Shadows of Old Ghosts

by Stephanie Zayatz

  Jirel and Aviira looked at each other. “Loretta said she found something like this in her house,” he said quietly to her.

  She nodded, dropped her chin into her hand. “Fuck.”

  Moira put the pictures in a pile on the table and folded her hands into her lap. “I hope you realize that you’ve dug up something very serious here. Even I would be nervous about something like this. The last thing you want on your tail is a witch who thinks you’ve gotten in the way of their work.”

  “Any advice?” Jirel asked.

  “Be very, very careful.”

  ***

  “Can I ask you something?” Jirel said as they got out of his car back at Headquarters. There had been almost complete silence between them as they drove away from Moira’s house, each too unsettled by what they’d just learned.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Go for it.”

  “Are you always this stone cold or is it just that you’re not used to me?”

  A couple responses went through her head, one of which included telling him to fuck off. She went for the diplomatic return instead. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He leaned against the side of his car. “Just curious. You give off this vibe that you’re always just a little bit pissed off at something. So I’m wondering if it’s me, or if you’re just like that and I need to get used to it.”

  “Wow. Two days in and we’re off to a really good start, aren’t we?”

  “Call me crazy but I just don’t see us really clicking.”

  She considered him for a moment, shrugged. “Guess I’m just not much of a people person.”

  He gave a quiet laugh that was not very amused. “We’re partners now. We have to get along at least a little bit.”

  Aviira looked away from him. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m just not very good with trust. Been screwed over one too many times. Been easier to just keep people at a certain distance.”

  “I get that. Trust me, I do. I know I’d prefer not to be here either. But it’s the only alternative to losing my job so I figure I might as well make the best of it.” He paused, seemed to be considering whether to keep speaking or not. “I mean, maybe it’s just better to just get this case over with and hope that we can talk our way into getting our old jobs back.”

  He immediately wished he hadn’t said anything at all, even though it was true. Aviira looked at him for a long moment and nodded her head, apparently trying to keep a neutral face.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

  The lie left a sour aftertaste. She knew there was no way she’d ever get her old job back. She’d already burned that bridge a few too many times. If Jirel went to Xander after this case and complained, her career was toast.

  She could tell he was having a hard time reading her, which was how she wanted it. The last thing she wanted was for him to pity her.

  “Well. At least we’re on the same page then,” he said.

  “Right. Same page.”

  ***

  When he finally got up to his apartment, Jirel stood out on the balcony and leaned on the railing as he watched the traffic rush by below. The heat from the concrete was radiating in waves up toward him and in the distance, clouds were building up and turning the western sky a threatening shade of gray. It would be raining before six o’clock.

  His phone was ringing on the kitchen counter when he stepped back inside. He didn’t recognize the number and almost let it ring to voicemail. At the last opportunity, he answered it.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Jirel.”

  The familiar, sweet voice on the other end sent a shock of surprise all the way through his body, nerve endings firing unexpectedly to the tips of his fingers. He hadn’t spoken to her in almost a year, not since she’d left and asked him not to call. He ran his free hand over his face and leaned on the counter.

  “Hi,” he said. He could hear the longing in his own voice and imagined that she could hear it, too. He wondered if it sounded as pathetic to her as it did to him.

  “How are you?”

  Jirel considered a litany of responses and finally settled on, “I’m fine.”

  Caesli was quiet on the other end.

  “Where are you?” he asked when she didn’t say anything.

  “San Diego. I took a job.”

  Jirel nodded even though she wouldn’t see it. A dull knot was growing in his stomach. He crossed one arm over his chest and dropped the other over it while he held the phone. “Is there…anything in particular you called for?”

  He heard her clear her throat. “Not really,” she said. “I just wanted to…check in. See how you were doing.”

  “That’s nice of you.” It came out harsher than he would have liked.

  “Don’t be mad, Jirel.”

  He bit his tongue so that something bitter did not come out. “Okay.”

  She was quiet. Then, “How’s work? And Jayne?”

  “I haven’t talked to Jayne in six months,” he said. He wandered back to the screen door and leaned on the door frame. “She got a new partner.”

  “Oh.”

  He let her chew on that for a bit.

  “I, ah…was thinking of you when I saw the story about the bombing in Atlanta,” Caesli said. “I wanted to make sure you were holding up okay.”

  Jirel frowned. “I’m not even thinking about it.”

  “All right.”

  He let the awkward silence drag on, not sure what else to say. Outside his balcony, a police cruiser took off, siren screaming into the distance. Jirel swallowed.

  “At the risk of sounding desperate…I miss you.”

  Caesli took in a ragged breath on the other end, sighed it out as she considered her response. “I miss you too,” she said softly.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. He wasn’t sure if he was encouraged by her response or not. “Then come home.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “I bet you’ve thought about it.”

  “Yeah.”

  He waited. “Why don’t you?”

  “It just…I miss you, but it doesn’t fix the reasons why we can’t be together, Jirel.”

  He pursed his lips together as a hole opened up in his stomach and flooded with bile. He wanted to tell her that it would be all right, tell her that they could work it out, but he knew that was just the desperate part of him that was still in love with her. The realist part of him knew, and had always known deep down, that she was right.

  “I’m sorry,” Caesli said when he didn’t say anything. “I didn’t…didn’t call to bring all this up again.”

  “You called for some reason.”

  “I told you. I just wanted to see if you were doing okay.”

  Something about the way she said it set him off. He tried to laugh, but instead it came out as a scowl. “I’m doing fucking great, Caesli. I’m about to get fired from my job, Jayne is working with somebody else and I’m pretty sure my new partner hates me, and every night I come back to my empty apartment and sit here alone. But thanks for taking the time to check up on me. It really means a lot.”

  “You don’t have to be angry with me.”

  “You walked out of my life like I didn’t mean anything to you—”

  “Jirel…”

  “—and told me not to call, and I didn’t, but now that you’re settled in your new life you think it’s time to call and see how I’m doing?”

  “It wasn’t easy for me to leave.”

  “Could have fooled me,” he said. His pulse was hammering in his neck as all the thoughts that had come to him in hindsight since she’d left surfaced. She had left so abruptly and he had been so stunned that his response at the time had been a feverish attempt to get her to stay; it was only later that the anger had come on and they had never discussed it. “Five years, Caesli. Five years and you just walked out. Like one afternoon you just decided not to be with me anymore.”

  When she sp
oke, he could tell she was about to cry. “It wasn’t like that. I’m sorry. I’m selfish, I know that. I wish…I wish I had realized sooner that I wasn’t going to be okay with the reality of…of us. I wish I had known so that I could have let you go.”

  “It took you five years to realize that?”

  “You deserve someone better than me. Someone who can be less selfish.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Thanks,” he said finally. “That’s helpful. That makes things better.”

  She sighed. “I have to go, Jirel.” There was sadness in her voice that made his chest tighten up.

  “Caesli,” he said.

  “What?”

  He struggled with what he really wanted to say, which he knew would come across as a desperate begging. Finally he sighed and shook his head, stared up at the ceiling. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  There was a long pause from Caesli before she said, “Okay. Well, I hope everything is okay with you.”

  “You too.”

  “Bye.”

  She hung up. Jirel sighed and put the phone down on the counter, leaned on it. He closed his eyes and immediately—involuntarily—conjured up a memory of curling up beside her, pressing his face into those thick waves of honey-blonde hair that always smelled of coconut. Then the look on her face when she’d kissed him one last time and slipped out of his life seemingly as easily as it was for her to come into it.

  He groaned as a wave of anger passed through him, and he pushed the phone off the counter with a violent sweep of his hand. It bounced across the floor with a crack. He ran both hands over his face and stared at his empty, silent apartment. It still didn’t seem as empty or silent as the space that she’d left behind in his chest.

  Outside, the wind picked up and when he glanced back out the door, the sky had already clouded over. The storm was moving fast.

  July 17th – Friday

  ***

  Just past three in the morning, Aviira sat up in the darkness, shaking uncontrollably. Her breath came to her in stuttered bursts as she looked around the room and realized that she had been dreaming.

  Just dreaming.

  She got out of bed and turned on the lights. It helped, but barely. She sat on the edge of her bed and watched her fingers tremble as the horrific dream faded slowly and reality came back. Once her breathing was finally settled again, she ran her hands over her face, slick with a cold sweat, and got up.

  The air outside was thick and wet. It had rained all night but instead of feeling refreshing, it just felt sticky, heavy. She sat on a patio chair on her balcony and listened to the sparse pre-dawn traffic below, let the sounds of life remind her that this was reality, not the images that had reached into her head and shaken her like she was a ragdoll. But the images were still there, burned behind her eyes every time she closed them. She could still hear the little girl screaming as she was ripped out of her arms, still feel the ache in her chest from the memory that she hadn’t conjured in years.

  “Vee! Vee!”

  Helpless, she buried her face in her hands and fought the sudden, foreign urge to sob.

  ***

  A few hours later, she sat at Jensen’s breakfast nook with a cup of coffee between her hands. Jensen leaned with his elbows on the other end of the counter. He was still dressed in flannel pajama pants and a white t-shirt.

  “Sorry,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “Just couldn’t get my mind off of it all night. Had to sit up with all the lights on, couldn’t even think about going back to sleep.”

  Jensen shook his head, brushed a strand of hair out of his face. “It’s fine. You can call me any time, you should know that.”

  “I just don’t…think about her all that often, and this dream was so fucking vivid.” She shivered. “Horrible.”

  He watched her for a moment. “Do you think it’s like, subconscious? Like something deep down is telling you to go find her?”

  She tapped the edges of her coffee cup with her fingernails. “Been this long,” she whispered. “Why dig up something that is just as well left alone?”

  “Because it’ll start to eat you up if you don’t,” Jensen said. “Don’t you want her back in your life?”

  “Of course I do. But if she ends up rejecting me I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

  “She’s your sister, and you haven’t seen her since you were kids. Why would she reject you?”

  “Wouldn’t you be pissed?” she said. “If you were in her shoes. If I just one day disappeared from your life and you got no explanation for it? She has to feel abandoned. I know I would.”

  “Or she’s worried about you and wants to find you, find out why you didn’t see each other anymore. It’s not like it was your fault. Just fucked up circumstances of a fucked up system. You didn’t ask for her to be adopted and lose contact with her.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. She put an elbow on the counter and fidgeted with the scar between her lips. She wished that was the explanation for it.

  “I could find her for you, Aviira.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to do that, Jens.” She looked at him and shook her head. “You don’t have to waste your time digging a hole into my problems.”

  “This is what I do for a living. I hack computers and I dig up shit on people. I can dig up your sister, Aviira, and you can get back in touch again. How long has it been since you saw her?”

  Aviira ran a hand over her face. “I was sixteen, so…ten years.”

  “She’s gotta be, what, eighteen, nineteen now?”

  “Twenty,” she said automatically. “She’ll be twenty-one this Christmas.”

  “There, see? She’s an adult now, and she probably is looking for you too, but I know how difficult you make it for yourself to be found. So she’s not going to have any luck. I can find her, though. Figure out where she’s living, get you in contact. Chances are she’s going to be thrilled. If she rejects you for some stupid reason, then fine. At least you know you tried. Because right now your subconscious is pissed at you that you won’t at least try.”

  Aviira gave him a flat look. “If I wanted a lecture I would have stayed home.”

  He came around the counter and sat next to her. “I’m sorry. But you know what I mean.” He reached over and took her hand. “You deserve to be happy sometime, you know that? Life does not have to be this difficult.”

  “I am happy,” she said quietly.

  “Oh please.”

  “Well, I was, till another man nearly fucked up my career for me.”

  “Your career should not be the only thing that makes you happy.”

  She wanted to rebuff that, but she knew it would be a lie, and he knew it, too. She bit the inside of her lip. “I’m not going to ask you to go looking for my sister for me,” she whispered.

  Jensen groaned. “Oh my god, you are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met in my life. Fine. I won’t make you ask. At least give me permission to do it.” She started to say something, and he held up a finger, stared at her with those wide, golden eyes. “Because I want to, not because you want me to. Fair?”

  Aviira glared at him, but he was not giving up. She sighed and finally said, “Fine.”

  “See, was that so hard?” He smiled at her.

  “Don’t be a smartass because you won.”

  “Can’t you just be chill for once in your life?”

  She finished her coffee and got up to put the mug in the sink. “I should probably go. Jirel and I have a shitload of stuff to take care of today.”

  When she turned around, Jensen was right behind her, and without giving her a moment to protest, he had her face in both hands and was kissing her. She tensed up and then held on to the edge of the counter with both hands. She was hesitant to return the motion.

  “Don’t go yet,” Jensen said after she didn’t respond.

  “Jens…”

  “You came here to get a bad dream off your mind,” he said, kissing the side of her neck in between
words. “Let me help.”

  She had to admit that her mind did go somewhere else when he put his hips against hers, gripped her behind as he pressed her to the counter. A thrill went through her, muted and weighed down by all the other things on her mind, least of which was sex. She waffled over the idea before she finally put an arm over his shoulder and kissed him, used her free hand to undo the button on her jeans.

  Jensen drove her crazy sometimes, but she knew if he was good for anything, it was a decent fuck, and it had been that way since they’d first started hooking up a few years earlier. It was a convenient setup because she had no interest in a relationship, but it was nice to have someone who was always willing to go to bed at a phone call’s notice. Took all the hassle out of taking someone home from the bar and hoping for the best.

  And so despite herself, despite the horrific dream that had rattled her to the very bottom of her that morning, ten minutes later it was nowhere, pushed out of her head as she panted for breath and held on to Jensen’s neck with trembling fingers. He held on to one of her legs, wrapped around his waist, and grinned at her.

  “See,” he said as he caught his breath. “Told you I could help.”

  “Shut up,” she whispered. “Don’t kill my moment.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, pressing his lips to the hollow of her throat.

  She had her eyes closed and her head tilted back, but it was only because she was afraid to give away the look on her face that said she’d been thinking about somebody else while he fucked her, and it was someone she had not expected to be thinking about.

  ***

  “You okay?” Jirel asked when she walked into the break room at Headquarters.

  “Yeah, why?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. You gave me a funny look.”

  She swallowed and turned to the cabinet to fish for a coffee mug. She’d told herself, leaving Jensen’s house, that there was nothing to the fact that she’d found herself thinking about Jirel while she was perched on Jensen’s counter with him between her legs. She was just thinking too much about their case and the distraction had helped put him in her head, even though she’d been angry about their last conversation. It had just surprised her, was all. Nothing to it.