I wasn't sure that entirely explained it, but I let it go.
The farther into the building we got, the more the air smelled of hospital—that distinctive combination of disinfectant and disease. The overhead fluorescents stripped the dingy, brightly painted hallway of any natural warmth. I shivered, grateful that I'd started to see signs directing us to the morgue.
A stretcher was pushed up against one wall. Only when I walked right beside the bed did I realize that there was a body under the white sheet. I hurried to catch up with Sebastian and took his hand.
We walked into the front office. An attendant sat behind a nursing station desk. He wore a white tunic and looked to be about twentyish with blond curls. He flashed us the civilians-usually-don't-just-wander-in-here look, before saying, somewhat skeptically, "Can I help you?"
"We're here for Daniel Parrish," I said. I pulled out all my documentation and flashed it at the attendant.
The attendant nodded with only the briefest glance in the direction of all my hard-gained legal paperwork, and said, "Where's the coffin?"
"In the van," Sebastian said. "I was hoping you'd loan us a stretcher or something."
"Sure thing," he said, disappearing behind a set of ominous looking double doors. In a moment, he was back with one of those flexible stretchers you see ambulances use. "I'll help you," he said. To me, "Stay here and make sure nobody walks off." He laughed at his own joke, and he and Sebastian headed down the hallway together.
I was sure the attendant wasn't supposed to leave his post, and I was twice as certain I didn't want to be in this place alone. There was nothing inherently creepy about the plastic potted plants covered in a thin layer of dust, the threadbare waiting room furniture, or the pervasive scent of air fresher, but just knowing that there were dozens of dead bodies just behind those doors gave me the willies. I paced the industrial-grade carpeting for the entire fifteen minutes it took for Sebastian and the attendant guy to come back with Parrish's coffin.
I wasn't quite ready for what came next. The attendant, who introduced himself as Gary, motioned us both in past the dreaded double doors. Noticing the look on my face, Gary said, "Hey, you're going through upright. It's all good."
I tried to smile, but found my expression froze at the sight of stainless-steel exam tables and drains. Lots of drains. For all the bodily fluids, I imagined. The acrid stench of formaldehyde stuck in the back of my throat.
All the Court TV I'd watched at Izzy's had prepared me for the rows of metal refrigerator boxes, at least. The door pulled out like a macabre lazy susan to reveal Parrish, covered modestly in a sheet. A slight film of frost covered Parrish's skin, and his lips looked bluish. Great Goddess, I hoped he was okay! I reached out a hand to touch his cheek, searching for some sign of life.
"I'll give you a minute, shall I?" Gary offered kindly.
"Yeah, but only a minute," Sebastian said. When I glanced at his rudeness, Sebastian whispered in my ear, "He's already been frozen too long. He's going to have a morgue hangover." To my questioning look, he replied. "It's like an ice cream headache, only worse."
"How would you know?"
"Had a similar experience with a frozen lake up north. Ice fishing gone bad."
"Let's get him out of here," I agreed.
Sebastian waved Gary back from where he was standing at the far side of the room. Gary compared my documents to Parrish's toe tag, and then Sebastian and he did the hospital sheet trick and neatly dumped Parrish into the open coffin.
"Awesome pine coffin," Gary said, running his fingers on the freight stickers. "You don't see a lot of antiques of this sort. I mean, most people are still using their coffins."
Eek. Good point. Maybe we should have bought new?
"Got it on eBay," Sebastian lied smoothly. "It was pre-bought and shipped empty, I guess."
"And what? The guy moves without taking his coffin and the family keeps it in the garage for generations?" Sebastian and I exchanged nervous glances, but Gary answered himself. "People are so weird."
"Yeah, well, it was cheap," Sebastian said. "Better than paying the extortionist prices through the funeral home."
"True," Gary said with a nod. "You can keep the sheet, by the way. No need to return it."
"Thanks," I said, trying to imagine the people who tried to give a used funerary sheet back.
The frost on Parrish's face had started to bead. Sebastian and I set the wooden cover in place. I didn't want to. In fact, it felt sort of wrong not to see Parrish's face, but the sunlight would kill him.
Gary walked with us back to the van.
"So, you guys are Witches, right?" Gary asked as we strolled down the hall. Everyone we encountered averted their gaze when they noticed the coffin.
"I am," I said. "He's an alchemist."
"Technically, I'm an excommunicated Catholic," Sebastian corrected with a crooked smile.
"Why, did you want to ask something?" I wondered.
I held the doors open as Sebastian steered the gurney. The sun was bright. Not a cloud in the sky, other than the plume from the smokers in scrubs huddled under the eaves. Gary directed us down a ramp. I held on to the lid tightly, as the wheels jittered over some bumps.
"Nah," said Gary with mischievous grin. "I just wanted to say 'Merry Meet.' "
Attendant dude was a Witch too. Gary had just given the secret handshake. "Seriously?"
"Every Beltane and Samhain," he said with a wink.
"Cool." I smiled, and shook his hand. Sebastian followed suit. Then once we reached our cherry-red Death Mobile, Sebastian opened up the back doors. He hopped inside to lever Parrish up. I started to help, but the two of them hefted the coffin in that manly way of two guys hauling a load. I felt pretty useless, honestly.
"So," Gary said, once Parrish was inside, "I hope you won't mind me saying: he's too light," he gestured with his thumb at the coffin. "Dead guys weigh a ton. Your friend here is weightless as air in comparison. It's not right. Something's out of whack, spiritually speaking, if you know what I'm saying."
Sebastian nodded solemnly. "That's why we're taking care of him ourselves."
Gary considered this. "Good plan, my man." He raised his hand in the peace sign like a benediction. "Blessed be."
"Blessed be," I replied automatically, like responding to an amen.
Sebastian and I watched Gary amble back inside. "Well, that was certainly interesting," Sebastian said, as he shut the van doors with a slam that made me jump.
"What? That he was so weird, or so right?"
"Both."
* * * *
Despite Gary's claims that Parrish wasn't heavy, it was a bitch getting him up the stairs to my apartment. Thank the Mother for Sebastian's superhuman strength and the duct tape we used to secure the lid. It was still awkward and slow going. More than once I suggested we forget the whole lying in the parlor thing, and change our plans instead to involve an outdoor barbeque despite early frost warnings.
Once upstairs, we had to decide where to put him. He fit nicely on the end table, but he sat just low enough to be an inviting bench. The last thing I wanted was for some drunken ghouls to sit on him and tip him over in the middle of the festivities. The dining-room table looked wrong too. The coffin hung off the edges and, well, seemed like an overlarge serving plate. Just not very dignified. Again, I imagined a lot of plates being set on him.
"How about we take him out of the coffin and just sprawl his body on the couch?" Sebastian suggested wryly. "It'd look very natural."
I imagined him propped up stiffly with a beer can in his hand like something out of a grisly comedy. "Wouldn't that wake him up?"
Sebastian shrugged. "Probably. Any other ideas?"
I had one. Sebastian and I hauled out a couple of dressers from my bedroom. They were just the right size, and when placed a short distance apart, even fairly sturdy. They put Parrish at good "viewing" height, but not so low as to be easily mistaken as someplace to sit.
Of course, the inst
ant we got the coffin in place, Barney leaped up on top and began to give herself a full body wash. Sebastian scratched her shoulder ruff. "You always did like him better."
She answered Sebastian with a sneeze.
After a rest on the couch and a couple of energy drinks, Sebastian decided it was probably time to fetch and carry from the caterers. "I don't even like the guy this much," Sebastian muttered. "Do you want to come along?"
I explained that I was expecting Dominguez early for an astrological date and that I was hoping to convince him he needed to hang around to help nab Izzy's cousin. "Plus," I added. "I'm going to prepare a de-hexing spell for William."
"I should help with that," Sebastian said, laying a hand on the flat expanse of his stomach. "My part of Lilith could add a bit of extra power to that spell."
I hadn't thought of that, but Sebastian and I made a whole Goddess. "Would you? I feel like I need all the help I can get on this one."
"Absolutely, love," Sebastian said, leaning in to give me a peck on the cheek. "I'll hurry home." Barney, who had hopped off the coffin to twine around our legs, sneezed wetly on his shoe. Reaching down to scratch behind her ear, Sebastian said, "Love you too, puss."
* * * *
Watching his car putter away, I was pleased how quickly Sebastian and I got back into a routine. He was a good guy, really.
Smiling to myself, I turned around and came face-to-face with Parrish's coffin. Despite seeing it in my storage space in the basement all the time, it still looked ominous in the middle of my living room. I skittered around it to the kitchen. I made myself some ramen noodles for dinner and settled in at my favorite spot at the kitchen table to cast Dominguez's chart.
Most people only know about astrology from their daily newspaper and don't realize the complexity of a full natal chart. A natal chart is like a snapshot of the sky as seen from the exact location on earth on the day and exact hour you were born, showing all the planets—sun, moon, and some asteroids included—above and below the horizon. It also details all interactions those heavenly bodies have with each other, what sign of the zodiac they appear in, and into which house they fall. It's a complicated affair. Casting one by hand could take hours, which was why most people did their computations by computer these days.
I, being some kind of last holdout from another era, didn't own a computer. No TV, no computer, no cell phone. I lived in the damn dark ages.
So, I set to work. The doorbell rang just as I marked the last aspect on Dominguez's chart.
I met Dominguez at the downstairs door. He wore faded blue jeans. A pearl-gray, almost silver, light-cotton button-down shirt opened at the throat to reveal a tiny golden baptismal cross. To ward off the chill of Halloween night, and, no doubt, hide a shoulder holster, he had on a tailored black sport coat. Dominguez's hair curled at the nape of his neck and just above his ears, as though he'd just stepped from a hot shower.
The only thing that looked out of place at all on him was the clunky fuchsia cast covering his arm to his elbow.
"Come on in," I said.
As he strolled past me, I caught the scent of soap with a hint of gun oil.
He thrust a cellophane-wrapped bundle of painted daisies at me. "These are for you, Ms. Lacey," he said gruffly.
"Garnet," I insisted. I took them, noticing that he'd failed to remove the SuperAmerica price sticker. Clearly, these were a kind of impulse gift, but what impulse? We'd said this wasn't a date, yet flowers were the romantic gift of choice. Or maybe his mother's voice called to him at the gas station reminding him that you don't show up at someone's house without bringing something, anything. Though I was absurdly touched, chips and salsa would have been more useful, given that I was expecting a crowd in a couple of hours. Still, the flowers might help distinguish Parrish's coffin from the other seating areas.
"Oh!" I said, suddenly having a vision of Dominguez's face when he saw Parrish's coffin in the living room. "Wait!"
But, he'd already reached the top of the stairs, where I'd left the door open. "What the hell?"
He sounded kind mad and surprised, or surprised and mad, it was hard to tell exactly. His face was red, just as I'd pictured, when I came up behind him. "About that… I'm having a wake later tonight."
"For the guy I shot?" His jaw twitched and his eyes glistened; rage looked kind of hot on him.
"Uh, yeah," I said casually. "You know, your chart implied you'd have the inner peace to deal with this sort of thing."
His face contorted for a second, then he said, "That's crap."
"Clearly inner peace is not your forte." I laughed. "Anyway, I made that up. Your chart says nothing like that. Come on in, I'll show you." When he didn't budge, I waved the bouquet under his nose. "Plus, I have to put these in some water."
"Oh, right," he said, stepping aside to let me through. I purposefully strode past Parrish's coffin into the kitchen. I resisted the urge to look behind me to see if Dominguez followed, but I could easily imagine his eyes riveted to the cloth-draped box. I kicked out the doorstop and let the kitchen door swing shut behind us. Then, I busied myself with finding a vase.
"Can I offer you anything to drink?" I asked, wondering if the cheap, rummage sale "I Heart London" pint glass would work for the flowers. Barney appeared instantly, her eyes following the foliage with the tenacity of a heat-seeking missile. One of the reasons I didn't own any real vases was because, among her other skills, Barney was a champion flower muncher and destroyer of glassware.
"Got any beer?" he asked. Instead of sitting, he perched on the ledge of the window that faced the back door.
"Tons," I said, snipping the ends of the flowers into the garbage with a kitchen scissors. "Plus several kegs are arriving shortly."
He looked confused, but only for a moment. "For the wake."
"Yeah, so mostly I have cases of crap beer in the back hallway. The good stuff is hidden in a cooler in my bedroom behind locked doors, along with the family heirlooms, and anything else I don't want to walk off by itself tonight." I fluffed the arrangement in the glass. The pastel lavender, pink, and rose daisies were cheery. I set them on the kitchen table.
Dominguez chuckled. "So, Parrish's friends are thieves?"
And worse, I figured. "Plus, I don't know who they all are. He's been…" Did I bring up the fact that Parrish had been prostituting himself? Nah, best not to speak ill of the not-really-dead in case he could hear me from the other room, and besides, Dominguez probably already suspected the truth "… seeing a lot of people lately, so I put up signs around town. I'm expecting some freeloaders."
He gestured to the bowl of mini Snickers on the table. "And trick-or-treaters."
Sebastian had actually been the one to think to bring them. I was just glad he picked a candy I'd eat, in case there were any leftovers. "I have to leave my porch light on for the people coming for Parrish's wake," I said. "I figured I'd get a few kids by accident, and it's always better to be prepared."
"Sounds like one helluva party," Dominguez said, as I handed him one of the bottles from the fridge. He looked at the label and sneered, but twisted the top off anyway.
"I hope so," I said more wistfully than I'd intended. And suddenly, there was Daniel, dead, between us—me the grieving girlfriend, and Dominguez party to his shooting.
"Is that my chart?" Dominguez said, pointing to the paper with the picture of the pie-cut circle with symbols neatly printed around the edges.
Grateful for the distraction, I pulled up a chair with a smile. I pointed the C-shaped glyph, "My favorite interpretation for Moon in Gemini? 'You may be too shrewd for your own good.' Tell me that's not totally you!"
He laughed, slipping into chair beside me to peer meaningfully at the squiggles on the paper. "Okay, you got me."
My finger pointed to his Sun in the fourth house. "And, of course, you share this placement with Liberace."
"Ugh." He grimaced.
"Aw, come on. I think that's fab-u-lous." I laughed.
"Te
ll me more." He grinned, as he took a long pull on the bottle.
By the time Sebastian arrived with the food and even more beer, Dominguez had told me all about his complicated relationship with his father, his fondness for combining edibles and sex—which I'd told him perfectly complimented his Venus/sensual nature—and we had laughed ourselves sick over some of the other odd quirks his natal chart had revealed to me.
It had all remained very platonic, but we still jumped apart like guilty lovers when Sebastian entered the room.
Dominguez recovered much more quickly and smoothly than I did. "Have you had this done?" Dominguez asked Sebastian with a comradely grin. "This interpretation is awesome. I've become a convert."
"Do ephemerises go that far back?" I asked before I could stop myself.
"There were star charts in existence when I was born," Sebastian said dryly.
Dominguez laughed, thinking we were making the usual jokes about old age. "Jeez, he doesn't look that much older than you. In fact, if I had had to guess, I'd have said you were the elder in this relationship."
Now Sebastian chuckled. "You really know how to score with the ladies, friend."
It occurred to me that I never introduced them properly, so I did. "Gabriel Dominguez," I said, "this is my boyfriend, Sebastian Von Traum."
"Von Traum? German? Dutch?"
"Austrian," Sebastian corrected politely, his eyes resting, fleetingly, on the vase of flowers. "Are you staying for the wake?"
"Uh… It doesn't really seem right," Dominguez started.
"Please?" I asked, "I mean, you're more than welcome to. Plus, we have more beer than God. Someone has to help us drink it."
Dominguez laughed.
"Besides," Sebastian said, gesturing at the chart and books on the table. "I'm sure you have more to talk about. Have you even gotten to minor aspects with asteroids or midpoints?"
With the enthusiasm of a new believer, Dominguez's eyes brightened. "No." He turned to me. "What's that? Tell me about those."
I shot Sebastian an are-you-sure-you-want-to-encourage-this look, but he ignored it to reach between us for the flowers. "Mind if I put these on Parrish?"
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