by T. G. Ayer
Devi nodded, her brows furrowing as she turned her attention from Vee to her past. “They were almost just as bad to her, but more with words than with physical violence.”
“Wait, I thought you told me he didn’t hit her physically.”
Devi shrugged. “When I finally confronted her she said it was just once. I’d kept a close eye on my aunts and cleared them of the physical abuse, but I saw so clearly what they’d been doing. I guess it helped that I’d taken to eavesdropping. I’d even used a drinking glass against the wall to listen. They gas-lighted her all the time, constant passive aggressive bullshit too. They were also deliberately sabotaging… but that’s a whole other conversation. In the end, I narrowed the perpetrator down to one person: my father.
“Little did I know that his cameras were catching me in action. He hauled me up one day, asking why I was spying on his sisters. I lied, because well, how would I have known he had a video feed to prove it? He slapped me, busted my lip, bruised my cheek. Mom went ballistic. After that, we had a long conversation and made a plan to run.”
“And you managed to leave without him stopping you?”
Devi nodded. “He couldn’t have stopped us even if he’d tried.” Her words were cryptic, her tone hard but edged with something else. Vee sighed, feeling the grief her mother was exuding. She was about to tell her mother how sorry she was when Devi spoke. “So are you going to tell me how you know all this? How did you find out something that my mother swore she’d never tell anyone?”
There was a note of what Vee could only describe as fear in Devi’s face.
Vee shrugged, entertaining a faint hope that she could get away without telling her mother the truth. “I told you. Radhima told me.”
Devi shook her head. “When? She never mentioned that she was going to tell you about her past. She would have come to me first.”
Vee sighed. “It was Radhima. She told me. Only…she didn’t come to you to tell you about it because she only told me yesterday.”
Devi’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. “Oh, Vee.” She sighed and came toward her daughter, placing her hands on either side of Vee’s face. “I’m so sorry, honey. I seem to have forgotten how close the two of you were. In my own grief, I’ve been selfish, forgetting that you too are dealing with her loss.”
Vee shook her head and grabbed her mother’s hands. “No, Mom. I’m serious. This isn’t in my head. Believe me, I thought it was, but you just confirmed it isn’t.”
“How did I do that?” whispered Devi, her eyes filled with tears.
“You confirmed what she told me yesterday. Radhima said that when you confirm the truth, then I’ll know she’s real. I honestly thought it was a figment of my imagination until now. I have to admit it’s a relief.”
Devi shook her head and held Vee around the shoulders. “Vee, I really think you need to see someone. If you’re imagining your grandmother here, now, perhaps you need to talk to someone about it.”
Vee shrugged her mother’s hand off and turned to stare at her. “I’m not imagining it, and I don’t need counseling. I’m telling you. It’s her.”
Devi inhaled deeply and folded her arms across her chest. Vee knew that stance; her mother was resisting, but she was entertaining Vee only until she could show her daughter how wrong she was.
This time she was in for disappointment.
Chapter 19
Vee suppressed the urge to groan out loud.
Instead, she said, “She came to me a few weeks ago. A day or so after the funeral. I thought I was imagining it, and when she kept coming back, I began to get frustrated. But then she warned me that I didn’t have all the time in the world to make myself believe her. She told me to come here. She told me to ask you those questions, and now I realize why. Because that proves she’s real. How would my imagination have conjured up such a story only to discover that I am right? Those kinds of coincidences only exist in books and movies.”
Devi had relaxed slightly, her spine no longer as stiff as a pole. “I don’t know what to say, honey.”
“So you don’t believe me?” asked Vee. She discovered that the feeling curling in the pit of her stomach was hurt.
Devi shook her head and gave Vee a sad smile. “A ghost? I just…I don’t—”
“If you’re going to say that you don’t believe in ghosts, need I remind you that I just killed a couple of demons this morning, a golem broke into my lab a month ago, and I’m an Apsara. I’m not even supposed to exist.”
Devi hesitated, then stared around the room as though she couldn’t look Vee in the eye. “Okay. You have a point there.” Devi sighed and sank onto the sofa. She seemed listless, and reached for her glass, probably just so that her hands were occupied.
Vee glanced at Radhima, who’d remained all too quiet where she stood beside the sofa. She glared at her grandmother then cocked her chin at her mother, silently urging the old woman to show herself.
Then Vee cleared her throat. “She’s here. In this room with us.” Vee’s voice was overly loud, like a bell ringing in a silent room.
Devi straightened, her fingers curled around the glass tightly. “What?” She glanced around the room, then looked back at Vee. “Where?”
Vee looked over and Radhima’s ghost. “Help a girl out, would you?” She sent a pleading glance over at her grandmother whose face had suddenly become implacable.
A few moments later, when nothing had happened, Devi looked up at her daughter.
“No, Mom. Just wait a sec. I don’t know…maybe she’s got her own issues. She’ll show you. Just wait.”
Still, after a few more minutes, nothing happened. No ghostly granny made an appearance.
Devi put her glass onto the table and got to her feet. Her sigh was filled with sadness as she hurried over to Vee. “You see, honey. It’s not real. I don’t know what’s going on, but this thing about a ghost…I just think…I don’t know. Maybe we all just need time to adjust.”
Vee swallowed down the tears of frustration that had built within her. She’d stuck her neck out with her mom, and Radhima had failed to confirm her claim. Now her mother believed she was going off the deep end. Vee had taken a risk and look where that had gotten her.
As her disappointment faded, anger filled the vacated space.
Vee nodded slowly and gave Devi a smile. Then, without another word she turned and left the office. As she strode off to the stairwell, her jaw held tight, she wondered if maybe her mother was right and she had just dreamed this whole thing up. She grabbed her security card from her pocket and swiped it through the card reader at the stairwell door.
“You didn’t dream it up,” said a disembodied voice from beside Vee. The door clicked ajar, and Vee tugged it open, giving the space beside her a dirty look.
“I don’t have time for this,” Vee mumbled and hurried into the stairwell, heading down the stairs two steps at a time. “Can you leave me alone? I stuck my neck out for you, and now I’m probably going to end up in a psych ward because of it.”
“I’m sorry. I can explain.”
“No need to explain,” Vee said as she reached her floor and swiped her card at the stairwell door. “I know now that I’m just making this shit up.”
“Watch your mouth, young lady,” said the ghostly voice.
Vee stormed off down the passage and reached her lab which sat at the end of the corridor. “Look, hopefully, I’m not crazy, and you are real, but unless you are prepared to confirm your existence to someone else, I can’t help you.”
“That’s just it, Vee. Nobody else will be able to see me.”
Vee froze, card hovering over the reader as she turned to stare at the space beside her, where her grandmother’s form was beginning to materialize.
“Now you appear?”
“Nobody else can see me,” she repeated.
“Then why did you appear to me in the room just now? You made me think that all you had to do was show yourself for her to believe me.�
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“I’m sorry, Vee. If I gave you that impression, I’m sorry. It never occurred to me to tell you that. I guess I’m new to this thing too.”
Vee took a deep breath. She had gone on an assumption. She should have asked Radhima first, before she’d demanded she materialize for her mother. She only had herself to blame for that, and it wasn’t fair to be angry with her grandmother.
She sighed and swiped her card through the reader and headed inside the lab. Lights flickered on as she went, the sensor picking up her presence and turning them all on. No point in wasting solar energy.
At last, she faced the spirit and sighed, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. And I should have che— What the hell are you wearing?”
Vee stared at her grandmother’s clothing.
“What? Why? Is something wrong with it?”
“Ma! Those are jeans. You never wear jeans.”
Radhima waved a dismissive hand at Vee. “Since when can’t I wear jeans.”
Vee folded her arms and lifted an eyebrow. “Firstly, you’ve never worn jeans in your life. Unless you wore them and danced around in your closet for kicks,” Vee huffed.
“And two?”
“Huh?”
“You said one, so I’m assuming there is a two coming along. I’m dead, not senile.”
Vee rolled her eyes and rounded the desk, pulling a plas from the in-tray. “Number two was I had no idea that there was such a thing as ghost jeans.”
The old woman let out a bark of laughter, which was cut short when Vee’s phone pinged with a message from Monroe.
Checked SL house. See report attached.
Vee swiped to open the document and read through it. Her stomach churning.
“What is it?” asked her grandmother.
“It’s the report from Monroe. They went to the victim’s house. Nothing. No sign of intrusion, everything appears intact. They found more identification though. A social media chat group that the family had set up to keep in touch. The mother and daughter were going away for the weekend.” Vee sighed as she stared at the report. “One last hurrah as single women, apparently both of them saw responsibility in their future once the baby was born. The victim was a widowed lawyer, but she’d been disbarred for illegal activity and ended up working as a journalist; disciplinary report on that was classified, happened years ago, so Monroe doesn’t see a correlation and neither do I.”
Vee glanced up and looked at Radhima. When she’d been alive, Vee used to talk about her cases with the old woman, who would often revert with good points for discussion. Today, she remained silent.
Vee continued to go through the report, giving her grandmother the gist as she went. “It appears she was using the money from her husband’s life insurance to assist her daughter with expenses. She’d been frugal though. Plenty left in there for the daughter and the baby.” Vee scanned further in the report. “They appeared to be just a normal family, no suspicious connections or activity.”
“So you think this attack was random?” asked Radhima.
“I do. If it weren’t random, he wouldn’t have hesitated when he came across the girl. He would have expected her. Killed her then and there.”
“But that depends on what they were after.” Radhima was staring off into space, and Vee paused. The old woman was a ghost, and she lived in an in-between world, so how did this world appear to her eyes?
But Vee forced herself to focus. “Which could also mean there is something we are not seeing.” Vee sighed. “What could this woman possibly have had that he’d have wanted. He drained her dry. She had no blood left in her veins. She was expendable.”
“So why was the pregnant woman not expendable?”
Vee paused and tapped her fingers on the phone’s face. “The only difference is that one was pregnant. So if we went on the assumption that they were after the baby, which means I could have misinterpreted the demon’s aural language which then begs the question as to why.”
A voice echoed through the lab. “Who are you talking to?”
Both Vee and her grandmother turned to the doorway to find Syama standing there with Akil at her side, her fine-boned face all hollows and shadows. She looked emaciated, though her black eyes gleamed with happiness.
Akil’s tall and lithe frame seemed somewhat thinner too, as if during his journey he’d been starved of food. His pale hair was lank and oily, and dark shadows circled his almond-shaped eyes. The Sirin—an owl-shifter—looked decidedly filthy too, his usual attire of white pants and white shirt could no longer claim to be any other color but…filthy.
Light shimmered off the pair as they unglamored themselves and walked toward Vee.
Syama stepped closer, squinting at the space beside Vee. “Oh, I see,” she said with a wry smile.
“You see what?”
Syama rolled her eyes, one hand on her hip. “I’m not blind,” she said to Vee before shifting her gaze to Radhima and saying, “Hello, Ma.”
Vee scowled and stared first at Syama and then at her grandmother. “She can see you but Mom can’t?” Vee wasn’t sure if she was furious or just done.
Syama laughed and responded even before Radhima opened her mouth to reply, “Humans can’t see ghosts unless that person’s spirit is bound to them. So you can see Ma but your mom and dad and Mac can’t. Supernaturals like Nivaan and Akil can’t either, unless they have the sight. I’m neither human nor supernatural.” Syama nodded, happy with her explanation.
Vee wasn’t. She glowered at Syama. “Do go on.”
Syama grinned, not in the least affected by Vee’s terrible mood. “I’m a hellhound,” she said, her tone implying that it should be obvious. “The role of most hellhounds is almost that of a bounty hunter. We’re charged with finding those souls who have either evaded, or escaped, from the underworlds. I, of course, have been given a different role. For which I’m most grateful.”
“And what role is that?”
“Watching your back.”
Chapter 20
After Vee’s grandmother had left the lab, disappearing with a promise to return soon, and a warning to ‘work on working things out’ with Devi, Syama and Akil had given Vee an update on where they’d been.
Syama rubbed her hands together. “I’m sorry. I had no way of contacting you. We’ve had a bit of a complication,” she pointed a decidedly grubby finger at the floor, “down under.”
Vee swallowed a snort and motioned for Syama to continue before sharing a questioning glance with Akil. He turned away as soon as he could, and Vee found herself studying the smudges on his cheek, the fading bruise on his right eye and his swollen and bruised lower lip.
He seemed to be favoring one leg too, putting more weight on his right foot and holding onto the nearby counter every few minutes. Vee turned her attention back to Syama, giving her a more thorough once-over.
The hellhound’s dull leather trousers were torn at the knees, revealing deep gashes and bruises caked with dirt. Her face too bore the evidence of a beating. Vee’s head began to throb with heat as she recognized the signs of older, almost healed, bruises beneath the bruised cheek and jaw as well as Syama’s own matching black eye.
Though curious, Vee decided it would be best for them to tell her at their own pace. They certainly looked like they’d both been through an ordeal.
“When I received that call to return home for debriefing after the whole nexus-asura-trishula incident, I believed it was just a standard handover of information.”
Vee rounded the counter to where a handful of high stools were scattered. She took a seat and sighed as she touched her own tender bruises. Syama drew closer and sank onto the seat beside Vee, frowning at Vee’s wince. Akil followed too, hovering for a moment before grabbing the seat beyond Syama.
Excellent.
Vee hid a smile at her success. She straightened and said, “And I take it that was not the case?”
“Nope.”
Syama’s face s
crunched and then she winced as blood oozed from her cheek, welling into a glistening ruby bead. She lifted her finger to dab at her wound. She studied the blood on her fingertip then wiped it off on her pants, her face inscrutable, her neck stiff.
“Not in the least. My superior was killed,” Syama said, her eyes shining with tears. “It was a coup of sorts, details of which I am unable to share. Not right now at any rate. Not until the dust settles.” Syama cleared her throat and looked around the room as she blinked away more tears.
Unable to share? Did she mean she wasn’t at liberty to? Or that she just wasn’t ready? Vee had never seen Syama this emotionally affected by anything. And though Vee felt the urge to wrap the younger girl in her arms, offer her some comfort, her gut told her that Syama wouldn’t want such a display of affection.
So Vee stayed where she was. “How did you get out?”
Syama poked a thumb at Akil, who was still strangely silent. He wasn’t usually the talkative type, but this silence…it spoke more of reticence, than of having nothing to say. “You sent him, so I guess I have to thank you.”
Vee turned to the sirin, frowning, but he just pointed a slim finger at Syama who’d already continued to speak. Though frustrated, Vee shifted her attention back to the hellhound. “Akil here came looking for me, snooping around when he found no trace. He had to go two levels deeper into the underworld to find me. Very dangerous trip, but he did it.”
“He got you out?” Vee asked, leaning closer. For all the worry that she’d had, she found herself so grateful that the pair was back with her, more or less in one piece. And still both breathing. She couldn’t handle any more deaths. Or ghosts, for that matter.
Syama shook her head, her short black hair glinting in the white light from above. She usually wore it neatly spiked, but today it was in disarray, longer stands drooping over her forehead, much of it plastered flat to one side of her head as if she’d risen from her bed and forgotten to run a brush through it. Now, she thrust her hair away from her face and smirked. “Nope. He went back up to Patala.”