Close to the Ground

by Jeff Mariotte

  “‘O, thou wicked and disobedient one, because thou hast not obeyed these words which I have spoken, I shall excommunicate thee, cast thee into the pit from whence there can be no return, where thou will burn in unquenchable fire. I shall destroy thy name and seal, unless thy obedience be forthcoming and immediate.’”

  “Fat chance,” the shapeshifter said. But she trembled and shook, and her skin seemed to have grown more pale, almost translucent. The spell was having some effect, Angel thought.

  The room had grown cold without him noticing, but he noticed now. The lights had dimmed even more, but there was a glow beside Karinna’s bed, an amorphous shape that seemed to coalesce even as he watched it.

  It crystallized into the shape of Karinna. Not solid — Angel could see the wall right through her — but unmistakably her likeness. She didn’t really stand on the floor, but hovered just above it. The insubstantial shapeshifter on the bed glared at it with hate in its eyes.

  “Is this another trick?” Angel asked.

  The Karinna-image didn’t move, her mouth didn’t open, but her voice was as clear as a bell.

  “This is no trick, Angel. It’s me, Karinna.”

  “The real one?”

  “That’s right. What’s left of me, on this plane.”

  “But how . . .?”

  “The shapeshifter took my form before my body was even cold, much less buried,” the ghostly Karinna explained. It felt strange to Angel to be talking to a dead girl whose voice seemed to come from nowhere, yet surround him completely. But Angel was no stranger to the strange. He tried to take it in stride.

  “And everyone who knew me denied the fact of my death. My own father . . .” Her voice faltered, emotion reaching beyond the grave. “I was buried, but with no recognition, and my body — the shape of my body, my face — still walked the Earth. I could find no rest.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” the shapeshifter snarled. “She’s nothing but a liar. Living inside her for a few days, I gotta tell you. Nasty.”

  “Shut up,” Angel told the shapeshifter. “Go on, Karinna.”

  “She knows nothing about the real me,” Karinna said. “She knew my form, nothing else. She couldn’t know the pain of being dead but unable to rest, unable to complete the passage.”

  Realization dawned on Angel. One last element that had made no sense finally became clear. Why would Doyle have a vision that would lead Angel into a trap?

  “So the vision that Doyle saw — that was you. The real Karinna. You were the one in trouble, the soul I was supposed to help. Doyle saw your face, but the vision wasn’t clear enough to tell him that there were two of you with the same face.”

  “Yes,” Karinna said, almost pleading. “I needed help. I need help. As long as she’s here, I can’t leave. By what you’ve done so far, beginning to banish her, you’ve allowed me to come back this much. But until she is gone, I can’t continue my journey.”

  “Do you know what she did, Karinna? What your father did?”

  “Yes. I’m ashamed of it. But where I’m going is beyond shame, beyond hurt, beyond the pain of betrayal. Please help me get there, Angel. Being in between like this, this is painful. More so than I can bear.”

  “Ignore her, Angel,” the shapeshifter said. “She’s dead, what can she offer you?”

  “What can you?” Angel touched his cheek, split open by her raking claws. “You’re not exactly taking the Congeniality prize.”

  “I can give you anything you want, Angel. With my abilities, my talents, we can have it all. We can have the world.”

  “Too greedy,” Angel countered. “Too much responsibility. I’m happy with the tiny sliver of it that I’ve got.” He looked at the Karinna-shape, floating just over the bed. “I’m sorry for your pain, Karinna. Sorry I can’t do more for you.”

  “Just help me move on, Angel,” she said. “That’s all I ask of you. Help me to do that.”

  Angel nodded and raised the book. The next section was in Latin again. He read it.

  As he did, the shapeshifter began to howl.

  When he looked up at her, her image was even more indistinct than it had been. She convulsed in pain. Through her, Angel could see the end of Karinna’s bed. The Karinna-shape hovering beside it seemed a little more substantial.

  Angel kept reading.

  The shapeshifter’s howls became a single, anguished wail. It hurt Angel’s ears. It sounded like all the pain in the world given voice by a single mouth.

  Then it was gone.

  She was gone.

  Angel closed the book.

  Karinna sat down on the bed, looking as solid as anyone.

  “You’re here?”

  “Not really. Not to stay,” she said.

  “Then why?”

  “I just wanted to thank you.”

  She climbed down from the bed. She was, Angel thought, more beautiful than the shapeshifter had been. There was something in her, some inner essence that came through, that made her more lovely still, and the shapeshifter hadn’t been able to duplicate that.

  With her red hair loose around her face, her clear eyes, her red lips curved into a shy smile, she looked more than ever like the young lady Angel had seen back in Tirgu Bals that time. Angel hadn’t been able to help that woman, but he had helped this one.

  Karinna came to him, wrapped her arms around him, strong and yet still girlish, and gave him a hug.

  “Thanks, Angel,” she said. “For everything.”

  “You’re — you’re welcome,” he said. “Karinna.”

  She released him, took two steps backward, and gave him a smile that seemed to light the room.

  And then she was gone.

  * * *

  Angel was heading for the front door when he saw her. Marjorie Willits still looked fragile, as if a loud noise would shatter her to pieces. She peered at him from the doorway that led toward her husband’s study.

  “Angel?” she said hesitantly.

  “Yes, Mrs. Willits?”

  “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “It’s all over, yes. I don’t know how much you know. . . .”

  “I know enough. Too much. Karinna . . .”

  “Karinna is at peace, Mrs. Willits.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “No need. I’ve been thanked.”

  “But still.”

  “You know what your husband did?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And you’re still here.”

  She nodded, gravely, and looked at her small hands.

  “I wouldn’t know where else to go.”

  “There are people,” Angel said. “Services. Shelters. You have some money. You could get help figuring things out.”

  “I probably need help.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “But mostly what I need is strength. Jack needs strength, and I have to be the one to give it to him.”

  “You’re staying with him?”

  “He doesn’t have anyone else.”

  “I’m not sure he deserves —”

  “Never mind what he deserves, Angel. He may not be a good man, or a strong one, or a brave one. But whatever he’s done, he is my husband and my responsibility, and I owe him.”

  “You’re a better person than me, Mrs. Willits. I’d have been out the door long ago.”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with how good a person one is, Angel. Or how bad. We do what we have to do, all of us. Right or wrong.”

  “He said something very much like that to me.”

  “I’m not surprised.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if he might emerge from behind her at any moment. “I think you’ve broken him, Angel. I don’t know if he’ll ever mend. I don’t blame you for that, I’m just telling you what I believe. He’s going to need my help. I’ll be here for him.”

  “You’re stronger than you look.”

  She graced him with a smile, and in it Angel could see traces of her daughter. It made him
glad to think that there were aspects of Karinna left behind.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Who isn’t.”

  He headed outside. In the doorway he stopped, turned, waved a hand at the ruined door. “Sorry about this,” he said. “The door. It was . . . in my way.”

  “I understand, Angel.”

  “You’ll probably want to get it fixed.”

  “Maybe we will. Maybe we’ll just sell the house. We’ll see.”

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Willits. And your daughter.”

  “And you, Angel. Pleasure meeting you.”

  She went back inside, toward the study and her husband. Angel went down the front steps. His dented GTX was parked in the drive, keys in the ignition.

  He climbed in, started it, and left Bel Air, heading for home. But on the way he had another thought. He looked at the time. An hour of darkness left. Plenty of time for one more stop. The address he’d taken from Jack’s office wasn’t too far away.

  E P I L O G U E

  Angel slept most of the day and spent the night resting as well. At around ten the following morning, he and Doyle were sitting in the outer office, talking about anything except Karinna Willits and her father and the trouble they brought to Angel, when Cordelia walked through the front door waggling the Hollywood trades.

  “Your boss is all over the news,” she said, “and none of it’s good. At least, for him.”

  “He’s not my boss anymore,” Angel pointed out.

  “Whatever, you know who I mean, right? Jack Willits.”

  “He made the papers, huh?”

  “They’re calling it the fastest career crash in Hollywood history,” Cordelia said. “Except since they’re the trade papers, they use headlines like ‘Ex-exec Checks Neck.’”

  “What happened to him?” Doyle asked.

  “What didn’t?” Cordelia replied. “He’s been fired.”

  “That was fast,” Angel said.

  “Hey, those multinational corporations smell blood when it’s in the water,” Cordelia said. “And they want to make sure it’s not their own. Why, when I was working at Monument, I —”

  “For, like, twenty minutes?” Doyle interrupted. “You been tapped to take over his job?”

  “Never mind,” Cordelia said. “There’s a place and a time for sarcasm, and this isn’t it.”

  “When is it?”

  “When it’s coming out of my mouth.”

  “Go ahead, Cordy,” Angel said. “He’s been fired. Is there more?”

  She looked at Doyle and then deliberately turned away. “You know how most of those big Hollywood execs have golden parachute deals, so even if they do a terrible job and get canned, they still walk away with millions of dollars? Willits had a golden parachute — maybe a platinum one — but he doesn’t get it. The corporation that owns the studio says it has proof that he was cheating the studio. There’s even a hint that maybe he was embezzling, although of course they don’t come right out and say that, because that’d make them look bad.”

  “Cheatin’ how?” Doyle asked.

  “You know all that stuff about Blake Alten doing a picture for them, for almost no money? Never happened, Alten says. He never agreed to any deal like that, and if he had, he would have had to have been hypnotized because he would never agree to any such deal. Especially with Monument Pictures, he says. Especially with a Monument Pictures headed by Jack Willits, for whom he has absolutely zero respect.”

  “Ouch,” Doyle said.

  “So Alten says that Jack was lying about the deal. And the corporation backs Alten. They say they’ve been through all of Jack’s paperwork, and there is no deal. There’s no contract, no letter of intent, no sign that there were ever any discussions. They think Jack floated the Blake Alten story to hang on to his job, to boost his own profile long enough to sell off his shares of Monument Pictures stock while it was up. The SEC, whatever that is, is looking into those charges.”

  “Securities and Exchange Commission,” Angel said.

  “They enforce laws relating to the stock market,” Doyle added. “Why I keep out of the market. Too much regulation.”

  “If bookies sold stock, you’d be in the market,” Angel said. “Legitimate gambling scares you.”

  “Harsh words, my friend,” Doyle said. “You wound me.”

  “I thought we were talking about me,” Cordelia said. “Or at least, paying attention to me.”

  “You mean there’s more?” Angel asked.

  “It’s a long story,” she replied. “I couldn’t even read the whole thing at one time. I was afraid it would make my eyes bloodshot, so I put drops in them. How do they look?”

  “Red-free,” Angel said. “What else?”

  “The corporation has not only fired Jack Willits, they’re thinking about suing him. Breach of trust, breach of promise, stock manipulation, yadda yadda yadda. A lot of business talk that didn’t really mean much. Basically, what it boils down to is that, not only is he out of a job, he’s stepped in a mountain of doodoo.”

  “I think that sums it up nicely,” Doyle offered.

  “Thank you.” Cordelia smiled and did a little curtsy.

  “I wonder if Blake Alten really was hypnotized,” she went on. “That would explain how he was able to ignore me. I was having a great hair day that day, so —”

  “That’s probably it,” Doyle said. “You’re right. Your hair was fabulous.”

  “Do they say who’s taking over Willits’s job?” Angel asked, desperately trying to keep the conversation on-topic.

  Cordelia thumbed through some pages, ran her finger down a column of type.

  “They’re looking for someone, considering a number of candidates, it says. In the interim, the law firm of Wolfram and Hart will be running things.”

  “Terrific,” Angel said. “New meaning to the phrase ‘Hollywood sharks.’ ”

  “I didn’t know there was a phrase,” Doyle said.

  “I wonder what Blake Alten would have thought of me if he hadn’t been in a trance,” Cordelia said. “I wonder if he’d have wanted me to co-star in his next picture.”

  “Almost undoubtedly.”

  “Do you think so? What kind of a guy do you think he is?”

  “Seems nice enough,” Angel said. “Nice house, too.”

  “Because, I’m sure I could arrange to meet him again, if you really think he’d like me. I mean, what’s not to like, right? Look at me.”

  “I’m lookin’,” Doyle assured her with a grin.

  “I didn’t mean you. I meant, the universal ‘look at me.’”

  “The universe ain’t here, Cordy. So I was lookin’ for ’em.”

  “Oh. Well, okay, then. Thanks.”

  Angel rose from the couch. Those two could go on for another hour and not hear a single word he said. He headed for his private office.

  “You know the female lead in a Blake Alten movie can pull in something like five or six million dollars, right?” Cordelia was saying.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s true. Even a relative unknown, like Julie Williams in Trouble Happy. Blake saw her in a soup commercial, and the next thing you know, she’s cashing a check for seven figures. Do you know what I could do with five million bucks?”

  Angel swung the door to his office closed.

  Doyle and Cordelia looked at each other. Doyle shrugged.

  “What’s up with him?” Cordelia asked.

  “Hard day, maybe.”

  “Hard day? I mean, sure, he works hard. Battling demons and all takes a lot out of you, I guess. But when was the last time five million dollars vanished from his bank account because a movie star was sleepwalking? I could’ve really used that money. Really, some people just need to get their priorities straight.”

  “I’m with ya, Cordy,” Doyle said. “I’m right there.”

  “So anyway,” Cordelia continued. “Five million big ones . . .”

>   About the Author

  Jeff Mariotte writes comic books such as Desperadoes and Countdown, edits comic books for WildStorm Productions, is co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy, a specialty bookstore, and writes books, including The Xander Years, Vol. 2, and Gen 13: Time and Chance (with Scott Ciencin). He and his family live in a book-filled house in San Diego with various book-loving animals. There seems to be one constant in his life.