Shadows of Old Ghosts

by Stephanie Zayatz

  Jirel nodded. “Yeah, I was there. At the bombing. The one in New York.”

  “Fuck me,” she said softly. He looked over at her. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded.

  “Jesus,” Aviira whispered. “I must have been barely fourteen. It was on all the TVs at school. What were you doing there?”

  He cleared his throat quietly. “My parents were activists. Well, my dad. My mother had always been kind of outside things but she supported him. I was seventeen. I wanted to do what my dad was doing, wanted to help Ancients have equal rights. I begged him to take me into the city for the rally.”

  Aviira was quiet for a moment. Jirel could sense that she was waiting for him to go on, that she could tell he’d left the story unfinished. He glanced at her and leaned back in his chair.

  “They, uh…the police showed up and things started to get heated. People were throwing things and the riot gear came out and people started running. The whole crowd was moving across the park and I tripped. I fell and there were so many people that I just kind of got stepped on and they didn’t notice that I wasn’t behind them. They were about thirty feet away when the bomb went off.” He cleared his throat. “So. That’s what the dream was about.”

  “Fuck, man,” Aviira said softly, running a hand across her face. “I’m sorry. What—what about you, were you okay?”

  “I went deaf in one ear for about three months. Some shrapnel. But I walked away, so. Nothing to really complain about.”

  Aviira blew her breath out slowly and felt marginally better about a lot of things in her life.

  After a silence, Jirel said, “What about you?”

  She rubbed at the soreness in her shoulder. “Nothing as bad as that, that’s for sure.” Jirel didn’t say anything, as if that was not a good enough excuse to avoid answering the question. “I, uh…I have a sister I haven’t seen in about ten years,” she said finally.

  “That’s what your dream was about?”

  She took a pull off her beer and nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it also involved walking corpses, but, you know. The sister part was the main storyline.”

  He was quiet for a moment before he said, “Can I ask?”

  Aviira wasn’t crazy about the idea, but he’d just shared something deeply personal, so it felt like a cop out to avoid the question. “We were taken from our parents when she was an infant,” she said. “I was six. We got split up in foster care and got to see each other every few months in supervised visits. When she was ten she got placed with a family for adoption and we lost touch. I haven’t seen her since then.”

  Jirel watched her. She’d put her thumb against the corner of her lip where he knew that crooked scar was. “Do you know where she is?”

  He saw her shake her head in the darkness.

  “Did you ever get adopted?”

  “Nope.” She pulled her legs up to her chest and went back to fiddling with the scar. He sensed it she was doing it without even thinking about it. “Just floated around the system until I was eighteen. Nobody wanted to put up with me longer than they had to.”

  He stared into space for a minute before he said, “That sucks.”

  Aviira scoffed, the sound indicating her agreement. “You have no idea.”

  Jirel reached toward her with his beer as if offering a toast. “Well. Here’s to a couple fucked up orphans, huh?”

  She tapped her bottle against his. “Fucked up is right.”

  He leaned forward in his seat and she heard him sigh. “So obviously we dug up something bad here. This witchcraft shit is obviously dangerous.”

  “Obviously whoever is behind this is warning us to stay away.”

  “Or we both got exposed to that calling card in the basement and made ourselves targets. Remember what you said about horror movies?”

  “Sometimes I wish I’d just keep my mouth shut,” she murmured.

  “Me too.”

  She looked at him in surprise, ready for a fight, but he was smiling. She laughed, and the fact that it came so easily surprised her. It was the first moment she’d spent with him that she actually felt like they might end up liking each other and not just put up with each other, mostly because it was one of the first moments he hadn’t acted completely uptight. Maybe he did have a sense of humor after all.

  “Whatever, man. Whatever.”

  ***

  The soreness in her shoulder woke her in the morning. She groaned and reached up to grab it, like it would make the dull ache go away if she held onto it. Something felt different about the material of her bed, and she looked up suddenly and realized where she was.

  She didn’t remember falling asleep on Jirel’s couch, yet here she was. Morning light was streaming across the living room floor and she could hear a shower running. After considering her surroundings for another minute, she recalled coming in from the patio after he offered her another drink, and they ended up sitting in front of the TV, finding something terrible on at three in the morning because they were both still rattled by their nightmares and each too chicken to admit they didn’t want to be alone yet. She must have drifted off at some point.

  Aviira sat up slowly and tried to roll her shoulder, listened to the shower for a moment. She wasn’t sure if it was kosher to leave, call him in a little and go about their day and pretend that last night hadn’t happened. No, that was stupid. They hadn’t done anything except keep each other company. So she’d fallen asleep on his couch. Wasn’t like he’d fallen asleep there with her.

  Still, there was something about the whole thing that made her nervous. She was usually so good about keeping everyone around her—even Jensen, who got a whole hell of a lot closer than most—at a safe distance from her. Tito always called her a loner and she didn’t disagree with him. Being a loner meant she didn’t have to be disappointed or hurt when the people in her life inevitably walked out or decided not to deal with her anymore. It had happened so many times it was no wonder she had a complex about intrapersonal relationships, platonic or otherwise. Alone worked just fine for her.

  And yet, she had to admit that it felt good to sit up and talk and share a beer with someone who’d just experienced the same thing she had. The fact that they’d stumbled on something potentially very dangerous was a little easier to handle mentally knowing that there was someone else who was in the same exact boat.

  You’re overthinking this, Vee, she thought. God forbid you actually make a real friend for once.

  She glanced around the living room, taking it in for the first time. It had been too dark the night before even with the television on to see anything. It had the look of a place a bachelor lived in after it had been decorated by someone who actually cared. The ex, she remembered. He must have left everything the way it had been. Aviira knew if he was anything like her, he spent pretty limited time in his apartment anyway. Case work often required a lot of time out and about, so down time was primarily limited to the time otherwise spent sleeping. Maybe that was why the ex left in the first place.

  There was a picture frame on the side table on her left, and she couldn’t help but look at it closer. It was Jirel and the woman she was assuming had left him. They were standing together in the middle of Larimer Square, the recognizable bright white lights strung above the street glowing in the darkness above them. It was summer in the picture, and Jirel had his arm around her waist and was looking at her, his face leaned in close. The happiness on his face made him nearly unrecognizable; it was as if something had hardened over his face in between that picture being taken and Aviira meeting him.

  That something was the woman in the picture leaving him, obviously. As if he hadn’t already had a difficult enough life.

  She was pretty, with a youthful, friendly face and honey-blonde hair that she was wearing down off her shoulders. The breeze was blowing it away from her in that captured moment in time. She was facing the camera, but her eyes were closed, a soft smile lighting up her face as Jirel touched his lips to her ear and som
eone managed to catch that happy moment and preserve it forever.

  It told Aviira a lot about Jirel. Even without knowing the circumstances that led to the split, she could suddenly understand a little more about his personality, his unwillingness to get too close to her even as a friend or partner at the very least. It was a behavior that reminded her of herself, even if her distrust hadn’t come from a failed love affair.

  “Morning.”

  She jumped a little and put the picture back down on the table quickly, turned toward the sound of his voice. He was standing in the mouth of the hallway looking into the living room, damp towel-dried hair pushed back off his face. Aviira could see a sizeable scar under his left ear that came down and disappeared under his jaw line. She’d never noticed it behind his hair. When he shook his head a little so that his wet hair fell back into its proper place, she realized he probably wanted it that way.

  “Morning,” she said. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry.”

  A flat, half-hearted smile twitched at the corners of his lips. “You want some coffee?”

  She cleared her throat and set aside the blanket, got up. “I, ah, I was actually going to run downstairs and change. What, ah…what’s our plan for today?”

  Jirel crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “It occurred to me later that we never got those identities that Devaney said he had for us. Presuming he had them at his place we’ll probably need to get the precinct to play nice and get those to us, so we’ll have to ask Xander to check up on it. And in the meantime it’s probably a good time to go hunt down Aiden Dannels and see if he’ll give up this mystery girlfriend.”

  Aviira ran her hands through her hair. “Dannels. Right. Almost forgot about him.”

  “So, stop at Headquarters and then head up to the mountains?”

  “Yes. Good.”

  She got up and adjusted her shirt as she walked toward the door. Jirel followed her at a distance, hands in his pockets.

  Before opening the door, she glanced back at him.

  “Thanks.”

  His eyebrows went up a little. “For what?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “For inviting me up. Made the night a little easier.”

  Jirel was quiet for a second, nodded finally. “Yeah.”

  Aviira stood there with her hand on the doorknob for a few more seconds before deciding it was awkward enough. She opened it. “Cool. Well. I’ll text you when I’m ready.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Jirel stared at the back of the door after she closed it behind her. After a moment he meandered into the living room and looked at the picture frame on the table that Aviira had been viewing. He’d thought he had found and removed all the reminders of her, but that last picture had obviously been hiding in a corner of the room he hadn’t spent a lot of time in lately.

  He picked up the frame and stared at the picture for a minute. In the silence of his apartment he could almost hear the murmur of the crowd milling around Larimer Square on that mild summer evening. He and Caesli and several of their friends had gone out to celebrate Caesli getting a new job with a marketing firm downtown. There was a feeling that night that everything was coming up roses for the two of them. He remembered that exact moment when he’d turned his face in to Caesli’s ear and whispered in her ear, and when he’d looked up, realized that her friend had taken a picture of them on her cell phone.

  It was a moment in time that he had always been fond of remembering because it had felt just then that everything was right in the world.

  He sighed and carried the picture into the kitchen, opened the trash can with his foot and tossed it in.

  ***

  There was a yellow Post-It stuck to Aviira’s door when she came off the elevator. She peeled it off as she dug for her keys in her pants pocket.

  Sorry I missed you.

  Jensen. He’d only left a J at the bottom, but she knew his handwriting from the way his J looked like a backwards 6. She popped her door open, not entirely sure she should have been expecting him. She wasn’t often in the habit of inviting anyone over that early in the morning, which meant he must have stopped by unannounced.

  Her cell phone was still on the charger in the kitchen where she’d left it before trying to get to sleep. Her screen was filled with missed notifications all tagged with Jensen’s caller ID.

  7:35 You awake?

  7:48 I have something for you, thought I’d bring it over with coffee. Busy?

  8:00 Heading your way. : )

  8:13 Missed Call

  8:15 Missed Call

  8:18 Missed Call

  8:19 Guess you forgot your phone before you left for work. Sorry to miss you. Maybe I’ll see you at headquarters later.

  “Jesus, Jensen,” Aviira whispered. She had no idea how he’d gotten the idea that she’d left her phone at home; maybe he’d heard it ringing through the door each time he’d called. Then she sensed the subtext in his message: if she’d forgotten her phone there was no point in telling her he’d see her later at headquarters. Secondary to that, if he thought she had already left for the day he wouldn’t have left the note on her door.

  He was suspicious of her.

  Aviira rolled her eyes and put the phone down as she went to get dressed and pack.

  “I’m not your girlfriend, Jensen,” she said aloud, if for no other reason than to taste the words that were feeling irrationally bitter in her head.

  ***

  “Do you ever take weekends off?” Jirel said as he walked into Xander’s office.

  “Why bother?” Xander replied without looking up from his computer. “So I can sit at home all day and let my wife bitch at me?”

  “Maybe if you were home once in a while your wife wouldn’t bitch at you,” Jirel replied dryly.

  Xander ignored him. “What do you want?”

  “We need travel approval.”

  “That so?”

  “Sure is.”

  Xander finally looked up at Jirel from the edge of his computer monitor and took his reading glasses off. Jirel sat down in the chair opposite Xander’s desk. As he sat, Xander’s dog, a corgi named Watson, emerged from below his desk and sat at Jirel’s feet.

  “Carissa out of town?” Jirel asked.

  Xander leaned back in his chair and swiveled it from side to side while he watched Jirel scratch Watson’s huge ears for a second. He frowned, and Jirel saw him wiggle his wedding band on his finger. “No, she says he’s chasing her fucking cat. Not worth the fight, so Watson gets to come to work with me until she lets it go.”

  Watson leaned heavily against Jirel’s leg. Jirel doubted the dog minded the extra attention, especially since Carissa was not exactly a dog person. He was the most popular guy around the office. Xander liked it because Watson followed him everywhere which meant he had an excuse to stop and flirt backhandedly with the girl at the front desk, who loved the squat little dog. Jirel was about to start taking bets on how long it would take his friend to start messing around with her.

  Xander never wore his reading glasses around the girl at the front desk. In fact, Jirel was pretty sure he kept them hidden at the bottom of a locked drawer so that nobody would mistakenly come across them if they happened to be in his office.

  Xander put his elbows on his desk, narrowed his eyes. “Thought you guys were looking into a couple of funny looking bodies,” he said. “What do you need travel approval for?”

  “House was owned by an Alliance top shelf,” Jirel said. “He’s up in the mountains on vacation, or so his wife says. She thinks he might be involved with the person who left the bodies.”

  “You get identities on the bodies?”

  “Aviira’s heading down to human relations to get them to contact DPD for us. Our source got snuffed yesterday and then tried to kill her.”

  Xander stared at him while he worked that one through. “Jesus. You mean—like a—”

  Jirel nodded slowly. “That’s what those three bodies were, too.”
/>   “The hell kind of case is this?”

  “Walking dead bodies and witchcraft and who knows what else.” Jirel flicked his eyebrows up and down. “So thanks for lobbing me an easy one to save my career on.”

  “Well, can’t fault me for trying,” Xander said. “I thought this would be relatively straightforward.”

  “Anything but so far,” Jirel said, leaning back and sighing.

  “You got the Spooks involved?”

  Jirel shrugged. “They can’t do much aside from remove the bodies and find replacements, doctor up the autopsy, that shit.”

  “We have a paranormal department, you know.”

  He remembered what Aviira said about handing over a case and losing their jobs. He shook his head. “We can take care of it.”

  I hope, the voice at the back of his head said.

  “If you insist,” Xander said, and put his glasses back on before turning to his computer to pull up the travel approval. “How’s it going otherwise with the new girl?”

  Jirel spread his hands out wide and didn’t say anything for a moment; he was too caught up in thinking about how Aviira would have responded if she knew someone had called her new girl. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Xander stared back and lifted his eyebrows.

  “That bad?”

  “Not bad, just…not great. I’m not sure we’re really a good fit.”

  “Why not?”

  Jirel shrugged, toyed with his silver ring. “Just different personalities. She’s always ready to just charge in guns blazing without thinking about a situation first.”

  “And you’re so damn uptight about the rules you let a situation get past you because you were overanalyzing how to do it,” Xander said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, in management, this kind of thing is what we refer to as a ‘learning opportunity.’ She’s a little wild, you’re a little uptight, meet somewhere in the middle and each of you can learn how to be a little more normal.” Xander leaned back in his chair as Jirel rolled his eyes. “She tell you anything about her childhood yet?”