Water of Souls

by Eli Constant

  My purse is in the Bronco. I leave dad’s watch on the ground to mark where the body is and I go and get my phone. I’ve set the watch’s alarm to go off in a few minutes so the shrill beep will lead me back.

  I scroll through the address book until I find Terrance’s name. I finally got smart after being kidnapped and held in a cage and I put his cell phone number in my phone as soon as I was released from the hospital. It beat the hell out of calling through the station and arguing my way into talking to him. That new girl they’d hired to man the phones is not the most cooperative person in the world.

  “Tori, what’s up?” Terrance skips the niceties.

  I sigh. “Don’t ask me how I know, just get over to Jim’s bar. There’s a body buried in the vacant lot next to it.”

  “A body?”

  “A woman’s body.” I hesitate and then decide ‘what the hell; go big or go home’. “Her name was Maggie Smythe. She had a son named Jacob.” I bite my lip, thinking about Maggie’s request that I find her son. “You should find him. Maybe he knows something. He was eight when she was taken and killed, but I don’t know what year that was. Although her clothes were pretty out of date, the kind of things that were for sale during the war. I remember my grandmother still wearing that sort of thing well after the war when I was little though. People hang onto things, so the body could be newer than that.”

  “All right,” Terrance’s voice sounds suspicious, but I know he believes me. Someday, I’m going to have to tell him the truth. That day is not today though. “We’ll be there soon.”

  The line goes dead against my ear. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself protectively. For some reason, my thoughts venture to Liam. I wonder why he hasn’t returned. I wonder where he’s gone. I wish he’d told me he was leaving.

  “Tori, are you okay?” Kyle is standing in the doorway of the bar calling out to me. I might as well warn him that the cops are on their way.

  Chapter Five

  The vacant lot has become daytime, daytime before the war that is. The standing lights cast artificial sun across the world like the gods clapping things into existence with only their force of will.

  I could see the other uniforms, aside from Terrance, casting me dirty looks—as if I’d made up a murder victim to keep them from going home to their warm houses.

  The body was buried deep, nearly ten feet down. I yelled at the diggers as they got closer, warned them not to damage the evidence. I was the crazy woman yelling into the night. They didn’t listen to me, not until Terrance gave the same orders to take care. I was offended, but I shouldn’t have been. He had the badge, the authority. My authority on the matter wasn’t something I could easily flash around like a badge. Even if I did have it written out on a badge or a nametag or whatever, flashing it would equate to a death sentence.

  From start to finish, it took four hours to dig her out. When they finally glimpsed the bones, they were stunned. Even Terrance.

  It was one thing to give him a clue here and there, to have a ‘hunch’ and question someone like Jim; it was quite another animal to randomly identify the burial plot of a victim, know the victim’s name, and details that were so outside the realm of my personal knowledge that I’d be proven a raving lunatic if I hadn’t been... proven right.

  “Jesus, she was right.”

  “Fuck, think she did it?”

  I can hear the whispers of the people still down in the grave.

  “Look at the bones, look at what’s left of her. She’s been down here for a long time. I doubt Ms. Cage was even alive or if she was, she wouldn’t have been old enough to kidnap and kill someone.”

  “Then how in the hell did she know the body was here?”

  Terrance put a stop to the speculation. “All of you, shut your traps and get on with your jobs. It’s ten o’clock and I for one would like to get home to my wife and kids.” After he admonishes the officers and county morgue staff, he walks over to me. Slowly, and with a thinking expression across his face.

  “Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer, Terrance.” I say the words before he’s even near enough to properly hear them. He does hear them though. His eyes meet mine and they say all the things that cannot be said.

  When he’s next to me, he turns and leans against the Bronco. I’ve moved it to the vacant lot, the exact space where Braeden’s car had been last year. I did it before the cavalry arrived, before they could tell me not to.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Tori. I’ll give you a month to figure out how you want to say it, but you are going to say it. You’re going to tell me how you know things, how you rescue four girls from being sold into prostitution, how you find a woman’s body buried over three yards underground.” His voice is even and certain, as if he’s thought about the words more than once and honed them to perfection.

  “I can’t tell you—”

  He interrupts me. “Tori, I don’t know what it is, but I can promise you one thing—whatever it is, I’ll accept it at face value. I’ll believe you and we’ll move forward.”

  “Terrance, it’s not that I think you won’t believe me.” I pause. I’m not always good at thinking my words through. I’m often too impatient for that. Although, with how long Kyle and I are waiting for sex, you’d think I was Mother Theresa-esque when it comes to patience. “It’s that I don’t know what you’ll do to me if I tell you the truth. I don’t know how you’ll react.”

  The police chief is quiet for what seems like a never-ending moment. He stares at all the activity, at the bones of Maggie Smythe being delicately lifted from the pit that has been her resting place for far too long. “I don’t make promises lightly, Tori. Maybe you know me well enough to know that already, maybe you don’t.”

  “I know you well enough.” I murmur, my gaze moving to stare across the vacant lot. Everyone will just see the bare skull being lifted, but I see Maggie’s face. Her beautiful, lovely and pale face.

  “Good. Whatever you tell me, I’ll believe. Whatever you tell me, I’ll continue to count on you. I may not know your sins, I may not have them numbered one-by-one in my brain, but I know you. You have helped me on no less than a dozen cases since you took over your father’s funeral home. Sometimes, it has been the smallest detail that put us in the right direction. Other times, you saved children, Tori. You singlehandedly saved four little girls. Can you imagine their fate if you hadn’t found them?”

  “I had help.” My voice is still a low hum. My head is buzzing. It is not just Terrance’s words, it is the fact that Maggie has finally, fully been released from the prison. I feel her spirit become free from its chains. In the distance, I see her materialize only for a moment. She is gazing down at her bones. There is a peace and calmness about her. The faintest of whispers sounds against my left ear. A reminder to find her son.

  “Yes, you had help. Just like you have been a help time and time again.”

  “Terrance, it’s not so easy as that.”

  “Tori, it is.” He stands up and turns to me. “It is just that easy if you let it be.”

  I nod at him. “I’ll think about it, Terrance.”

  “And I’ll give you a month. I’m in this profession to find truth. And I need your truth. I think, after all this time and faith, you owe me that much.” He turns away and he walks back to the crime scene. Halfway there, he turns back around. “Go home, Tori. We’ve got it from here.”

  I know I’ve been dismissed. He wants my honesty and I don’t know if I can give him that. I’d give my life to save someone, but letting my truth be known would mean a very different sort of dying. An empty kind. Not a sacrifice at all.

  I get in the Bronco and crank it up to move it back to the bar. Kyle won’t close for another three hours, sometimes he leaves early and hands things over to Mikey, but with the police activity around, he might not want to leave. Of course, if the totally empty parking lot is any indication, Kyle might not have a reason to stay tonight. Maybe he’ll decide to close. I leave the Bronc
o in the closest spot to the entrance that isn’t a handicap space and I walk inside.

  I’ve not entered since I found the body. There was something too keen about entering and passing right next to where Jim died against the discovery of Maggie, who has been dead for a very long time, but is a new death as far as I’m concerned.

  “They found the body?” Kyle makes me another glass of water without being asked. I don’t realize how thirsty I am until I see the beads of sweat created by fridge ice meeting room temp liquid.

  “Yes.” The word sounds wet, said around a swallow of water.

  He nods. “That was lucky of you. How could you tell the body was there?”

  “The ground looked disturbed.” I don’t know what else to say. I’m not ready to tell Terrance or Kyle the truth.

  “Ah. Reasonable.” Kyle sounds nonchalant—I can tell it’s an act. He turns away and starts fussing over the liquor bottles, pulling out ones that are nearly empty. “The last person left about two hours ago and no others are going to come in with the cops crawling over everything.”

  “I wondered about that. You might have fresh paint and a juke box, but this is still Jim’s place. He... catered to a certain type of client.”

  Kyle turns and uses the sink to rinse out a rum bottle that’s only got a drop or two left in it and then he tosses the cap in the trash and the glass bottle into the recycling bin. “I don’t want to change dad’s place.” He leans against the bar and looks around. “It’s like his memory still lives in the walls.” Kyle sighs and then smiles; it lacks the usual mischievousness. “But I wouldn’t mind bringing in a few reputable customers now and then.”

  “What am I? Mincemeat?” I reach out and tug on his shirt sleeve. He’s wearing a royal blue button up shirt and a pair of dark wash jeans. It’s fancier than his normal attire, but I like it. His hair is pulled back from his face into one of those man buns that I used to think was utterly ridiculous. Until I saw it on him. A strand of hair has come loose and it’s curling against his forehead and trailing down his cheek.

  Kyle isn’t looking at me; he’s looking down at the counter, at those marks again. He’s playing his fingers over them lightly, as if he’s trying to make out their meaning. When he speaks, his voice is low, different than his normal tone. “Tori, I love you. You don’t have to say it back. I know we’ve not been together long enough for me to say it, but if I didn’t say it, I’d keep holding it inside until it ate at me. I like to speak my mind. I like to be honest.”

  “I know you do, Kyle. I... love that about you.”

  He looks up then, a soft smile on his face. Still, the impishness is gone. He is solemn and changed. “Let me finish what I need to say. I can’t love someone who doesn’t trust me and I know you’re holding back, that there’s something you feel you can’t tell me. You can though. I want to take care of you. I want to protect you. I want to know you. Every part of you.”

  I stay quiet, making sure he’s finished and then I speak. “What if I can’t be honest with you?”

  “I don’t know. I love you, but I don’t know.”

  My heart freefalls into my stomach. A six month relationship shouldn’t come with ultimatums, but I could understand his point. I could understand where he was coming from and where Terrance was coming from.

  I was stuck between a rock and a damn hard place. Shit.

  “Will you come to my place tonight?” I sound hopeful.

  “No, I think I’ll go to Dad’s. I’ll never get used to calling it my house. I haven’t even considered changing the bar’s name.” He moves away from me and continues to clean up the bar.

  “Come over tomorrow then?”

  “After church.”

  “Okay.” I feel deflated, like a balloon that’s floated too long against the ceiling and has finally come floating down to earth. Soon, I’ll be popped by a needle, someone putting me out of my misery. I was so lucky with Adam, lucky enough that I shouldn’t expect to find a love like that again. Yet I do think that I love Kyle. Maybe not in a ‘put a ring on it and keep me’ way, but the love is there. It’s definitely there.

  “Want me to pick up food on the way?”

  If he’s coming over and he’s offering to bring food, then we aren’t broken yet. And if we aren’t broken, then we can still find our way through. If I can pay the passage, which is my honesty.

  It’ll be lonely in my bed though. We’ve spent more nights sleeping side by side lately than we have apart. I’ve gotten used to having his warmth beside me.

  “No, don’t. Leslie gave me enough fish to feed the multitudes on the mountain. Assuming you know how to prep it for cooking? I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Sure. I’ll teach you.”

  “I’ve no desire to learn how to gut a fish, but thanks.” I give a half-laugh that dies so quickly that it barely has lived.

  I sit on the stool and Kyle keeps himself busy. We are only a few feet from one another, but we might as well be miles apart. Strangers across oceans.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  The needle is hovering above my skin, poised to strike.

  As I walk out of the bar and towards my Bronco, I block out the bones and the soil. I block out the police chatter and the flashing lights. I block out everything except the needle’s point. And when I sit down in the car and start the engine, it breaches the surface. It pops me with a sound like a gunshot.

  I cry all the way home. I’m so tired of the dead ruling my life. I fear I will never really live.

  Chapter Six

  I don’t sleep much and when I wake up, I’m sad to find that I don’t smell coffee. When Kyle spends the night, he always gets up before me and starts a pot. His side of the bed is still perfectly made too, the top sheet tucked between mattress and box spring.

  The lack of the roasted, heady scent of brewing coffee floating through the air is a reminder of his words last night. His ultimatum. And I’m so unsure about what to do. It takes me longer than it should to pull myself away from the warm coziness of bed—not the least of reasons is because it’s cold in the apartment—and get dressed.

  I’ve gotten much too used to having him around.

  It’s not good to depend on someone. My family are all gone, save for a psychotic half-brother. Adam is gone. Jim is gone. I worry about attaching myself to people. I worry about Terrance and Mei and Kyle. Will they die too?

  Will everyone that I love die? My grandmother used to say that our gift was also our curse. I always thought she meant because of the rising, because of what would happen to me if I was found out by the wrong person.

  Now though, I wonder if she meant that we are doomed to lives dominated by sadness. Grandmother had to leave her home country, leave Italy. Grandfather Pietro had died soon after I was born and she never pursued love again. She gave the rest of her life to helping the dead.

  When I’m sitting with a mug of dark coffee cradled in my hands, I stare out the window again. To the lake. It hits me once more that there’s something different about it, a coloring that has never existed before—save for when the suicide spoke to me as I stood in the gazebo so long ago. Her family thought it was an accident. I know better.

  Standing, cup still in hand, I move to the window and press my right palm against the glass. It feels like death, but... not. It is something different. Almost like how a body feels after I’ve embalmed it and not before. There is a lack of life fluids. My powers are so much stronger now, for all I know I might be finally feeling the true, underlying essence of Lake Moultrie. There is always some degree of death within creation. Here, it is likely fish trapped beneath the ice, slowly fading away under the trappings of winter.

  After I’ve finished my coffee and my musings over the water outside my home, I go to my hiding spot in the basement of the Victorian and I take out Grandmother Sophia’s notebooks and the ones I have recently filled with teachings from Liam. There’s still so much to learn and now I am
something that even grandmother had no knowledge of. I will find no secrets about how to manage being both necromancer and Blood Queen within the pages of her writings.

  But perhaps, reading them again will help me control the reach of my new powers. Perhaps I can apply the same principles. And I’ve forgotten so very much. Dad taught me everything when my gift first surfaced. I use it actively now, but not in a way that pushes me forward.

  Taking the books upstairs—my grandmother’s leather-bound tattered things and my new findings contained in basic composition notebooks—I cuddle on the sofa, my many throw pillows tucked around my body protectively, and I read.

  Grandmother was the tender age of three when her gift surfaced. Her mother had been watching for it, challenging her mind to accept the impossible so that she would be open to the powers when they came. When she saw her first apparition, she’d not met it with fear, but with purpose in her heart. She’d set it to rest. I feel her three year old self could rival me, sitting here huddled in a cool apartment, twenty-five (nearly twenty-six) and still so much a novice.

  But then again, grandmother had been trained by someone with the gift. She had been prepared from the start. My father did his best, but he knew everything as book learning, not as truth and practice. I am alone in the world, the memory of the rising and what happened to necromancers always on my mind, and it becomes easier and easier to use my gifts to the extent I’m comfortable, but not explore them.

  For some reason, Blackthorn comes into my mind then. The sight of him as I felt his heart in my hands and I squeezed and squeezed until he was nearly ruined. I would have killed him then and there if Sausage Fingers had not interrupted, crashing down on me like a vengeful fog.