Soul Mates

by Donald Hanley

  Of course, eventually, they’re both going to decide that the answer is yes, and then everything changes.

  Mom and Dad appeared shortly after I finished my shower. Mom seemed a little worse for wear from over-indulging last night but that didn’t stop her from humming to herself as she assembled eggs, ham, and English muffins into breakfast sandwiches for everyone. She kept glancing at the hallway as if she expected Susie to walk in at any moment, but she wisely stayed ensconced in her room. Frankly, if I were Susie, I’d climb out through my bedroom window and hide somewhere until nighttime.

  Mom redirected her motherly urges at Daraxandriel and Lilith, complimenting them on their matching tees and skirts and marveling at how she could hardly tell them apart, despite Lilith’s utter lack of horns and a tail. She suggested they drive over to the mall to replace any items Lilith lost with her luggage but both sisters declined.

  “Well, we at least need to do a grocery run,” Mom declared, perusing the contents of the refrigerator. “I didn’t plan on having this many mouths to feed. Not that we mind,” she assured Lilith hastily, “we’re just running low on some things.”

  “I’m sorry to be such a burden, Mrs. Collins,” Lilith smiled over the rim of her well-sugared coffee mug.

  “Oh, you’re not, don’t be silly, Lilith.” Mom closed the refrigerator door and then ran her finger across the calendar hanging on the outside. “Oh, I forgot, we can’t go until later,” she said in dismay. “I promised to meet up with the Walking Club this morning.”

  “I thought that was on Saturdays,” I said.

  “We’re not walking today, it’s our turn to pick up trash along the highway. It’s part of this year’s Keep Hellburn Beautiful program.”

  “Like it was ever beautiful to begin with,” I muttered. Fortunately, Mom didn’t hear me.

  “You should come with me, Peter,” she went on. “You’ve just been sitting around all summer, you could use some fresh air and exercise.”

  “Gee, I’d love to, Mom,” I told her, just barely managing not to roll my eyes, “but Dad and I need to go down to the station this morning.”

  “What for?”

  “He just needs to sign some forms,” Dad explained. “It shouldn’t take long. I can probably drop him off to you on the way back.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful!” Mom enthused. “Just call me and I’ll let you know where we are.”

  “Dad,” I gritted through my teeth. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my day dodging speeding cars under the blazing sun while picking up someone else’s discarded beer bottles and burger wrappers. He just smiled and drank his coffee.

  My phone rang while I was trying to come up with a plausible reason why I couldn’t possibly help the Hellburn Ladies Walking Club with their civic duties and I was surprised to see Melissa’s name pop up. I excused myself from the table and took her call in the front room.

  “Melissa? What’s up?”

  “Hi, Peter.” Unlike her other early morning calls, she actually sounded alert and sober. “Is Lilith up? I need to talk to her.”

  “Lilith?”

  “Yes, Lilith. Could you hurry? I don’t have much time.”

  “Uh, sure.” I returned to the kitchen and held out my phone to Lilith. “It’s for you,” I told her dubiously.

  “Oh?” She didn’t look surprised as she took the phone and I wondered if she was already plotting something with Melissa or just good at hiding her reactions. “This is Lilith. Good morning, Melissa, how are you? Fine, thanks. Oh? Certainly, I’d be glad to. Go ahead.”

  She took the phone away from her ear to look at the screen and I tried to peek over her shoulder. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Just girl stuff. You wouldn’t understand.” My phone pinged a couple of times and she tapped on it, holding it away from me so I couldn’t see anything. She scrolled back and forth a couple of times with her fingertip and then held the phone up to her ear again. “Definitely the first one. Yes, absolutely. No, my pleasure. Good luck! Talk to you later.” She hung up and returned my phone with a secretive smile.

  “What did she want?” I asked. “What were you looking at?”

  “Peter,” Mom chided me. “That’s none of your business. That was a private conversation.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Collins,” Lilith assured her. “Melissa just wanted my opinion.”

  “On what?” I pulled up my messaging app and saw that Melissa had sent two photos. They were both selfies of her holding a white blouse against her chest, one with a ruffled front and the other plain with a scooped neckline. In both pictures, her legs were bare, as if she’d been in the middle of getting dressed and couldn’t decide which top to wear. “Why would she ask you about this?”

  “She wants to project the right image and she knows I have a lot of contacts in the corporate world.” Lilith smiled. “Why wouldn’t she ask me?”

  “It’s just a blouse,” I protested, uneasy at the thought of Melissa and Lilith turning into BFFs. Doesn’t she realize Lilith’s nothing like Daraxandriel?

  “That’s why she didn’t ask you,” she smirked. “Men are no good at this sort of thing.”

  “You told her to wear the fancy one, didn’t you? I would have picked that one.” I actually thought it was a little too frilly but I had to stand up for my gender.

  I zoomed in on the photo and realized I could see Melissa’s bedroom in the background. I recognized the corner of her bed and the mirror on the wall, along with a scattering of discarded clothing on the floor. Then I noticed the reflection in the mirror.

  It showed Melissa’s backside, all the way from the top of her head down to her feet, and the only thing keeping her entire anatomy from being exposed was a pair of skimpy white panties. I suddenly had trouble swallowing.

  “Peter?” Mom asked worriedly. “Are you all right? You look flushed all of a sudden.”

  “What? No! I mean, yes, I’m fine, really.” I hastily locked my phone and stuck it into my back pocket. Lilith smirked to herself and I had no doubt at all that she knew exactly what I’d seen in Melissa’s pictures. “So, Dad, are you ready to go?” I asked hopefully.

  Dad glanced at his watch. “There’s no rush, Peter. It’s my day off and I’d like to enjoy it for a while. We’ll head out in a little while.”

  “Oh, okay, no problem. I’ll, uh, I’ll be in my room until you’re ready. Just, ah, let me know.” Lilith made some comment I couldn’t catch as I beat a hasty retreat, eliciting laughter from everyone else. Round three wasn’t going at all well for me.

  I didn’t actually have a plan for what I’d do in my bedroom, I just needed a minute to collect my flustered thoughts. Despite Daraxandriel’s earlier threats, there was no way she could have manipulated Melissa into standing in that exact spot when she took those pictures. Besides, she promised to leave us alone until the hunter was dealt with. It was just a coincidence, that was all.

  What I needed to do was come up with a way to get Daraxandriel away from Lilith so that she’d come to her senses and forget about claiming souls. Bribing her with french fries wasn’t going to do it. Come on, Peter, think! I berated myself. What does Daraxandriel like to do? The answer was, unfortunately, not much. She didn’t really understand modern society, since she’d spent most of her time on Earth back in Elizabethan England. Today’s world was just a big, confusing blur to her.

  She figured computers out pretty quick, I mused, but that just keeps her sitting in my room. I need to get her out of the house, by herself and away from Lilith. She liked going out to the movies that once. Maybe I just need to take her out somewhere, just her and me. Like on a date.

  I stopped and blinked. A date? Is it that simple? I thought back over the last few weeks. We spent virtually every minute of every day together, but I couldn’t recall any time where we’d gone out by ourselves. No wonder Lilith was able to move in and take over so quickly. I’d taken Daraxandriel for granted and she latched onto the first person who t
reated her nicely.

  Now I just needed to figure out what sort of date she’d enjoy. Sadly, I didn’t have a lot of experience in this department. Melissa organized all the date-like events I’d been on so far and I sincerely doubted she’d appreciate me asking her for advice on showing another girl a good time.

  Who else do I know that’s dating? Justin and Ashley were still together, much to everyone’s surprise, so he had to be doing something right. I pulled out my phone, told myself I should really delete Melissa’s photos before anyone else saw them, and texted Justin: I want to take Dara out on a special date tonight. Any ideas?

  I wasn’t sure if he was even awake yet, so I tried to think of who else to ask in the meantime. Mrs. Kendricks? That would be awkward at best and potentially fatal, depending on how she took it. Stacy? She has a boyfriend. She also suspected I was sleeping with her mother, so her suggestions weren’t likely to be helpful. Mom? Maybe, but her concept of fun was a generation out of date. Susie? I snorted to myself and then reconsidered.

  She and Cameron were gone for hours, I thought, and Susie doesn’t like to do anything. How did he keep her happy that whole time? I didn’t have Cameron’s number but Susie was literally right next door. Assuming she feels like talking to me.

  I stepped out into the hallway and listened. A murmur of conversation told me that Daraxandriel and Lilith were still in the kitchen talking to Mom and Dad. That was worrisome but at least it kept Lilith busy. Hopefully she wouldn’t realize what I was doing until it was too late.

  I tapped on Susie’s door and got no response. I knocked again, with the same results, and then tried the door knob. It was locked.

  “Susie, are you in there?” I hoped she hadn’t actually snuck out to avoid Mom’s inevitable prying into her love life. “I need to ask you something.”

  “Go away.” There was no emotion behind that admonition, which meant she was just saying it out of habit.

  “It’s about you and Cameron.”

  After a long silence, I heard the clack of her lock and the door eased open an inch, revealing Susie’s left eye. “What about him?” Now her voice had a dangerous edge to it.

  “Do you really want to talk about him here? Mom could come by any moment.”

  Her eye looked past me down the hall and then withdrew, which I took as an invitation to enter. Susie glowered at me with her arms crossed as I closed the door behind me. “What?” she demanded.

  “What did you and Cameron do on your date?”

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

  “I want to take someone out and I’m looking for ideas.”

  Now she frowned. “Who?”

  I cleared my throat. “Dara.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head in despair. “Give it up, Peter,” she told me. She sat at her desk and picked up a soldering iron and a pair of tweezers. “She’s a succubus. She only wants your soul.”

  “Dara’s different.” That earned me a scoff. “Okay, maybe not, but this will mess up whatever plans Lilith has for her.”

  Susie paused with the smoking tip of the soldering iron hovering over a length of chain. “I’m listening.”

  “Lilith’s human now because of that curse so she needs Dara to do her dirty work. If I can separate them and persuade Dara not to collect any more souls, Lilith will be powerless.”

  She sat back in her chair with a thoughtful expression, heedless of the soldering iron mere inches from branding an intimate portion of her anatomy. “It would be simpler if we just told the demon hunter where Dara is.”

  “Except that’s exactly what Lilith wants,” I reminded her.

  “True.” For a heart-stopping moment, I thought she was going to tap her lips with the soldering iron as she considered the options, but she set it down on its stand, alarmingly close to a stack of papers. “All right, I’m in. What do you need to know?”

  “Tell me what you and Cameron did. Not anything, ah, personal,” I added hastily, although I couldn’t imagine either of them doing more than maybe holding hands. “You went to a movie first, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Which one?”

  She thought that over. “It had robots in it,” she said finally. “Maybe. That could have been one of the previews.”

  “You don’t remember?” I asked incredulously. “What were you doing in there the whole time?”

  Now she did Melissa’s tucking-hair-behind-the-ear thing. “We ate popcorn.”

  “For two hours?”

  “It was a big bucket.”

  “With a hole in the bottom?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Wouldn’t the popcorn fall out?”

  “Never mind,” I sighed. “What next?”

  “We went to that midget club place with the tunnels and things.”

  I had to blink my way through that one before a matching memory surfaced. “Mini-Golf Mountain?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Who won?”

  “I did,” she said, as if the answer should have been obvious.

  “Was Cameron ahead most of the way?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “Maybe.”

  “And did he suddenly forget how to putt on the last hole?”

  “It had a windmill,” she asserted. “Those are hard.”

  “And you won by one stroke?”

  “Two. What are you saying?”

  Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “He let you win.”

  “He did not!” I shook my head at the naiveté of the younger generation. “Did he?” I nodded. I thought she’d blow her stack but she surprised me. “Oh, how sweet,” she murmured with a tentative smile playing on her lips.

  “Wow, you really have it bad,” I muttered. Her eyes instantly turned hard.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I assured her hastily, “I just meant – nothing. Then what did you do?”

  “We went down to that picnic place by the bridge and walked along the river.”

  “Just walking? No feeding the ducks or skinny-dipping or anything?”

  “He wouldn’t let me. We just talked, mostly.”

  “About what?”

  “Things.”

  I waited but no further clarifications were forthcoming. “And then?” I prompted.

  “We went to dinner.”

  “At the Sizzler, I remember. And then you came home. Or did you?” I frowned. “You didn’t actually show up for ages.”

  “Dessert took a long time.”

  “It’s doesn’t take an hour. Where did you go afterwards?” She developed a sudden fascination with her nail polish. “Susie –”

  “Fine,” she huffed. “We went over to that little park at the end of the block. He wanted to see my –” She stopped abruptly and clamped her lips shut.

  “What?” I asked, feeling a growing sense of alarm. “What did he want to see?”

  “Nothing. You’re just going to get all weird about it.”

  “Susie!” I was aghast. I could think of only one thing a teenaged boy would want to see and Susie had absolutely no sense of shame or modesty. “You can’t do that!”

  “He’s going to see it after we’re married anyway,” she argued.

  “That doesn’t matter! He – Wait, what? What do you mean, married? You just went out on one date!”

  “I’m not going to do this all over again with some other boy. Dating is too much work. I’m marrying Cameron.” She crossed her arms and glared at me, daring me to disagree.

  “You can’t get married, you’re only fifteen!”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Yes, it matters! Except it doesn’t right now! What matters is you showing – you know – to a boy you barely know!”

  “He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone,” she frowned.

  “Of course he did! That’s what boys do, they lie to get what they want! He probably told all his friends by now! Oh my God,” I breathed, rubbing my forehead. “Mom’s going to fre
ak out.”

  “She won’t if you don’t tell her,” Susie pointed out. “She doesn’t believe in magic anyway.”

  “We have to tell her! She needs to –” The gears in my brain suddenly downshifted without a clutch. “Magic?”

  “It was just a little spell,” she grumbled. “I knew you’d get all weird about it.”

  “Wait a minute, let me make sure I have this right. You went to the park and showed him your magic?”

  “Just some fairy sparkles and stuff like that,” she said, miming with her fingers. “He thought it was pretty,” she added.

  “Oh my God.” If being a real parent was going to be anything like this, maybe it would be better if Stacy did remove my testicles with a scalpel. “So Cameron knows you’re a witch?”

  “Of course.”

  “And he’s okay with that?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “Because most people don’t think witches exist!”

  “Cameron’s not like most people,” she sniffed.

  “Obviously, since he actually likes you.” That earned me a glare but I was used to those. “You didn’t tell him about Mrs. Kendricks or the other witches, did you?”

  “No.”

  “And he doesn’t know about Dara or Lilith, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Thank God for that,” I sighed. “Look, until we get this demon hunter thing sorted out, it’s really important that we don’t call any attention to ourselves. No more showing Cameron anything for a while and I mean anything, okay? In fact, it’s probably best if you didn’t see him or talk to him at all.” Her hackles rose and I backed up a step. “Just think of it as incentive to help us get rid of the hunter. Without killing him,” I added hastily, just in case she wasn’t clear on that point. “The sooner Dara’s in the clear, the sooner you and Cameron can get back to planning your wedding.”

  “Won’t he wonder why I stopped talking to him?”

  “Tell him you were playing hard to get. That’s what ladies do in those romance novels you and Mom read, right?”

  “I guess,” she grumbled. “So you’re going on a date with Dara now?”