by Mia Archer
“You need to get out of here,” I said, pausing at the exit. “Like now. There are still vampires running around the place. I’m going home, and there won’t be anyone around to pull your cute ass out of trouble if you run into them.”
Stacy didn’t say anything, and I didn’t try to get her to come with me. She was a big girl, and in the mood I was in I figured she could make her own mistakes, damn it. It would serve her right if she got chowed down on by a vampire trying to turn her over to their side.
13
Out of Town
I stepped through the front door and immediately knew something was wrong. The place felt strangely empty. I stepped into the kitchen and looked around, but mom wasn’t in her usual spot pretending to make dinner that she couldn’t ever actually prepare because of the whole ghost thing.
“Dad?” I called out. “You in here?”
No answer. I looked in the living room, and then went up the stairs. I checked his room to make sure he hadn’t taken a nap, but there was no sign of him there either.
Finally I went down to the other end of the house. To his study. It wasn’t a room I’d ever seen before, but from the noises I’d heard coming from the other side of that door I figured it was probably a good thing I’d never seen them before.
Like right now. There was definitely someting going on in there. I hated to do it, but I really needed to talk to him about everything that’d happened tonight.
I figured if anyone had a good perspective on what it was like to be dating a mortal who was putting themselves in danger by association then it would be him, though admittedly it hadn’t worked out all that well for him.
All the more reason for me to keep Stacy out of trouble, damn it. I wasn’t going to have her suffer the same fate as my mother, and I certainly wasn’t going to have it be my fault because those vampires figured they could get at me by going through my girlfriend.
I raised my hand and was about to knock when Dad pulled it open. He blinked a couple of times in surprise as he saw me standing out there, then smiled.
“Gwen!” he said. “What brings you here?”
“Um, I live here?” I said, looking around to make sure there wasn’t some other Gwen he was talking to for some reason.
“Well yeah,” he said. “But you usually never come down here.”
“Usually because you’re the one telling me not to bother you while you’re in your study, but I’ve got a problem,” I said.
“Well come in then,” he said. “Because I’m afraid I’ve got some news for you too, and it’s not necessarily the good kind.”
A chill ran through me at those words. Given his profession, bad news could mean some very bad stuff had gone down. I hated to think about what might’ve happened that he was actually forgetting himself and inviting me into his study, but at the same time there’s no way I was passing up this opportunity!
I stepped through the open door, wondering what I was going to find on the other side. Given all the strange noises I’d heard through that door over the years I wasn’t sure what to expect. Gargoyles? The souls of the damned being held in little crystal balls? Ghosts floating around in the tiny space? A room that was bigger on the inside?
The actual reality was a hell of a lot more boring than anything my mind had come up with over the years.
“This is your office?” I asked.
“Sure is,” dad said. “You like it?”
I looked around the small room. There was a closet on one end of the room that’d been given over to a couple of filing cabinets. He had a small desk in the corner on the opposite side of those filing cabinets, and his laptop was out with a spreadsheet up.
It struck me as odd that an avatar of death on the mortal plane would use spreadsheets to track his work, but here we were. I looked around at the walls that were the same plain white that we had in the rest of the house and tried to reconcile that with the more Addams Family inspired visions I'd grown up imagining.
“You were maybe expecting something else?” he asked.
“Well yeah,” I said. “I mean the noises I’ve heard coming from this room over the years…”
He laughed and shook his head. “I have had to bring some temporary visitors through here over the years, but I can assure you that I can do that just as well from a boring modern looking home office as I can from a place that takes all its design cues from the Munsters.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Guess I should’ve seen that one coming. What are you doing in here anyway?”
“Getting ready to head out for a little while,” he said, his face suddenly grim.
“What?” I said. “Like you’re going on a trip or something?”
He reached out and he was suddenly floating there in his robes with his scythe in his hand. “I'm afraid so. Duty calls.”
“Seriously?” I said. “You’re seriously leaving? Now?”
“There’s some nasty business going on in Starlight City,” he said. “Lots of people dying. Alien invasion. The usual kind of stuff that happens over there.”
I crossed my arms and rolled my eyes. “Seriously? Why is it every time that place has a huge emergency you have to fly off there and help out? It’s so weird. Heroes. Villains. Like it doesn’t even belong in our world!”
“You mean the same way necromancers and vampires and other supernatural creatures don’t belong in your world?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
I held his gaze for a moment. I knew he was trying to make a point here, but it didn’t make me any less irritated that he was leaving when I was in the middle of something. It was like when he’d been captured by Graham the necromancer right when I was dealing with all the trouble that comes from having a necromancer suddenly showing up in the neighborhood an causing trouble.
Sure that hadn’t been all his fault. Part of that had simply been that Graham had gotten the drop on him in a fight, but still. It didn’t make me any less annoyed that he was voluntarily leaving now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s kind of an all hands on deck thing. City under attack. Lots of people dying. You could at least tell me about what’s bothering you though.”
I growled. If heroes and villains made no sense in my world, well the arrival of a bunch of space aliens really didn’t make sense. What was next? Some massive alien civilization that ruled the galaxies around here coming down to earth to cause trouble and the only person who could save us was a plucky earth girl who was abducted years ago?
Talk about the kind of hack premise that wouldn't even cut it in the new Star Wars movies.
Whatever. I could forget about that for now. I had some very real problems right in front of me.
“Vampires,” I said. “It’s vampires.”
“Vampires?” he said, his eyebrows shooting up. “I mean I know I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating honey. If you could take out a necromancer all on your own, well I think vampires aren’t going to be much trouble for you.”
“Yeah, but that’s not all,” I said with a sigh. “I’m also having trouble with Stacy, and I thought maybe you could help out.”
Dad frowned. Actually there was a look of mild to moderate panic that flitted across his face. Like he’d rather be doing anything but having this conversation.
“Listen honey,” he said. “I’m probably not the best one to ask about situations like this. It’s been forever since I was dating, and it was in a world well before texting and all that stuff you kids are doing these days, and on top of all of that I haven’t even thought of going on a date in years because of…”
He trailed off and choked up just a little. I was sure from the far off look in his eyes that he was thinking about that fateful night so long ago when something terrible had happened to mom. When a necromancer had visited our house and killed her.
I was starting to think the only thing that’d protected me that night was that I was destined to go into the family business. I hadn’t talked about it with my
dad, stories of that night were clearly still pretty painful for him, but I had my suspicions.
“That’s the thing,” I said. “The reason I’m so worried about this is because Stacy keeps trying to get in the middle of me trying to catch these vampires. I keep thinking about what happened the last time around with Graham killing her a couple of times, how lucky I was that she made it out in one piece at the end, and how horrible it would be if something happened to her!”
That was enough to get a more sympathetic look from dad. A pained look, to be sure, as he was no doubt reliving those painful memories of mom dying all over again, but at least I had his attention now.
He slumped into his chair, and it groaned under the weight. It’s not like he was all that heavy. It’s just that the office chair was that cheap. Which was yet another example of something that didn’t seem like the kind of thing that should be in a reaper’s lair, but whatever.
“I was afraid something like this might happen,” he said. “You’d think she would’ve learned her lesson the last time around.”
“Yeah, you’d think,” I said. “But it turns out she can be pretty determined when she sees something she wants, and she really wants to hunt vampires. She had a hell of a run-in with one tonight.”
My dad hit me with a sharp look. "What kind of trouble did you have with a vampire?"
I laughed. Clearly he was imagining the kind of thing I’d been horrified would happen when Stacy first expressed an unhealthy interest in helping me fight the forces of the undead who were currently infesting our high school.
"You're not going to believe this," I said. "But she actually climbed on top of a vampire and started beating the shit out of her."
"You mean the vampire started beating the shit out of Stacy?” Dad asked. “Did the vampire bite her? It’s very important that you tell me if something like that happened.”
"You’d think," I said. "But I meant what I said. She rolled around the cafeteria for maybe half a minute before she was on top of the vampire beating the shit out of her. Like straight up hitting her over and over again with full on punches. I had to pull her off the vampire to keep that girl from getting hurt too much."
My dad frowned. "She shouldn't have been able to do that. Humans just don't…"
"Yeah, well you know Stacy and how determined she gets."
"I suppose," he said, though he sounded like he doubted that her being determined would be enough for her to take on a vampire and win.
"So you can see my problem. She's the kind of girl who’d jump on a vampire and start beating the shit out of them. She doesn't care about risk to life and limb!"
My dad sighed. "I wish I had answers for you honey. I wish I could tell you something that would make this all better, but…"
His eyes moved down. I knew he was staring at the kitchen. To the spot where my mom usually spent most of her time puttering around the kitchen acting like she was preparing meals even though she couldn’t touch the physical world.
Being killed and then staying in the world of the living had done a number on her. That was for sure. There were times when I thought it’d be a mercy for dad to send her to the other side, but I’d never brought that up with him.
"I never could bring myself to take her to the other side, you know," he said.
I blinked. Sure on the one hand I knew he was talking about my mom, but on the other hand it was so weird to hear him openly talking about her like that. Especially when we'd gone so long without him mentioning it in any way, shape, or form. It’d always been a taboo subject in our house.
"I know," I said. "I never really blamed you for that, you know. I'd have trouble doing the same thing. Hell, I did have trouble when Stacy got killed."
He smiled. Patted me on the shoulder.
"I suppose you did. Maybe that's something that runs in the family."
"Yeah, well you seem to have trouble bringing people you like to the other side," I said. "I mean there were years when I thought the only reason I kept surviving was because I was getting the family treatment or something."
My dad rolled his eyes. "No. Believe me. It almost would've been easier if I just let you go to the other side to teach you a lesson.”
"Hey!" I said. "You're talking about letting your daughter die for good here!"
"Except I always knew you could never die for good. I think that's how you survived that night with the necromancer, though it's a good thing he didn't know what he had that night. Things could’ve been very bad if he realized he had a reaper who couldn’t defend herself.”
I shivered as I thought about what Graham had done to my dad. How he’d locked him inside a massive obelisk of crystal designed for holding the spirits of the recently deceased, or people who'd had the souls sucked out of them without technically going through the whole dying part first.
That obelisk containing my dad had been almost as powerful as an obelisk Graham filled with the souls of everybody in a football stadium. Sure it was just a high school football stadium, but there were a bunch of people gathered for a homecoming game. Not one of the usual pitiful showings our football team had because they weren't all that great.
"You know. You never did tell me what I'm supposed to do about this whole vampire thing. I have a girlfriend who’s obsessed with going out and putting herself in situations where she's going to get killed by supernatural creatures, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to save her.”
"And I'm not sure what I'm supposed to tell you," my dad said. "Unfortunately that's more of a relationship thing than a reaper thing.”
I sighed. "I was afraid you were going to say something like that. I don't suppose you have any relationship advice you’d want to give out? Maybe have a father and daughter moment?”
He looked down again. Straight at the kitchen.
I mean it’s not like she spent all her time in the kitchen. I’m not trying to paint a picture of domestic slavery or anything like that. It’s just that with my dad doing his thing she’d always been the one who took point on the whole child rearing thing.
"I'm really not the person to give that kind of advice," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Because I made the choice to let the woman I loved go into harm's way long ago because I was selfish, and you know how that ended."
I sighed. It was weird, but my dad had sort of made my decision for me.
Sure on the one hand I knew there were risks involved with letting Stacy have what she wanted. She’d already been caught up in some of those risks. She'd been killed by a necromancer several times already, and every time she'd gone right back into the fight without caring that she was risking her life and immortal soul.
Basically I figured she’d already proved there was nothing I was going to be able to do to stop her. It was that, more than anything, that finally decided me.
"You look like you've come to a decision," my dad said.
"Maybe I have," I said.
"Well it's good to see that you're able to make decisions like that," he said. "Especially since you're going to be running things while I'm out."
I turned to him. My eyes went wide. I looked around his small study that didn’t look at all like the arcane altar to the dead I'd always imagined when I was younger hearing the screams of the damned coming from the place.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"From the big guy himself. I just got word right before you knocked on my door. He's impressed enough with you that he thinks you can hold down the fort while I'm helping take on the higher volume in Starlight City."
I thought about what was involved in doing something like that.
“So you mean every time some little old lady dies in a nursing home?”
“You’re going to have to be there,” he said.
“And accidents and stuff like that?”
“You’re also going to have to take that on,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s no getting around it. If you’re the one taking point then you
’re the one who has to be there when people are passing on.”
I sighed. “I really don’t need this on top of hunting a bunch of vampires.”
“I know,” he said. “But I’m sure you’re going to do a great job. The good news is this town is small enough that it’s not like you have that many people dying on a given day.”
“But there’s always going to be someone,” I said, thinking about what was going to be involved in that and realizing that it wasn’t going to be fun.
I’d seen people who’d just died before, and it was never pretty. They were always unwilling to admit that they’d gone to the great beyond. They were always fighting the inevitable. Even the old folks who knew they were close to the end usually didn’t want to go.
Though you did get the occasional nice old church lady who was sure enough about where she was going when all was said and done that she didn’t mind going along with you so she could see all her old friends and pets.
“Any idea how long you’re going to be in Starlight City?” I asked.
“No idea, I’m afraid,” he said. “At least until things calm down a bit there, though there’s always the chance it could get worse if things start spreading beyond the city limits.”
“Great,” I growled.
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” he said. “You’ve already taken on a necromancer and taken out one vampire spirit. That’s the kind of thing most reapers would never dream of doing.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, dad,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“No problem,” he said with a grin that told me he was deliberately missing the sarcasm in my statement. Which, to be honest, was a pretty good strategy for dealing with a frustrated teenager.
This was not going to be fun. Running the whole city on my own. Damn it. I wasn’t ready for this, but it looked like I didn’t have much choice.
