“I’m fine, Dad. I just need a drink of water.”
“Are you sure? Your complexion is positively gray.” He put his hand to my forehead.
“I swear I’m all right.” I held myself as still as I could, trying not to tremble. “I’m going to stand here a minute, but if I don’t come in, start the service, okay?”
He frowned a little. “Should we try and postpone it for a while so you can be there?”
I shook my head. “Please, Dad. Just go ahead with the service.”
He nodded, kissed the top of my head, and went to sit next to Evelyn. I headed down the hallway.
I didn’t make it to the drinking fountain before my vision swam. A moment later, I was back in Miss Spry’s study.
“Dear gods, what is she wearing?”
I put my hands on Miss Spry’s desk in order to steady myself. A cool breeze came through the open French doors, drying my sweat. My queasy stomach settled. Even the dormant Ativan kicked in, mercifully dulling my terror.
“Who told her to dress like this? She looks like an old whore who’s about to turn a trick in the bus station restroom.”
I’d been going for a high-class hooker look. Like a sophisticated lady who might be found in the cocktail bar of a really nice, downtown hotel. So the comment about the bus station stung. “No one told me how to dress,” I said. I turned to face the unknown speaker.
He was in his upper fifties, I guessed, with overly-moussed gray hair and a gold earring. His white suit had been tailored with perfection, and his paisley tie flawlessly knotted. “You look terrible.” His voice carried one of those cultured accents that sound like it comes from American royalty.
“So I’ve been told,” I said.
“You are a mess, my dear.” Miss Spry came through the French doors, a bouquet of freshly-cut roses in her arms. She handed them off to the man in the suit and walked a circle around me, clucking her tongue. “Mr. Clerk, please make a note to help Ms. Straight with her wardrobe after today’s task.”
Were they always so formal here? Mr. Clerk, Miss Spry, Mr. Darcy. Speaking of whom… “Is Mr. Darcy here right now?” I looked around hopefully.
“William is off on an errand for me,” Miss Spry said.
William. So he did have a first name. And I was so glad that it had been appropriately shortened, for no matter how sexy or alluring a man was, I simply couldn’t make it with a guy named ‘Fitz’.
“She’s already in love with him,” Mr. Clerk said. I was pretty sure I detected a note of wistfulness in that comment. It came as no surprise to think that Mr. Darcy appealed to both sexes.
“After today’s little errand, Lilith, I’ll make sure that you have some appropriate clothing. Mr. Clerk, my assistant, will aid you in this.”
“Are you kidding me? I don’t have money for new clothes.” Especially not the expensive ones worn by these people. “I’ve got more bills than I know what do to with, not to mention that I don’t have any teaching assignments lined up in the foreseeable future. And my child support isn’t due for another two weeks. Plus, now that Ariel and Jasmine are living with us, I’ve got extra groceries to buy, and more gas to put in the car, and those two don’t even come with child support payments…”
Miss Spry held up her hand, cutting me off. “Ms. Straight, we’ll take care of the clothing expenses.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” My cheeks burned with embarrassment.
“Now for today’s assignment,” Miss Spry continued. My insides clenched as I readied myself. From beneath her desk, she removed a paper shopping bag. “You will see a man in a gray sweatshirt and jeans. You are to tell him that he has dropped this and then hand him the bag.”
I waited for several heartbeats. “And?”
Miss Spry raised her eyebrows. “And what?”
“And then what do I do?”
“Well, I imagine you’d want to get back to your mother’s funeral.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around this. “You want me to give this bag to a man wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans. That’s all.”
She frowned. “I wanted your first assignment to be simple. Is there something wrong?”
I was starting to have this giddy, lighter-than-air feeling, the kind you get when you’re driving and look up in time to narrowly avoid hitting a car that’s turned right in front of you. But I didn’t dare trust it. “I thought that because I’m a, you know, succubus, that I’d have to…” I couldn’t finish the sentence no matter how much I wanted to.
“She thought she’d have to have relations with the man,” Mr. Clerk offered when Miss Spry still appeared puzzled.
“Oh, Lilith.” The older woman looked both annoyed and amused. “Why do the minds of your generation always immediately jump to sex?”
Oh, I don’t know. Because that’s what succubae are supposed to do? At least according to the Wikipedia article that I’d Googled the night before. Thrilled that I wouldn’t have to make torrid love to a total stranger, I willingly accepted the bag from Miss Spry. And I was actually grinning – grinning! – when I was once more whisked away from her office.
Oh, it breaks my heart now when I think back to what a complete, naive moron I was.
I found myself standing in front of one of those chain drug stores, and as Miss Spry had predicted, a man in a gray sweatshirt and jeans was coming through the automatic doors. I waited until he’d passed by before saying, “Pardon me, but I believe you dropped this.” When he turned, I held out the bag.
I had thought he might give me a once over, seeing how I was dressed, but his eyes immediately fixed on the bag. “It isn’t mine.” His voice was husky.
“I’m sure it is.” I approached him and held it out.
“No. It isn’t mine.” He fumbled with his keys, dropped them and then scrambled to pick them up.
I shook the bag like it was full of treats, and he was my dog. The things inside shivered. He stiffened, holding perfectly still. I shook the bag harder to entice him more, then the side of it ripped open.
A myriad of little white boxes with red labels spilled onto the ground. I recognized the boxes right away since, every summer, I suffer from allergies and sinus headaches. This was non-prescription stuff, but, nonetheless, it was kept behind the counter at the pharmacy. So that guys like the one in the gray sweatshirt couldn’t get a hold of it.
Seeing the boxes, he lunged. Then, reflexively, so did I. Despite Miss Spry and her warnings and her hot eyes, I was determined not to let this man have these boxes. Because, suddenly, I knew what those boxes represented, and what this man meant to do with them. And I refused to let him hurt Ariel by hurting her mother.
Some brief history.
When Tanya, Ariel’s mother, showed up at my door with her daughter six months ago, her teeth were as brown as the bottom of a dirty ashtray, and she was jittering from side to side and up and down like a puppet in the hands of a seizure victim. Now, I may live in the suburbs, but even I recognize these signs. After all, I do watch A & E.
So I knew what those little red pills would mean to a man who cooked meth, and what the cooker’s product meant for meth heads like Tanya.
I scrambled for the boxes, tightly clutching the ones I picked up. “You’re right. This isn’t yours. Sorry.” My laugh sounded strangled. “My mistake.”
There was real hunger in his eyes. “No, these are mine. And my wife’s.” He gave a cough so phony that it wouldn’t have fooled Grace. “I’ve got this virus, see?” He grabbed boxes and began shoving them down the front of his sweatshirt.
I didn’t relent and continued to lunge for the boxes. I could almost feel Miss Spry’s eyes on the back of my neck, her hot gaze boring into me.
“Are you in rehab?” I asked him.
For a moment, he blinked in surprise, but then his eyes hardened. “What the fuck is it to you?” He snatched a box from under his car.
“Call your sponsor. Right now. Right this second.”
He shoved me backwards, tum
bling me onto my butt. Then he pawed at my arms, dislodging the horde of boxes. I tried to fight him off like a rapist, but in the end, I gave up. Sobbing, I flung the boxes at him. “Take them, you shit! Just take them.”
So he did. And when he left me, he was whistling like someone who’s won the lottery.
I sat on the dirty asphalt, wiping my eyes and runny nose with the back of my arm. Asshole! Dick! I wasn’t sure who made me angrier: the meth cooker or Miss Spry.
I thought she might bring me back to her office to shout at me, or worse. A wave of dizziness rose, and my vision grayed. But when my eyesight cleared, I saw that I was squatting on the steps of the funeral home as the mourners exited the building.
My dad hurried to my side. “Lilly, are you all right?”
Jasmine, Ariel and Grace came over as well. “Did you miss the funeral,” Jasmine asked. “I didn’t see you there at all!”
“I was there,” I lied. “Standing at the back of the room. I just couldn’t bear…” In my mind’s eye, I saw the strange man in the gray sweatshirt happily carting off his boxes of sudaphrine. “I just couldn’t bear to…”
My weird little family – Jas in her chic designer clothes, Ariel in a Goth getup complete with black, fishnet stockings, and little Grace in her purple sparkling shoes – crowded around me, and I realized how much I loved them. And how much I desperately needed them. “I didn’t want to do it,” I finished. “I couldn’t.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Grace said. All three of them hugged me, and I hugged back, crying and crying as if my heart would break.
Chapter Five
The day after my mother’s funeral, I sent the girls back to school. They both protested, but for different reasons. Grace said her tummy hurt though she ate two immense bowls of Frosted Flakes, and Ariel – older and wiser – claimed she was still too upset over Carrie’s death to sit in class. “You never met my mother,” I reminded her.
“It’s not just her death,” Ariel said. “It’s death in general. It makes me sad.”
“You know what makes me sad,” I asked. “Illiteracy.” I held out her backpack. She narrowed her eyes at me and yanked it out of my hand. Grace, still whining about her stomach, kissed me before leaving. Ariel, on the other hand, slammed the door so hard that the windows rattled.
I counted to ten, then hurried outside to crouch behind the hedge that separated my yard from my neighbor’s. I waited, predator-like, behind the bushes, peering through the gaps in the leaves so I could watch as the girls walked to the corner bus stop.
I’d resorted to this undercover behavior after Ari moved in with us. It seemed that, most mornings, Ariel would get to the bus stop and keep right on walking. Hours later, I’d get a call from the school secretary saying that she never made it to class. Then I would have to spend half my day touring every public park, comic book store, and tattoo parlor in the city looking for her. But on the other hand, if I tried to actually walk the girls to the bus stop, I would be met with such outraged shrieking (from both girls) that I simply couldn’t endure it.
So every morning, to save my own sanity, I hid in the bushes like someone your mother warned you about. Unfortunately, I occasionally got caught. Not by the girls, but by my neighbors. This time, it was by a little boy on his way to the bus. He was slightly built with dark skin and serious, brown eyes and carried a backpack nearly as large as he was.
“Did you lose something,” he asked.
“No,” I said, feeling foolish. I stood up and brushed off my knees. “I was checking the bushes to see if something was hiding in there.” I’m a terrible liar even on the best days.
He regarded the bushes. “Hiding? What would be hiding?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A monster, maybe?”
I meant it as a joke, but it was clearly the wrong thing to say for his eyes went wide, and he nearly stumbled over his backpack as he moved away from the bushes.
“I was kidding. There are no such things as monsters,” I assured him. “You know that, right?”
“There’s demons,” he said, looking up at me with his solemn, brown eyes.
A week ago, I would have written off his comment as the result of too much T.V., but now I wasn’t so sure. “Do you see demons,” I asked him.
“Not right now.” He finally looked me in the eyes, and when he did, he smiled. “You’re that lady who works at our school, right? The substitute teacher.”
Then I recognized him, too. I’d never been in his classroom, and I couldn’t remember his name, but I’d seen him in the halls on the days I subbed. “That’s right, I’m Ms. Straight. I’m also Grace Dempsey’s mom. Do you know Grace?” I pointed to where the girls waited at the corner.
He frowned. “She’s the cousin of that freaky girl with the black hair? The one who always rips up library books and who always – hey, I gotta go!” The bright, yellow bus was pulling up to the corner.
I wanted to detain the boy and make him tell me what else Ari had been up to, but it was probably best if I didn’t know. I already had enough nightmares as it was.
Now that the kids were off to school, it was time for phase two of my morning ritual. This involved acquiring a few tools first: a nail file, a flashlight, a pair of gloves and a plastic bag. The file was to jimmy my way into Ariel’s desk drawers. The flashlight was to look under the bed and other dark corners. And the gloves and bag were to remove anything repulsive that I might find. The week before, it had been a dead squirrel.
And, no, I’m not kidding.
The top of Ari’s desk looked fairly clean. Amid the bottles of nail polish and scattered earrings, lay a forgotten math book, but otherwise there was nothing terribly wrong. Next, I used the file to open the top drawer. It isn’t that Ariel locks the drawer, there’s no lock on it after all, but she’d figured out how to artfully jam it shut by stacking too many things inside. So I carefully slid the file through the crack, and in a moment, violà! I’d gotten pretty good at this over the past few months.
Now I could begin checking. For what, you ask? Well, I could never be sure. Matches, of course. But also, tiny bottles of liquor and other small bottles that she stores liquor in, packets of condoms she’d taken from Jasmine’s purse, mail that she’d stolen from other people’s mailboxes. Mail that she’d stolen from my mailbox. Candy and gum and eye shadows that she’d palmed from the store. Once, inexplicably, a teething rattle.
If you’re thinking that taking care of Ariel is a lot of work, you don’t know the half of it. Some of her habits are only mildly irritating, for example, the way she removes the labels from every single canned good I buy. While others, like cutting diamond-shaped holes in my drapes, make me so angry that my vision fogs. But there are a few – like the time she used my credit card to buy a dozen Marie Osmond collectable dolls from the Home Shopping Network – that really push me to the limit. Every night I lay awake, terrified that she might slip out of the house while I’m sleeping. I’m like her stalker, making sure that I know where she is every moment of the day.
And why do I do it? Why don’t I simply kick her to the curb? Or back to her mother, which would basically be the same thing. Or even back to Ted since, after all, she’s technically not my niece; she’s his.
Well, on the day Ted’s sister, Tanya, showed up on my door, standing next to her was this frail-looking little kid wearing black eye shadow practically up to her bangs, and a black raincoat six sizes too big for her. And when I heard that she and her mother had been sleeping in their car for the past three months, my heart melted.
“I need a place to stow her for a few days,” Tanya had told me.
Now, mind you, I had only seen my sister-in-law a half a dozen times over the past twelve years, and most of those meetings had ended in disaster. She showed up at my wedding long enough to steal some of my gifts. She convinced me to bail her out of jail and then skipped town. And she once called me ‘fat’. Ted and his mother had written Tanya off long before I arrived on the scene, and they bot
h refused to speak her name. But despite all of that, when I looked into Ariel’s large brown eyes, I couldn’t say no.
“What do you think, Ari,” I asked. I was aware that Tanya had a daughter, but I’d had never laid eyes on her before. Seeing the waifish-looking child made me feel like the magnanimous Mr. Brownlow taking in the grateful urchin, Oliver Twist. “Do you want to come stay with me for a while?”
Ariel is tiny for her age, but already her eyes were sharpened with adult disdain. “Hell, no.”
It was like she’d tried to slap the smile off my face, but I hung onto it for all I was worth.
Tanya was outraged. “You haul your ass in that house and be nice to the lady,” she demanded.
Ariel stood her ground a minute longer, then mumbled, “Whatever,” and came inside. And thus, life with my niece began.
So on the morning after my mother’s funeral, as I was digging through her desk drawers and finding nothing, I once more wondered if maybe – despite what the little boy had told me – Ariel was beginning to turn around after all. But then I began to check the rest of the room, and that’s when I saw the voodoo doll lying on her pillow.
I knew right away what kind of doll it was because it was studded with pins. Also, it was lying on top of a few pages that had been printed from the Internet. Pages entitled, “How to Make a Voodoo Doll”.
A little more history.
That fire Ariel started in my old house? Despite what the insurance company claimed, that was an accident. Yes, Ariel started it, but not in order to burn the place down. No, she’d started it because she’d been using candles for a séance and hadn’t bothered to extinguish them before walking away. My little Ari, named for the heroine of her mother’s favorite movie, Disney’s The Little Mermaid, was already deep into the occult before she ever started shacking up with me.
Anyway, the sight of the nearly formless little poppet sickened me. A red-headed pin pierced each of the crudely sewn X’s that marked its eyes, and a black-headed pin had been jabbed into its sexless crotch. For one horrifying moment, I thought the doll might be me, but then I noticed that she’d used white yarn to make its hair. White hair? That left out pretty much everyone I knew. Even my dad, who was letting his hair gray naturally, only had a dash of silver at his temples. Ariel’s mother was an overly dyed redhead. Grace was a brunette.
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