought it here to protect you from Trench-Coat, just as I said.”
“Uh-uh.” I stood and picked up my plate. “I want it gone. What if I’m out of body, and that thing tries to eat me like its cousin did?”
“Zoë.” Rhonda put down the magazine and stood. She grabbed a few plates herself. “It’s unofficially called a soul cage. It won’t eat you. And it’s triggered to the person lighting its tongue. If you told it to protect you and lit it, then it would. Even if you went OOB. It wouldn’t see your own astral self as a threat. Even a Wraith can use it.”
I stopped in the middle of the kitchen and walked back to the edge of my dining area. “So you found out what a Wraith is? Am I it?”
She nodded, holding up plates. She looked very calm. Calm is good, right? “By all the definitions I found of Wraiths, I’d say so. But that’s a generalization. Not all astral Travelers are considered Wraiths.”
“But I’m different?”
“You are now. People who astral travel, or bilocate, do only that. You’re a Traveler that can become visible to the living, Zoë. That makes you a c
andidate for Wraithdom.”
I heard it then, the slight catch in her voice. There was something she wasn’t telling me. Something oogy. “Rhonda…”
“That’s all I know for now, Zoë. Mitsuri was right in pegging you. For now. You’re a Wraith. Which if you think about it, is kinda cool in a dark and sexy way.” She smiled. “So, don’t worry about the soul cage. It won’t eat you, unless someone sets one on you like Mitsuri did.”
Right. “You didn’t see what it could do.” I set the dishes in the sink. Wraith. I’m a Wraith. Well, it did sort of have that sexy, superhero sound to it. I yawned. Yeah, me the mighty Wraith, who wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
I eyed the refrigerator. Did I have any juice left?
“No, but I’d love to!” Rhonda moved to the sink and started scraping off the remaining food into the garbage disposal. “I mean I’d love to see what it does to the actual intruder, you know? I mean, I’m glad you didn’t get caged, but…” She paused, and I heard the clink of utensils on ceramic as I opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of grape Kool-Aid I’d made the day before.
“But,” I started up as I set the pitcher on the table, “if I had, then I could have given you a firsthand description of what happened.” There weren’t any clean glasses on the table, so I just tilted the pitcher and drank from the spout.
“Well I’m not saying I’d want anything icky to happen to you, but if you’d have been…ZOE!”
Her yell startled me and I choked. Grape Kool-Aid dribbled down the sides of my mouth and onto my tee shirt. I coughed, set the pitcher on the table, and grabbed a paper towel to wipe the spill. “What the hell was that for? You scared the pooh out of me.”
“My mom would have killed me for doing what you just did. That’s gross.” She stood in front of the sink, her eyes wide again. In fact, I’m not sure I liked the way she was looking at me. “Zoë, why are you drinking so much?”
After tossing the wet paper towel in the trash, I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just thirsty.”
“Maybe you should go to a doctor about that. It’s not normal.”
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