I reach for my phone on the nightstand to check my texts, upsetting a cat’s deep slumber as I roll over. Only one from Jo in the wee hours asking if he’ll be making me breakfast followed by several winking emoticons. My ears heat with embarrassment. I’m going to ignore her for as long as I can.
A stab of guilt hits me. Melissa. I knew what Morris Stiles was capable of as a despicable human, so what he’s now capable of as a boundless Spirit fills me with dread. At my quick change in mood, Maggie comes to the bed to check on me. I assure her all is well. Arial is unconcerned and still sleeps in a coil, partially turned on her back, with her paws stretched out behind her head. I rub her exposed chest, which earns me a low mew of disapproval.
As I pour myself a cup of coffee, I force my thoughts away from Melissa to plans for the grand opening. I recruited Sylvia to create the invitation and she should have designs for me today. Jo’s been tasked with finding a caterer. These mundane duties are boring and vexing, so when both Jo and Sylvia eagerly offered to help, I was more than happy to delegate.
I putter around in the flowerbed on the roof until the sun peeks above the cityscape. I sense movement in the shop below and hear the coffee grinder’s tinny roar cutting into the peaceful morning. A few moments later, the screen door to the roof slams loudly as Sylvia comes through, dressed in bright colors as always, her short hair bobbing with each step. She has a binder tucked under her arm and a mug in her hand.
“Good morning,” she says in a sing-song voice, her energy radiating pure excitement.
I stare at her in mock disappointment. “You didn’t bring me any coffee?”
She stops and her face falls. “Oh, my Goddess, I’m so sorry! I’ll be right back!” She’s at the screen door before I open my mouth.
“I’m just kidding!” I chuckle. “This is my sixth cup.”
She turns back relieved. “You got me! Besides, that crazy complicated coffee maker you bought only grinds and brews one tiny cup at a time.”
“Because it’s an espresso machine, not a coffee maker.” I shake my head at her, looking as disappointed as I can.
“Yeah, yeah.” She waves me off with a laugh. She sets her mug on the edge of the wide-brimmed planter and pulls out the binder, waving it. “I got some stuff for you!” she sings again.
“Great! I can’t wait to see them. But, and please forgive me, I have a very important errand I have to take care of this morning.”
She gives me her best pout, which instantly makes me feel bad. “Don’t worry! I won’t be gone very long. Promise.”
“Totally okay. No worries.” She picks up her mug and turns away, then turns back with a leer. “Does this have anything to do with Cal?” She draws out his name, waggling an eyebrow.
“Good grief! You are just like your mother. And no, it doesn’t.”
“Bummer,” she says as she flips the screen door open with her free hand and slips through it before it hits her. “Mom’s dying to hear how it went,” she calls back as she trots down the steps.
“I bet she is,” I say under my breath.
In my reading room, I draw the heavy velvet drape from the imposing object hanging on the wall to reveal a large baroque mirror.
The black scrying mirror stands as tall as I and twice as wide and is mounted a foot from the floor. The crown and skirt of the mirror flare out slightly from the narrower middle with gentle curves rather than hard corners. Thick, elaborate scrollwork frames the glossy, black surface while a delicate inner frame serves to soften the mirror’s intimidating appearance. Unlike any other mirror, even those meant solely for scrying, neither my image nor that of the room is reflected on its surface. What shows is pure blackness, smooth and cold, as the mirror silently waits for its purpose to be invoked.
I stand before it with my arms raised slightly from my sides, palms out. I take several deep breaths to clear my mind and ground my energy. Once at peace, I inwardly call to the Veil. After a moment, the glossy surface quivers and begins to splinter, spider cracks wrecking its pristine face. The sound of thick glass cracking fills the room, but no shards fall to the floor. Within the large area of the inner frame, the broken pieces separate, then swirl and change, forming a whirling ether of dark gray and silver. The meager light in the room is snuffed out by the darkness seeping from behind the mirror, enveloping everything in the space around it.
The familiar tug of the Veil’s energy dances across the edges of my own. I shiver at its touch and chill bumps rise across my body. This feeling never ceases to thrill me. I stand for a few moments savoring the tingling sensations of its surging and seductive power. I must stay vigilant, though, as the pull of the Veil is very strong. It is the conveyor of Spirits, the ferry to those that have passed, a transitional medium from one plane to another. Once called, it expects to be presented with a Spirit to consume. But there is great power in the Veil beyond its intended purpose, and I learned long ago how to exploit a small portion of it.
I release the smallest amount of my Spirit to the Veil to search for Melissa Stiles. It shimmers with the presence of my energy and pulls at me. I harden my body, clench my hands into fists. It does not know or remember that if I enter fully, it will only spit me out.
I use the flow within the Veil to seek out the young, troubled girl. I picture her face and give a sample of the flavor of her energy to the Veil. It quivers once more as it devours her taste and the swirling ether moves more quickly. I travel with it, or rather, the part of my Spirit does, as it seeks out its target. Should I slip and release too much of my Spirit into the Veil, it would grab hold and not let go. I’d be powerless to resist its pull. My body would be dead and my Spirit would have to start anew in a different one.
Melissa is not home, which was the first place the Veil took me. It does not falter as it continues on, following her trail with more determination than any hound dog.
The color of someone’s aura breaks into the darkness of the Veil. The blurry form is a muddy red color, far in the distance. As I get closer, the blur takes the shape of a girl sitting on the floor in a small room. Her muddy red silhouette is encased in dirty browns and grays. Taking note of where she is, I pull back lightly so as to not alarm the Veil with a sudden retreat. My prompting makes it draw backward, returning smoothly to the mirror’s portal.
As I recoil the portion of my Spirit into the whole, I must pull firmly and without hesitation. Once I am freed from its grip, the Veil quakes softly in a silent protest.
Deep breaths return me to myself, whole once again, and the surface of the mirror solidifies to shiny black glass.
The minor trek through the Veil has not weakened me but has made me extremely thirsty. I down two large glasses of water from the kitchen sink. The colors of Melissa’s aura worry me even more. She is angry and afraid. I hurry to finish dressing and pull my hair into a ponytail. Maggie trots behind me as I take the stairs by twos.
The taxi driver gruffly asks ‘where to’ and I tell him tersely, matching his annoyance. I am restless in the back seat, but the driver is making good time as we approach Congress, heading to the south end of The Point. My nails pull at the tattered vinyl of the armrest, and I don’t focus on anything as I stare out the window.
As we turn off Congress, the driver whips onto a nameless street and after a few hundred yards, we come to a sudden stop. He throws the car into reverse and turns onto a street we just passed. We come to another abrupt stop a few doors down on a dirty, quiet street. I thank him, wish him a better day, and toss several bills through the little window in the partition.
When I open the car door, the dense, muggy heat smacks me in the face. The air is thick and unmoving, blocked by wide homes, divided into apartments, and visibly neglected.
I go directly to a massive brick box of a building, featureless except for the many small, dingy windows lined up evenly on each floor. As I enter the dimly lit lobby, the smell of old cooking oil and cat pee assaults my nose. I think for a moment about how to approach Melissa
. If I knock, she could ignore it or refuse to see me, and all sorts of drama might ensue. I decide that surprise is the best option. After ensuring that no one is looking, I close my eyes and picture the inside of the room where I saw Melissa through the Veil.
I can project myself only a short distance. The farthest I’ve been able to accomplish is about a hundred feet and that drained me to the point where I lost consciousness. The distance to the room is not far, only two floors up. In the moment my body fades into nothingness, the vulgar smells vanish. There is no light, no sound, no sensory stimuli at all. I have to focus intently on where I want to appear. If I fall short, or I am wrong, I could end up materializing inside of a brick wall, or half of my body could be inside a mattress and box springs.
I am on target, however, and the small bedroom comes into focus. I hear faint sounds of talking and see images forming. The air around me shimmers, and I stand in front of two young girls, seated on the floor beside a bed.
“Jesus fuck!” Melissa exclaims at my sudden appearance and drops the bong poised at her mouth. A similar exclamation peals from her friend, and she scrambles atop the bed, grabbing a pillow and hugging it tight as if it provides all the protection in the world. The room is thick with the smells of rotgut whiskey and weed, and a thin cloud of smoke hangs low in the air.
I stand rigid, with my hands behind my back, glowering at the incredulous teenagers.
“What the fuck, lady?” The friend has gained courage with the protection of the pillow.
I glare at her. “Sleep.” She falls back onto the bed.
Melissa has recovered the bong and is holding it tight to her chest. The dark circles under her eyes are accentuated by the red-rimmed whites and sagging face. She stares, mouth agape, trying to determine if I’m real or a product of some hallucination brought about by cheap whiskey and bad weed.
“You disappoint me, Melissa.”
“Fuck you.” She curls her lip at me. She seems to have decided that I am real.
“Are you capable of any other words?”
“Yeah, I got a couple more for ya.” She tries to stand but only succeeds in sitting on the bed. She now notices her friend and panics. “You bitch! You killed her!”
I roll my eyes. “She’s only asleep.”
Melissa looks back at her friend and her face turns wistful. “I wish I could sleep.”
I calm at her words. “You’ve had a visitor, haven’t you?”
She whips her head around and glares at me.
“Yeah, and it’s your fault!” She flings the bong at me, and I lean my hips to the side so it sails passed.
Another attempt to stand fails, and she lands hard on the floor. In frustration, she bangs her feet and hands on the floor. She sways a bit then leans back against the bed. “I wish I’d never come into your store.”
I relax my body and sigh through my nose. I sit on the floor, facing her.
“I am so sorry, Melissa. But in truth, this is not solely my doing.”
She only snorts at this and leans her head back onto the bed. She closes her drooping eyes.
After a few minutes, she finally speaks, eyes still closed. “I just wanted to know more about him. Everybody looks up their ancestors, right? How many of them end up being haunted by a psycho bastard?” Assuming these are rhetorical questions, I remain silent.
Another few minutes pass. It appears Melissa has dozed off, or passed out rather. I smack her foot.
She jerks forward, eyes wide open, searching the room. She seems startled to see me sitting in front of her.
“Oh, so that was real. Great.” She rolls her eyes. “What do you want?”
“I want to make Morris Stiles go away,” I say. She flinches at the sound of her ancestor’s name. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
With a deep sigh, she raises her hands to her face and rubs vigorously. She pushes her greasy hair from her forehead, and then slouches back against the bed as if these little movements have drained her completely.
“A couple of days after, you know, the reading,” she says with no small amount of sarcasm, “I went to a couple of those websites, you know, where you look up your relatives. It really didn’t take very long before I found our family tree.” She snorts. “I guess they keep prison records really good ‘cuz I found a whole lot of Stileses. Makes me so proud.” She shakes her head.
“Anyway, after a little bit, I found records from California, and that led me to Morr…him.” She chokes on his name. “There really wasn’t much to read, just stuff like where he was born, where he lived, what he had been in jail for, but there weren’t any records of his death.” She sits up straighter, seeming to sober up some. “So then I kept thinking about him and was really curious about why there was nothing about his death. Well, that night, I’m lying in bed, thinking—and my mind can really spin when it wants to—and I pictured all sorts of nasty ways a bad man could die in the wild West. I play out these movie scenes in my head, you know. So, anyway, I fall asleep. I had the worst nightmare.” She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them tight.
“So, get this now.” She releases her legs and leans forward eagerly. “In my dream, this old guy, no teeth, well, stubs I guess, gross skin, nasty hair, is wandering around in the desert. He’s coughing and hacking, grabbing at his neck like he can’t breathe. He looks totally miserable. He’s walking around what looks like a grave almost. It’s a long pile of rocks, and he’s kicking them, trying to yell at the pile, but he can’t make words.”
I can vividly picture Morris stalking around my unmarked grave and cursing me with every ragged breath.
“I’ve always had pretty realistic dreams.” She turns suddenly serious. “But this was nuts. I could feel his pain, his agony. He could barely breathe, he was choking. Each breath turned into a cough and after coughing, he spits this nasty junk. Ugh. It was totally gross. And I felt it!” She shivers at the memory. “Anyway, it just kinda went on like that for what seemed like forever. He circled and circled the grave, yelling and hacking. He even took a piss on it.” I snarl at this. “But then, as he’s peeing, he falls to his knees. He’s banging on his chest, like, trying to breathe. Then he just falls over. He lays there for a bit, twitching.” She shivers violently. “It was awful.” She stares at the floor for a long moment then looks up at me, eyes filled with tears.
“I felt all of it,” she says in a whisper. She blinks a few times then wipes her face. “I woke up sweating, crying. I ran to the bathroom and puked in the sink.”
That bastard. I seethe at the thought of Morris entering this poor girl’s dream and making her relive his pitiful death. He deserved his suffering. She did not. She’s staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to make this all better.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
“I dreamed of him every time I fell asleep.” Her head falls back against the bed. “But then shit got real last week. I was in my room, at home, and all of a sudden everything got red. The room glowed red.” She stares at me with big eyes. “Then this black smoke stuff started to form in the corner. It sorta formed a face and I knew instantly it was him. I screamed and he told me to shut up and sit down, that he wanted to tell me a few things about my friend, Aven Dovenelle.”
I prickle when she says my name.
“He said I didn’t need to be messing around with any witches. I was his kin after all and that shit wasn’t allowed. He said if I went around to you again, he’d make me regret it.” She shudders again and turns pale.
“He’s not going to bother you anymore, Melissa, I promise you that,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm.
She nods absently, not believing me.
“He told me that you cursed him, that you made him sick. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could barely breathe because he was coughing all the time.”
“Good,” I can’t help saying. “He was a terrible man and he deserved his end.”
“He definitely disagrees with that.” Her face sobers.
She makes an anguished noise and covers her face. I reach out and touch her foot. “Getting stoned and hammered will not keep him away.” She pulls her legs away from me and hugs her knees to her chest again.
“Then what will?” In those three words, the raw, broken Melissa shows; the frightened little girl pretending to be tough is gone.
“If his source of power goes away, so does he,” I say matter-of-factly.
Her eyes widen with realization. “You have to kill me, don’t you?”
I have to laugh. “No, no, no. I didn’t mean it like that! You are giving him energy; your negative emotions, thoughts, and fears are feeding him. If all that goes away, he no longer has what he needs so he will dissipate into nothing.”
“But how do I stop thinking about him?” She almost yells this. She throws her hands up in exasperation. “I’ve tried everything!”
“What I’m going to propose will seem pretty extreme, but it will not hurt. I promise.”
“What?” She eyes me suspiciously.
“I take your memories away.”
“Yeah, right.” She starts to get up and succeeds this time. “Whatever, lady.”
She stands, hands on hips, wobbling a little. “You can get out now.” Tough Melissa is back.
I stand as well. “I am completely serious.”
“You need to go.” The tremor in her voice belies the harshness of her face.
The White Raven Page 9
