Touch the Dark

by Karen Chance

  There are a lot of ghosts in Atlanta, and most are your run-of-the-mill, let’s-haunt-something-until-we-work-through-our-issues-or-fade-away types like Billy Joe. There are also a few guardian spirits and an occasional psychic imprint, not that the latter are technically ghosts. Imprints are like a supernatural theater that shows the same movie over and over until you want to scream. Since it’s usually something traumatic, running into one isn’t fun. I’d spent my free time for a couple of months after I moved in learning the streets in the area, and one of the main things I’d been looking for was imprint zones. I’d found about fifty dealing with the burning of the city during the Civil War, but most were too weak to cause me much more than a twinge. But there was a big one between my apartment and the agency where a slave had once been ripped apart by a pack of dogs. I started taking the long way around after I got caught in it one day. I have a lot of memories I’d just as soon forget; I don’t need other people’s nightmares.

  Portia, however, isn’t an imprint. Sometimes, I thought she was worse. Portia is one of those ghosts who relive the tragic parts of their lives over and over, but not like a mindless movie. They’re haunters with a fixation, similar to an obsessive human who wants to wash her hands fifty times a day. And they’re mobile, so they can follow you around and run on about whatever is bothering them 24/7. I broke Billy Joe of that early—he’s upset because he died young, but I can handle only so many choruses of “the life I should have had” before I start to get crabby.

  Unfortunately, I’d caught Portia in a talkative mood, and it took more than ten minutes to find out—after a detailed description of the ivory buttons she’d sewn onto her never-used wedding gown—that she hadn’t seen Billy Joe. Typical. I spend most of my time wishing he’d go away, but he never gets lost until I need him. My level of aggravation must have shown on my face, because Portia stopped in the middle of the story about a party where two officers had fought each other over the last place on her dance card. It was one of her favorites and she was clearly not pleased to see my attention wandering. “You aren’t listening, Cassie. Is something wrong?” An angry snap of her little lace-edged fan said there had damn well better be.

  “Tony’s found me and I need to get out of town. But I have to go by the club first, and I need a lookout.”

  I knew as soon as I said it that I should have kept my mouth shut. Portia’s eyes got even bigger, and she clapped her dainty gloved hands together delightedly. “Oh, what fun! I’ll help!”

  “Um, that’s really generous of you, Portia, but I don’t think…I mean, there’s a lot of ways into the club, and you couldn’t cover all of them.” But Portia got a familiar, steely glint in her eyes and I immediately relented. Most of the time she was sugar sweet, but get her upset at you and things could get bad fast.

  “I’ll find help,” she promised. “It’ll be like a party!” She disappeared in a swirl of petticoats, and I sighed. Some of Portia’s friends were even more annoying than she was, but any lookouts were better than none. And I didn’t have to worry about Tony’s boys noticing them. Even if he’d sent vamps, they wouldn’t see a thing.

  As strange as it sounds, a lot of people in the supernatural community don’t believe in ghosts. Oh, some will agree that there is the occasional troubled spirit who hangs around its grave for awhile before accepting the inevitable, but few would accept it if I told them just how many spirits stick around after death, how many different types there are, and how active some of them can be. Spirits like Portia and Billy Joe are, for the supernatural community, like vamps are to the human—old stories and legends that are dismissed without proof. What can I tell you? It’s a weird world.

  I arrived at the club a few minutes later, out of breath and with aching arches, but intact. Showing up was, of course, a really bad idea. Even if nobody had followed me, a dozen people at the agency and my apartment building knew I worked there part-time. It was also only a block from Peachtree, which was not a coincidence I liked. If it ended up getting me killed, I planned to come back and haunt Tony. But I couldn’t leave without warning my roommate and making some kind of arrangement for him. I had enough guilt without adding another messed-up life to my total.

  The club, with its high ceiling of exposed steel joints, graffiti-covered concrete walls and massive dance floor, was larger than most, but that night, there were enough gyrating figures under the hanging disco lights to make it almost claustrophobic. I was grateful for the crush, since it made it less likely that anyone would notice me. I slipped in the back way and didn’t encounter any problems—at least, not of the gun-waving, homicidal variety.

  One of the bartenders had called in sick, so they were shorthanded, and Mike tried to talk me into subbing as soon as he saw me. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, since my usual job as one of his novelty acts didn’t provide much in tips. I read tarot three nights a week, although I’ve never liked the cards. I used them because it’s expected, but I don’t need to squint at archaic images to know what’s about to happen. My visions come in Technicolor and surround sound, and are a lot more complete. But most people would have preferred a standard reading to what I gave out. Like I said, I’m better at Seeing the bad stuff. Tonight, though, I declined the chance to make a few bucks. I didn’t think bartending was the way I wanted to spend my last hour.

  “What’s the word?” Mike yelled at me cheerfully, doing a Tom Cruise with the liquor bottles to the rowdy appreciation of the crowd.

  I sighed and dug in my purse. My fingers clenched around the greasy tarot deck that had been a tenth-birthday gift from my old governess, Eugenie. She’d had a charm put on the cards by some witch with a sense of humor, and I kept it with me because it was good for entertaining customers. But the predictions—which acted like a kind of karmic mood ring—had an eerie habit of being right on the money. I held it up and a card popped out. It wasn’t one I wanted to see. “The Tower,” a booming voice began, before I shoved it back in the pack and deep into my purse.

  “Is that good?” Mike asked, before getting distracted by a pretty blonde’s cleavage. I merely nodded and hurried off, losing myself in the crowd before he could hear anything else. The voice was only a muffled croak from my overcrowded bag, but I didn’t need to hear it to know what it said. The Tower signifies a huge, cataclysmic change, the kind that leaves a life completely altered. I tried to tell myself that it could have been worse—it could have been Death—but it wasn’t much comfort. The Tower is probably the most feared card in the deck. Death can have many meanings, most not the literal one, but the Tower always indicates trouble for anyone who wants a quiet life. I sighed—what else was new?

  I finally located Tomas in the Dungeon—Mike’s nick-name for the basement room—wading through a sea of black-clad bodies with a tray of used glasses. He looked edible, as usual, if your thing is slender muscles, skin like honey over cream and sable hair that brushes his waist when he doesn’t keep it pulled back. His face should look too rugged to be handsome, all high cheekbones and strong angles, but the delicacy of some of the features make up for it. His hair was off his face in a thick braid, a sure sign he was working, since he prefers it loose, but a few pieces had worked free and billowed about his head in fine strands. Mike had picked out the outfit: a black silk shirt knitted in a cobweb design that revealed more than it covered, sleek black jeans that fit him like a second skin and black leather boots that climbed halfway up his thighs. He looked like he ought to be headlining at a strip club instead of waiting tables, but the exotic, melt-in-your-mouth sex appeal pushed a lot of buttons for the Goths. I didn’t exactly find it hard on the eyes, either.

  Mike had decided about a year ago that Atlanta had enough country-and-western bars, so he turned the family drinking hole into a progressive haven upstairs and a Goth dream in the basement. Some locals had grumbled, but the younger crowd loved it. Tomas looked like he’d been designed for the place right along with the decor, and he brought in a lot of business, but it worried me
that he spent half of every night fending off propositions. At least, I assumed he fended them off, since he never brought anyone back to the apartment. But I sometimes wondered, given his background, if getting him that particular job hadn’t been one of my dumber moves.

  Tomas looked a lot better than when I first saw him, hanging out at the local shelter with the kind of dead eyes that I was familiar with from my own street days. Lisa Porter, the manager and self-designated mother hen of the place, introduced us when I stopped by for one of my erratic volunteer sessions. We got to talking while sorting the newest donated clothes into piles of the usable, the need-repair and the good-only-for-cleaning-rags. It says something about Tomas’ personality that I mentioned him to Mike that very night, and that he was hired after a brief interview the next day. Mike said he was the smartest hire he’d ever made—never sick, never complained and looked like a dream. I wasn’t so sure about that last part: the look was striking all right, but I personally thought he needed a pimple or a scar, some mark on all that pale gold skin to make him seem more real. He resembled the undead more than most vampires I knew, and had their unconscious poise and quiet assurance to boot. But he was alive, and as long as I got my seriously jinxed self away from him, he’d probably stay that way.

  “Tomas, got a minute?”

  I didn’t think he heard me over the music, which the DJ kept painfully loud, but he nodded. I wasn’t supposed to be there yet, so he knew something was up. We carved a path through the crowd, which earned me a dirty look from a woman with purple dreads and black lipstick for stealing off with the main attraction. Or maybe it was my happy-face T-shirt and earrings she didn’t like. I usually did the Goth thing, or as close as I could get without looking truly awful—strawberry blondes don’t wear black well—but that was when I was working. I found out pretty early that no one takes a fortune-teller seriously if she shows up in pastels. But on my days off I reserved the right not to look like I was going to a funeral. My life is depressing enough without help.

  We ducked behind the bar to the back room. It was quieter there, which meant we could hear each other if we stood close and shouted, but the noise was less of a problem than looking into Tomas’ face and figuring out what to say. Like me, he’d been on the street early. Unlike me, he’d had nothing to trade but himself. I didn’t like the look that came into his eyes whenever I asked about his past, so I normally avoided it, but it was probably a variation on the usual theme. Most street kids have the same story to tell, revolving around being used, abused and thrown out with the trash. I’d thought I was doing him a favor, letting him stay in my spare room and getting him a real job for a change, but a share in Tony’s wrath was a high price to pay for six months of stability.

  Our relationship was not close enough to help me figure out how to keep Tomas safe without looking like I was bailing on him. Part of the problem was that neither of us liked opening up, and it didn’t help that we’d gotten off to a rough start. I came out of the bathroom the night he moved in to find him lounging nude on my bed, his hair spread out like an ink blot against my white sheets. I’d stood there, clutching my Winnie the Pooh towel and gaping at him, while he stretched like a big cat on my feather comforter, all sleek muscles and boneless grace. He was completely unself-conscious and I could see why; he sure didn’t look like a starved street kid. I’d never asked his age, but assumed he was younger than me. Which made him way too young to have that particular look in his eye.

  I hadn’t been able to keep from following the path of one long-fingered hand as he traced a line down the side of his body from nipples to groin. It was a blatant invitation, and it took me a second to stop drooling and realize what was going on. I finally figured out that he thought he was supposed to pay for his room in what he considered the usual way. On the streets, there’s no such thing as free, so when I refused to take money, he assumed I wanted payment of another kind. I should have tried to explain, to tell him that my whole life had been about being used and that I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it to someone else. Maybe if I had, we’d have started to talk and cleared up a few things. Unfortunately, what I did instead was to freak and toss him out of the bedroom, along with the blanket that I’d quickly thrown over him. I don’t know what he thought about it all, since we never discussed that night. We eventually fell into a more or less relaxed routine, splitting the housework, cooking and shopping like any two roommates, but both of us guarded our secrets. I’d catch him watching me with a strange expression sometimes, and I figured he was waiting for me to abandon him like everyone else. I really hated it that I was about to do exactly that.

  “Did you get off early?” He touched my cheek and I stepped back, wanting to be farther from those trusting eyes. There was no escaping what I had to do, but I wasn’t looking forward to seeing his face shut down, and watching whatever faith he’d regained in people bleed away because of me.

  “No.” I shifted feet and tried to think how not to make this sound like a rejection. It wasn’t his fault that my life was spiraling down the toilet. Again. “I have to tell you something important, and you need to listen and do what I ask, okay?”

  “You’re going.” I don’t know how he knew. Maybe I had that look. He’d probably seen it before.

  “I don’t have a choice.” By mutual consent, we moved out the back door to the paved surface surrounding the stairs to street level. Not much of a view, but at least it was quieter. The air smelled of rain, but the downpour that had been building all afternoon was holding off. If I hurried, maybe I could make the bus station before getting soaked. “You know how I told you that I had some bad things happen a while ago?”

  “Yes, but there is nothing to worry about now. I’m here.” He smiled, and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. I didn’t want him fond of me, didn’t want him to miss me. Damn, this wasn’t going well. I decided to quit trying for subtlety; it wasn’t my strong suit.

  “There’s some serious stuff going down soon, and I have to be gone before it hits the fan.” It wasn’t much of an explanation, but how do you tell someone that the vampire gangster who raised you and who you tried your best to destroy has put a price on your head? There was no way Tomas could understand the world I came from, not if I had all the time in the world to explain. “You can have the stuff in the apartment, but take my clothes to the shelter. Lisa will put them to good use.” I had a momentary pang for my carefully assembled wardrobe, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “Cass…”

  “I’ll talk to Mike before I go. I’m sure he’ll let you bunk here for a week or two, in case anyone drops by the apartment looking for me. It probably wouldn’t be good for you to go back there for a while.” There was a studio apartment at the top of the building left over from the era when owners sometimes lived over their businesses. Mike had used it fairly recently, so it should be in decent shape. And I would definitely feel better knowing Tomas was staying there. I didn’t like the idea of a bunch of enraged vamps descending on our place looking for me and finding him instead.

  “Cassie.” Tomas took my hand gingerly, as if afraid I might snatch it away. He thought I was uptight about being touched since that initial misunderstanding. I’d never corrected him because I didn’t want to give the wrong impression and, frankly, it was easier to behave myself if I kept a little distance between us. He didn’t need to be hit on at home as well as at work. “I’m coming with you.” He said it calmly, as if it was the most logical thing in the world.

  I didn’t want to hurt him, but I could not stand there and argue the point with an assassin after me. “You can’t. I’m sorry, but two people are easier to find than one, and besides, if I’m caught…” I stopped because I couldn’t think how to tell him how bad it would be and not sound like a raving lunatic. Of course, he’d probably seen enough weird things on the streets to make him more open-minded than the cops, who treated anyone who started talking about vampires as a druggie or a psychotic. But even if I could figure out a
way to tell him, there wasn’t time.

  “I’m sorry; I have to go.” That wasn’t how I wanted to say good-bye. There were a lot of things I hadn’t told Tomas because I was afraid it would sound like I was coming on to him. And now, when I could say whatever I wanted, I had to leave.

  I started to pull away, but he held on to my hand and his grip was surprisingly strong. Before I could insist that he let me go, I had a very familiar, totally unwelcome feeling creep over me. The muggy night air was suddenly replaced by something colder, darker and far less friendly. I don’t know what nonsensitives feel around vampires, but all my life I’ve been able to tell when they’re near. It’s like when people say that someone walks over their grave—kind of a shiver down the spine combined with a feeling of something being wrong. I never feel that way around ghosts like norms sometimes do, but it hits me with vamps every time. I looked up to see a dark shape silhouetted against the glare of the streetlights for an instant, before it melted into the night and was gone.