Accidentally Dead, Again

by Dakota Cassidy

  Phoebe managed to make her way to the end of the kitchen on ever-weakening legs when Mark stuck his head around the corner, grinning. “Eminem and the Unabomber’s bride to see you,” Mark said on a snicker, clearly referring to Nina’s black hoodie and Sam, who must still be in drag. But she’d already known it was Nina and Sam. She’d smelled them the moment Mark had opened the door, and Wanda wasn’t far behind, if her nose was correct.

  That stopped her in her tracks. Sweet Jesus in Manolos. She was applying scents to people who were more than two hundred feet from her. Her terror ratcheted up yet another jolting notch.

  Phoebe fought the swirl of colors before her eyes, pinching Mark’s arm when she clung to it to keep him from going back to the front door. “That’s her,” she whispered to him. Mark had helped her when she’d decided to find Nina. He’d logged just as many frustrating hours at the computer as she had.

  The look of horror on his face would have made her giggle if not for the fact that she was having trouble holding herself up. “Her-her? Your long-lost sister her?” He put a hand over his mouth and whispered from behind it, “Shut the front door.”

  “You know what this reminds me of?”

  Mark nodded with vigor. He knew the soap opera reference she was referring to. “I’m right there with you. It’s just like the time when Fabiana Jones found out she had not one but two sisters separated from her at birth. Oh, Holy mother of all things melodramatic. Really, who could believe that guttersnipe Tanya from the planet Ghetto was the ultra-swank Fabiana’s sister?”

  Phoebe shushed him. “It’s inconceivable, right? We’re so different.”

  “Well, you’re not the Doublemint Twins, count on that. So who’s the dish? Never mind. I just want to know how you two can genetically be related. Oh, dear God in heaven. How …” he sputtered in wonder, his blue eyes wide.

  “I know, I know. We’re poles apart. She’s like Dreary Barbie dressed for the fashion apocalypse. Genetics are LOL, huh?”

  “Yeah, totally ROFLMAO those genetics. Funny, funny, funny,” Nina said on a grunt, pushing her way past Phoebe and picking Mark up only to set him down by their small kitchen table.

  She rounded on Phoebe, cornering her against the pantry door. “You need to feed. You look like shit. Sit. I brought something that will make you feel better. We’ll talk about what the hell that was back at my house after you feed.”

  Mark tapped Nina’s shoulder, making her turn to face him. No matter what, Mark always had her back. “Feed? Is that what thugs call it these days? Where I come from we dine.”

  Nina’s nostrils flared, alerting Phoebe to the potential disaster Mark was headed for. She wrapped a finger around the collar of his polo shirt, stretching the dark blue material as she did, and lifted him up as though he were lighter than the proverbial feather. “Where I come from, we dine on worms like you.” She waved a dismissive hand under Mark’s nose. “Now go take a bubble bath and listen to some Liza or something, and leave us the hell alone. We have shit to do.”

  Mark crossed his arms over his chest in defiance, even with his slippered feet dangling. If Mark was nothing else, he was no coward. Phoebe knew he was more than likely petrified that a woman had scooped him up off the ground like he was nothing more than a stray sock, but she also knew he’d never let anyone see him sweat.

  Eye to eye with Nina, he let his eyebrows rise in full-blown diva arrogance and his voice only held a hint of a quiver. “The hell I will. You’re in my home, accosting my BFF. Not on my watch, pale-face.”

  Sam grumbled his disapproval from behind. “Nina. Put him down.” Sam poked his head around her shoulder and gave her a hopeful grin. “Please,” he tacked on.

  Nina dropped Mark with a thud, the slap of his slippers echoing in the silence.

  Sam shot Nina a grateful, approving smile. “Now, uh, Mark, is it?”

  “Single, is it?” Mark cooed with a flirty wink.

  Sam dragged a hand through his hair, fed up written all over his chiseled, smeared made-up face. Yet, his words were patient and served up with a kind tone. “Look. Could we maybe go sit down in the living room and let Phoebe and her sister talk? I promise you I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Mark walked his fingers up Sam’s muscled forearm. “Only if you tell me where you bought that dress. It’s cute, yet sexy and fun all at once, handsome. I can think of three of our clients off the top of my head who could wear that.”

  Sam’s teeth, now back to their normal state, visibly clenched, and the muscles in his jaw twitched. “Please.” He waved a hand in the direction of the living room to encourage Mark to exit.

  Mark paused and reached for Phoebe’s hand, searching her face. “You okay, kitten?”

  She gave his hand a squeeze. “Fine. Go. Peruse the fresh meat,” she teased, making herself smile at him.

  “Now that I can do. And take those things out of your mouth. They look strangely real and it’s freaking me out.” He blew her a kiss and skipped off behind Sam.

  Phoebe plastered her body to the pantry door, praying it was enough to hold her up, and confronted Nina. “What. The. Hell. Was. That? One minute I was in Castle Dracula, the next I was here in my kitchen. I want explanations and I want them now. What did you do to me?”

  Phoebe’s ears noted the front door opening again and then Wanda was suddenly in her line of vision, blurry, but as elegant as ever. She clamped a hand on Nina’s shoulder and gave her a yank backward. “This conversation will wait until you feed, and, yes, by feed I mean drink blood. You know, that beverage you so flippantly chose to ignore back at Nina’s? It’s your beverage of choice from now on, kiddo. And if you give me a hard time about it, I won’t just make you feed, I’ll pry your mouth open with my toes like the Jaws of Life and dump it down your throat. So no arguments, because Auntie Wanda’s had it. One of you was enough. Two of you is like loony day camp. Now. Feed.” She handed Phoebe a bag that looked like one of those sippy drinks she saw dangling from children’s mouths at the park.

  But it wasn’t the orange sunburst party-in-a-cardboard-carton juice box she was used to seeing. It was blood. Blood. Just the scent of it drove her mad. There was a distinct moment when she literally tasted the coppery tang of it on her tongue—salivated at the very thought of it trickling down her throat.

  And then she blanched. Blood. It was abhorrent and enticing rolled together in one sick, vile, disgustingly appealing package.

  Then why, why, why did it sing to her a siren’s song of bliss, which under normal circumstances, only a slice of New York blueberry cheesecake could evoke? She tried to gulp back the distaste the image of her favorite dessert wrought and found she wasn’t capable. Of gulping.

  OMG.

  Nina’s eyes flashed amusement from over Wanda’s shoulder while she watched the play of emotions skitter across Phoebe’s face. Almost as though she was waiting for the opportunity to call Phoebe a chicken.

  Chicken this. She’d gone to college. Nobody, not even to this day, did boilermakers like she did. She was legend at NYU.

  Chugalug, baby.

  Grabbing the packet from Wanda with trembling hands, Phoebe yanked the straw out, held it to her mouth, and squeezed every last drop from the tiny hole until she’d wrung it dry. Then she threw it on the floor like a discarded dirty whore, stomping her foot on it in territorial ownership.

  A surge of power so revitalizing, so invigorating, slithered along her raw nerves, soothing them and leaving her blissfully sated.

  And then everything was clear again. Nina’s beautiful face came into focus, her lips in the form of a sneer sharp and crisp, her eyes so black they were like pieces of coal. Wanda, who brought to mind words like stately and collected, smiled her approval, each laugh line on either side of her mouth jumping out at Phoebe’s now perfect vision. She rubbed Phoebe’s arm. “Better, right?”

  “Better,” Phoebe mumbled with reluctance. Weirdly so, but definitely better.

  Wanda’s smile was warm and
approving. She reminded Phoebe so much of her mother, not only in the way she nurtured you one moment and scolded you when necessary the next, but in the way she took such great care in her appearance. Her mother had always been meticulous about her appearance. She’d dressed like she was going out, even when she wasn’t.

  Phoebe remembered her words of advice well: “You just never know what might come up, Phoebes. So in order to be prepared, you should always look your best.” What Phoebe later realized was her mother always wanted to be ready for her father Joe. He came into town more often than not without warning, and her mother prettied up on the off chance he’d call and take them out to the diner for dinner or ice cream.

  Wanda took her by the hand and led her to a chair at the kitchen table. “And now we need to decide where to go from here, Phoebe. So please, sit and let’s talk. We genuinely only want to help you. Despite Nina’s brash behavior, the last thing we want to do is frighten you.”

  Stinging pierced Phoebe’s eyes with the familiar onset of tears. Tears that refused to flow, for which she was grateful with Nina staring her down, just daring her to curl up into a little ball of snot-dripping, whining baby. “How did you find me?”

  “I went through your purse like all good thugs do. You left it at my house when you tripped the light fantastic,” Nina said, sarcasm in her every word as she hoisted herself up on Phoebe’s small countertop and wiggled her fingers at Phoebe’s silver cat, Optimus, who’d finally made an appearance. He hopped up into Nina’s lap and began to twirl his traitorous tail around her stroking fingers with a humming purr.

  “What is happening?” Phoebe implored, the quiver in her voice making her angry with herself for showing her fear, especially in front of her tougher-than-shoe-leather sister.

  Wanda shook her head, rolling one of the fresh lemons Phoebe had put in a decorative bowl just this morning under her palm. “If what you mean by that is teleporting yourself, I don’t know exactly, Phoebe. Nina can’t teleport herself anywhere. Like we said, this is the list. She can fly. She can read minds. She’s stronger than the NFL as a whole. She can be so much stubborn, difficult bitch you want to choke her, but she can’t do what you did. Which means investigation is in order.”

  “And how do we go about investigating something like this?” Did you make an appointment with the Center for Paranormal Diseases? Was there a specialist in teleportation?

  Wanda’s glance at her was wary. “First and foremost, we keep a low profile, Phoebe. You’ll soon find this isn’t like the movies where ET gets to phone home and everyone skips a happy circle at discovering Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There is no definitive happy ending to this lifestyle. Just a happy medium where we make our way in the human world much the way we did before, but with a great deal of caution. No one takes our shapeshifting seriously because no one believes it really exists. That’s why we can get away with OOPS. We get a lot of crank calls. More often than not, people think we’re a cult who just calls themselves shapeshifters and live wannabe paranormal lives. No one really believes Nina has to drink blood in order to stay erect. If the population at large really knew the truth—if they saw—we’d be lab rats in no time flat. So living this way sometimes involves fibbing.”

  “No, Wanda. We don’t fib, we tell bald-faced lies,” Nina corrected with devilish glee while she cuddled Optimus. “You know, like you lie to that crazy bitch you and Marty both go to for a leg waxing every other flippin’ day. Tell her what you told that poor, confused, non-English-speaking cosmetician, Wanda. You told her both you and Marty have some rare disease that accelerates the hair growth on your legs. You even told her you met in a clinical trial for a hair-removal hormone. You don’t fib. You fucking lie. Big-big lies, baby. All day long. All day strong.”

  Wanda sucked in her cheeks, letting her chin drop to her chest. “Yes, Nina. Thank you. This lifestyle does mean you sometimes have to be creative. And you have to keep track of your creativity. There’s also the bit about keeping your abilities to yourself. Which means we can’t have you teleporting out in a crowd. And it also means we need to understand how you can control it and help you learn how to manage it.”

  “And we do that how?” Phoebe asked.

  Wanda’s lips thinned. “We find the source, aka the biter.”

  Phoebe looked out the small window of her fourth-floor apartment, wincing as the glare of traffic lights passed by. “The source …”

  “Yes. The woman who we think is responsible for biting Sam is the source,” Wanda said. “Whatever abilities she has she gave to Sam, and by proxy, now you have them, too.”

  Phoebe was astonished, and she didn’t bother to hide it. “A woman bit Sam?”

  “Yeah. The one-night stand woman.”

  “Nina! Hush,” Wanda reprimanded. “That’s no one’s business but Sam’s. Client profiles should be confidential, mouth.”

  Phoebe was taken aback. “So Sam’s not a cross-dressing gay man?”

  “I think the one-night stand with a woman implies he likes chicks, but he might wish he’d switched to the other team after this shit. He was wearing the girlie crap because he went to a Halloween party. That’s where he was bitten,” Nina informed her.

  As thoughts started to formulate in her clearing brain, so did the questions. “So,” Phoebe began, casting her gaze upon Nina, “you can’t transport yourself, but you have other um, abilities? What does this mean? Why, if I’m a vampire just like you, do I have different abilities? Are there different breeds of you people running around?”

  Nina stirred on the counter, shrugging her shoulders. “Fuck if I know. I don’t know a single vampire in our clan who can do what you did. Doesn’t teleportation require you to use your noggin? What was going on in all that air between your ears when it happened?”

  “I was thinking I wanted to get the hell away from you and go home,” Phoebe said from the side of her mouth.

  Nina gripped the edge of the countertop with her fingers as a blatantly obvious call for patience. “So all you did was think about home and you ended up here?”

  Phoebe nodded, pushing her mussed hair behind her ear. “I just thought the word home and boom.”

  Wanda shook her head in awe. “Amazing,” she whispered, placing a hand over her mouth.

  Phoebe fought the fear this added to her already precarious situation. The situation that had finally forced her hand in looking for Nina in the first place. “So what do I do, paranormal counselors? How can you possibly hope to help me, if you don’t have someone who can show me how to use it? How to control it? What if I think up Bora Bora or some other crazy place I can’t get back from?”

  And what if she wished up the wrong destination at the wrong time and couldn’t find her way back? She’d had an episode or two in the not too distant past where she’d ended up somewhere unfamiliar, frightened and alone. But now that she could possibly transport herself anywhere, who knew what could happen. She had to tell them the whole of the reason she’d sought Nina out.

  But doing that meant she’d have to bear witness to eyes round with pity and sympathetic words. At this stage of the game, and with Nina so reluctant to acknowledge her familial tie to her, Phoebe couldn’t bear it. More than likely, Nina would think it a ploy to worm her way into her life through sympathy anyway.

  Nina scoffed, crossing her long legs at the ankles and giving Optimus a scratch under his chin. “I get the impression you don’t think about much but clothes and shit to decorate your face. So if we lose you, we’ll get right on that shiz and send out the rescue dogs in the direction of a Macy’s white sale—or maybe the mall.”

  Phoebe’s eyebrow rose. “In that case, we should be glad it’s not you who can teleport. I imagine picking through a Jersey dump to find your skinny butt would prove unpleasant.”

  “Oh!” Wanda exclaimed on a laugh, clapping her hand against her thigh. “Touché. Now enough, girls. We have things to do. The first of which is getting a list of the names of people who attended th
at party Sam went to. Whoever it was that turned Sam must have this ability—and if we can find her, maybe we can get some answers.”

  “She dumped the dude at our door, Wanda. Do you really think she still has her engraved invitation from the ball in her pumpkin turned coach? You know, right next to her glass slippers and mouse driven coach? Jesus. Don’t be a moron. This shit ain’t sittin’ right with me at all. First of all, I don’t think this was the accident Sam said it was. Or thinks he heard her say it was. And second, not even Darnell knows anyone who can do what Frou-Frou Barbie does.” Nina held up her BlackBerry to show a text from someone named Darnell. A text Phoebe saw as clearly as she did the hand that clenched into that tight fist of stress in her lap.

  Wanda patted Phoebe’s arm, giving it a light squeeze. “First, we don’t know how Sam got on our doorstep. We don’t have any proof it was the woman from the party. Now, Phoebe, don’t fret. We’ve dealt with the unknown before. Just recently, the unknown being a veterinarian turned cougar. We’ll figure this out, Phoebe. Somehow. Until then, you need to stay close to us. So I hope you have a spare dark hovel for Nina to roost in.”

  “The. Hell. I’m staying here with Barbie and Skipper, Wanda. I can keep an eye on her from home.”

  Phoebe bristled, pulling her arm from Wanda’s reach. “I don’t need a babysitter. Especially not one who looks like she’s fresh out of The Shining.”

  Nina narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. Yet, she said nothing.

  Wanda rose from her chair and stretched. “The hell you won’t, Nina. Phoebe and Sam both need twenty-four-seven at this point. That’s what all our clients get from OOPS.”

  “But I didn’t hire you,” Phoebe stated, unsure if it was a good idea for she and Nina to be in such close quarters.

  Wanda cocked her head with a smile. “In order to hire us, you’d have to pay us. We’re nonprofit. That aside, you claim to be Nina’s sister. No way we let family go it alone. Especially when alone means having no idea where you’ll scamper off to if we’re not keeping a close eye on you. Add into the mix Sam and whether or not he can teleport, too, and we have one big paranormal launch pad just waiting to shoot off a spaceship. So we stay. Adjust. Deal. Oh, and learn to love your Auntie Wanda.” She winked on a giggle.