by JL Bryan
Like me, Kara apparently preferred sleeping during the day, with blackout curtains creating a pocket of night inside the house. She hardly needed it today, with the clouds blackening the sky.
I floated in her room, looking down at her thin, waify form that belied the enormous power contained within. Her eyes were closed in sleep, her black hair spread out around her on the pillow, her chest rising and falling softly. Her night clothes were extremely skimpy; if she'd grown up in Russia, then Savannah must have seemed scorching hot, even in November. However, the labels told me that what little she wore probably cost a thousand dollars or more.
With my mind—that was all I had, after all—I reached out toward her supermodel face, with her pert little nose and sharp cheekbones, and I imagined giving her a hard flick. I was going for mean and vicious but petty, like an elementary-school bully.
Her eyes opened, looking up at me with her ice-chip blue irises, and suddenly I was afraid. She had the power to grab and torture me, even in this form. Especially in this one.
Then I reminded myself of my purpose and focused again.
I thought of how Michael had described me, from when he'd seen me floating around his hospital room. Terrifying. Unnatural. So awful that he hadn't wanted to see me for days, and a distance still remained between us.
Now I tried to look that way. I tried to let out all the hate and anger I had inside me, all the darkness, and imagined my face shifting into something monstrous, something twisted with evil.
“You,” Kara said, staring right at me despite the total darkness. Well, that answered the question of whether she could see me or not.
She immediately reached up a hand, her fingers hooked as if to seize me, as she'd done on the day that she ripped me out of my body.
I retreated toward the ceiling, out of her reach, hovering directly above her like a storm cloud in her bedroom, making my face as hideous as I could imagine. We all have dark things we hide, impulses we suppress, a monster within, a devil inside, like in the song. An accumulated lifetime of things, some small, some large, things that have happened to us, things we've done, each one twisting and scarring our souls a little bit more.
That's the side of me I tapped into, the side I let out, making myself look as demonic to Kara's eyes as I could manage.
And she gazed up at me, horrified. Silent, eyes large. She might have faced ancient spirits in the ruins of long-fallen Eastern castles, she may have encountered all manner of darkness in the frozen cities of Russia...but at that moment, she feared me.
I can't say this would have worked with anyone else. One reason I could find Kara so quickly, and that she could see me so clearly, was because of what she'd done to me in the past. She'd forged a connection between me and her—a gross, disgusting sort of psychic bond.
Now I was turning it all back on her. And I was fueled by the energy of the soul fragments I'd taken from the magician, so my apparition was strong, my voice powerful.
"Leave us alone, Kara," I said, really going for a demonic tone with my voice. It was surprisingly easy. Powering yourself on pieces of broken souls is a total demonic move, exactly the kind of thing that all the most evil and dangerous ghosts I'd faced always had in common. Now I was like one of them. "Back off, or suffer."
"You're...a fool." Kara's voice trembled at first, but she got it under control. "You think you can frighten me with this cheap...theatrical display?" She stood up in her bed and swiped at me with her left hand, but I pulled away again, toward the corner of her room. She smirked. "See? You know I am the one to be feared."
She was putting up a good show, but I thought I could see doubt on her face.
"I am not afraid of you." I drifted down from the ceiling. Usually I felt weak and exposed in an out-of-body state, like an oyster without its shell, as Aldous had described. This was very different. "Your soulhook powers no longer work on me, Kara. You've lost your control."
Kara stared at me for a few seconds, clearly trying to read my horrid ghostly face for any sign that I was bluffing. I was.
And she knew it.
She raised her hand again, fingers hooked, nails sharp. Then she said something I didn't understand. It sounded like she was gargling razor blades, so I assume she was speaking Russian.
Whatever it was, she yelled it at the top of her lungs while she leaped off the bed to grab my soul.
I backed up as fast as I could—which is pretty fast when you're an amped-up ghost. I moved right through her wall, glimpsing wires and nails as I backed into her hallway.
There was a loud, satisfying crash on the other side of the wall through which I'd just passed. It was enough to jar loose a framed print on my side, out in the hall. The print was abstract, spiky slashes of chilly blues and grays, definitely Kara's style.
I circled around through a bathroom, emerging back into Kara's bedroom via a different wall.
Kara lay on the floor, wincing as she touched a rapidly swelling spot over her right eye. She'd crashed right into the wall in her eagerness to snatch hold of my soul. Unlike me, she wasn't a phantom, and she couldn't walk through walls.
She sensed me enter the room and looked at me right away. She let out a long string of profanity. Well, the English words were definitely profanity. The Russian words, which she mixed in heavily, were probably profanity, given her tone and the available context clues.
"You attacked me," she said, drawing herself up to her feet, very nimbly. Like she'd studied martial arts. Or maybe ballet. That's big in Russia, right?
"Actually, you were attacking me, and you beat yourself up," I said. Then I recounted bits of philosophy Calvin had once taught me. "Evil always destroys itself, Kara, or it keeps moving until it finds the force that will destroy it. Peace and tranquility cannot exist inside an evil person. Evil carries the seeds of its own destruction." There. That sounded like an appropriate sort of thing to say when materializing in horrific nightmarish ghost-form within an enemy's home.
Kara lashed out toward me with her little hook-fingers. I gasped, or would have if I'd been breathing. I just barely had time to vanish through her wall before she could catch me.
"You're still afraid," she said, her voice heavily muffled by the wall.
I circled around the room, passing through her closet, pausing to check out her amazing expansive collection of shoes, full of French and Italian designer brands. Then I emerged behind her in the bedroom.
She turned, sensing me right away.
"You think I am evil?" she asked. She dropped to sit on the foot of her bed, apparently giving up on snatching me for the moment. "I have seen true evil. I have seen it in ancient places, buried beneath temples where humans were sacrificed, in times when language was little more than a growl. I have touched evil so old, it is not only ancient, it is...primordial."
"Well, I think you got some on you," I said. "And tracked it home with you. Because you...haven't been all that nice to me. With the soul ripping, as the most obvious example."
She stared back at me coolly. I don't know if I was expecting an apology, but nothing like that was forthcoming.
"Let's just agree we have reason to fear each other," I said.
"I do not fear you."
"You should. And you will." That sounded good; if only I actually had some way of backing it up. "Stay out of my way, Kara. And I'll go easy on you."
She looked back at me, her gaze steady and cold. I retreated back through the wall, and then away from her house, toward my waiting body at the theater.
Along the way, I released all those souls I'd snagged from Aldous the Mysterious, letting them float up and out of sight, to go where they wanted, move on as best they could. They were no longer the magician ghost's prisoners.
I entered the attic of the theater.
Stacey and Jacob still knelt beside me, trying to revive me. Jacob looked up toward the ceiling when I entered the room.
I took a last look around with my non-physical eyes. I could see traces of spiri
ts, like half-formed glimmering images...residuals. There was no sign of the magician ghost, not even within his old cabinet.
"She's back," Jacob said, a couple of seconds before I opened my eyes.
My first sensation was of stinging, as if a dozen or more venomous ants had bitten me all over the arms. I hissed and looked down to see droplets of blood everywhere. "What's that?"
"You're okay!" Stacey flung her arms around me and squeezed tight. I noticed blood droplets on her arm and her cheek.
"Why's everyone bleeding?" I asked, my jaw a little stiff. Everything's a little stiff when I come back to my body.
"The glass!" Stacey pointed to the four exploded mirrors, including the one on the cabinet. "It went everywhere. Like volcanoes. Volcanoes of glass."
"It's been a while since I got sliced and burned with you guys," Jacob said, dabbing blood from his face with his shirt cuff. "I guess I was overdue."
"What happened?" Stacey asked.
"Aldous is out of here," I said. "I'm not sure where he's gone. Later, we can come back, take that cabinet apart, and burn it. And sweep up all this glass...but I'm sure we're out of time today."
Stacey nodded. "It's past noon. And the rain is slowing down."
"Let's get out of here right now. I don't want to go to jail on top of what I just went through."
We headed down to the van, where we dug into the first aid kit as we fled the scene, bandaging our nicks and cuts from the shattered mirrors. Stacey drove. Calvin shook his head as he bandaged me up, and everyone listened as I recounted what had happened...as best as I could explain it.
I kind of focused on the part where I fought the magician until his entire essence fell apart, and his captive soul fragments escaped to the heavens. I kind of left out everything to do with my visit to Kara and my attempts to scare her into backing off.
Our day wasn't even over. There were more ghosts back at the lighthouse, plus a very unhappy client flying back from Los Angeles days earlier than she'd planned, with the promise of very awkward family drama ahead.
Still, it felt good to defeat the magician, to free those chunks he'd bitten out of his victims' souls. And things with Kara were certainly going to be different. Whether that meant her backing off or making my life more miserable, I couldn't be sure, but I had a feeling I knew which one to expect.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We broke apart for the afternoon. Stacey and I would meet later at the client's house, and we really wanted to be rested, freshly scrubbed, and at full attention for when Alyssa arrived. From the way her assistant spoke to me over the phone—in hushed, troubled tones, like we were passing secrets in some bleak prison—I gathered the movie star was in a very bad mood about the whole situation. So we had that to look forward to.
I spent a fair amount of time in my cramped little bathroom at home, with its stupid pedestal sink that offers no counter space. With tweezers, I located and removed any additional slivers of glass I could find lodged in my face and arms. Calvin had done a little of this, but more remained.
Michael was just the guy to treat a bunch of cut wounds, with his paramedic training, but he'd pretty much withdrawn from my life, so he wasn't exactly available. It was Sunday, so the regular doctor's offices were closed. I suppose I could have gone to the emergency room for help, but I'm not a millionaire, so I stayed home and did it myself instead.
After showering, I sprayed my wounds with Bactine. The slightly alcoholic smell of the stuff always gave me a flicker of my childhood, my mom treating me after I'd scraped a knee on my bike or fallen off the neighbor's tire swing.
I double-checked that all my deadbolts were in place—I'd added extra after a couple of murderers ransacked my place a few months earlier. Hopefully, Kara wouldn't try to come and get revenge on me at my home. But I checked those locks just in case, and the extra locks on my balcony door, too.
Then I hit the bed, for two hours and seventeen minutes' worth of sleep before I had to get up and prepare to face an unhappy client. I needed it desperately. My out of body adventures had left me exhausted, and my body still felt stiff. Hey, body, I was only gone for a few minutes. No need to go all rigor mortis on me.
Sleep. Awake. Coffee and muffin from a drive-through window. The muffin's full of fattening, diabetes-inducing sugar and carbs. Don't care today. Reach client's house. Remember to check teeth for muffin bits before going inside.
That was my afternoon. The rain had simmered down to a low drizzle, but the clouds were still thick, and more storms were expected any day, any hour, thanks to the unpredictable weather formation battering the Caribbean and moving up toward coastal Florida. The county still hadn't ordered an evacuation, but everybody was supposed to be on alert. People were advised to avoid the coastal islands and stay on the mainland, if they could, for the next few days.
I drove out to the coastal island estate that faced directly onto the ocean, a site that had been devastated by similar storms in the past.
The tension was high inside the main house. Stacey was already there, and Hayden had barely left except to go grab clothes and body spray from his apartment. At least his apparent crush on Alyssa's sister kept him distracted and busy.
Tammy paced out on the covered area of the rear patio, smoking cigarettes and looking out at the drizzling rain. Her two older kids played hide and seek in the big living room, until she shouted at them to be quiet, sit down, and watch TV.
"You got your nice clothes on now," she reminded them. Steffy wore a pink dress and matching bow-tied shoes, while Kyle wore a suit that was stained and plainly a size too small for him. "Don't get 'em messed up before your Aunt comes home. You want to look your best. Just like Grandma always says—"
"—look your best to impress," Steffy said, and Kyle imitated each word she said, saying each about a second later than she did. Steffy turned to her brother. "Yeah, Kyle. Stop messing up your good clothes. You look like something the cat dragged in, Kyle."
Kyle began to cry, as if this were a profoundly cutting insult that hammered right at the core of his self-esteem. His cries woke up baby Chesterly, who'd been dozing in her car seat, and now she began to wail and kick, baby-style.
That was how things were going in the main house, so Stacey and I double-checked our gear and got out of there as soon as we could, leaving Hayden to try and distract the kids with the giant movie screen again.
"He's actually pretty good with those kids," Stacey said, as we walked down the glass hallway. We were planning to double-check the gear in the big guest house—except in the bedroom and bath Hayden was using, because ew—and then in the hallway in front of the bungalow.
"Anybody with a giant projection screen and a queue full of Pixar could be 'good with kids.'"
We paused in front of the doorway to the guest house. I looked down the way, toward the final stretch of glass hall in front of the caretaker's bungalow. "Did we check that footage for cold spots?"
"I haven't checked anything from last night," Stacey said. "We were kinda busy with other stuff this morning, remember?"
"Right. We'll get to it after—"
"The sparrow has landed," Hayden said abruptly, over our headsets. "Repeat. The sparrow has landed."
"Are you saying Alyssa's back?" I asked. If so, she was about half an hour early.
"They passed the forward security checkpoint."
"You mean the gate out front? We'll be right there."
Stacey and I paused to check ourselves in a powder room mirror. I put on my glasses. When you feel like things are going sour with a client, it's best to look as professional and competent as you can manage.
Alyssa hadn't wanted us learning anything about her family or her real personal history. I recalled that tabloids were a big concern, and the main reason we'd signed non-disclosures when taking the case. She also hadn't wanted her family to encounter any ghosts when they arrived—she wanted everything "perfect."
Now both of those conditions had been broken, simply bec
ause her family had arrived two weeks early, unexpected and uninvited. The presence of the old lighthouse keeper's descendants had stirred up at least one extra ghost already.
I expected rough waters ahead, and not just because of the waves of thunderstorms rippling in from the ocean.
We assembled in the front room, like fearful servants awaiting the return of their master, while the long, black-windowed SUV snaked down the driveway toward us.
The SUV stopped directly in front of the porch, minimizing the distance that Alyssa would have to walk in the drizzling rain.
Delavius stepped out first, nodding at us as we all filed out onto the large covered area to meet her. Then he opened the back door.
Zoe emerged, holding an umbrella, and finally Alyssa stepped down, her face shielded by immense black glasses. Her hair was in elaborate ringlets, like she'd just stepped off the set of some dragon-fantasy movie. Her tightly tailored black and white suit looked like something from the avant-garde challenge on Project Runway. Her lips were painted black to match her suit. Her stiletto heels made her half a foot taller, clicking on the stone walkway as she marched toward us.
I wondered whether she'd been at a photo shoot or something earlier that day, or whether she'd gone to all this trouble just to make a powerful impression on her estranged older sister.
We all remained silent, even the kids, as Alyssa ascended the wide steps. Zoe followed just behind her, holding up her umbrella, making me think of that guy who stood right behind the Roman emperors whispering Remember thou art mortal during triumphal parades. Only Zoe was more likely to whisper Remember thou hast a spa appointment at eleven. Which was also a fairly Roman thing, in its own way.
"Isn't this unexpected?" Alyssa said, removing her glasses to look over her sister, then her kids. "And here are the little munchkins. Hi, kids." She put on a publicity-tour smile for them. "It's nice to see you, ah, little...little Stevie. And Kevin. I haven't seen you since one of you were a baby. The older one."