Paranormalcy

by Кирстен Уайт

  I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and reached over to check my vid screen for an announcement of what was going on. I pulled the screen up, but all it showed was a flashing red WARNING. Lots of help there. I pulled on my robe, grabbed Tasey, and poked my head outside. I knew alarm procedure called for me to stay in, but I wanted to figure out what was going on, and now.

  I ran down the empty hallways; strobe lights were going off to warn any paranormals that couldn’t hear the alarm, although you could feel the dang thing it was so loud. Reaching Raquel’s door, I palmed it. That’s the nice thing about being me—all access, all the time. I ducked inside; she was at her desk, calmly rifling through some folders.

  “Raquel,” I panted. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it.” She looked up at me and smiled. Or rather, the thing wearing Raquel’s face looked up at me and smiled. Raquel’s face shimmered over—What? I couldn’t describe it. It was somehow featureless, with eyes the color of water. If it hadn’t been wearing Raquel’s face, it would be like it wasn’t there at all.

  I forced a smile to mask my terror. “Woke me up from the freakiest dream.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got some work to do. Why don’t you scoot along?” It went back to the files.

  “Sure, as long as you don’t need me.” Turning toward the door, I casually walked closer to the desk.

  “Oh, Raquel?”

  “Hmm?”

  I flicked Tasey onto her highest level. “You dropped this.” The thing wearing Raquel’s face looked up as I lunged forward and jabbed it in the chest with the Taser. Its water eyes opened briefly in shock before it collapsed to the ground.

  Horrified, I made my way around the desk. I had heard of things that could eat a person alive and wear her skin. The idea gave even me nightmares sometimes, and my life was populated by nightmares. “Please, not Raquel,” I whispered, trying not to throw up. Raquel melted away, leaving the strangest thing I had ever seen. Which, given my job, is saying a lot.

  NOT-ME AND I

  My eyes couldn’t seem to focus on the creature. They kept slipping down its sides, unable to find anything to hold on to. It wasn’t invisible, exactly, but it was as close as a physical being can be.

  Imagine trying to walk up an eighty-degree incline covered in six inches of ice. That’s what trying to look at this guy was like.

  I was pretty sure it was a guy, at least. He kinda wasn’t wearing any clothes, and I was grateful that he’d collapsed in such a way as to cover himself. I was at a loss for what to do next when the door slid open and the real Raquel rushed in, followed by two security guards.

  “He didn’t eat you!” I threw my arms around her, on the verge of tears.

  The guards rushed by us, and Raquel patted me stiffly on the back. “No, she didn’t eat me. She just punched me very hard in the face.”

  “It’s a guy,” I said.

  “What is it?” she asked. We walked over to look at him. The guards stared down, perplexed. One scratched his head. Big guy, a hulking French werewolf named Jacques. Werewolves are a bit subtler to see than vampires. If the moon isn’t full, the only thing that gives them away to me is their eyes. Whatever color they seem to be to other people, I can always see the yellow wolf eyes underneath. Most werewolves are pretty decent people. And, since they’re extra strong all the time, we take a lot of them on as security. Of course, during full moons they’re on complete lockdown.

  Jacques shrugged. “I have never seen anything like it.” He, too, was struggling to focus on the inert form.

  The other guard, a normal human, shook his head.

  “How did he get in?” I asked Raquel.

  “She—he—it was wearing Denise.”

  “Denise from zombie duty?” Denise was a werewolf whose main job was zombie cleanup. I never went on zombie missions—no glamours, so anyone could do it. Plus they weren’t ever hard to pinpoint, although agents had a heck of a time covering it up with the terrified locals. Just another service of IPCA: keeping the world blissfully unaware that most of the supernatural beings of myth are, in fact, real.

  “Yes. It—it as Denise—called for a pickup. The zombie was a false alarm. I saw them as they came out of the faerie door. Denise turned and knocked Fehl, the faerie, back through. I pushed my panic button and went to confront her when she punched me and grabbed my communicator.”

  “How did he know where your office was?”

  “She—he—ran into Jacques and pretended to be dizzy, asked for help getting here.”

  Jacques shuffled his feet, embarrassed. “How should we neuter it?”

  He wasn’t talking about literally neutering it. Yuck. “Neuter” is just our little term for rendering a paranormal harmless. Werewolves get tracking bracelets with massive amounts of sedatives set automatically for the full moons. Vamps get the holy water bracelets. Faeries are easy once you know their true names, since they have to obey whatever you tell them to do when you use it at the start of your command. Well, easyish, since they always seem to find little ways to work around their strict boundaries. Never underestimate faerie ingenuity for deliberately misinterpreting commands.

  Raquel frowned. “I don’t know. Just use the standard volt/sedative combo. When we know more about what it is, we’ll find something with more finesse.”

  Jacques pulled out an ankle tracker. He looked hesitant to touch the thing and shook his head. “I can barely see it. Where is the leg?”

  Raquel and the two guards frowned as their vision slid around the figure on the floor. I sighed. “I can see his leg. I’ll do it.” I held out my hand and Jacques, relieved, gave me the tracker. Kneeling down, I paused, nervous. Would my hands go right through him, like plunging into cold water? But he had to be corporeal, otherwise Tasey wouldn’t have worked. Suppressing a shudder, I put my hand on his ankle.

  He was solid. His skin was warm and as smooth as glass—but no glass had ever been this soft.

  “Weird,” I muttered, activating the ankle tracker with my finger, then fastening it. It took the selfadjust mechanism several tries before it sealed around his ankle. He twitched as the sensors jabbed in but didn’t wake up.

  I stood, still feeling his warmth on my hand. “Well, that’s that. And I’m not carrying him to Containment, if that’s what you were gonna ask next. You’ll be able to feel him even if you can’t see him. Besides, dude’s naked—I’m not touching him again.”

  I held back a laugh at the looks on the guards’ faces. They reached out like they would get burned, grabbed Water Boy, and carried him out of the room.

  “I’d better find out what happened to Denise. And Fehl, too.” Raquel gave her best why is it always me that has to deal with these things sigh (one I was well familiar with at this point), then patted me on the shoulder. “Good work, Evie. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t found it.”

  “Just—keep me in the loop on this one, okay? He’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I want to know what’s up.”

  She smiled, a tight, noncommittal smile that I knew meant not a chance, then picked her communicator up off the desk. I walked out, seriously bugged. IPCA had a tendency not to tell me much more than where they needed me to be and what I needed to do. Screw that. I skipped my room and headed straight for Containment. If she wasn’t going to keep me informed, I’d just have to inform myself. I palmed the door and walked into the long, brilliantly lit cell-lined corridor.

  My gremlin buddy from before was snarling and jumping at the electric field just inside the six inches of Plexiglas that lined its cell. Each time it hit the field, it yelped and flew backward, only to start the whole thing over again. Gremlins? Not smart.

  Jacques wasn’t too far down the hall. Wrapping my arms around myself, I hurried toward him. I was always cold in the Center, but Containment was downright frigid. Jacques stood there, a disturbed look on his face as he stared into a cell. I turned and my jaw dropped in surprise. There was

  Jacques ag
ain, leaning casually against the wall of his cell and staring out. When he saw me, his expression changed. Agitated, this Jacques moved as close to me as the electric field allowed.

  Not Jacques. I walked right up to the glass as well, my eyes narrowed in concentration. There it was —behind Jacques’s square face.

  “It woke up right after I sealed the cell and has been doing that ever since,” Jacques whispered, standing next to me.

  “Please,” Not-Jacques said, his voice identical. “That monster overpowered me and threw me in here! Let me out so I can help you!”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, pleasantly, “because I’m stupid.”

  The pleading look on Not-Jacques’s face fell, replaced by an enigmatic smile. He shrugged, putting his hands in his pants pockets.

  “How do you do the clothes?” I was genuinely curious. No other glamours I’d seen were anything more than a second skin. Only a few species (like faeries) could put them on and take them off at will, but none could change what the actual glamour looked like.

  “How did you know?” His transparent eyes stared intensely at me behind the image of Jacques’s.

  Most of the paranormals have no idea what I can do. I like to keep it that way. “Raquel would never say ‘scoot.’”

  Not-Jacques shook his head. He leaned even closer; I examined his face, trying to find his real features. The only things I had an easy time focusing on were his eyes. He stood up straight, shocked.

  I’ll give him this: He managed to make Jacques’s face more expressive than Jacques ever did.

  “You can see me,” he whispered.

  “Um, duh? You’re right in front of me. Wearing Jacques. Looks better on you than Raquel did.”

  He smiled again. Then his skin rippled like water disturbed by the wind, and Jacques melted away.

  Now nearly imperceptible except for the ankle bracelet, he walked to the other side of the cell and, without warning, dropped flat to the ground.

  I found his eyes staring right at me and realized too late that he was testing me, seeing if I could follow his movement when he was in invisimode. Color bloomed from his features and in a sudden shift of light I was looking at myself—myself exactly, right down to the bright pink fuzzy robe.

  “You can see me,” my voice, tinged with wonder, said from his mouth.

  “Evie!” Raquel was booking it toward us in her sensible (read: ugly) black pumps, a frown etching a deep line between her eyebrows. Busted. “You should not be here.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m there, too.” I pointed at the cell. Raquel stopped short, surprise erasing her frown lines as she stared at Not-Me behind the glass.

  “Remarkable,” she whispered.

  “Lame.” Not-Me yawned and reached up to play with his—my—platinum hair.

  “What are you?” Raquel was suddenly all business.

  Not-Me gave her an impish grin. Watching myself do all this was really odd. I was getting angles of my face that I had never seen before—way different from looking in a mirror. Not-Me glanced at me again, then shook my—err, his?—head. “I can’t quite get your eye color.” He stood and walked right up to the field, staring at my face. I couldn’t help but check myself out. I was pretty. Too skinny, but I’d always been something of a beanpole. And, dang, really flat.

  This was freaking me out. I frowned. “Take it off.”

  He just stared at me with my face. I was focused on his real eyes when I realized that he was sorting through colors. “Not quite right,” he muttered. “Too silver. Now too dark. They’re so pale.”

  It was true. My eyes were such a light gray they barely had any pigment at all.

  “What color?” Not-Me mused. His eyes were flickering now, shifting colors like he was on fast-forward. “A cloud with the slightest hint of rain.”

  “Streams of melting snow,” I answered without thinking.

  He shot straight up and backed into the corner of his cell. I watched an expression of fear and mistrust spread across my features. “Yes, that’s it,” Not-Me whispered.

  LEND ME YOUR EARS…AMONG OTHER THINGS

  Where’s Denise?” Raquel demanded, glaring at Water Boy in his cell.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as my face melted from his, replaced by Denise’s. “Right where I left her,” Not-Denise said. He kept glancing over at me.

  “And where was that?”

  “In the cemetery. You should be able to find her.”

  “Find Denise or find her body?” Raquel’s voice was hard.

  Not-Denise rolled his eyes. “She’ll have a headache. Honestly, it’s like you think I’m some sort of a monster.” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile.

  “What are you?”

  “So rude. We haven’t even been introduced.”

  She gave a can I just start shocking him into submission now sort of sigh. I jumped in before he got himself into more trouble. “My name’s Evie. Raquel you already know—punched her and then stole her face, remember?—and Jacques over here is your new best friend, because he’s in charge of the feeding schedule around here. Assuming you eat. And you are?”

  “Lend.”

  “Lend?” Raquel asked.

  “Yes, as in, lend me your self.” He shimmered into Raquel again.

  “Why not Borrow?” I asked. “Better yet, Steal?”

  “I’ll ask again,” Raquel snapped. “What are you?” Given what this guy had done, I didn’t blame her for being impatient.

  “Good question. Maybe you could tell me?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I love a nice dose of electric current in my body.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Answers.”

  “Well.” Raquel gave him a thin-lipped smile. “So am I.” Her communicator buzzed. Relief flashed across her face as she read the message. Looking up, she nodded at her mirror image. “Tomorrow, then.”

  She turned and started down the hall with Jacques. I was still staring at Lend-as-Raquel, watching his real face beneath hers. I could almost pick out features now. He stuck his tongue out at me and, before I could stop myself, I giggled. It was too ridiculous coming from Raquel’s face.

  Raquel barked from down the hall. “Evie! Now!” Giving Lend-as-Raquel a final glare, I ran to catch up. “They found Denise, she’s fine. And Fehl got back, too. I don’t want you talking to that thing until we know what it is and why it’s here.”

  No way, I thought. “Okay,” I said.

  “What do you see when you look at it?”

  “I don’t know. At first I couldn’t really see anything, I could just tell there was someone under your face. But when he’s not wearing anyone, it’s like—I can’t catch onto anything. I was getting better, though, staring at him in there. His eyes are the only things I can really focus on. Other than that it’s like a silhouette or a clear shadow or…I don’t know—a person made out of water and a hint of light.”

  “I’m going to call in some researchers. First we find out what he is, then we find out what he wants.”

  I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Cool, whatever.”

  “You should be in bed.” Her voice was stern. You’d think the whole not-having-a-mother thing, or the whole being six-freaking-teen years old, would get me off the hook for bedtimes. But no. “And don’t forget your class tomorrow.”

  “Fine. But if any more alarms go off, I’m going to ignore them instead of saving the day.”

  She heaved a give me vampires and gremlins over pouty teenagers any day sigh and waved as she turned off down another hall.

  After heating up some milk for hot chocolate, I curled up with a blanket on my couch. My mind was racing too much to sleep. Today had been weird. And for something to be weird in my day, it’s downright freaky. I popped in another movie and let my mind glaze over. The light from the screen flickered hypnotically. I didn’t notice the light coming from behind me.

  “Come and dance with me, my love.” His voice
was like the color gold—bright and sparkling with the promise of warmth. So much warmth. I smiled, closing my eyes and letting myself be pulled up off the couch and into an embrace. He rested his cheek against mine and the heat spread out, through my face and then down my neck, inching toward my heart. “My heart,” he whispered. I nodded against his cheek. His heart.

  My vid screen beeped, jarring me out of the trance. I jumped back and shoved Reth off me. The heat slowly drifted away from my heart. It had been close. Too close.

  Reth looked disappointed. He held out his arms. I swore. “What is your freaking problem? Get out!

  Now!”

  “Evelyn.” His voice was a magnet with his warmth still in me. I leaned forward against my will.

  “No!” Ripping myself away from the pull, I ran to the partition dividing the TV room from the kitchen and grabbed my communicator. “Get out.” I glared, my hand over the panic button. His beautiful face fell. I wanted to comfort him. Closing my eyes, I lowered my finger. “Out. Now.”

  I could see the light of a door from behind my eyelids and waited until it faded to open them again.

  Reth was gone.

  I went over to my vid screen and turned it on. “What good are freaking palm-coded locks when faeries can make their own doors any time they want to!” I shouted at Lish. Her green eyes widened in surprise and concern. I took a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault. “Thanks for the interruption,” I added.

  “Reth?”

  “Yeah. Can you file a report for me?”

  “Yes, of course. We will try to make his instructions more explicit.”

  I shook my head. He always found a way around them. My guess was when they told him to go get me today he applied it as a blanket statement rather than a simple onetime retrieval command.

  “What did you need?”

  She looked embarrassed. “I wanted to ask about the disturbance. I will talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of exhausted. I’ll come visit and tell you everything, okay?”