The little adventure with Trench-Coat that subsequently zapped my voice had proven I could stay out longer. But Joe had said he’d used a cocktail on me, his own recipe, to pull me back in my body. And then there had been that recovery period—with me in the hospital. Again.
So—did that mean I could stay out of body for a longer period of time as long as I had Joe’s cocktail? And exactly what had that been? I had no way of getting hold of him. Maybe I could go back to the hospital and ask around. Find out his last name.
That is, if I survived my present nervous breakdown.
During the drive from Hirokumi’s estate north of the city, up Interstate 75, I thought about what’d happened in Hirokumi’s home, in that room as I realized my body was gone.
Daniel had lost his grip on my hand and turned, and could no longer see me. He brandished his gun and called out for me, but of course he couldn’t hear me.
We both heard footsteps in the hallway.
Then I was somewhere else.
I was someone else.
I stood behind Hirokumi—and I was talking. Actually speaking. But not in control of what I wanted to say. I knew on some level I was back in my body, but not in ownership of it. I was more of a bystander—sort of watching things unfold from the wings.
And then blam! I’d been kicked out and found myself back in my room. Daniel was gone and I’d half stumbled, half run out of there looking for him. I heard shouts down the hallway and went in that direction. Three, maybe four turns later and I was at the front door.
I’d heard the dragon roar.
Daniel had been getting in his car as three of Hirokumi’s men pointed really big automatic guns at him. With a glance at the men, I decided going with Daniel was preferable to sticking around here.
He’d looked upset. Really upset as he backed the car out of there, unaware I’d been sitting right there beside him in the passenger’s seat.
And even now, as I watched him punch numbers into his cell as he drove, it happened again. I wasn’t in the car anymore—but back in my body.
And I was speaking, not writing. I was actually speaking out loud. And I sounded an awful lot like Rai.
Ew.
And then I heard my own voice.
My voice!
I looked up.
Trench-Coat, in all his hulking, black leather forbode-i-ness, stood on the other side of a desk. Hirokumi’s desk. The desk I’d just left. The dragon still expelled smoke. But why wasn’t it going after the Archer?
Wait…everything sort of fell into place at that moment. Someone—Rai?—was in my body, talking to Trench-Coat, who then answered in my voice!
What. The. Fuck?
And then Rai, in my body, abruptly held my body still. “She is here…” was all I heard myself—himself—us--say before I was abruptly back in the front seat of Daniel’s Crown Victoria.
What was going on? And was it going to keep happening? I needed more than to lie down.
I needed my mommy!
I doubt Daniel actually heard my unspoken plea, but he did increase speed.
I was surprised when he drove straight to Mom’s. Which was good, because that’s where I’d wanted to go. And because by the time I hit the door to the botanica and tea shop, I’d guessed I’d been out of my body for nearly four hours.
Ding, ding, ding.
Time’s up?
Mom knew I wasn’t in my body the moment we stepped through the shop door. In fact, she immediately closed up the store after we stepped in.
Daniel went to her and took her hands in his. “I saw her, Nona…She was there, and then she just…vanished.” He busied himself telling her what he’d seen at Rollins’s, and later at Hirokumi’s, then he moved away into the botanica to call Cooper on his cell.
Mom and I stood in the middle of Mom’s shop, in front of the counter. She still wore one of her numerous knit pantsuits. A dark, emerald green one this time, with a white turtleneck and her old standby necklace—a green stone set in a gold filigree that hung just above her breasts—only now it hung above an embroidered Christmas wreath.
Christmas. Was it Thanksgiving yet?
Had we had Thanksgiving yet?
“Where’s Tim?” was all Mom said in a low voice.
Then Steve appeared, looking more washed-out than I’d ever seen him. I wanted to tell them about Tim and what he’d done to help me, and that he was still trapped inside of Rollins’s estate. At least I’d hoped the rock was still in the potted plant. No one really bothered taking rocks out of plants.
Did they?
But I didn’t have a pen, or a pad. And I’d lost the juice to go corporeal.
“I need to know” Mom’s voice was stern, even, low. Scary—“exactly what happened. After Daniel leaves.”
And I needed to process and understand everything I’d heard and seen. There was so much knowledge. And there was knowledge I needed to research somehow, either on the Web, or in a library.
Rhonda came through the front door, the bell overhead banging loudly against the motion.
And sometimes knowledge arrives in a noisy, gothic package.
Her hair was down, which was odd. Matt black, it splayed over her shoulder like the broken strands of a spider’s web. Her eyes were shadowed as usual, but not with the precise care she usually took with them—this looked more like eye shadow gone wrong after sleeping in it.
The little geek was dressed in plain jeans and a gray Celldweller sweatshirt. She had on her black leather jacket and matching black combat boots.
It was soooo good to see Rhonda again.
On her shoulder was her leather book bag, and she dropped it to the floor when she saw me standing in the archway between the herb and the tea shops. “Zoë!” Her eyes widened. “He found you!”
I shook my head.
Mom put her finger to her lips and nodded to the botanica, where Daniel spoke on his cell. “Daniel doesn’t know she’s here—he didn’t find her body.”
With arched eyebrows, Rhonda stepped toward me, her index finger making zigzagging motions in the air. “Love the kimono.” Then she paused, her eyes wide with dawning horror. “Where is your body? How long have you been out of it?”
And therein lies the rub.
Daniel stepped out of the botanica as he tucked his cell back into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He smiled at Rhonda, but not even that managed to brighten his beautiful face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She’d been right there. I can only guess one of Hirokumi’s goons snatched her again. But what I can’t understand is why.” He absently scratched his head.
Mom stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Daniel. You tried. And your hunches paid off. We know Hirokumi has her, for whatever purpose.” She glared at me, which meant “and you’re gonna tell me.”
“But why, Nona? The only connection Zoë has in this is her snooping, and that Mitsuri saw her while she’d been leaving Rollins’s place. That’s where it made sense that Rollins’s men would have her, but why Hirokumi?”
But the shop owner was fast on her feet. I also knew she wanted to get Daniel out of her house for now. “I don’t know yet, Daniel. But we’ll find out.”
“He called her a prize, Nona. What the hell did that mean?”
Well that comment got me looks all around the room.
“Daniel, perhaps you should get some sleep, and regroup. You know she’s alive, and now I do too, and that’s okay for now. You should be able to get Captain Cooper to back you up on this. And if Cooper won’t listen to you, he sure as hell will listen to me.”
Daniel left with promises to call back if he heard any word. Mom stood by the door until the Crown Victoria was out of the driveway.
I lost myself when the door closed, as if I’d been holding my astral pieces together while Daniel was there. Why? I don’t know—maybe I thought in some weird way he’d see me or something.
I must have vanished for a moment. When I saw Mom and Rhonda again, the
y were above me. I lay on the floor—or rather lay as easily as any astral form could. I felt weak, shaky, drained of energy.
A hand touched mine—soft—the delicate tickle of a spider’s web against my astral skin. Steve knelt on the opposite side of Mom and Rhonda, and he was touching the back of my hand.
“Nona—I’d say that’s a bad thing.” Rhonda pointed to the contact. I could only imagine what it looked like from the living’s point of view.
“Zoë”—Mom’s own skin looked as pale and ill as a full moon—“get back to your body! Now!”
“I can’t,” I mouthed to her. I needed to tell them what happened. But how? I didn’t have the strength to become solid enough to hold a pen.
“Grab my hand, Zoë.”
I looked back to Steve. I saw pain in his eyes. He needed to know where Tim was. How awful it had to be for him to be alone in this house after all these years. And I’d left Tim in a potted plant.
I didn’t understand the request to hold his hand—wasn’t even sure I could. I’d never touched the boys, as Mom called them. No one ever had.
Turning my palm over, he slid his hand into mine, and I realized too late what would happen. I should have known.
There was no euphoria as I watched the color drain from Steve’s face. I felt strength, a surge of energy, as my new Wraith condition pulled Steve’s ethereal juice from him.
“Stop it!” My mom’s voice was a shriek.
It was also enough to jar me back into myself in a sense. I wrenched my hand free of his—knowing it was what I’d intended to do when I’d seen what was happening to him. Intended, but hadn’t.
My newly stolen strength sustained me, but Steve faded to little more than a hint of his physical appearance.
“What did you do to him?” Mom was on the floor beside him, next to me, but unable—or in my case unwilling—to touch us.
“Quick,” Rhonda said, as I pulled myself into a sitting position. I thought of Daniel again, saw his face in my mind, and within seconds I felt the dusty hardwood beneath me, felt the chill in the air from the windows. She knelt beside me and handed me a pen and legal pad.
“Tell us,” Steve said softly. His voice was a projection. A memory on the wind.
I hesitated—he’d known this would happen. He’d given me his strength, his ethereal essence, so I could tell them what happened. I sat wide-eyed as I watched him sustain a shadowy physical form, the pen and paper in my hand.
“Write, Zoë.” Mom continued looking at Steve. She wouldn’t look at me. She was still mad at me. “Don’t let Steve’s sacrifice go to waste.”
So I wrote. I told them everything that had happened, from the time I received the message on the phone (though I left out the threat from Maharba) to when Daniel and I arrived here.
And after I’d finished, and Rhonda read as fast as she could, I watched Mom. Willed her to look at me, her daughter. Please. Steve gave me a smile and a wink, and I pulled my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around them.
“I’ll be fine, Zoë,” Steve said.
But somehow, I knew that wasn’t true. I’d taken something from him. Something vital. I’d crippled him. And for what? For a brief moment of strength? How long would it last? Would I spend through it as I had my own strength? Would I devour it as a drunk devours whiskey? Already I’d felt the disappointment inside of me when the euphoria I’d known with Mrs. DeAngelo hadn’t returned. How long before I too became addicted to this method of thievery?
Whoa—that was deep. Was that me thinking such melancholy thoughts?
And it got worse. If we got Tim back—would Steve ever be the same?
Rhonda spoke. “So you think this Rai character is in your body, and that’s why you can’t get back in?”
I guess I’d sort of thought of that, but I hadn’t given voice to it. Sounded weird even to me, but I nodded.
Rhonda seemed to agree. “Me too—but what is he? Is he an astral Traveler?” She stood and pulled a massive book from her bag and returned to our little floor party. The thing looked like a Merriam-Webster dictionary.
It wasn’t the usual book of everything, the one in Mom’s shop. This was something I’d not seen before. The cover looked more like the old tattered weave of a hard cover, without the dust jacket. It was black, with the faded gold embossing of the words “PASSAGE OF THE DEAD.”
Needless to say, I don’t think this one had ever made the top ten in Publishers Weekly.
Rhonda flipped to several pages marked with ripped pieces of lined white paper, and I noticed Mom taking up the legal pad. When she started to read, I moved next to Rhonda and peered over her shoulder to look at the illustrations and really wished I hadn’t.
Whatever artist had been commissioned on this one had definitely taken his cues from H. R. Giger. Eewwwwwwwww.
The left page was covered in bulky, eye-blurring text. The right page showed a black-and-white picture of what I would call a cat on steroids. Or maybe a really pissed-off cat. The size of its maw had to have been the diameter of a bowling ball.
Garfield meets Darth Sidious.
And the artist had warped the thing to where its tail had looped back around and snaked down into its throat, which might be why it looked so mean.
I noticed an interesting smell. It was nice. Spicy. And my stomach growled. Was there something on the stove?
“This,” Rhonda was saying, “is a Symbiont. Or rather, a sort of idea of what they look like when not in symbiosis. And as I figured, they’re created by Phantasms from the mist of the spiritual plane, both Ethereal and Abysmal. Most of the time they’re benign, or even at times used as pets.”
“Pets?” Mom and I said at the same time (only my voice wasn’t heard by anyone).
Steve nodded. He looked a little better—or as better as a ghost could look. “I’ve seen one or two of them here and there.”
Mom pinned him with a wide-eyed stare. “In my house?”
“Harmless, Nona, really,” Rhonda said. “Sometimes they’re just simple, old afterthoughts of the Phantasms. Sort of like cats and dogs. There are some schools of thought that small creatures like them—pets, or familiars—are like extensions of our souls. Actually, some witch’s familiars are Symbionts possessing animal bodies.”
“That would sure explain my old bird Hermes. Little fucker was smarter than he should have been.” Mom scowled.
Hermes had been a kestrel, the smallest of the falcon family, and indeed the smartest. It’d had a love of boiled peanuts and ginger ale, and made a break for it one afternoon while Mom got groceries out of the car.
I don’t think Mom ever forgave the little creep for running off on her. Kinda like my dad.
Wow…what is that smell?
Rhonda nodded. “It rings true from what I read here on Symbionts. They can become physical—which means they can enjoy the pleasures of the flesh in two ways. They can A, take over a body.” She looked at me. “Or B, they can take in enough souls to transmutate its own body into becoming physical. The key ingredient for that little spell is an astral Traveler.”
I gulped. I looked around for a scrap of paper. The pen was on the floor and easily retrieved. Mom irritably ripped a sheet out (she was still reading) and thrust it at me. YOU THIK RAI WAS A SYMBOTE?
Gah. My spelling. Awful.
“I’m not sure. He could be either astral or ethereal. From this book I found that either could possess a body. The difference is an astral entity can only possess for a short time. They can maybe ride along, but it takes a buttload of willpower to manipulate a body.”
Really? I pursed my lips. I didn’t know I could have possessed someone. I’d always been told I had a lot of will. I leaned in close to Rhonda…was it her that smelled so good?
“On the other hand,” Rhonda said. “For a Symbiont, it’s easier to take hold of a body, especially if the original owner is weak-willed.”
I scribbled. OR THE BODY EMPTY?
She nodded. Crap. So the wee man with th
e Fu Manchu mustache was actually a Symbiont. Maybe. Damnit. I just want my body back!
“Now with Trench-Coat, we’ve established that he probably intended on eating you the way he did Tanaka, only you weren’t really dead, which caused a weird glitch, and there was a transference. He took your health, and your voice.”
Honestly, I’d have preferred Trench-Coat take something else, like the cellulite on my left thigh.
I leaned in close to Rhonda again. The smell was coming from her. It was like stepping into Macaroni Grill at lunch, all garlicky and spicy. I could just eat her alive.
Rhonda was still talking. Whups. Was it important? “… dealing with Phantasms.”
“What the hell is that?” Mom abruptly spoke up.
“What? A Wraith?”
“Phantasm. You keep saying that. What is it? Is it the devil?” Good question. I got the idea it was a big bad and something the Symbiont in Rollins was deathly afraid of. That was about as far as I really wanted to go.
“We can’t look at this situation in the contemporary religious context of god and devil, Nona,” Steve said.
Everyone turned and looked at him.
He looked so pale. Gaunt. Shadows crept into his handsome face, and I felt a twang of guilt. I did that to him. “When we realized we were dead, disappointment in the lack of manifestations of our shared belief kept us little more than Shades here in this house.”
I stared blankly at Steve. English?
Mom shook her head. “English?”
Ahhh…like daughter like Mom.
“He means when neither of them ascended to Heaven or descended to Hell, the realization that there may not be such places caused them to go into a really hard depression.” Rhonda the psychologist.
Mom shook her head. “There is a God, and there is a Devil.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Steve said. “I’ve never seen either as a personification. I’ve seen beings of light at times, and felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I would categorize those instances as coming close to angels. And if there is a Devil”—he looked at me—“then the beings would be the Phantasms.”
“Plural,” Rhonda said. “More than one?”
“A hierarchy. I’ve only seen one. And it terrified me. They have no real shape, save the one you give them. And it will use that image, that nightmare you have, to destroy you. Phantasms hate the living.”
Wraith Page 32
