Phantasm

by Phaedra Weldon

  I leaned over him and pressed my ear to his chest. I couldn’t hear a heartbeat.

  No, no, no, no . . . that bastard was not taking the only friend I still had left.

  And with that, my CPR training kicked in.

  Up until Mom had ended up at Miller Oaks, I would never have attempted to do what I was doing. Yeah, I’d had basic CPR while taking karate. But as part of the long-term-care program at Miller Oaks, I’d taken a few more in-depth classes at the suggestion of the nurses. In case I ever had to bring Mom’s body home. And she stopped breathing.

  I had Jemmy and the girls straighten him out completely as I tilted his head back. I was on his left side, so I used my left hand under his neck, pinched his nose with my right, and blew air into his parted lips. I moved to his chest, placed my hands in the proper position, and pressed down.

  One, two, three . . .

  Air in . . .

  One, two , three . . .

  Breathe, asshole.

  Air in . . .

  Breathe!

  One, two, thr—

  Dags’s body shuddered, and air rushed into his lungs in a fit of coughing. They were deep, lung-clearing coughs, and he fought to push himself over onto his right side.

  The coughing increased, and Maureen and Alice let out a squeal as he turned away from me.

  I leaned over him and watched as blood and something fleshy came out of his mouth. Jemmy got up and rushed into the kitchen, gun in hand. I was too horrified to move as I recognized what it was that had come out of Dags’s mouth.

  The top half of a bloody, human finger.

  5

  There’s a finger on my floor!

  THAT was just—wrong.

  Dags had a finger lodged in his throat?

  He continued to cough as more blood and stuff came out. I kept a hand on his shoulder, not wanting to let go of him at all. I was too afraid he’d die on me. But my gaze remained locked on that—ew.

  And even more disgusting was the look of sheer joy on Maureen’s face as she reached down and picked the finger up. It sparkled a few times and looked as if it was going to dissolve. “Zoë, get a glass jar. I know Nona keeps several mason jars for preserves on the back porch.

  I stared at the finger. Was that—was that TC’s finger?

  Maureen waved at me. “Zoë—quick!”

  I got up, wobbly, and moved to the kitchen—past Jemmy, who was heading back to the botanica with a towel and ice—then out the back door. Maureen was right—there were two trays of cleaned and prepared mason jars with lids. I grabbed one and beat it back inside, only vaguely aware of a car pulling into the back drive.

  Jemmy was on the floor with Alice and Dags. He was pale, and there was blood on a towel beside him. Jemmy had gotten two towels and had ice in one, holding it to his forehead as Alice held her hands over him.

  Maureen met me at the botanica opening and held out the finger. I opened the jar, and she dropped it in. “Get Nona’s Dragon’s Blood Rede, St. John’s Wort, and a small bit of sulfur.” She looked insane. And I noticed her entire demeanor had changed. Her clothing—for what it was—had a darker hue to it now, and her eyes were kinda . . . red.

  “Zoë, you switch with me,” Jemmy said, getting up. “You stay with Dags. You probably don’t know where any of that stuff is.”

  Nope. Nor did I know what it was.

  Wait . . . did Mom really have Dragon’s Blood? Were dragons real?

  I handed the jar to Jemmy, and she handed me a cold, ice-filled hand towel. I knelt beside Dags. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing deep. Maureen moved her hands away and sat back with a sigh. I put the cloth over his forehead. “Is he okay?”

  “He’ll be fine. I don’t think he meant to nearly kill himself,” Alice said with a smile. “Though I’m sure the Archer wanted otherwise. He’s not going to like having a Guardian around you.”

  I watched as Jemmy came back to Maureen with several bottles in her hand, and the two of them moved to the kitchen, talking quietly. I pointed in their direction. “Is Maureen okay?”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah she seems a little”—I shrugged—“evil?”

  Alice laughed. “She and I are both sides of the same coin, Zoë. Remember, she’s the Abysmal half of Dags.”

  Yeah . . . they’d mentioned that before—still didn’t understand it.

  “But you have to remember, Zoë—Abysmal does not equate with evil. Evil is more of an opinion, or a state of living. You yourself are mostly influenced by the Abysmal plane, and do you consider yourself evil?”

  Uh. Hrm. No. I could be bitchy sometimes, but I’d always sort of thought of myself as relatively nice.

  “Oh shit . . .” the man in question said. “What the hell landed on my head?” He opened his eyes and looked up at me. A grin replaced his wince. “Okay . . . I’m feeling better now.”

  “You had a finger in your throat.”

  He nodded. “I got it, huh? Good. I didn’t know what it was—I just knew he was sticking something down my throat to choke me.” He looked past me to Alice. “Can Maureen use it?”

  “She’s busy on it now.”

  I looked from him to her. “What’s going on?”

  “A little mojo,” Dags said as he pushed himself to sit up.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and leaned down. “Rest. It’s what you told me to do.”

  I watched his eyes as they looked at my face. I was surprised—but not much—when he reached up and tucked a strand of my unruly hair behind my ear. “So I guess the roles were reversed this time? You took care of me?”

  I nodded. There was something interesting being this close to him. I couldn’t pinpoint it at that moment—I just knew I felt safe with him. Even after what’d just happened. I moved the compress from his forehead and smoothed back his hair. “Just promise me not to stop breathing again, okay?”

  He smiled. “I promise.”

  My gaze locked with his for a moment, and something stirred, warm and fuzzy. Which was odd, ’cause I hadn’t felt warm and fuzzy in a long damn time. He reached up again and pushed more hair back as it fell forward. “I miss your white streak.”

  I smiled. “We’ll get it back.”

  That’s when I realized I wasn’t just leaning over him anymore—I was practically on top of him. His upturned nose was mere inches from my own, and his half-lidded eyes were focused on me. I remembered him sleeping beside me, keeping me warm when I was sick, and I worried that somehow I’d given him my cold.

  The floor vibrated at that moment, telling me someone else was here. A customer maybe—which would be good for the business. But I didn’t think of getting up because customers usually went to get tea first.

  I felt the footsteps, heard Jemmy say something in a cordial but tense voice, and then heard the step of shoes against the hardwood.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  My body tensed, as did Dags’s beneath me. We both turned our heads and looked up into the stern face of Detective Daniel Frasier.

  6

  My heart hurt s . . .

  IT felt like a lifetime since I’d seen Daniel.

  Standing over me, his hands planted firmly on his hips, he looked as handsome as ever.

  If a bit—stern.

  And then I realized the position I was in—practically accosting Dags!

  I scrambled back, just as Dags did, only he slapped a hand to his forehead and moaned. I knew he was sick from having ingested a piece of the Abysmal. I myself had gone through that yuck when a Daimon had hijacked my body back in January. Made me throw up. I was thinking he might throw up too, and I hoped the girls would help him.

  Alice was gone. I was torn between making sure Dags was okay and jumping up and hugging Daniel.

  He’d come!

  To my surprise, he leaned over and offered Dags a hand before pausing. “Dags? Is that you?”

  Dags took the offered hand and grinned. “Hey, Detective Frasier, it’s me.”

&n
bsp; Daniel’s eyes widened as he pulled Dags to his feet. “Are you okay? You have blood on your face.”

  Dags was still wobbly and Daniel supported him with his arm. I got to my feet as well and stood to the side, very happy the finger wasn’t on the floor anymore. Though there was a pool of blood.

  And as Daniel helped Dags to a chair in the tea shop, I realized what the scene had to have looked like. Rug pulled back, the pentagram visible, the floor a bit singed, guy on his back with blood—

  Not good. I only hoped Jemmy had put away her BFK.

  Daniel knelt in front of Dags and held the darker-haired man’s head by his chin. He narrowed his eyes as he turned Dags’s head from side to side. “What exactly was Miss Martinique trying to do to you? Was she trying to exorcise a Daimon out of you or something? You do know that’s what her mother used to do—put on shows for customers. I walked in on one once. Pretty impressive.”

  My jaw made the loudest thunk on the floor as I gaped at him. I knew Daniel was referring to the time he’d walked in on Mom interrogating the succubus Mitsuri when Mom trapped the icky thing in the Stone Dragon. Of course Daniel had nearly been attacked by the succubus, as his entry had blown out the candles of the protective circle holding it in place—and if it hadn’t been for my wailing scream, he’d have become a succubus snack.

  He and I had had a talk about that instance, and I thought I’d explained to him my mom wasn’t a shyster bilking the customers. But from the tone in his voice—my protests had fallen on a deaf ear.

  The only thing that saved Dags was the look of pure insult on his face. He grabbed Daniel’s wrist and firmly pulled his hand from his chin.

  “No, she was not. I was helping get the room back in order and I tripped, so she was making sure I was okay.” Dags’s voice was stern, and I noticed he held on to Daniel’s wrist a bit longer than necessary. He also glanced down at the detective’s hand, then looked up into Daniel’s face. Dags’s expression was unreadable. “Do you always barge into a home unannounced and make asinine assumptions?”

  The two men stared at one another for a beat before Daniel pulled his wrist free and moved back, still kneeling. “Only on Tuesdays. My mistake.” He tilted his head to the side. “You look different—I’ve been by the new Fadó’s several times, but you haven’t been bartending.”

  “No—I took a leave of absence.”

  “You really look different.”

  Dags nodded. “So do you. Contacts?”

  Daniel nodded. “Yes. I got your messages about Zoë.” He glanced over at me. It wasn’t a good glance or a bad one, just a sort of neutral look. What I did notice was the lack of emotion to it. No surge of joy. Nothing. “She looks fine, but”—he looked back at Dags—“how do you know her?”

  Dags pursed his lips. “That’s a long story, and not one I want to get into right now. This is the first full day Zoë’s been out of bed. Nice of you to drop by afterward.”

  The detective stood up. “Been busy, Dags. There are a lot of crazies out there. And I am surprised to see you here.” He finally turned and faced me. “You okay? Were you sick or another diabetic issue?”

  I shook my head. “We think it was the flu—but it’s okay now. I just wasn’t expecting you to come in here—I mean you haven’t been by or returned calls in—”

  Daniel’s expression stopped me. I wasn’t sure why his eyes were the size of chicken eggs beneath his brown hair. I glanced behind me to make sure there wasn’t some weird thing—not that I could have seen it—or that TC hadn’t shown up again. I noticed Tim, Steve, and Jemmy were absent though, along with Maureen and Alice. But I didn’t know if Daniel would even see the familiars.

  A beat later his right hand had come up, pointing an accusing finger at me. “You—you’re talking!”

  Whups. I forgot he hadn’t known that. My voice return was a pretty recent occurrence. Like . . . this morning?

  I swallowed. “Yeah—my voice sort of came back. The new doctor was a big help,” I lied.

  Still lying to him.

  His reaction calmed down a bit, but he was still visibly shocked. He narrowed his blue eyes. “You—so it just miraculously came back?”

  Well, there wasn’t anything miraculous to it in my opinion. There were so many factors that returned my voice, but not a one of them would work for Daniel. Because I’d never told him the truth.

  Damn.

  Dags piped up. “Dr. Magnus Fenrir is a leading specialist in unexplained maladies.”

  Magnus Fenrir? Oh—yeah—Dr. Scorpius. I just forgot what his real name was.

  Daniel ran his fingers through his hair. He’d left it longish and kept his sideburns. He looked good enough to eat. “Fenrir, eh? Isn’t that Halloran’s doctor?”

  Halloran? I looked at Dags. Joe Halloran?

  Dags wouldn’t look at me. “Yes—Detective Halloran introduced me to him a month ago. I was in a position where I needed his service.”

  I frowned at Dags. He was? When? Was it during the time I didn’t see him? Was it after Joe kissed me?

  Daniel gave a long, frustrated sigh and rubbed at his face. “Okay, whatever. So you’re just as much of a fruitcake as Halloran. I didn’t know you were into pentagrams and voodoo or any of this other witchy shit.”

  Dags crossed his arms over his chest as he stood up. He was shorter than Daniel—by about a good foot—but somehow he didn’t look diminished. “You never asked.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He looked at me. “I obviously didn’t ask at all.” With a glance around, he sighed again. “Well, it looks like you’re okay. The shop’s back open?”

  I nodded.

  “Your mom still in a coma?”

  I nodded again.

  “Real sorry about that—but . . .” He shook his head. “Not much I can do.” He checked his watch. “I’ve gotta go. Take care.” And he walked back out the way he’d come, through the back door past the kitchen.

  I glanced at Dags, who was frowning intensely in Daniel’s direction, then I took off after Daniel.

  “Wait!” I managed to get out as I got to the door. He was already on the back porch steps. I moved out into the subdued sunlight; to my right were stacks of old magazines and newspapers. Mom’s idea of recycling that never made it to the center. A chill breeze blew over my skin, and I crossed my arms against my chest as my hair moved about my face. It was the early part of spring, when the days were warm but the mornings and evenings were still cool with the fading winter.

  He stood on the step, looking up at me as I came closer. His face was unreadable. He nodded to me but still kept space between us. I could hear the traffic on Euclid—it seemed so far away at that moment. Someone passed by with their car windows open, reveling in the warmer temperatures as spring progressed. From their car I could hear the lonesome vocals of “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.”

  I hadn’t actually seen Daniel since that Thursday in the warehouse. Nor had we spoken on the phone. No contact other than stilted responses to voice mail and texting.

  And now that I had his attention—I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “I guess Jamael got the color to stick on that streak too, huh?”

  I touched my hair where the streak had been. I shook my head. “I didn’t go to Jamael. Look, Daniel—”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Daniel started to walk away. I don’t know what possessed me to put my hand out—desperation? Fear? The inability to lose anyone else close to me?

  Daniel stopped and looked down at my hand. And then he looked up at me. “What?”

  That one word seemed so cold. So—final. I could sense he didn’t want to be here—so why had he come?

  “I—we need to talk.”

  He gave a kind of snort and laugh, a noise I associated with sarcasm. “Talk? After all this time you finally want to talk?” I didn’t recognize the man’s expression. “It’s too late, Zoë. I just can’t—I can’t deal with—”

  “What? Please, Daniel.” I t
ried to take a step toward him, but he took one back on the last step. My heart plummeted in my chest. I wanted to cry. I just wanted to—

  “Zoë—” Daniel said, and he was looking at me, watching me. “I need time—I need to process everything that’s happened. I’m sorry about Nona—I really liked her. And I know how hard it is to let go—”

  “My mom is not dead!” I hissed.

  But Daniel wasn’t backing down. “No, she’s a vegetable, Zoë. At first I didn’t understand why Rhonda or Joe had stopped coming around—but now I think I do. It wasn’t Rhonda or Halloran that did something terrible; it was your constant betrayals. Your lies. Your faked illnesses—”

  “Faked? You think I’ve faked everything?”

  He held out his arms. “What else is there? Your doctor said your vocal cords were just fine, that it was all in your head. Though I will admit he was proven to be unreliable—given he turned out to be a murderer. And then I get worried calls from Dags—only I get here and you’re all over him on the floor and he’s bleeding—”

  “That wasn’t—”

  “That’s not all,” he interrupted. “You’re a menace to yourself. You’re a diabetic and you don’t take care of yourself—”

  “I am not a diabetic!” I hissed again. I’d meant it as a prelude to saying, “I’m a Wraith, and that plays havoc on my sugar levels.”

  But the rest never came out—I was too stunned by the look on his face.

  He glared at me and lowered his arms. “That kind of denial is why I just can’t stay. I can’t stand by and watch you destroy yourself and everyone who loves you. You’re sick. You need help. I’m sure Rhonda and Joe tried to help you, and you pushed them away.”

  I dropped my arms to my sides, balled my fists. He had no idea what the truth was—what I’d gone through—or what was out there. Watching me. Watching him.

  Yeah . . . and whose fault was it that he didn’t know? Because no one told him? Not Daniel’s.

  He shook his head and waved at me in a dismissive fashion. “See you around, Zoë. And please—use your witchy, voodoo playacting on someone else for a while.” He glanced past me to something behind me. “Just don’t fuck with him the way you fucked with me.”