by S D Hegyes
Sorsha shook her head. “Monster.”
“You’ve no idea.”
Pulling the ketchup from the fridge, Sorsha closed the door and stood before him, shutting off the water and plopping the ketchup bottle in his injured hand. She had the satisfaction of watching him flinch a little.
“Meanie,” he teased.
“I’m a monster too, remember?”
“Not the same kind.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “That I know.”
She gave him a secretive grin, pleased when his brows knit together. She’d left him just enough clues that if he were smart enough, he’d know she had some idea of just what kind of monster he was. He’d only proven it more and more the longer they lived together.
If he wasn’t smart, well. . . She wouldn’t explain herself.
He studied her, even as she returned to the fridge and pulled out the butter to put on her own toast. His eyes were still on her, as if trying to figure out how much she knew, when they sat down together.
She dug into her eggs as if nothing was wrong, tucking her chin down so he wouldn’t see the smile that crossed her face. His confusion amused her more than she cared to admit. Maybe she was being cruel, not explaining what she knew, but so was he by not admitting it either.
It took two to tango.
17
Sorsha only nibbled on her toast while Larz wolfed down his breakfast. He watched her push her eggs around on her plate without eating much. He pushed his empty plate away and frowned at her. “Alright,” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
Sorsha dusted crumbs from her hands. “I think I have to ask a little girl to re-live her murder so I can find more clues about her killer.” She flinched. The words sounded worse when she said them aloud.
“Want me to ride with?”
“Don’t you work tonight?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Off.” He grinned. “I’m at your disposal. We can go interview your spirit, if that’s what you wish to do, and if that doesn’t get you answers, we can go talk to the local vampire lord.” It was his turn to flinch. “Oh. That sounded terrible.”
Sorsha laughed bitterly. “The whole situation is terrible. I’ve never tried figuring out who—or what—killed one of my spirits before.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Sorsha collected files and documents on the spirits she had in her deck, but that was more out of curiosity than anything else. She’d questioned what might have happened to them all, of course, but never actively looked into their deaths.
Not that I’ve been actively looking into this one either, she realized. She’d spent so much time studying facts laid out in a file, as she did with all her spirits, that she hadn’t once gone out and looked for real evidence.
Already, Gloria had given her a clue. The person who’d killed her had been a man with an ice cream truck.
Eyes wide, Sorsha jumped out of her chair, knocking it to the floor in her haste. She banged her knee against the table as she stood and grimaced, but it didn’t deter her. She found Gloria’s folder and flipped through it, scanning the file. “That’s it.”
“What is?” Larz twisted around in his seat. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Sorsha snapped the folder closed and shook it. “Gloria already ID’d her killer. The first time I spoke to her. I’d forgotten about it honestly. She said that her parents had always told her about the ice cream truck, and one of the last things she remembered was hearing its song and going to get ice cream.”
She grinned triumphantly. “I need to talk to Gloria again. She knows who killed her. I just wasn’t listening properly.”
His brow knit together. “I’m not following.”
“How many people do you know still operate an ice cream truck?”
An hour later, Sorsha and Larz stood side-by-side next to the spirit’s grave. Sorsha held Gloria’s file in one hand, and her spirit deck in the other.
Most of the time, Sorsha came to the cemetery at night so she wouldn’t bother others who might come visit their loved ones. She knew few people who entered cemeteries after dark. Too creepy.
Thanks to the holiday though, when they walked through toward Gloria’s grave, the cemetery was deserted and few cars drove along the roads, despite it being a major street through town. Sorsha was almost glad they’d come on the holiday, but that happiness was a double-edged sword when she saw the child.
Gloria sat atop her headstone, her feet swinging even as she had her elbows propped on her knees and her head cradled in her hands. She frowned as she watched the pair.
Misery washed over Sorsha, and she shuddered. Gloria was strong. Then again, emotions from child spirits always seemed to be. They hadn’t had the filter most adults did when they were alive, and any filters they may have had then were gone once they passed. At least, that’s what Sorsha attributed it to.
“Merry Christmas,” Gloria said, her voice dismal.
“Merry Christmas, Gloria.” Sorsha glanced at Larz, but he looked around the cemetery, eyes narrowed and wary, as if he expected trouble.
How much trouble could they get into in a cemetery on Christmas Day?
“What’s his problem?” Gloria asked.
Sorsha shrugged. “What’s wrong?” Her focus remained on the child.
Gloria sighed and dropped her hands, but she wouldn’t meet Sorsha’s eyes. “My parents came to see me.”
“That’s good.” It was hard to swallow the lump in her throat. She’d cried all the tears she was going to cry the night before, but that didn’t stop her from feeling the pain of knowing other parents were better with their children.
The spirit glared at her, and her body flared red. “No, it’s not.”
“Well,” Sorsha said, another shudder passing through her. So much anger. “Why not?”
The red drained away, starting from the top of Gloria’s head and fading until only her typical translucent look remained. “They told me about the gifts they’d gotten me that I couldn’t open. Because I’m dead.” She sniffed and rubbed at her nose, as if it could still drain snot the way it might’ve had she been alive. The gesture was nothing more than habit.
There wasn’t anything Sorsha could say about that. She turned to Larz. He stood beside her, waiting but not speaking. Could he only see her power, but not spirits? “You can’t see her, can you?”
He shook his head.
“Can he hear me?” Gloria asked. Then she frowned and kicked at the dirt. “He probably can’t. No one but you seems to be able to.”
Sorsha could transfer her power into the spirit deck. Could she transfer it to a person too? She stepped away and returned the spirit deck to its velvet pouch, shoving it into her purse and dropping it unceremoniously next to another grave. She murmured an apology to whoever rested there and returned to Larz’s side, taking his hand in hers. He jerked, surprised, but didn’t pull away. He stared at her with round eyes.
“I’m trying an experiment. Bear with me.”
“I trust you.”
She smiled before she turned her attention to their conjoined hands. She could feel her power writhing inside her, awakened at Larz’s touch and the spirit’s presence, seeking a means of escape. Taking a deep breath, she tried to remember how she pushed some of that power into her spirit deck to awaken the spirits within them. She filtered her power through her body and into the hand holding Larz’s. She hadn’t if she could transfer her power to Larz the way she did her deck, but it was worth a try.
The worst that could happen was nothing at all.
Sorsha watched the vapors around their hands swirl in pale wisps. They danced around in twisting circles before climbing up their arms toward their elbows. She looked up and met Larz’s eyes, which had turned pale, making the black pupil stand out even more.
“I can never get over the change.”
“My eyes?” He nodded and she grinned. “You should see yours.”
“Mine?” Pale fear drifted across his face.
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She chuckled. “They’re pale—white.” She tipped her head toward Gloria. “Can you see and hear her now?”
His eyes widened.
Gloria giggled and clapped her hands. “Oh! He can see me.” She glanced at Sorsha. “How did you do that?”
It had worked. At least, it seemed as if it had. Somehow, she’d transferred her power to Larz. A giddiness filled her at the prospect. She could share her power with another person. She hadn’t a clue if it would work for anyone else or worked for him because he was a supernatural. She’d have to test it on someone she knew wasn’t a supernatural to know for certain, and she wasn’t ready to go there yet with anyone else. Not even Tanner.
She explained that she’d done the same she did with her cards, transferred a bit of her ability to Larz. Not a lot, but enough he could interact with Gloria in a similar way she did. When Sorsha asked if Larz and Gloria could physically interact, Gloria’s hand passed right through his, confirming that Sorsha hadn’t given Larz access to all her abilities.
“What if we let go?” Larz asked her. They tested that theory as well. When they released each other’s hands, Larz’s eyes darkened and he shook his head. “It’s as if Gloria faded before my eyes. It seems to be a constant contact thing.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Sorsha for good measure.
“There’s children present. Just because you can’t see her, doesn’t mean she’s disappeared.” Sorsha took Larz’s hand again and watched his eyes turn pale once more.
“This is cool,” the child said. “Best Christmas ever. You have no idea how nice it is to talk to someone.” She frowned. “Other than Ray, that is.”
Sorsha snorted. “He’s not very good company, is he?”
The spirit shook her head. “He’s cranky.”
“He is,” Sorsha agreed with a chuckle. “That said, I’m sorry to do this—and on Christmas too—but if I’m going to find out who killed you, I need to know more about what happened that day.”
Gloria shuddered. “I thought you were here to ask me if I was ready to join your deck.” Sadness crept into her features, and she sighed. “What do you want to know?” The resolution in her voice made Sorsha’s heart ache.
“Tell us what you remember,” Sorsha said. “Don’t worry if you can’t remember everything. Just tell me what you do.”
As the child spoke, Sorsha thought about the words she used. Gloria’s matter of speaking was already different than it had been when Sorsha had first met her. It wasn’t unusual, but something she’d noticed with all the spirits she dealt with. Over time, their speech patterns changed to match an adult’s of the current era. It didn’t matter what age they were or which century they’d lived in.
“All I remember is the man offered me ice cream from his truck. It had played a song—like Mommy and Daddy told me about—and I followed the noise until I saw the truck.”
Sorsha nodded, afraid to interrupt or ask questions.
“He told me I could come in and see what flavors he had, and the last thing I remember is climbing into the back of the truck.”
“Could you describe the truck?”
Gloria frowned, her nose wrinkling. “It was like a big box.”
“Like a moving truck?”
“Yes!” Gloria’s head bobbed up and down. “It did. I remember I was barely able to climb up in it.”
Sorsha felt her body vibrate as Larz growled beside her. She didn’t spare him a glance though.
“What about the man? Can you tell me about him? Do you remember what he looked like?”
Gloria’s face scrunched up, and she looked down as she tried to remember. “He had blond, shorter than yours.” She pointed at Larz. “And he had blue eyes. I remember that.” Then she frowned. “Wait. Were his eyes red? No. That can’t be right. No one has red eyes. That can’t be right.” Her face wrinkled again. “I remember him having both blue eyes and red eyes. How is that possible?” Her head cocked to the side as she looked at them.
“Vampire,” Larz said, a smug grin on his face as he looked at Sorsha. She rolled her eyes at him. “Man, I hate that I was right though. I was actually kind of hoping I was wrong.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because that means we need to visit the local vampire lord, and I was trying to avoid that as much as possible.”
“Why?” It was a stupid question, she knew, with how often he’d made it clear vampires wanted her dead, but she didn’t have any plans on revealing what she was. His irritation made no sense.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he nodded to Gloria. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Larz released Sorsha’s hand and climbed to his feet, a troubled expression on his face. “I’ll see you at the car.”
She nodded and turned her attention to Gloria. “You mentioned you thought we were here to ask if you wanted to join my deck, so I figured I’d ask: did you want me to change your haunt? No pressure. Just curious if you’d thought about it.”
The spirit glanced around the cemetery, her expression filled with such loneliness that Sorsha’s heart ached just to see it.
“Can you?” Tears gathered at the bottom of her wide eyes when she turned back to Sorsha. “It’s lonely here, and I’m scared.”
Reaching forward, Sorsha took the child’s hand in her own. Without looking, she grabbed her purse and shuffled through it one-handed until she found the velvet bag and pulled out a card without a spirit. A quick glance at the face of the card revealed it was the ten of hearts.
“Gloria Murphy,” Sorsha whispered in a low voice.
She felt her power rise, humming through her veins. The wind around them rose, but Sorsha took a deep breath and the wind slowed to a gentle breeze, swirling around the spirit’s mostly translucent form.
Another calming breath later, and the child’s form faded away into a thin cloud of smoke and vapor that drifted down into the card Sorsha held. The child’s hand remained in her’s until the rest of her had already disappeared into the card before it followed suit.
As soon as the card was safely in the card, it changed. The card turned completely black with a skull on the backside of it. The eyes glowed orange as the spirit in the card settled, and Sorsha could breathe easily when they dulled until nothing but blackness swirled in the skull’s sockets. She took a deep breath through her nose and released it slowly out through her mouth, flipping the card over as she did so.
Her whole body tingled and she shook her hands one at a time, her fingers banging against one another, trying to get some feeling back into them.
The grimace on her face turned into a smile as she looked at the card Gloria now occupied. Where six hearts had just been in two neat rows of three, Gloria stood instead, her hands tucked behind her back and her head tilted down in an innocent expression.
Sorsha narrowed her eyes at the card. Something was different about Gloria’s card, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Reaching over to her deck, she pulled another card with a spirit to compare it to.
“It’s in color,” she said aloud, wonder clear in her voice.
The spirits of her deck were always translucent so that the black card shone through each figure. Their depth came from the various shades of white and gray in their details.
Gloria was different. Although still translucent as the others, there were colored shades to her image. The green of the holly on her holiday dress was evident. Gold shone through the curls in her hair. Her eyes shone bright blue.
A thought occurred to Sorsha and she shuffled through the cards until she found Jenny’s card. She remembered how they’d both glowed when they’d found one another and both realized they were family—together again.
Sure enough, Jenny’s mohawk was somewhere between pink and purple, her eyes blue and brilliant hues swirled through her various tattoos.
Sorsha smiled and put her cards away. She didn’t quite know why those two were different from the rest, but in the end it didn’t matter. Th
e two spirits were together, and they could speak to one another at will unless Sorsha called them, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to before she found Gloria’s killer.
18
“Where are we going?” Sorsha asked Larz.
A twisted grimace replaced his usually-relaxed expression as he gave her a quick glance. “There’s a couple of vampire nests here in Fayetteville, but there’s only one man who oversees them all. If you want to know anything about the rest of the vampires, he’s the one you’d have to talk to.”
“Who?”
“Frank Thirst.”
Sorsha sat back deep in her seat, staring out the windshield. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“You knew?” His body tensed, and she noted that his grip on the steering wheel tightened more than necessary.
“I started having suspicions that there was something different about him the night I met him, but then I saw him again.” She ground her teeth together and growled. “He threatened me. Sort of. Not directly, but either way. I don’t appreciate threats.”
“Have you spoken to him since?”
She shook her head. If she hadn’t already been studying Larz’s body language from the corner of her eye, she might’ve missed the way he relaxed in his seat. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Just curious.”
Sure. She didn’t believe him for a second, but she let the lie hang in the air between them. “So, why are you so worried about taking me to a vampire nest?”
He stared at her. “Really? Other than the obvious fact that they’re going to kill you?”
Sorsha snorted. “I doubt that.”
“You’re a phantom, Sorsha. Everything they’ve been taught and programmed to hate and fear. The fact that you’ve lived this long amazes me.” He shook his head.
This felt like a conversation they’d had in the past. She frowned as she tried to examine the memory, hating how she could remember some things from her past, but not others. It bothered her more than she’d ever mentioned aloud to have such large holes in her memory where the supernatural were concerned. She rubbed at her forehead, frustrated, as she drew another blank on why their conversation was familiar.
