The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set
Page 178
With the glamour, she did. She knew how the women in the shop were seeing her now, fuller cheeks and longer eyelashes, glimmers of green in the blue of her eyes and the subtle auburn highlights in her brown hair becoming more prominent. Her figure took on more exaggerated curves as the light softened about her, lending its radiance to her skin and making her seem like its source. All at once she was sweet and sexy, friendly and trustworthy, and absolutely riveting. Laughing, Cadi said, “It’s not voodoo!” The women laughed with her. “No, no, it’s just my great-grandmother’s concoction for arthritis pain. She had it something terrible.”
“Yes, it’s awful,” agreed Ellie. “I can’t sew, and it keeps me up at night.”
“We do sell these in half-sizes,” Cadi said. “Why don’t you get one of those; they’re cheaper. Then if you find it doesn’t work to your liking, you haven’t dropped as much money.”
Still somewhat keen under the glamour, the woman said, “I should just bring it back!”
“You should!” Cadi said. Agreeing with her made the woman slip under more deeply. “Try out a half-size. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you a full refund. But Ellie,” she said confidentially, leaning over the counter like they were having a girl-to-girl chat, “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
The woman purchased the half-size, her friends the full, and they were replaced by a man wanting a book on dream analysis. Cadi walked him over to their book section and noticed a shard of glass on the bottom shelf. She swept it up and chucked it into the trash, wishing that reminders of the Nychos’ visit weren’t still visible. Upstairs when she heard the crash, she used her speed emblem to fly down to the shop and found three people standing over Torvi. She felt the repulsion but did not understand what it was, or what it indicated. Thinking they were human robbers, she scooped up one of the wizards’ staffs from the umbrella stand and thumped the one closest to her on the back of the head. That had been Vastax, who crumpled immediately.
The Ceilidh half of her repulsed at violence did not overcome the terrified and furious human; she took a swing at the other male. Back then, Delyth’s face had been so warped that it turned her stomach, a burnt nose crisped into obscurity, the skin of his forehead ragged and his cheeks riddled with pits. Delyth cried out to Kalanthe as the staff broke over his shoulders.
Then a brilliant purple orb gleamed at the tips of Kalanthe’s fingers. It slipped down into her palm and she tossed it casually at Torvi’s chest. It stopped there, blackening his shirt, and his back arched in pain among the broken glass and goods. He screamed like he was being rent apart. Pulling up her glamour to stun the thugs into submission, Cadi was shocked when Kalanthe laughed and turned away. The orb at Torvi’s chest vanished, but another appeared above Kalanthe’s fingers and slid down into her palm again. She tossed it. Torvi screamed as high-pitched as a kitten when it struck his stomach. The smell of singed flesh filled the air. Only then did Cadi put together that these were some kind of sigil, and she begged for Kalanthe to stop.
Oh, but it’s such fun, the Nychos girl said. It was fun to them. Cadi had seen that over and over now. That night she’d rubbed Torvi’s own burn unguent upon his wounds after stopping his bloodflow. Torvi, who wouldn’t even step on a spider, who spanked Cadi once when she was small for running into the road and then cried harder than she had! Nuts for animals and babies, flirting innocently with the old women in his shop, he looked at his gashes and burns with incomprehension. What did Ceilidh know of violence? He had no emblem to fight back; his were strictly limited to palliatives for such foes as menstrual cramps and allergies. Ceilidh did not fight. It made them physically ill. No, this was not fun for Cadi and Torvi.
When she had returned home from Spencer late Friday night, Torvi was in his room with the door cracked open, meaning that she could come in to talk if she wanted. She didn’t. There was nothing to say. In the morning he made breakfast and lined up ingredients for the night’s work in neat rows on the counter. Cadi needed that normalcy. Her weekly pay was there, too, crisp twenties and one hundreds, a scattering of coins. Most of it went into her wallet and she put the rest into her nightstand and closet. The coins were slipped into her only piggy bank that wasn’t overflowing, although it was on the brink, and she dropped a dime on the floor by accident and left it there. It was nice having money everywhere.
Shopping was sick, so fresh from the night before, and she’d channel-surfed all day, showering three times to boot. But she could not wash Spencer out of her skin. In a way, it was all right Catskill called in sick on Sunday; it gave her something to be annoyed about instead of trying to fill up the hours around her show. Catskill was a flake. He loved designing their window displays and redoing the jewelry counter, but the less interesting parts of the job floated right off the top of his head.
The customers kept coming through the hours and she rang up thousands of dollars in sales. The big money was in unguents, but they did a decent amount with the rest. One side of the store was costumes and that was popular today with Halloween coming up. A man groused at Cadi for not accepting credit cards or checks, and groused more for not gift-wrapping the naughty pixie costume intended for his wife. “Come on, honey, you must got something back there! What kind of suspense is it if she just opens the bag? Find some paper and ribbons to make it pretty.” Hating strange men who called her honey, Cadi looked him in the eye defiantly and stapled the top of the bag shut. The man said angrily, “I want to speak to your manager!”
“Get the hell out of here,” Cadi said. After he threatened to leave a bad review online when he got home, she pointed him to her laptop behind the counter. “Why wait?” His bad review would be buried under the good ones. Kids at school complained about how much crap they took in their jobs, but Cadi didn’t have to take it. What was Torvi going to do, fire her and go to high school himself for procurements? He wasn’t aging that fast either, but he couldn’t pull off eighteen. When he hit forty, his looks would plateau there for a hundred years before he appeared to age again.
At the end of the day it finally quieted, customers paging through books or comparing Tarot decks and leaving without buying anything. A man ran in with a desperate look one minute before closing. “Are you still open? My flight was late, I rushed all the way-”
“What do you need?” Cadi asked.
He flushed. “Oh, um, say, is that fellow here, the guy in the hat?”
“No, he’s not in. Look, whatever it is, just blurt it out. I’m closing. Hemorrhoids?”
“It’s . . . um . . . you see, it’s to help with . . . um . . . it works great . . .”
Briskly, Cadi said, “Is it a little blue container that costs thirty even?”
“Yes, that’s it!” he said. She sold him the cream for erectile dysfunction, the man trying to distract by telling her about the great new restaurant he and his girlfriend frequently visited. Then he stepped into the evening in relief, the bag tight in his fist. She locked the door after him and vacuumed the store before taking care of the register. It was Catskill’s job to clean the employee bathroom on Sundays; she decided to just leave it for him to take care of on Tuesday when the shop reopened. It was probably why he hadn’t come in, hoping that someone else would do it. Catskill needed to be fired, but it amused Torvi how the guy spent all day whining about cleaning the bathroom when it took all of ten minutes. He pulled the same stunt with the vacuum every shift. But Torvi kept him around because he didn’t steal, and Catskill happily went to hippie fairs and New Age events to advertise for the store.
Flipping off the lights once everything was done, Cadi took the money upstairs. From the outside their place didn’t look like much, but the inside was far different. Both she and Torvi adored to shop, and they bought expensive items. Her closets were packed with the best clothing and their television was the largest size one could get. They’d spend entire days in furniture stores finding items to do up their rooms, or redo them if the mood struck. When she walked in, Torvi was sp
read out on one of their two leather sofas before the plasma, which was playing on mute. She chucked the packed bag of money to him, which he chucked in turn to the corner to join the others. One fell behind the entertainment center. Torvi yawned. “Anything interesting?”
“No, just a woman thinking the Cinnamon Challenge is a new way kids get high, the usual nuts and a man with a broken boner,” Cadi said. She flopped into an armchair.
“That’s James,” Torvi said. “He came in months ago looking for a gift and we ended up talking. Two doctors haven’t been able to put a finger on the cause and his new girlfriend was about to break up with him. He was so down that I gave him the free one-use sample. The next morning at opening, he was back for more. He would’ve bought the whole stock if I’d let him. Made me promise never to close the shop as long as he lives. The lady was satisfied, and remains so.”
Only Torvi could get some guy to discuss his bedroom issues minutes after meeting. “None of that I needed to know. But since we’re discussing his personal life, he and his satisfied lady recommend dinner at Stars by Seven.”
“It’s getting great reviews. Want to go tonight?”
“Nah.”
“Oh, yes, you do. Come on, change into something nice and I’ll do the same. Or else you’re cooking, it’s your turn.”
Having forgotten that, Cadi groaned. “I covered your ass at the store!”
“Thank you! I’ll express my gratitude with your paycheck.”
It always took them a long time to get ready, and hours later they drove to Stars by Seven. Straightening her short white Eva Shine dress, Cadi gave the keys to the Pantheon to an awed valet before taking Torvi’s arm to walk inside. The ceiling was covered in twinkling lights, which reflected off the glass votive candleholders on the tables. Torvi shook hands with the hostess and explained about wearing his hat inside to cover his burns.
Despite his coverings, Torvi was a good-looking guy, and his suit was top-of-the-line and well fitted. Charmed, the girl said, “What happened to you?”
Stepping up to the podium, a man said, “Don’t ask that, Reba!”
“It’s all right,” Torvi said. “I fought overseas and unfortunately sustained some gruesome injuries. Are you the man in charge? I was just apologizing to Reba for needing to keep my hat and gloves on in such a nice restaurant. My burns might disturb your other patrons. What good things we’ve heard about this place, right, Cadi?”
They were seated at the best table by the window, a reserved sign whisked away by the manager. Calling Torvi an American hero, he snapped to a busboy to find the waiter. Cadi rolled her eyes. “Bad story, someone might ask you questions about that one.”
“I didn’t say what I fought,” Torvi said. The sommelier brought a complimentary glass of white wine for Torvi and a sparkling apple cider for Cadi. She examined the outfits on the other women in the restaurant; none were as fine as hers. Murphy wasn’t that classy of an area, but a restaurant with a valet service was a huge step in the right direction. Usually, she and Torvi had to leave the city to find a place with tablecloths. They hadn’t realized how spoiled they were by fine dining in Alary, and both wanted to drive back when the store closed at the end of the year to visit all of their old favorites.
Cadi hadn’t thought moving to southern California through. She figured it was a slightly hotter version of northern. But here it was October and the temperature in the mid-eighties, spiking into the nineties on occasion. It didn’t cool off much at night either, and it was dismaying to open a window into the darkness and still be too warm. Summers were brutal, seething heat that kept her inside with the air conditioning. The second she stepped outside, she broke out in sweat. The concrete baked under the sun and there was nothing but concrete in every direction, no break between cities, not like the cow pastures and open space separating Alary from its neighbors. This area was just one strip mall after another, one suburb after another, Under Grounds coffee shops every quarter of a mile. After she graduated for the second time, she’d insist they find a more affluent city. And a cooler one.
It caught her short, realizing they no longer had that option, nor could they take a vacation at New Year’s. Feeling trapped in this city, she forced herself to peruse the menu. Torvi waved away the busboy when he tried to drop off a basket of bread. It wasn’t worth her zits or his gas, and it dulled the power of their emblems. Even as she thought it, her right shoulder started to burn anew. Seeing her wince, Torvi said, “I’ll take a look tonight.”
“The insignia shift so rapidly, but they’re becoming clearer, especially the top two.” Cadi sighed. “Eva Shine has a new sleeveless dress with gold brocade.”
“You could wear it around the apartment.”
“It’s not the same.” That had been a problem when she was dating Lukas, keeping her emblems covered. She applied and reapplied foundation, but still she felt like they were showing. Once he tried to cajole her into the shower with him, and Cadi had to make excuses. She knew exactly where the shower would lead, his slick hands stroking her back as they kissed, running down her arms and smearing the cosmetics. Then she’d have a lot of explaining to do. Keeping him incurious under glamour all the time was beyond her capabilities, and they had fought about why she wouldn’t go to a pool party, why she wouldn’t let him into the bathroom whenever he wanted. She maintained it was for privacy; he thought she was a prude.
Maybe she could have told him in time about her sigil side, but Lukas was such a chatterbox. He never could have kept it secret. Perhaps she had been too cautious about the pool party, but all it took was a little carelessness to expose her. The emblems slowly evaporated the best waterproof foundation in its thickest application, heat made it go even faster, and it was hard to blend the cosmetics to match her skin tone perfectly. Someone observant might wonder why she was wearing makeup on her arms. A forgetful scratching of an itch, not minding the time . . . her glamour wouldn’t cover the fifty people at the pool, and it just wasn’t worth the worry.
They had broken up right after graduation because Lukas wanted to keep his options open in college. Keep his options open. Like she was his fallback girl, the one he’d keep if nothing better came along. He couched it in terms about realizing potential and going where life led them; she told him to blow off. There hadn’t been anyone since Lukas, and the feel of his hands was becoming an increasingly distant memory. The younger guys in school didn’t interest her. She wanted someone whose mom hadn’t yelled at him to get out of bed that morning, someone who didn’t punch his friends on the arm and call them fart boxes, someone not snickering at the fountain between classes trying to spray girls with water for an impromptu wet T-shirt contest. She wanted a man, but she was surrounded by hormonal little boys.
If only they weren’t animate, she could call her emblems tattoos. But the insignia in her speed emblem moved like a rainfall, shifting in every direction; her glamour was waves from the circumference to the center; the emblem to stop bloodflow looked like two hazy figures dancing before one was subsumed into the other. The others were scattershot still. Cadi was terrible at figuring out what the shapes meant, although Torvi was more fluent at meanings and ingredients. It didn’t matter with the three on her left shoulder; those were in her blood and needed no other component. Whatever the others ended up doing, they might need some procuring to work.
When she was little, she sat in Torvi’s lap and poked his emblems as a game to remember them. Acne, migraines, malaise, cramps, insomnia, dry skin, hay fever, she continued down to the base of the V on his chest and then worked her way up before starting on the second set. Then she did his forehead, beginning with clarity, and moved on to the emblems running from his shoulders to the backs of his hands. If she did them right, he gave her a chocolate bar or a Sugar Whizzy. If she did them wrong, he still gave her a chocolate bar or a Sugar Whizzy. If there wasn’t any candy in the house, he gave her a penny and she ran to add it to one of her many piggy banks. She got one every Christmas.
Setting his napkin on his lap, Torvi nodded. “I know. I don’t.”
“You’re full Ceilidh; you can’t hate anything.”
“That’s not true. I can hate what they’re doing to us. I wish you’d kept driving.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I would have, if it were reversed. And I’d hate that I had to do it.”
“You should hate them!” Cadi said angrily.
He shrugged, although his eyes were sober. “How do you hate a rabid animal? That’s all they are. Just because they walk and talk like us doesn’t change it. This is what Nychos do, destroy things to stay alive.”
Waving off a second busboy with a basket of bread, Cadi said, “They truly have no choice?”
“They could choose to die, I suppose, but that’s precisely the reason they’re in this state. Cadi, they wanted to live so desperately beyond their normal lives that they didn’t care what the price would be. Can you imagine if an emblem appeared on your skin at the end of your life meaning you could keep going, as long as you kill? Of course you’d say no, but these old Cthalu sigils chose life at that cost.”
“It’s warped.”
“Pity them for being such slaves to fear, the selfishness it took to put themselves first by these means, their arrogance to think they could handle the diminishing of their magic to live beyond death. Dad told me in those last moments as Cthalu that many vow to only kill bad people. Trying to justify their decision, make it noble; they believe they’re strong enough to hold onto themselves in the transformation. But the change magnifies what they really are, the flaws in their characters that made this choice even a consideration, and their new spells need far more than a jerk on parole who has to be tracked down and procured. How can they do that with the repulsion anyway?” Torvi adjusted the brim of his hat. He was eager to talk about this; Cadi hadn’t been able to tolerate listening until now and avoided his polite attempts to initiate. “You don’t spend your energy being mad at a panther stalking you in the wild; you flee. It isn’t a matter of anger. When those Cthalu sigils chose to press the emblem, it was the last decision they ever made.”