by Gary Jonas
“You do know a way to remove her, right?”
“Maybe.”
“So get her out.”
Lakesha shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a powerful wizard. You should be able to expel her yourself.”
“I told her to leave. She refused. Can you draw one of those triangles on my forearm to rid me of this pain-in-the-ass ghost?”
“It would take two of them. Tradition dictates it must be one on each forearm, but your right arm is already taken.”
I turned my forearm up. The pain had dropped to a dull ache. “Yeah, that was a brilliant idea. Suffer through all the pain to get the deck into my arm and the first card that comes up tells me I’m ruined.”
She looked at the Ten of Swords. “Maybe you should have stayed in bed today.”
“Thank you.”
“May I speak now?” Sabrina asked.
“Not unless you have a way to get the ghost out of me.”
“You could kill yourself,” Sabrina said.
“You’re a riot, Cheese Dip.”
“Seriously, can’t you just push her out with white light?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Guess you should have paid attention in magic class.”
“That’s so helpful. Thanks for that.”
“Focus inside yourself, picture a ball of white light, and expand it outward, commanding anything evil to leave.”
“I’ll give it the old college try.”
“You didn’t go to college.”
I flipped her off, then focused on imagining a ball of white light inside me. My thoughts turned to any intruder, Regina in particular, to get the hell out of me. I imagined the light growing and pushing everything out. My eyes were closed, but everything brightened.
“Stop!” Lakesha said.
Isis meowed and hissed.
I dropped my focus and opened my eyes.
Lakesha and Sabrina had their arms up, faces turned away, blocking a brightness that was no longer there.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The entire room lit up.”
Isis raced over, jumped onto my lap, and tried to scratch my face. I leaned backward, trying to avoid her claws, and the chair toppled over. I hit the floor hard and grunted. Isis leaped off me and darted through the beaded curtain into the store.
I rolled off the chair to my hands and knees and picked myself up off the floor. I righted the chair. “Damn cat,” I said.
“You scared her,” Lakesha said.
“Poor kitty,” Sabrina said. She blinked a few times. “I have spots of color floating in front of me. That was blinding.”
“So I’m a bright student after all,” I said and tried to rub my aching back. I couldn’t reach the spot that hurt where the chair dug into me.
“Is Regina gone?” Lakesha asked.
I frowned. “No. I can feel her pushing me to find a blade and slit my wrists.”
“Okay, you need to talk to her. Establish communication.”
“Hey, bitch, you in there?” I said.
“Establish rapport, dipshit. Don’t antagonize her.”
“She wants me to kill myself. That makes it hard to be nice to her.”
“Find a way. We’ll try to figure a spell to get her out.”
“Can’t we do the triangle thing somewhere else? Maybe on my upper arms? My legs? Something like that?”
“How about the hands?” Sabrina asked.
Lakesha shrugged. “Can’t hurt to try.”
“Do they have to be tattoos?” I asked.
“No. Temporary solutions are better for something like this. Wait here.”
She went back into her private room and returned with a black magic marker.
“Hold out your hands,” she said.
I obeyed. She popped the cap and drew a triangle on my right palm. She drew an identical triangle on my left palm. Then she drew circles inside each triangle and colored them in.
She hesitated, still holding one of my hands.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Trying to decide which language to use for the spell.”
“Latin?”
She shook her head.
“Enochian?” Sabrina asked.
“We’re not trying to invoke angels here,” Lakesha said. “Screw it, I’ll just go with Theban.”
“Is that particular to blasting ghosts or something?”
She shook her head and started drawing symbols. “It’s a standard witches’ alphabet. I use this in my own Book of Shadows and on talismans, and sigils. I also use it on street signs, buildings, roads, you name it.”
I’d seen her scribblings hidden in the infrastructural markings on sidewalks and roads around town. It gave her instant access to spells should she need them in areas she liked to frequent.
“How many alphabets do you know?” I asked.
“More than you.”
“Since I only know one, that’s not saying much.”
“You’ll learn.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
She turned to stare into my eyes. “You’ll learn,” she said again, her voice all ominous.
I wiggled my fingers at her. “Oooh!” I said. “Just get this ghost out of me.”
She went to a cabinet, took out a bag of leaves. “This is agrimony,” she said. “It’s helpful in removing curses.”
“Do I roll it up and smoke it?” I asked.
She sighed. “Keep your hands out and open.”
I extended my hands and opened them, palms up. She sprinkled leaves on the black circles.
She spoke a few words in an odd language and pointed at my hands. The leaves burst into flame and I flinched, shaking my hands.
“Son of a bitch!” I said, standing up. My hands burned, and I blew on my palms. I rubbed them on my shirt, smearing ash. “That hurt.”
“Of course it did,” she said.
“You could have warned me.”
She grinned. “More fun not to.”
“Bitch,” I said.
She smacked me upside the head. “That’s witch,” she said. “Now, focus on the circles in your palms, and push Regina out through the pain.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Just focus and try it.”
I aimed my palms away from me. Sabrina stepped out of the potential line of fire. Lakesha stood beside me and chanted a few words I couldn’t have spelled or pronounced.
Focus. Regina begone. I pushed energy out through my palms, flexing invisible muscles I didn’t know I had. A blast of energy shot out of my palms and blew a hole in the wall.
“Oops.”
Lakesha smacked my head.
“Stop that,” I said. “You’re going to give me a concussion.”
“You’re going to fix that hole.”
“Whatever.”
“Is she out?”
The urge to put my palms to my head and blast my brains out surged strong.
Time to die!
I didn’t obey her command.
“Nope,” I said. “But she’s talking to me now.”
Die! Die! Die!
“Talk to her,” Lakesha said.
“Hi, Regina,” I said.
“You don’t have to say it out loud,” Lakesha said. “Think to her. She’s inside you. She’ll read your thoughts.”
“I sure hope not,” I said.
“Was that to me or her?” Lakesha asked.
“She can read my mind?” I asked.
“When you direct a thought to her, she’ll hear it. Other than that, she’d need to be inside you a long time to assimilate.”
“Okay. Here goes.”
Hi, Regina, I thought.
Die! Die! Die!
How’s death treating you?
Die! Die! Die!
Yeah, I get that. I don’t want to die, so you need to get out of me. You can go hang yourself at home if you l
ike.
Die! Die! Die!
You sure like to stay on message.
Die! Die! Die!
Say something else or I’ll get “It’s a Small World” stuck in my head on auto repeat and then you’ll really want to die.
Regina went silent, then: Please don’t do that.
“I’ve got her number,” I said.
“Good,” Lakesha said. “Talk to her.”
I’m Brett, but you probably know that.
I do.
Can you please get out of me?
I don’t know how.
Then can you please stop with the suicidal tendencies? Unless of course, it’s the band. If there’s a “War Inside My Head,” I have to tell you that “Nobody Hears” and “You Can’t Bring Me Down.”
What?
Music, Regina. Good tunes. After your time, I guess, but “How Will I Laugh Tomorrow” if you kill me?
I want to kill me.
Hate to break it to you, but like Bruce Willis in that old movie, you’re already dead.
Then I deserve to die again.
Why?
Because I let my family down. I should have saved my sister and my nephew.
“What’s she saying?” Lakesha asked.
“She wants to die again. She has a one-track mind. You’d think that after spending so many years with her nephew, that she’d get over it.”
“Something you haven’t considered is that maybe she can’t see Demetrius,” Lakesha said. “Ghosts sometimes operate on separate frequencies from one another.”
“But he can see her.”
Lakesha paused. “There might be another reason why she can’t see him. Keep talking to her.”
Hey, Regina, when’s the last time you saw Demetrius?
The day he died.
You haven’t seen him since you died?
No, how could I?
Because he’s been sharing the house with you.
You’re lying to me. It’s time to die.
“You’re right, Lakesha. She hasn’t seen him.”
“Poor Demetrius.”
“You knew, didn’t you?”
“I only suspected. When a ghost is caught in a loop, sometimes all they can see are those moments inside the loop. Over and over.”
My heart broke for Demetrius. Poor little guy had shared a house with his aunt for more than thirty-five years, had watched her hang herself every night, and she’d never even spoken to him in all that time.
This needed to stop. And the only to do that was to face Abigail again. The sooner, the better.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rather than wait for her to call me, I went ahead and called Abigail. I put my phone on speaker and listened to the ringing. I was stretched out on my bed, going through her wallet. She had some credit cards, a few business cards—one for a hair stylist, one for some corporate executive at some tech company in Houston—and sixty-two dollars in cash.
Abigail answered on the fourth ring. “This is Abigail,” she said. “What do you want, Brett?”
“You, of course. How’s life with a little comic book fan inside you?”
“He’ll do fine for us,” she said. “You were supposed to wait for my call.”
“I didn’t feel like waiting.”
“Patience is a virtue,” she said.
“I thought ‘Patience’ was a Guns N’ Roses song.” I held up her driver’s license. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting ready to hang up on you.”
“The picture on your driver’s license makes you look like a criminal, but since you are a criminal, I guess that makes sense.”
“Nobody looks good in a driver’s license photo, Brett. Be patient, and I’ll call you soon about my wallet and the necklace.”
“I went on an online shopping spree with your credit cards.”
She laughed. “Nice try, asshole. If my cards weren’t maxed out, I’d have canceled them when I discovered you’d stolen my wallet. Smooth move on that, by the way.”
“I gots skills.”
“Gots? You need to learn how to talk like a grown-up.”
“I’ve got a great idea. Let’s get a hotel room over on Seawall, spend the night drinking wine, ordering room service, and having wild monkey sex. When the night is over, I’ll give you your wallet, you’ll let Demetrius go free, and you’ll help me get Regina out of my body.”
“What makes you think I’d sleep with you?”
“I’m a guitarist. And you said I was a good kisser.”
She laughed. “You’re an idiot. And if I did sleep with you, I’d want it to be just the two of us. Why would I want a couple of ghosts to go on a ride along?”
“Fine. Let them go first, then we can have some fun.”
“Tempting, but that’s not going to happen.”
“I don’t know about that. You haven’t hung up yet, so I can’t be doing too bad.”
Her tone of voice grew serious. “I want the necklace.”
“It doesn’t look good on me, so I’m cool with giving it back to you. Now, about that hotel room…”
“No.”
“I’ll bring my guitar. I can play some classical for you. I’m no Andrés Segovia, but my version of ‘Leyenda’ is guaranteed to impress.”
“I’m not buying that.”
“I’ll do you for free.” Why was I turning this into a creep-fest? She was no longer flirting.
“That perfume was evidently too strong,” she said.
“Yeah, I can still smell it. I can’t get you off my mind. Whatever criminal enterprise you’re engaging in, if I can spend some time with you, I’ll help. And that’s not just the perfume talking”
She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice was full of regret. “Sorry, Brett. You won’t be alive to help.”
“Don’t count me out just yet, Gorgeous.”
“You may be cute, but unfortunately, you were never counted in. Goodbye, Brett. I’m sorry about Regina. I hope your death is painless.”
And she hung up on me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Die die die, Regina told me.
Sleep sleep sleep, I thought back.
Death calls to us. It’s time to die.
I didn’t want to talk to Regina, but she wouldn’t shut up, so I went downstairs to watch TV. Sabrina was out with Michael somewhere, so I had the place to myself.
The remote was on the coffee table, so I kicked back on the sofa and clicked on the TV. It was just after ten, and the Houston news was on. I hit the guide so I could see what was on the other channels, but the news kept playing as I searched for a movie or show.
“In other news,” the attractive anchor said, “more bad news for Westlake Mall, where a security guard was found dead in a women’s restroom yesterday afternoon, and an employee from Jacob’s Jewelry died from a suicidal fall the day before.”
I hit escape on the remote so the news would go back to full screen.
“In yet another bizarre turn of events, workers entered the Jacob’s Jewelry store in Westlake Mall to find a co-worker hog-tied behind the counter. Mitchell Godfrey has more.”
A middle-aged man in a blue suit and tie talked to a reporter. “A man in his sixties came in here, claiming to be looking for a necklace to give his wife, and when I went around the counter to help him, he raised a hand and I passed out. I have no recollection of him hitting me or anything. I woke up in the dark with a gag in my mouth and my hands and feet tied up behind me.”
The shot cut to the reporter standing in front of the mall. “The store reports that a single necklace was stolen, and security tapes were wiped clean. Police have no leads on either case, and are asking for information from the public…”
Sabrina was over at Michael’s place, so I couldn’t talk to her about it.
I clicked off the TV and called Lakesha.
She answered her phone with, “Is Regina pushing harder for death?”
“You could start with, �
�Hello.’ But no, she’s not.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“I wanted you to read me a bedtime story.”
Her sigh was audible.
“Kidding,” I said. “I know why the jewelry store was closed without any cops at the mall. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine was one of the warlock dudes who took Regina in the first place.”
“And what makes you think that?”
I told her about the news report. “What do you think?” I asked.
“I think you still need to return the necklace.”
“We should find out what Gene and Abigail are up to, put a stop to their dastardly plans, and rescue Demetrius.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Lakesha asked. “You normally want to get baked and sleep in.”
“Regina won’t let me sleep, and I’m hot for Abigail. Shouldn’t you be happy that I want to do something?”
“Not when it’s past my bedtime. But as it happens, I’ve been working on a locate spell to find Demetrius.”
“Are you also working on a spell to cast out Regina before she kills me?”
“I already figured that one out.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
“You said yourself that you’re too lazy to kill yourself. I know how to dislodge her, but you need to do it yourself.”
“How? I tried singing ’99 Bottles of Beer,’ but only made it to seventy-six before she started singing it repeating die over and over to the tune. Want me to sing it to you?”
“Want me to cast a spell to remove your mouth?”
“How about removing her ability to tell me to kill myself?”
“Cast her out, Brett. It’s simple magic.”
“So simple that you failed to help.”
“Your power level is far greater than mine. You can cast her out whenever you want.”
“I don’t have the control. Abigail’s an experienced witch. She couldn’t cast Regina out until she had someone to cast her into. That Weston guy was a warlock, and Regina killed his sorry ass on a toilet.”
“You’re from the Masters family.”
“So?”
“You’re a pure blood wizard, Brett. You’re from the original line. There’s no magic you can’t master if you put your mind to it.”
“Back to that crap? I heard that from my father when I was a kid. ’Son,’ he’d say in his deep booming voice, ‘back in the old days when the Earth was cold and we had to walk to and from school in eight feet of snow, twenty-six miles uphill both ways, people were named for their occupations. People named Baker were bakers. People named Smith were blacksmiths. And we were the Masters, so we are far greater than anyone who’s ever lived or ever will live. Except for you, you lazy little fuck.’”