by Cheree Alsop
“No,” she replied. “I remember the lights flickering out.” Tears filled her eyes. “There were lots of loud noises; I felt trapped, wet, cold, then everything went dark.”
Sorrow filled my chest with a tight pressure. “I’m sorry,” I said. The words felt paltry and thin compared to the somber expression that took over where her hopeful smile had been. “I don’t know why you’re here.”
“I feel so lost,” she said.
I took a step toward her. “Maybe I can help?”
“I don’t think anybody can help me,” she replied.
She turned away so fast she bumped into a desk, or she would have if she’d had a body that was a solid form. Instead, the edge of the desk passed cleanly through her as though she hadn’t moved. She stared at it, then her leg. Slowly, as if afraid it would bite her, the young woman lowered her hand through the top of the desk. She pulled it back and then stared at her opalescent fingers.
She shook her head again. “This isn’t right. This can’t be right!”
She backed away from us.
“Wait,” I called out. “Let me help you.”
She misjudged her retreat and ended up fading through half of the doorframe only to reappear on the other side. Her startled gaze went from the frame to me.
“Hold on,” I said.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “This isn’t right,” she repeated. “This isn’t right at all.”
She turned and walked away.
I ran to the hall to stop her, but when I reached the doorway, she was gone.
Professor Shipley joined me.
“Please tell me that was one of your magic tricks,” I said.
“I wish,” he replied. He was quiet for a moment before he said, “She looked so distressed.”
“I wish I could have helped her. I’m just glad you could see her, too,” I told him. “At least I know I’m not going crazy.”
“To be fair, both of us seeing the same ghost might mean we’re both crazy.”
That made me crack a smile. “You have a point.” A thought struck me. “What time is it?”
“Four ten,” he replied.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Where?” he asked with a hint of surprise.
“Work,” I told him.
His eyebrows rose. “You started college and a job this week? You’ve been busy.”
I gave him a wry smile before leaving the classroom. “You have no idea. Thanks, Professor. I’ll try not to fall asleep in class tomorrow.”
“You do that,” he called after me down the hall. “You might actually learn something!”
“That’s a terrifying thought,” I replied.
His chuckle stayed with me when I left the building. I thought about the ghost girl on my way to the bus stop.
I usually walked, but falling asleep had cut my leeway too close and I didn’t want to be late again. I had the sinking feeling that I was already failing at being human. Who knew responsibility would take so much work?
I snorted at the thought and was rewarded with a sideways glance from a woman with groceries in one hand and the chubby arm of a toddler clutched in the other to keep him from reaching the road as he so insistently wanted to do.
I took a step back to give them more space. I was a responsible individual. I had guarded the Lair successfully my entire nineteen years of life. The voice in the back of my mind noted that I had then killed my vampire Master and freed the werewolves who had been little more than gladiatorial soldiers beside me. I wasn’t exactly sure I could call that responsible, but at least it had felt like accomplishing something.
The woman’s cellphone rang. She sighed and shifted her groceries to her other arm and proceeded to hold a phone up to her ear while attempting to keep her child under control.
On her other side, two men were in a deep discussion about property values that made no sense to me, while another mother next to them argued with her teenage son. Snippets of ‘caught smoking’ and ‘getting expelled’ came through loud and clear. Two women had come up a respectful distance away on my other side and were in a debate about whether the inflation in the price of a gallon of milk compared to this same time last year meant the economy was in trouble.
Perhaps I didn’t want to be responsible or human. Running back to the woods behind the Willards’ house was looking like a pretty tempting option if the specimens around me were any indication. None of them smiled. Everyone carried the heavy lemon scent of stress, including the child, who also smelled of jelly and a pet rabbit. I doubted the two were related.
The hum of the bus’s engine made me turn along with a few of the others. My breath caught at the sight of another ghost lit by ethereal light walking in the middle of the road. Gasps from the humans around me told me I wasn’t the only one who saw it. The man wore an old-fashioned suitcoat with tails. He had dropped his top hat and he bent over to pick it up without any concern for the bus that was barreling toward him.
The bus driver swerved. The vehicle careened around the ghost and plummeted straight toward us. Everyone at the bus stop ran away from the trajectory. I was nearly to the building behind us with the others when a strangled cry sounded.
“Jeffie!”
Somehow during the chaos, the woman had let go of her toddler’s hand. He was busy figuring out how to step down from the curb onto the street. It appeared to be an enormous task for the child. His little brow was furrowed in concentration as he dangled one leg over the gap. He set a chubby hand on the curb, unaware of the danger that was moments from running him over.
His mother was running desperately toward him. The groceries she had been juggling lay on the sidewalk in disarray, forgotten in her haste. But there was no way she would make it in time.
I shoved away from the building in a mad run. The looming presence of the bus hurtled closer. The child glanced up at a second cry from his mother. His blue eyes widened.
“No!” the woman screamed.
I grabbed Jeffie under his arms and threw myself into a roll. The sound of the bus slamming into the sign and the light pole just past it was so close I felt it through my lungs. I crouched over the child, my knees pressed into the rough pavement and my arms raw with road burn that would soon heal. I could feel the toddler shaking in my arms. I barely dared to open my eyes.
“Jeffie?”
“He’s there! That young man saved him!”
“Over there!”
I looked down at the curly haired boy. Large tears filled his eyes but didn’t spill over as though he didn’t know if he should cry.
“You’re alright,” I told him.
The sound of footsteps was followed by hands patting my shoulders.
“My Jeffie!” the woman said.
I rose with the boy in my arms. Other hands supported me. I gave the woman a shaky smile.
“Maybe he’ll stay with you now?”
Tears flowed down her cheeks when I held her child out and she accepted him from me. Jeffie clung to his mother and began to cry.
“I doubt it,” she said with a watery smile.
She threw her free arm around me and hugged me tight. To my shock and dismay, others who had been watching did the same thing until I was trapped in an enormous group hug. The cloud of dust and debris from the accident settled around us.
I forced myself to breathe and reminded myself that this was how humans showed affection. It didn’t mean I was under attack, and I certainly wasn’t supposed to defend myself. But it was hard to calm my instincts past my racing heartbeat and the adrenaline that flowed through my body.
The woman finally stepped away. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
“I don’t need any thanks,” I told her.
“What’s your name, son?” one of the men who had been discussing numbers asked.
“Zev,” I replied.
He held out a hand. “Zev, that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do in my life. Well done.”
I
shook his hand in a bit of a daze.
Other hands were held out. I noticed cellphones raised and pointed at us.
“You’re bleeding,” someone said.
I looked down to see red coating the knuckles of my hand. I lowered it.
“It’s fine,” I told her. “No big deal.” I needed to get out of there. Others who had seen the accident were rushing over to us.
The bus driver had climbed out of his vehicle along with the other passengers. He looked from the damage he had created and then back at the road, but the ghost was gone. By the look on his face, he wondered whether it had actually been there.
I caught snippets from the crowd.
“He was glowing.”
“His clothes were from some other time.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts. That must’ve been something else.”
“Can I take down your information?”
I realized the young woman was addressing me.
“What?”
“Your info,” she said. “Name, address, phone number? I write for the Township Times and want to get your story. We could use more heroes in this town.”
I was at a loss for words. Cellphones were pushed closer to my face. If they were waiting for a heroic statement or something, I definitely wasn’t their man. Heck, I wasn’t a man at all.
“I, uh, I’ve got to go to work,” I said, backing away. I stumbled over the curb and caught myself as the crowd followed.
“I can take you there,” the driver of the bus offered. “It’s the least I can do!” He glanced behind him at the wreckage the bus had created. “It might take me a minute. I’m sure there’s paperwork or something I’m supposed to fill out.”
The sound of a siren in the distance caught my ear. I shook my head. “I’ll walk, thanks.”
“Wait, I need to get a statement!” the woman from the paper said.
I jogged around the corner and didn’t stop until I was far enough away that the commotion of the crowd had faded into a whisper. I ducked between two buildings and leaned against the wall of the closest one. It took several minutes for my breathing to return to normal. The last thing I needed was to phase in the middle of the city during the day. That would definitely be the story they weren’t expecting.
A clock chimed five times somewhere within one of the buildings. My heart skipped a beat. I was late. I pushed off the wall and started running.
Chapter Two
“You’re late.”
Alia’s statement came as more of a question than an accusation.
“Sorry,” I told her. “I got held up. It won’t happen again.”
She studied my face from her place behind the cash register of the clothing store. If she read something there, she chose not to comment on it. “It’s fine. We just got a new shipment of pants that need tags and placement.”
“I’m on it,” I said.
As I marked the newly arrived jeans from the price list Alia had given me, I couldn’t help wondering at the dramatic change my life had taken. I used to be a battle-hardened warrior defending my vampire Master’s Lair against all manner of paranormal threats; now, I worked at a store in Township’s mall to help pay for the clothing, food, and other necessities Mrs. Willard had invested in to provide for the werewolves she had allowed to take over the forest behind her house. Though there were only five of us left now, the impact of feeding and clothing the twenty-five who had originally left with us had taken a toll I was determined to repay.
At Professor Shipley’s insistence, I had started college after we destroyed the dark coven who had kidnapped his wife. The same day, Alia’s coworker had gotten engaged and informed the owner of Yours Threadly that she was moving. Alia had offered me the job and I accepted on the condition that the money I earned went directly to Mrs. Willard.
The professor had wanted me to experience what it meant to be human. I couldn’t think of anything more human than going to school and working part time. I also wasn’t sure what I felt about it. The human experience certainly felt a bit more regimented than I had expected. Life at the Lair had revolved around a strict schedule of guarding, training, kitchen duty, more training, and a few hours of sleep here and there. I hadn’t anticipated that human life would fall into a schedule as well.
Between learning human biology, art history, college English, and a plethora of other classes the professor had enrolled me in, as well as perfecting the finer arts of folding shirts so that the sleeves didn’t stick out and making sure the creases of the pants stayed even, I felt as fully immersed in human life as I ever wanted to get. The chemical scent of the dye used to turn the jeans blue made my nose crinkle. Yep. Somewhere down the line I had become domesticated.
A familiar voice made me lift my head. I listened for a few seconds before crossing to the door that separated the storage room from the store. I plastered a small smile on my face and pushed the door open.
Janie, Alia’s friend who worked with Isley at the salon that occupied another wing of the mall, gave me a wide-eyed look from where she held out her phone to Alia. Her hair had changed from pink to blue since the last time I had seen her. The pungent odor of hair coloring substances and bleach wafted from her in a heady wave.
“Is this you?” she asked.
I glanced at the phone. “I doubt it. I don’t carry a cell.”
“Not the phone,” she replied. “The video.”
“Really, Zev?” Alia said, looking up from whatever she watched. “You were delayed?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Yeah. The bus was late.”
“You mean the bus that nearly ran over the baby you saved?” Alia replied. “That bus?”
I nodded with a tightening sensation in my stomach.
“Have you seen this?” Janie asked. “It’s amazing!”
Though I wanted to point out that I didn’t need to see it because I had been there, I kept quiet and walked over to join them.
Janie pressed the play button on the video. Below it, the number of views kept going up.
I watched a shaky recording of the bus swerving. From the distance, it was hard to see why it had jerked so suddenly toward the bus stop, but the shouts of alarm and chaos of the crowd were captured clearly from a viewpoint across the street.
I picked myself out from the crowd, a young man with dark blonde hair, taller than the majority around me, and wearing nondescript clothes that looked accurately as if they had been chosen from a second-hand store. I shifted my gaze to the toddler’s mother as she nearly dropped one of the bags of groceries and let go of the toddler’s hand to right it. He tottered away toward the curb without a care for the vehicle careening toward him.
Even though I knew the outcome, it was hard to watch the bus draw closer to the child. I heard Janie’s breath catch as she watched him take his awkward step off the curb. There was no way anyone would save him in time. The mother ran forward, but was too far away. Others cringed, sure they were about to see the child be killed.
A blur of movement was me shoving through the crowd. Faster than should have been possible, I scooped the kid up and rolled out of the way. Dust and debris rose as the bus impacted the pole. The camera image shook, and the mother’s screams came through; then the dust cleared to show me hunched protectively over the child. Exclamations came from those standing around the one who was filming.
People rushed forward. I rose and the cameraman zoomed into to an unmistakable shot of my face before switching to record the woman with her child.
“Zev, that was amazing,” Alia said.
Heat prickled across my skin and I shook my head. “It was nothing.”
I turned away, but Janie caught my arm. She lifted my hand before I could stop her. “Another video showed your knuckles bleeding. Somebody should look at them in case….” Her voice died away at the sight of my healed skin.
I had washed the dried blood away in the bathroom before reaching the store. There was no trace of the road rash that had torn my skin.
I gave her an uncomfortable smile and drew my hand away. “It was just a scratch,” I said. “No big deal.”
Janie’s mouth opened and then closed. She glanced at Alia.
Alia pushed me toward the back room. “There’s work to do. Jalia will take my overtime if we don’t get those boxes unpacked and products out today, and we’re already running late.”
“But Alia, I saw him bleeding. It was bad,” Janie protested, “I don’t understand….”
“You know how those videos are,” Alia replied as I ducked back into the storage room. “Always sensationalizing. And who knows what filter they were using. You can’t believe everything you find out there.”
I flexed my hands. They were scarred and strong, used to the finer points of picking a lock, breaking a neck without making a sound, and honing blades to the perfect cutting edge. And now, apparently, rescuing a child who would otherwise have been dead in the street. At that moment, they looked like the hands of a stranger.
“You saved his life,” Alia said a few hours later as I helped rearrange the clothing displays.
“You said that already,” I replied dryly.
She looked up from the shirt she was hanging and said, “I know, but it’s true. Zev, that boy is alive because of you.”
“He wouldn’t have been in peril if that ghost hadn’t been wandering through the street.”
“Yes, but nobody got footage of that from what I’ve found,” Alia replied. “Believe me, I looked. Apparently, ghosts don’t film well.”
That brought the hint of a smile to my face. “They’re camera shy.”
Alia laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know how you can joke about this. It’s serious.”
I sighed. “He’s alive, his mother is happy, and the bus driver doesn’t have a toll on his soul. There’s not more to it.”
She was quiet for several minutes. I used the time to stack another set of jeans that to me looked exactly like the pairs next to them.
“A toll on his soul,” she said, interrupted the silence. “What does that mean?” At my questioning look, she repeated, “You said the driver won’t have a toll on his soul because the boy is alive. What is that?”
