A warning? Or a field guide?
I shut my eyes. When I dared open them again, Doris was gone and Sarah sat in her place on a plain metal chair I’d bought at a yard sale. She bent her head over a lap full of quilting pieces. Her graying brown hair was a cap of chunky layers; she’d gotten stuck, style-wise, in a seventies Dorothy Hamill ’do. But it was pretty. It was Sarah. Her fingers deftly wove a needle in and out, stitching silk to cotton, brocade to wool. She liked all the textures. I liked all the textures of Sarah. And of Charles. Mostly, that feathery one.
I had just seen Doris Harken and Sarah in the same patch of sunlight.
Did Pig Face kill the Harkens, too?
Oh, my God.
There, there, the quilt birds sang. Rest.
Under their spell, I slept again.
*
“She’s so beautiful. Such pretty black hair. Her eyes are deep green, you know. Like well-fertilized catnip. She tries not to get close enough for people to notice, but they’re really, really green. Hello, Tabitha, how is she doing?”
Better, my amulet said. But she misses Nahjee. And she’s afraid to leave this building. She won’t admit it though.
I kept my eyes shut. Tabitha, you outted me. I should smash you on a rock.
Oh, my, Tabitha said. I’m sure you don’t mean that.
Try me.
Dante’s deep voice said, “Show me the tats her grandmother put on her head when she was a girl.”
“All right. I’ll just part her hair a tiny little bit, right . . . here. See? I told you. Her grandmother had her tattooed with faith symbols when she was ten. Not much protection, but at least it got her this far.”
“When she sleeps she looks almost happy. I’ve never seen her like that at the club or in my classes. She’s a fighter. And scared. She barely trusts me.”
“Join the crowd. She thinks I’m a pest. Well, okay, I am a little pink pest. Hmmm. I think she looks like Cher. A young Cher.”
“Cher? Please, Gigi. Show some taste. I’m thinking of Tomyris.”
“The one who led the army against Cyrus, the Persian? Oh, come on. No way. Tomyris was too short. Livia is nearly six feet tall.”
“Then Zenobia, the Syrian.”
“Bad vibes. The Romans eventually whacked her.”
“Dante, you’re missing the point.”
“All right. Boudicca, the Celt. Not that I liked her all that much. And the Romans, again . . . I’m thinking Majiji.”
“Dante, Dante, Dante! The Romans eventually whacked Majiji, too. Don’t fixate on losers.”
“I’m talking spirit, you know. Not form.”
“Okay, then what’s wrong with Cher?”
“I give up.”
“Shush. She’s opening an eye.”
I opened both eyes. When I looked up I saw Gigi’s sincere, pink-framed little face surrounded by a floppy velveteen hat covered with pink feathers and faux pink fur and beads. She held a small brocade amulet bag to her denim heart. Witches who dye their overalls black to fit the Wiccan dress code are, somehow, hard to take seriously.
She stood there alone. Where was Dante? I looked across the room. He nodded at me from a casual pose, leaning against a window. He’d opened the bottom of the big industrial panes. “I like the air,” he said. “Maybe I used to be a bird. A hawk. An eagle. You never know.”
You never know. I looked back at Gigi. Her eyes, which already looked tender, glistened like wet marbles. “I’m so sorry about what happened, Livvy. You have to understand, it’s not like we looked the other way. You’re the turning point. The portal. The link. Oh, I’m no good at metaphors.” She wrung the amulet bag. “You’re the YouTube channel. We’re the videos. You have to upload your spirit guides willingly.”
My sluggish brain sorted the weird play list she’d just handed me. “I . . . choose . . . funny cat videos . . . instead.”
Her mouth popped open. She arched a thinly plucked brown brow, decorated with just the tiniest ankh tattoo at one corner. The Egyptian hieroglyph for life. Her teary eyes widened. She began to laugh. She bent double, chortling. Her feathers and faux fur jiggled. “You have a sense of humor! This is a good sign! A brightness I never expected!”
“Thanks. I’m so glad to entertain you.” I pushed myself up on the pillows, wincing. Some days I still felt like I’d been gutted.
Her laughter faded. My tank top showed the healing slashes on my arm. Eight thin rows of stitches. Eight Toes. Eight claws. They bisected my honor roll of family names. Momma, Daddy, Alex, Granny, Preacher T. Their names would have scars across them from now on. Sarah had not repeated that point about me being able to heal a bane wound. I guess it was clear I was too much of a rookie.
Gigi studied the slashes. “Oh, Livia. That bane was an awfully powerful one. Sheba was right about him.”
“Whatever.”
Gigi pulled up a folding metal chair—one of my other pieces of fine furniture—and sat beside me. “You don’t really want to believe anything we say yet. That’s okay. It’s a lot to take in. Let me try to explain just a little.”
She twiddled a long feather that drooped off her hat, sighed, then launched into a spiel. “There are many worlds. You can call them ‘heavens and hells’ or Elysian Fields or dimensions or universes or whatever. I like to think of them as a layer cake.”
“Sure. Why not.”
“When you eat a piece of layer cake, you can sample the chocolate icing, the cream cheese center, the chopped pecans and the layer of jelly all at the same time. Or you can take a bite of the icing, then move your spoon down and scoop out a bite of the cream cheese. Or you can only eat the rum pudding layer. I think of this world right here—” she whirled her finger, indicating our planet, dimension, whatever—“as the rum pudding layer. But just because you spend your whole life nibbling the rum pudding doesn’t mean you’re not part of a much bigger dessert. Which you can taste, if you try.”
I adjusted my thin tank top for semi-modesty then folded my arms under my breasts. “I’ll stick with lemon cookies.”
“Cynicism is blindness. Free your mind.”
“Thank you for that motto, Morpheus.”
“Livia, I’m just saying that all these layers exist at the same time, they’re all going on, all around us, all the time. The past, the present, and even the future. Time means nothing. It’s not a straight line from here to there, like, duh. Time is like a soup. And we’re in the middle of it.”
“What kind of soup? A cream soup or a broth? Can I be a dumpling? I don’t want to be a carrot or a Brussels sprout.”
“Livia, please. I’m telling you: There are many worlds, and many, many souls in all those worlds, and this particular world is very tempting to some of them. This world is vulnerable and young. They see it as an unclaimed frontier. They want to carve out territories. Grab some action.”
I settled back on my pillows. “So . . . it’s like we’re living in Casablanca and bad-asses from other dimensions drop by Rick’s nightclub for a drink and a chance at the roulette table. What do they want with me? Of all the gin joints in the world . . . ”
“You’re the bouncer,” Dante put in. “You decide who gets kicked out of the club for bad behavior.”
“Oh? Then I quit. It’s a lousy job. I didn’t apply for it.”
“Your soul did. Your soul knows best. This is what your soul chose to do.”
“Excuse me while I text message my soul. ‘OMG. WTF?’”
“You have a gift. There aren’t many like you.”
“Go figure. Nobody wants this job. No perks, no pension plan, no health insurance . . . ”
“No perks?” He spread his dark, muscular hands in supplication. “Livia, how about first-hand proof that the soul is everlasting and death is just a door to another life?”
“I’d rather have a 401K and a company car. Make that a Vespa. I’ve always wanted a scooter.”
Gigi patted my quilted leg. “Livvie, we know you’ve been through a lot . . . �
�
“Look, I plan to track Pig Face down and banish him. I’ll find a way to send that fucker to Hell. But that doesn’t mean I’m interested in a permanent soul-catching job.”
Dante sighed and walked over. He stopped at the foot of my bed. “This isn’t about your personal revenge. Demons are a threat to all living beings. They can’t be allowed to stay here.”
“I’ve seen one demon up close, guys. In its real form. I fought it. I banished it. But ever since then, I’ve tried my best to cut that memory out of my brain.” I dug the heel of one hand into my forehead. “I see my brother dying. I see my mother . . . her body, her face, even if wasn’t really her anymore . . . I see her morphing into . . .”
“Livia, that will get easier, I promise.” Gigi sighed. “Take a break. We’ll talk more about your mission, later.”
“Do you have any clue what happened to Nahjee? Has Pig Face hurt her?”
Dante shook his head. “No, I think he plans to use her in some way. To cause trouble for you.”
Great.
“How about my knife? Did anyone find it?”
“Not yet, sweetheart.”
Gigi sighed again and stood up. A long strand of beads and charms trailed from her overalls’ chest pocket to a tiny pocket on her hip, meant to hold a watch or lighter. Gigi pulled the strand free then stooped and tucked it between my mattress and box springs. “This little fellow will help you sleep.” She opened the brocade amulet bag and laid its contents on the chair’s seat. A crystal. “This will help clear your mind.” A dried rose. “This will help your wounds heal faster.” And finally, she laid an enameled lapel pin on her palm and held it out for me to peruse.
I stared at a Starfleet insignia. “This will help me get into a Trekkie convention?”
“It’s not the form of the talisman that’s important, Livia, it’s the spirit. This will help you smile. And it’s already working. Yes, that twitch at the corner of your mouth? That’s called a teensy, tiny smile.”
“Amazing,” Dante added. “Maybe one day we’ll see her teeth.”
Gigi placed the lapel pin on the chair, arranged it and the other low-rent talismans on the velveteen bag, then dusted her hands with a ceremonial flutter of pink fingernails, as if casting pixie powder. “We’ll be back to visit tomorrow. Buh bye.”
They headed toward the loft stairs. I wrestled with pride for a second, then called, “Thank you, guys. I’m sorry I’m such a bitch. But the people I care about . . . they always die because of me.”
Gigi pirouetted and smiled. Dante turned slower, his expression gentle “No need to thank us,” Gigi chirped.
Dante nodded. “We sacrifice our bodies for the sake of decent souls everywhere. Just as you do. It’s an honor.”
Ta-dah. They went down the heavy factory steps, their feet echoing off the beamed ceilings and high, tin roof.
I lay there feeling as if I’d just wandered down a new path in The Twilight Zone.
The sound of large wings outside the windows made my blood freeze.
I shoved the bedcovers back and struggled to move my weak legs to the side of the bed. The wings grew louder. Big wings. I started to yell for help from Charles and Sarah.
No. If Pig Face is here, I have to face him alone.
I grabbed a drawing pad and charcoal pencil.
A hawk settled on the wide wood. The largest hawk I’d ever seen. Not gray or red, like ordinary mountain hawks, but a deep, burnished black, like a crow, only with fine stripes of silvery gray. A two-foot-tall tabby-cat hued hawk? What the fuck? Somebody call National Geographic.
It carried something in its talons. The hawk unfurled its claws, studied me with its glossy black head cocked to one side, and then simply flew away.
When I could breathe again I inched one bare foot ahead of the other until I reached the window sill. My knife lay there. Greg Lindholm’s dried blood was caked the blade. Words were scratched into the blood’s crusty surface.
Found it, love. From Ian.
Sweat ran down my clammy skin. I crawled back to bed.
I dreamed of layer cakes and giant hawks and the soul hunter named Ian.
*
“I need to show you what you did last night,” Sarah said gently. “For the record, Charles didn’t wake up and see you. Only I did. Your dignity is safe with me. He’s a very gallant and fatherly man, so I promise he won’t look if it happens again.”
She sat in a chair across from my bed. She didn’t seem upset, but she did seem concerned. I sat on the side of the bed with a plate of wheat toast going cold on my lap. I tugged my geisha robe tighter around me. “Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water.”
Sarah held up her cell phone. “This happened about two a.m.”
I squinted as the tiny video screen filled with a shadowy image. Okay, that was me. Getting out of bed, my eyes locked in a thousand-mile stare, night-of-the-living-dead me, okay. Dressed in nothing but my tank top and panties, I limped slowly across the studio, following a familiar trail between paint cabinets, a rack that held big rolls of canvas, and a large work table I’d made from two big pieces of plywood. I went straight to the far wall, where dozens of half-finished landscapes leaned, face-forward against the aged bricks. I shuffled them aside, latched my hands onto the biggest one, and turned it around.
Black-haired pioneer Ian, yes. Him and his bloody hatchet and his outstretched hand and his angry tears on my behalf.
I propped that painting against a post.
And then I made out with it.
I stepped as close as I could get to the fabric, pressed my whole body to his, raised my hands to his hair and face, kissed him, stroked his hair, his face, his clean-shaven jaw and his shoulders then slid my hands to his thighs. I stroked them slowly, up and down, inside and out, then angled my pelvis against his and rotated, gently grinding my wounded parts to his painted ones. Finally I pulled my hands back up to his shoulders and curled my fingers along their broad tops, as if holding on. I turned my cheek to his painted neck.
And I rested happily.
Sarah clicked her phone shut. “You stood there for about an hour, then you turned the painting back to the wall, and you went back to bed. Do you remember anything at all?”
“No.” I didn’t mention the erotic Ian dreams that flooded me around dawn.
“Livia, let me tell you what I know about soul hunters. Well, first off, let me tell you this about soul jumpers, because it’s related. Charles, Gigi and Dante and I, we’ve been around a long time. We’ve been part of your life going back through a lot of lives. We know how to jump from life to life. We find . . . uhmmm, willing bodies to use.”
“You evict them,” I said wearily, drained of surprise. “Like what happened to my mother.”
“Oh, no. God. No. No.”
“Then where do the souls go when you ditch them?”
“Think of it this way, Livia. A body is just the container for the soul. Bodies die, souls don’t. They move on. Not that it’s a good thing to leave your body. It does some damage to give up a body you’re attached to. We don’t recommend it.” She frowned at me knowingly. “Generally speaking, when you deliberately kill the body you live in, it’s like you’re kicking your soul out of its house with no warning.”
I looked away, clenching my teeth. She knew I’d tried to off myself about a dozen times. “So where do you get a body to use? Is there a ‘Bodies R Us’ store?”
She arched a brow at my humor. “Nooo. We look for souls who are ready to move on. They’ve learned all they want to learn from their life’s experience. Their bodies—and all the associated faults and personality bugaboos and all that fleshy identity stuff that overlays a soul—are in a mess. These are people in despair, people who’ve ruined their lives and can’t picture a happy future. We give them a chance to . . . to move to a new neighborhood a little earlier than a natural death would allow. It’s voluntary. It’s a mutual agreement.”
“So, you and Charles, and Gig
i and Dante . . . you took over these bodies I see, and they have some bad history.”
“Yes, they do, thanks to their former owners.”
“Like what? I can’t imagine you being anything but a wonderful . . . ” Too intimate. I shrugged. “A nice person.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I am a nice person. So are the others. We’re good souls, if I do say so myself. Let’s leave it at that.”
“I remember you saying something to Charles about soul hunters being lost souls. You didn’t sound happy about Ian.”
She nodded. “Soul hunters tend to be tormented. They have unsettled business. They aren’t at peace. They soul-jump too much, looking for trouble, looking for a fight. Looking for old, old enemies. They’re kind of obsessed with revenge.” She studied me intently. “Or they’re looking for their lost soul mate. But . . . soul mates are only lost because they want to be.”
“So you’re saying I might be on the run from him?”
She nodded. “For some reason only your soul knows.”
“I’ve got a demon after me and a stalker ex-boyfriend?”
She sighed as she got to her feet, lifting both hands in a prayer-like posture, palms up. She gazed heavenward. “God only knows.” Then she looked at me again, gently. “But I’d say, judging from what I saw last night, that you’re ready for him to find you.”
4
Looking up Greg Lindholm on the Internet seemed like such a good idea. Okay, maybe not good, but unavoidable. If I thought of him as a man, maybe just a man, albeit a sadistic fucker, I could deal with the fear better.
But what did I expect? That he had a Facebook page? That I’d find out his favorite hobbies were collecting Bob Dylan vinyls and blogging about his pet ferret?
As things turned out, it wasn’t what I found online that scared the piss out of me.
It was what found me.
Soul Catcher Page 6
