by S D Hegyes
“Why don’t you find out?” Irene purred as she wrapped her arms around his waist. “Ready to get out of here?” The pair of them said goodnight to Sorsha and Larz and left the bar.
Sorsha waited until they were gone before she started laughing. “Well, I never. . .” She shook her head. “I’ve never imagined she’d react that way.”
Larz grinned. “How long have you two known each other?”
“A little over two years. Roundabouts.” She shrugged. “Want to get out of here?”
“God, yes.” He looked about as enthusiastic as she was.
She fiddled with her fingers for a moment, watching him as they stood. “You said I could trust you?”
He paused and studied her. “Yes.”
Once again, she knew, without knowing how, he was telling the truth. Why were they so at ease around each other? She decided it was better not to question it. “There’s something I need to do, and if you’re up for it, I could use a ride.”
“A ride? Where to?”
She opened her mouth to respond and then closed it, turning away to pull on her jacket and shoulder her purse. “Maybe I’ll just get an Uber.”
“Sorsha.” Larz put his hand on hers, and warmth flooded through her. She felt her power rise to answer with a siren’s call, but she pulled her hand out from beneath his before it could reveal itself. She met his gaze instead.
She did know him from somewhere. The memory was just below the surface, but gone before she could make heads or tails of it though. She growled in frustration at her own mind.
“Sorsha? You can trust me.”
Somehow, she believed him. For whatever reason, she was safe with Larz. “Alright then.”
The drive to the cemetery was silent, but not awkward. They were caught up in their own thoughts. As Larz pulled into the drive that wove through and around the plot of land, he looked over at her with what looked like a nervous grin. “Want to tell me why we’re in a cemetery?”
She narrowed her eyes for a moment. “No.”
His eyebrow rose and she frowned. She’d never met anyone who could do that—except Irene, but she didn’t count as she’d trimmed, plucked and shaped her eyebrows just for that ability.
“Thanks for the ride. You’re more than welcome to leave if you’d like or have other plans. I can get a ride home from here. I’m used to it.”
“You don’t want me to come with you.”
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer it. “I’ll see you later.” She climbed out of the car and shut the door behind her. The last time she’d been in the cemetery, she followed the edge of the road until she came across Ray before following him halfway across the grounds to Gloria’s grave.
This time, she cut across the cemetery, shivering as she walked past a plot devoted to babies’ graves. It always made her stomach roll to know so many infants had died and buried.
Once, she’d counted. She’d stopped and broken down into tears when she saw there were more than fifty headstones for infants without names attached to them. The words were the same for most of the headstones, and the only difference were the years lived.
Gloria’s grave was further back in the cemetery. Sorsha guessed the section where her resting place was located had been added after the cemetery grew too full. The wall memorial had been a later addition as well, and she knew the groundskeepers were still developing land beyond it in order to increase the overall size of the cemetery.
Gloria’s grace lay to the left of a building Sorsha had never entered before and didn’t know the use of.
Once she passed all the baby graves, Sorsha stopped and called upon her power, sure that Larz could no longer see her, even if he was still parked where she’d left him. She waited until the orange tendrils of smoke whirled around her hands and started drifting up her arms before she continued to the child’s grave.
She sighed. It had been a long time since she’d spoken to a spirit who wasn’t an adult, and it never got any easier.
The grave had changed since her last visit. The soil had settled and darkened with the recent rain, and there was a headstone at one end with Gloria’s full name engraved upon it along with an image of an angel and the dates during which Gloria had lived.
I hope I never meet an angel, honestly. I might have to punch him in the face for allowing children to die.
Gloria sat on her grave, staring at her headstone. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Tears spilled down her translucent face.
“Gloria? Are you alright?” Sorsha reached for the spirit but hesitated, deciding it would be best to wait for an answer. She still had scars from past spirits that had turned upon her.
“They put this here this morning?” The little girl looked up at Sorsha. “I’m really dead?”
“I’m afraid you are.” There was no use sugarcoating the truth. Still, Sorsha dropped her purse in the dead grass and sank to the earth beside the spirit, wrapping her arms around the child. She settled her cheek atop the spirit’s head.
“Why?”
Such a simple question, but Sorsha knew the answer was anything but.
“I don’t know, but I will find out. I promise.”
“Does it matter?” Gloria sniffed. “I’ll still be dead.”
“True, but I bet your parents would like to know.”
“My parents?” The girl’s translucent form glowed orange. “They weren’t my parents. I heard them this morning. They cried for me, but they wished they’d told me about my mom.”
“I know.”
Gloria pulled away from Sorsha and looked up at her, her body turning translucent again. “You. . . know?”
Sorsha nodded. “I know who your mother is. She—” Sorsha allowed the words to falter as she thought about how to phrase her words. “She had a tough decision to make when you were born, and she did what she thought was best for you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Somehow, Sorsha got the impression Gloria would only believe her if she proved it. She couldn’t say she blamed the girl. First, she’d died, and then she’d found out her parents weren’t her parents. It had to be rough.
“Would you like to meet her?”
The spirit hesitated a long time, tugging at the curls on her head. Sorsha waited. It didn’t do well to hurry a spirit. They were dead. They weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
After a long time, Gloria nodded.
“Alright then.” Sorsha reached over and snagged her purse, pulling the velvet bag from it. Withdrawing the cards from inside, she split the deck, poured her power into the half containing spirits until the skull’s eyes glowed, and then whispered the child’s name to the deck.
Jenny’s transparent form appeared before Sorsha, and she watched the confusion spread across Gloria’s face.
“I—I don’t understand. I met her the other night.”
Sorsha nodded. “She’s your mother.”
Jenny wrung her hands together. “I was fourteen when you were born, and I knew I couldn’t take care of you. Heck. I was still a kid myself. So I found you parents I knew would raise you well.” Jenny tried to smile, but it didn’t stay on her face. “I kept a picture of you in my wallet. Every year, your parents sent me a new photo on your birthday.” She looked away. “Maybe if I hadn’t died last year, I could have saved you.”
Gloria stared at Jenny until the woman looked at her again. Then she scrambled to her feet and ran to Jenny, wrapping her arms around the other spirit’s waist and burying her face against Jenny’s chest.
Jenny looked at Sorsha, her arms in the air, as if unsure how to respond.
Sorsha bit back a chuckle and mimed wrapping her arms around someone else.
With a look down at Gloria, Jenny finally lowered her arms and did just that. She laid her head atop the child’s as well, a warm smile on her face.
Sorsha’s eyes widened. Before her, the two spirits became less transparent, their color less washed out. The pink and pu
rple on Jenny’s head brightened and the gold of Gloria’s curls was less muted. It was also easy to tell her dress was white with red and green holly on it.
“Holy shit!” Her words were a low whisper.
“You’ve got that right. You did something right for once, voodoo-witch.”
Sorsha growled, unhappy that the perfect reunion between the mother and daughter might be ruined, and turned toward Ray. She prepared to lay into him about calling her a witch once more—especially one who dealt with something as dangerous and ancient as voodoo—but the words froze in her throat as she saw who stood next to the spirit who liked getting on her nerves.
“Larz.”
10
At first, Sorsha stared at Larz, dumbfounded. Her eyes roamed the features that made him so distinctive in her mind. The ring in his brow, the piercing at the corner of his thin mouth. Sharp angles, dark hooded eyes. His left ear was slightly more pointed than his right, and both held an array of different piercings.
When he swallowed, she followed the motion of his Adam’s apple, and she saw the edge of a tattoo peeking out from the low neck of a tank top he wore under a leather jacket.
A flicker of a memory bombarded her mind, gone before she could catch it, but she knew it dealt with a name. And that name started with an A.
Was she imagining things?
“Sorsha?” Her trance broke and she met his gaze again, noting how his expression heated.
She licked her lips, mouth dry, and cleared her throat. “I thought I told you not to come?”
“Curiosity killed the cat. You left me alone in a car so you could stalk a graveyard?” She supposed he meant his smile to be comforting. “Are you a gravedigger?”
“What?” Surprise colored her voice. “No.”
“Then what are you doing?”
She looked down at her hands, saw the orange vapors drifting around them. Was Larz like everyone else she knew? Could he not see the way her power manifested?
For some reason, the knowledge sent a wave of disappointment wafting through her. A deep ache for companionship, for someone to talk to about the fact that she’d promised to find a child’s killer, rippled through her.
“You didn’t shut it down. I guess that’s progress.”
Her eyes met his again. “What?”
“You’ve been cutting off your power when we touch.” He gestured to her hands and gave her a one-shoulder shrug.
Her mouth flopped open. She’d misheard him. She had to have misheard him.
With a chuckle, he tucked her chin closed with his left forefinger. Wasn’t he right handed? She could have sworn she’d seen him use his right hand for almost everything that night. Confusion and familiarity flooded through her.
“I don’t understand,” she said in a low voice.
Larz reached out and grabbed her hand. She tried to pull away, panic rushing through her, but his grip was deceptively strong.
“Sorsha,” he said. “Relax. Trust me.”
She froze. He had no idea what he was asking her. Then again, maybe he did. She watched his open excitement as he stared at their hands, watching the vapors swirling in intricate designs around their entwined grip.
His expression proved more interesting than her power. Wonder and relief warred for control of his facial features, his eyes lighting up with delight and his mouth turning up into a smile at the corner near his lip piercing. It was the look of someone finally returning home after years overseas, of someone finding something familiar in the unfamiliar.
We do know each other! There was no doubt in her mind they knew one another. What she wouldn’t give to have her mother near to question him. Maybe she could pull the truth from his lips.
She lowered her gaze to his mouth, a carnal part of her wondering what it might be like to feel his lips on hers, but she shook the thought from her mind.
“Sorsha?” Larz lifted his gaze. “Are you alright?”
“You can see it, can’t you?” Her voice came out low. She didn’t dare believe.
He grinned at her. “I told you. You can trust me.”
At that, she ripped her hand from his grasp. “Can I?” she asked, her words heated as anger filtered through her. “I told you not to follow me, and yet you did.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re in the middle of a cemetery, and it’s dark, Sorsha. Did you really expect me to sit in the car and twiddle my thumbs, or worse, go home and wait for you to return?”
“Yes!”
“I can see that you two have some unfinished business you need to resolve. I’m just going to—”
“Ray,” Sorsha said, snapping her gaze to the spirit. “Can he see you?”
“No. That’s all on you. I can see your power, but I can’t see the spirits you talk to.” Larz gestured to her face. “I love watching your eyes change colors.” Reverent awe filtered through his words.
She blinked. He could see that her eyes weren’t gray anymore? They turned the same color as the vapor swirling around her, but no one ever noticed. How could he? It didn’t make sense.
“It comes with being a phantom. You can see spirits, those killed by supernatural means rather than normal human ones, and—if you’ve been training—you can even control spirits.”
She shuddered at the accuracy of his words. It was really close to what she’d discovered over the years of having her powers. She wasn’t certain about the supernatural means of death, but she did know that most in her spirit deck had odd or inconclusive deaths. On more than one occasion, she’d accidentally controlled the actions of a spirit, but only when she couldn’t control her own emotions. She always tried to keep a clear head when working with spirits because of it.
Still, she narrowed her eyes at Larz. “What do you know about what I am?” She tipped her chin. “And what does that make you?”
He grinned. “A concerned citizen,” he told her. Right. “And probably not as much as you’ve discovered for yourself.”
Sorsha shrugged. “Humor me.”
Glancing around, he said, “How about I explain at home? What were you doing out here?”
Spinning around with a swear, Sorsha looked at Jenny and Gloria. The child watched Larz with obvious curiosity, but Jenny had a knowing grin on her face. Both spirits still had that brighter coloration. She couldn’t explain how or even why that was possible. A new development in her abilities. Just what she needed at the moment.
“Who’s the loverboy? I don’t know, Sorsha. He seems more my speed than someone you’d hang out with.”
Sorsha rolled her eyes at Jenny. “Of course you’d think that. He’s my roommate.”
“This seems like a very one-sided conversation that I’m the subject of.”
She gave Larz an apologetic smile and asked the two spirits, “Are you two good?”
They nodded. “I’m more interested in the hottie,” Jenny told her.
“Of course you would be,” Sorsha muttered. She crouched before Gloria. She’d come there for the child after all. The spirit child’s eyes followed her movements, fear hiding in the corners of her eyes, but her face open to explanations with curiosity.
“Are you happy you met your mother?” She tried to keep her voice low and soothing.
Gloria glanced up at Jenny, a soft and uneasy smile crossing her face, before she looked at Sorsha again. “Yes.”
Sorsha got the sense she wanted to say more, that she felt more tumultuous feelings about everything going on, but couldn’t voice such emotions. She smiled. “Would you like to join her, away from the cemetery?”
The child’s eyes widened, and she glanced up at Jenny. When Gloria looked at Sorsha again, indecision lingered in her gaze.
“It doesn’t have to be tonight. This is a big decision. I’ll tell you what would happen, so it’ll help you decide.” Sorsha sat down cross-legged before Gloria. “What I’d do is sever your tie to the cemetery, to your grave, and I’d change your haunt to a card.”
She held up her spirit deck,
spreading out the cards so the images faced her. Each black card had a translucent figure of a spirit on it. The rest of the cards looked like regular playing cards. Remembering how the spirit deck started always made Sorsha flinch, even if she was getting better about not showing it.
Funny, she thought to herself as she held up the cards without spirits for Gloria to see. The memories that were compromised were all that seemed to deal with my power. Why? She wished there was someone she could ask about it. It was frustrating.
“So, I’d be stuck in a card rather than stuck here?” Gloria asked.
“I’m not explaining this right.”
Jenny bent down. “It’s a little more complicated than that. She’ll change your haunt to the card, but you won’t be stuck the same way you are here.” She smiled at the girl, and Sorsha saw the love in it. “In its own way, it means more freedom.” Jenny glanced at Sorsha. “We would have to answer if Sorsha calls us, but she does generally call upon us personally, and those who answer her generalized call do so of their own accord. Does that make sense?”
“I. . . I think so.” Gloria’s face screwed up with a frown, her nose wrinkling and her eyes scrunching up at the corners. She looked absolutely adorable in Sorsha’s opinion.
Sorsha explained that she ran a kind of psychic operation, but then she had to explain what that was because Gloria didn’t know.
Jenny had to hide her smile behind her hand, and Sorsha imagined her frustration was written across her face. She hated having to explain Phantom Mystics. She was so used to not talking about it much.
It was one of the reasons why she didn’t often ask spirits to join her deck. Most of the spirits in the deck had asked her. Jenny had been one of them, terrified to remain at her grave although she couldn’t explain why.
“Oh! You can use spirits to predict people’s futures!” Gloria cried, understanding lighting up her face.
Sorsha tilted her head from side-to-side. “More or less. It doesn’t quite work that way, and when I do—” She shuddered and her words died in her throat as she glanced back at Larz. Did she really want to explain this to him? No, but Gloria deserved answers. “When I do it, the spirit called forth takes over my body. I’m completely at their mercy for the time they’re there.”
