Hungry Ghost

by Allison Moon

  She took the stairs three at a time, tiny leaps, over and over, carrying her to answers, or at least a passing grade.

  Deep within the recesses of the fifth floor she smelled more mold and some sex. Clearly this part of the library was used for only storage and midterm quickies.

  She wove her way through the stacks to books with no spine titles—just quiet rows of simple burgundy leather bindings shelved tightly together. She pulled a thin one out and flipped through it. The pages rustled like dry November leaves, more at risk of cracking than tearing. She landed on a page that delineated varieties of meat and matched them to words with some recognizable characters and other foreign ones. Lexie tenderly turned to the first page which read “Icelandic Language Guide, United States War Department, 1944.” She replaced the book and pulled out another, this one in Russian. Each book she pulled down was a different language guide, seemingly written entirely to teach soldiers how to communicate with native speakers before they killed them.

  She laughed bitterly, realizing this was exactly why she needed her own language guide.

  Knowing no one would care much, Lexie pulled out every text that had sigils of any kind, whether true sigils or merely characters foreign to Lexie: Norse, Voodoo, Kabbalah, and Santeria piled among Russian, Old English, Dutch, Farsi, Arabic, and innumerable indigenous language guides.

  The light through the sliver windows waned and her stuffed nose became too much. With the same frustration as when she tried on ill-fitting clothes for hours, Lexie quit her meandering search. She stood at once and walked, nearly ran, away from the pointless stacks of dead words.

  She grabbed three of the texts at random and took them to the front desk for checkout.

  When the librarian scanned her ID card, he said, “Clarion. We’ve got another book on hold for you. One sec.”

  He wheeled his chair to the shelves behind him, pulling down a tiny black leather-bound book and adding it to her stack.

  “I didn’t order that,” she said.

  He shrugged and handed it to her.

  Lexie packed the rest of the books away in her bag and walked to the student union, the mystery book in her hand. She flipped through its pages while waiting in line for the cashier to ring up her coffee.

  It was a smallish book bound in plain black library binding. The pages were thin, almost like parchment, and the text was clearly from a typewriter, one of the old ones before they became electric.

  She thumbed back to the first page. In faded patchy script, Lexie read Miss Lucille Shoal. Anthropology, Milton College, Milton, Oregon, 1888. She flipped past an etching of a sunset over a forest scene and let her fingers glide along the smooth pages, finding the tiny indentations beneath each letter strike. Words she’d never seen before, and hand-drawn sigils and symbols that seemed so odd as to be alien, covered the pages. Every so often was a plate of weaponry, home life, or portraits. On page 74 she found a woodcut of a wolf. A large, fierce wolf. A Rare.

  Her fingers grazed the image. The creature’s fur was detailed to the point of obsession. The animal’s face was crude, though, resembling more a Chinese dragon than any wolf she’d known. Its tongue slavered out of its mouth, a serpentine creature in its own right. Lexie tried not to laugh at this caricature.

  Two pages later she found another etching, this of a person, some sort of shaman, their hands palm-down above a table covered with bowls and pottery. The shaman’s head was tilted back, looking at the sky. The inscription below read: Berdache shaman conducting rite.

  Flipping further, Lexie found a slip of yellow paper wedged between two pages. On it was fresh, new print: a series of sigils perfectly drawn. She removed it, flipping it over, searching for meaning.

  A few pages later, she found its mate: a codex. The sigils were paired with sounds written in the standard alphabet.

  “Next,” the checkout lady called, giving Lexie an impatient look. Lexie slipped the paper back into the book at the codex page and rushed forward to buy her coffee.

  31

  Bree’s deathbed wasn’t hard to find, just a fifteen minute run into the south woods. After giving Lexie shit for being two hours late, Hazel, Renee, Mitch, and Corwin ran alongside her in silence, while Jenna and Sharmalee stayed behind.

  The cracked leaves that had caught Bree’s blood were crushed and scattered as though scavenged by small animals in search of sustenance.

  Lexie pointed. “There.”

  Renee and the rest walked to the spot and dropped to their knees, sniffing the ground, trying to glean clues.

  “Whoa,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah.” Hazel nodded. “Weird.”

  Renee sucked in breath over and over, finally letting it all out in one big bellow. “Did you smell this when you found her?” she asked.

  Lexie shrugged. “Yeah. She smelled sour, pungent. I thought it was just death. Or maybe … you know … sex … stuff.”

  Hazel shook her head. “No. It’s not that. It’s her. But it’s … different.”

  Mitch stood and wiped his hands on his jeans, searching the scene for clues. Renee and Corwin followed, but Hazel remained glued to the ground.

  “She smells familiar,” Hazel said, more to herself than to Lexie, who hovered a ways behind. “Like something I’ve smelled at Luscious.”

  Lexie stifled a snicker, a myriad of snarky responses darting through her head. She kept them all to herself.

  “Oh no,” Hazel said.

  “What?” asked Lexie.

  Hazel called, “Renee?” and the girls hurried back to her. “I know this smell,” Hazel said, her face tight, flinching. She dug her hands into the dirt and let her black hair fall over her face. “It’s all circumstantial, but … .”

  Renee crouched to Hazel and placed her hand on her back. “What is it, Hazel?”

  “She smells like Octavia from my work. Thick and creamy and kind of like, yeasty, you know?” Hazel sniffed again. “Like … nutrient-rich.”

  Renee rubbed Hazel’s back.

  Hazel shrugged Renee’s hand away and flipped her hair from her face to expose tear-stained cheeks and red eyes. “Bree was pregnant.”

  32

  Lexie needed to scream, howl, or bleed. She burst past the treeline, to the river where Archer had found her when the water was cool but not deadly. Back when things made sense.

  She carried her knife on her hip, though it wouldn’t do any good against the Morloc. It felt better to trust the knife than herself. She ran along the river and over the deer path into the cabin clearing. Snow blanketed the cabin remains, the meadow, the rocks, and the lowlands beyond. She found her wall, her first great challenge that she no longer even noticed, and bounded up to the plateau, and from there into her tree. It was a return, but it felt like the first time. Tiny flakes of snow found their way between the boughs and dusted her hair and shoulders.

  Lexie skulked into the treehouse and looked darkly at the empty nest. She felt ashamed for the memory of the pleasure the birds gave her tongue. Lexie sat facing the east where the trees thinned out. She held the knife to her chest like a ritual object. The snowflakes clung to her, before their tiny sublimes.

  Bree had been pregnant.

  The girls would be lucky if they were killed when facing the Morloc. It was better than the alternative, the thought of which made Lexie sick. She remembered Bree’s body, blue and red. She imagined a Rare hunched over her. Imagined him picking up the same scent Hazel had picked up on. She imagined his rage, slashing not just Bree’s throat, but her belly also, as if her pregnancy had been an affront to him and his wants. He must have believed he was entitled to her. She shuddered against the thought and gritted her teeth. This, all of this, was too unfair, too perverse, too sordid. It was too old. Lexie was tired of this story. Tired of women in peril, tired of being reduced to her womb and what monsters and ideologues thought should be done with it. She was so angry she spat and watched the wad fall four stories to the ground. She wasn’t mad at
her father anymore, or her aunt or mother. She was mad at the world that put her in this position. It may as well jab a meathook through her shoulder and dangle her aloft like a chicken over an alligator pit. She was mad on behalf of the families of Bree and the other victims, for people who couldn’t or wouldn’t ever know the depths of the grotesqueries that had killed their loved ones. Then again, maybe it was better that they didn’t know.

  Tiny snowflakes fluttered their way through the boughs to land on the platform. The grayed and sodden sheepskin grew white again, flake by flake.

  Lexie hugged herself. She felt slight and weak. But her body was hers. Hers to carry and to crush. Hers to abuse and maybe someday exalt. In her head scrolled the interminable list of things she hated about it, but when she looked at them, she found the words in another language, so indecipherable as to be irrelevant. She took a breath, let it fill her lungs, expand her ribs, loosen her shoulders, stretch her neck, open her belly, plant her feet. She spread her arms, rotating her hands on her wrists, wiggling her fingers, swinging her arms at the shoulder, hinging at the elbow. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling as surefooted as she felt on her four paws. Another breath. She stood on the balls of her feet, feeling her weight there, her toes spread in her boots, gripping, tendons like suspension cables, distributing support. Another breath, and she shifted her balance to one foot, pushing her support up onto the ball of her foot and her toes. She rose taller. The stretch of tiny muscles around her moon toe lead to other tiny stretches: her jaw, her lips, her forehead. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth, her jaw hanging loose and wiggling. She was sure she looked like a Chinese dragon, all bug-eyed and slavering. She didn’t give a shit.

  There in her treehouse, Lexie moved, feeling her body as if for the first time, discovering new quarries and springs, new joint pops and small patches of pleasure. Rocking her body in space, Lexie felt a slash of shame. She knew neither of her bodies at all, but she felt so much more seduced by her wolf form. It made sense in a way Lexie didn’t like to admit. It fit right in places she hadn’t known mattered.

  She ran from that shame, darting and dancing over the platform, exploring span and grace. But it found her at the tree trunk beneath the empty birds’ nest. She couldn’t reach it now like she could as a wolf. Lexie grasped the branch and pulled herself up to face the cold, dark nest. A few tiny, downy feathers remained, but the rest was falling to pieces, twigs jutting out at haphazard angles. A spiderweb wound itself around the top of the nest—a tiny, silken trampoline. Hiding beneath a twig, she saw the spider twitch, its forelegs folded in front of its eyes.

  Lexie dropped back to the floor and wrapped her arms around her chest. “Mine,” she whispered. She lowered herself to the snow-dusted planks, curling up tight. Mine, she thought.

  Lexie was jolted awake by an invisible something, a strange sound from the ground below. A rustling, guttural communication.

  She held her breath and listened.

  The night was as smooth, black, and cold as onyx. Scattered clouds glowed white from the waxing gibbous moon. Her heart froze along with the rest of her.

  What was she hearing? Wolf chatter? A Morloc? It didn’t sound the same. It was more guttural, straight from the chest through the snout. Resonant and deep. Heavy. Whatever was there stood upwind so that she couldn’t catch its scent. But she understood its muttering, or thought she did. She could swear she heard the grunting voice say, “Excuse me.”

  An odd thing for a wolf to say.

  She strained to listen either with her mind or her ears, still unsure which was which.

  The voice sounded again, like the clearing of a throat.

  Lexie blinked opened her eyes and scanned the branches overhead, finding nothing unusual. She listened again to something that sounded like a polite but increasingly impatient sigh. She crawled to the edge of the platform and peered through the furry boughs down to the forest floor. A shadow slanted against the pine needle carpet, hidden by lower branches.

  “Hello?” Lexie called.

  The shadow rustled and the sound of heavy footsteps followed. They were not the sounds of paw pads, but something harder, like a wood-soled boot.

  Into a dappled beam of moonlight stepped a creature. Curly white fur covered it from hooves to horns. Its nostrils heaved like bellows from a nose the color of beach rock. A white buffalo. The buffalo swayed its heavy head once and looked up with wet black eyes, meeting Lexie’s, which were frozen open, wide and unbelieving.

  The buffalo snorted with a swing of his head, beckoning her down.

  Lexie stared, frozen in wonderment, before rushing down the tree and cliffside. She landed at a safe distance, watching suspiciously.

  The buffalo watched her movements and snorted.

  “Who are you?” Lexie asked.

  The buffalo swayed his head heavily to the right, then to the left. He glottalized and snorted and his form started to give way. Flickers of flesh and tangled hair traded space. The buffalo receded to the comparatively small body of a man, crouched.

  Then a long exhalation, and he stood.

  Tall, lean, with flax curls brushing his shoulders, the young man stood before Lexie and offered a gentle smile. He let her take in his presence, his transition, all about him, in stark silence before speaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “But I think you may be able to help me.”

  Lexie stared, too shocked to laugh.

  “I’m looking for Archer Racine.”

  Lexie nearly choked.

  “She sent for me. My name is Sage. I’m her brother.”

  33

  Sage waited for Lexie to speak, but it barely occurred to her to do so. Her breathing was labored and her balance swayed.

  “You’re her brother?”

  The boy smiled faintly.

  “You’re a pureblood.”

  He made no motion.

  “Why are you here?”

  “My sister said my help was required.”

  Sage’s frank tone felt like an artifact from a different era. Lexie wanted to laugh to ease her nerves. The water rushing in the stream beyond was the only sound. Sage stared at her with unblinking amber eyes. Like Archer’s, there was a hint of perpetual bemusement, though his gaze was more feral and prepared. Each sound from the forest elicited a small reaction: a glance, a pause. He seemed to look both at her and through her, taking in all the information the forest could offer at once.

  His mauve lips curled ever so slightly at the corners, so that despite his solid gaze, he seemed gentle. Perhaps even content, in a wholly-inhuman way.

  The returning silence reminded Lexie of Sage’s nudity, and she took a step back. His skin was light, but not pale. He had been touched by the sun, but more easily reflected the moon, as if he were illuminated from within. He seemed utterly unaware of his nudity, and for this reason, if no other, Lexie wanted to stare, to take him in, like a statue at a museum. This was the first time a man had stood unabashedly nude before her, and she didn’t want to squander the opportunity. She stole a look. When he didn’t flinch, she scanned the whole of him. His muscles were long and slim, his stomach taut. Though he had appeared to her as a buffalo, so stocky and with such bulk, his human form was leaner and more sinewy than anyone she’d yet encountered, including Archer.

  She sheepishly let her eyes drift downwards, finding the fine hairs below his navel and tracing them lower. His penis was darker than the rest of his flesh, reminding her of the tawny hue of Archer’s own tender flesh.

  His hair was curled and blond here as well, as though it were carved from marble in perfect ringlets.

  She paused, then blushed, realizing she shouldn’t be looking like this. But Sage didn’t flinch, nor interrupt her perusal. He stood as if awaiting instructions.

  She fought against a thousand stupid phrases that pressed at her mind.

  “Thank you,” Sage said finally.

  “For what?” Lexie asked.

  “For thinking I am
beautiful.” He grinned.

  “Oh. Uh.” Lexie said. “Don’t think it’s like … a thing … or anything.”

  Sage maintained that tiniest smile and stolid, unmoving gaze.

  “How is this,” Lexie said, gesturing to his body, “even possible?”

  “Shapeshifting?” he asked.

  “Archer is a werewolf. Aren’t you supposed to be … ”

  “Technically, she’s not. Archer and I are pureblood Rares. Though born as wolves, we have the power to be any creature we know. Most of us choose human for obvious reasons.” He touched his abdomen. “Though we all have our favorites.”

  Lexie cocked an eyebrow. “So you chose white buffalo. Inconspicuous.”

  “No more than a six-foot-tall wolf,” he said. Lexie shrugged.

  Lexie’s earlier restlessness caught up with her. She had to move. “It’s … late.” The words came out more vicious than she had intended, residual bitterness that felt like it would never go away, because the world would never change, and it would never be safe for her to wander alone late at night. “I should head toward home.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” Sage said.

  Lexie headed off without argument. Sage caught up with her. She could just see him out of the corner of her eye, but that didn’t stop her from casting him several sidelong glances. “Are you cold?” she asked, her breath fogging the space between them.

  He crossed his wrists in front of his waist and shrugged. “I’m fine.”