Shapeshifted es-3

by Cassie Alexander

  “I want to be on the fighting side!” I pounded my chest with a fist.

  “That was always your problem, dear.” My mother smiled at me, sadly. “You never knew how not to fight.”

  * * *

  I spent the rest of dinner determined to prove her wrong—as if somehow making it through until dessert without blowing up again would show her that she needed to change her damn mind. I ate with a vengeance, swallowing underchewed bites of food, feeling overcooked chicken scratch at my throat on its way down—all the while realizing that Mom wasn’t eating as much as she ought to.

  If it was any consolation—which it wasn’t—at least I’d be here when Jake got his effing act together enough to arrive. Maybe he would be on my side in this, and we could talk her out of giving up together. And maybe there were little green men living on the moon.

  He’d probably hope she’d die, so he could get his inheritance, and then shoot it all up his arm. I stabbed another bite of chicken with a knife.

  After dinner, we sat in the living room to talk. Turns out when cancer is the elephant in the room, there’s not very much to talk about. Mom told me about her church’s mission project, down in Mexico, and I listened without actually paying attention.

  I didn’t even feel like I could cry. Crying would be an admission that things were irredeemable. If I kept being strong, I could somehow force her to be strong too.

  So at the end of the night, after Jake didn’t show up, I took my dry-eyed leave.

  “Really, Edie, we should hang out more,” she said gently as I hugged her on her spot on the couch so she wouldn’t have to stand. Trying not to notice how weak she was when she hugged me back.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow,” I told her, as Peter escorted me to the door.

  “She needs some rest, Edie,” he said when we turned the corner to the front hall. I bent over to push on my shoes and grab my purse. “She’s very tired these days.”

  He blocked the door with his hand, and looked pointedly at me. I knew what he was saying with his eyes.

  I could think whatever I wanted to think, but he wanted me to keep it to myself.

  Peter and I didn’t always agree—but I had always thought I’d known, up until today at least, that he had my mother’s best interests at heart. If he thought I was just going to take this lying down—

  The shadows in my mother’s face were mirrored in his too. I’d been busy pretending they weren’t there so I could be mad at him. Now I wondered how many nights he’d spent up, kneeling beside her at the toilet, how many pillowcases he’d found beside him in the morning covered in her hair. I shoved my three-year-old self down into a box and found the grown-up nurse in me again. I stood a little straighter, and let her take charge.

  “I’ll visit every other day, so I don’t wear her out. Let me know if you need to take a break too.” I took a step forward, staring at him. “And this time, tell me if anything changes—or I’ll never forgive myself, or you.”

  He grimly nodded, and then opened the door to let me out.

  * * *

  I drove off like a sane person. I didn’t take out any mailboxes or lampposts on their street. But two streets over I almost hit a garbage can, so I pulled over again.

  Now it was safe to cry. Huge sobs welled up, and I had no Kleenex in my car, so I was forced to daub at my teary-snotty face with the bottom of my shirt. I’m sure I looked charming, asphyxiating with sorrow and baring my pale stomach in turns. When I reached the end of my crying jag fifteen minutes later, exhausted, I knew I could safely drive.

  A part of me that wasn’t dissolving in pain started doing calculations. Things would be easier if I hadn’t destroyed all the extra stored vampire blood in the county last December—the thing that had gotten me shun-fired. If I hadn’t done that, and I were in this situation now, I could steal some vampire blood from work … or I could just stand outside the transfusion lab and waylay someone, karate chop them in the neck or some shit, and make them give me all their keys.

  But I didn’t know if the lab was still being used, since I’d ruined things so successfully seven months ago, over the holidays.

  While I wasn’t paying attention—or while that distant part of me was plotting—I took the exit to County Hospital again. I didn’t fight myself, even as I pulled into the parking lot.

  It took a while to find a spot, as seven o’clock was prime visiting time, which was good since it’d make it easier for me to get in. I knew from prior experience here that the intensive care units were on lockdown, and you’d need a badge to get inside.

  But floor Y4, the one that cared for all the supernatural patients, had another barrier—and just one elevator. I wove back through the stairs and hallways until I found myself, feeling odd in civilian clothing, outside its orange doors.

  First things first. I rummaged in my purse until I found my old badge. I’d kept carrying it, even though I didn’t think it’d do me any good anymore. Chances were if I met an old “friend,” I’d be dead, and not have time to wave an expired badge around. But old habits die hard.

  I ran my badge in front of the elevator’s lock. The lights didn’t flash. I waved it, more slowly, again.

  No such luck.

  Second—I kicked the door. “Hey!”

  My voice echoed in both directions down the hall. I didn’t know what else was on this floor; I’d never looked around when I’d been working here. Now I wondered how far I was from a security guard. “Hey!” I shouted, with more force, and slammed my fist on the door.

  Y4 didn’t need guards, normally—because it had the Shadows. Creepy tar-like things that fed on the hospital’s pain, they lived deep inside the ground underneath it. They monitored guests at Y4 and kept an eye on the elevator door.

  “Come on—” I looked up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling. There were plenty of cracks up there for them to hide in. “I know you can see me. And I know you know who I am.”

  The Shadows wiped the minds of anyone who saw anything they shouldn’t. I’d had the option, when I’d left, to let them wipe me. “Please. It’s important—” They were the ones that’d initially contacted me to work on Y4, in exchange for straightening out my brother. I knew they had similar bargains with the rest of Y4’s crew.

  Silence. Maybe they weren’t even here anymore. Maybe they were being punished. They’d abandoned Y4 once before, to chase after an escaped prisoner of theirs. I’d destroyed the stored blood in their absence, rather than let it get stolen. There’d been a war on—it made sense at the time.

  But if I’d known I’d be condemning my mom— I waved my badge across the reader again, angrily. “Let me in!”

  “Why?” Darkness coalesced over my head like a tiny storm, bringing back bad memories.

  “I want in. I want my old job back.” I took a step back so they couldn’t rain on me. I didn’t want them to touch me—if they washed over me, they’d know my heart in an instant. And it was still in their power to erase parts of my mind.

  “You have nothing we want anymore, human, and we’re shunning you, besides.” The darkness began to drift away, like blowing smoke.

  “Come on—” I pleaded with the ceiling tiles. If I hadn’t just come straight over after seeing my mom, I never would have said it, but— “Isn’t there anything I can trade you?”

  The remnants of the cloud stilled, looking like a thin membrane overhead. “You know who we were looking for?” The thing that embodied their presence thrummed in time with their speech, looking like gray lung tissue shuddering back and forth with unholy breath.

  “No. Who?”

  “Santa Muerte. She is still missing. Should you find her, then we may talk.”

  Done with talking, and done with me, the wisp of gray evaporated.

  I didn’t know how the hell I was going to be able to find something—or someone—that the Shadows couldn’t even find. Them sending me off on some goose chase was not a feasible answer. Dammit to hell—

  A crew of three
people, none of whom I recognized as a former co-worker, were returning in scrubs from the taco truck. They were surprised to see me there, and one of them waved a badge in front of the door.

  If I could just get downstairs—I might know someone who was on P.M. shift right now. If I explained what was going on with me, what had happened to my mom—everyone down there who was on staff was human. They all still had beating hearts.

  As the elevator doors opened for them, I tried to step in alongside them. One of them blocked me. “I just want to go down—” I said by way of explanation, trying to sound innocent and kind.

  The man who blocked me shook his head. “No you don’t. Trust me.”

  “No, really, I do. You don’t know me but—” I held the door open as his smile got tighter. “Please, it’s just—”

  “You’re not authorized.” The one nearest me gently pried my hand off the door. I let him because I didn’t know what else to do—fighting with them was not going to help my case.

  Without my hand, the elevator doors closed, taking them away.

  I looked up to the ceiling, where the Shadows had been. “This isn’t the last of me,” I told them.

  But if I didn’t think of things, fast, and make some miracles happen, it might be the end of my mom.

  CHAPTER THREE

  What was I even talking about? Or thinking of?

  I pulled my little Chevy into the parking lot of my new apartment “home.” How could I explain things to her if my plan actually worked? Yeah, Mom, just stay still while I inject you with this strange red stuff. And if you feel a little like eating raw meat afterward, I won’t blame you.

  I’d met daytimers before, the servants of the vampires who had only gotten a drop of blood. They were mostly miserable people, scrabbling for their owner’s favor to survive. I couldn’t condemn my mother to that existence, even if I could get my hands on vampire blood.

  This evening had been a fool’s errand, just an excuse to keep the denial rolling, doing something, keeping up pretense, instead of giving up again.

  I walked up the stairs to my place on the second floor and opened the door. Minnie, my Siamese, still loved me. She wound around my ankles as I stumbled to my couch.

  Moving had been a top priority once I’d gotten a new job, so as to avoid any unwanted visitors in the middle of a full moon night. My new place was the upper right half of an older fourplex near the south side of the city.

  The only decoration I had on the wall was a giant silver cross. The couch I sat on had most likely fallen off a werewolf’s truck, and the mattress in my bedroom had been recently turned upside down to hide the stab wounds—stab wounds that had probably been meant for me, but I hadn’t gotten to ask the stabber about them at the time. The world I’d been in had been a dangerous place. I’d barely gotten out alive. It was no place to send my mom, even if I could figure out how.

  I pulled out my phone and called a few numbers, though—the denial train continued. I went through my address book and dialed old friends. Asher the shapeshifter had helped me out more than I deserved, and I called him first. I left a message on his voice mail. “Hey. I know I’m shunned. But I’ve got a problem—and, as usual, a stupid plan. Call me back.”

  Then I called Anna, the vampire who was partially alive, and the one who’d initiated my shunning for my own good. I got a high-pitched beeping, like a fax machine calling, from her old line. I dialed it again, hoping against hope that I’d misdialed and this time she’d pick up.

  Nothing. Just more faxing beeps. I stared at the useless phone line. I guessed vampires didn’t have to worry about early termination fees.

  Lastly, I called Sike, the only daytimer I’d ever been fond of. I got the three rising beeps saying that her phone was disconnected—dead—which made sense because so was she.

  I didn’t know how to get ahold of anyone else without stalking Y4 directly, which I figured the Shadows would put an end to as soon as they realized I was camped outside. And I didn’t want to tempt them to wipe my memory.

  I reluctantly pulled out my laptop. If the Shadows were going to offer me a needle-in-a-haystack’s chance of help, well, I was stupid enough to try to take it. For now. But I knew that in my current state the Internet could be dangerous for me—I was only one bad search away from staying up all night going from WebMD to crank sites, and winding up at dawn trying to convince myself that my mom’d get better if only she drank her own pee.

  I carefully typed in Santa Muerte and swore to myself I would have the strength to leave the rest of the Internet alone. I was surprised to be rewarded with a few hundred pages of hits.

  Santa Muerte—the literal translation “Saint Death”—did exist. At least as much as the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. She looked a lot like the Virgin Mary, except for the fact that she was a skeleton inside of her voluminous robes, with a skull-head and bone-hands. Anyone could pray to her—and there were tons of people who felt neglected by the Catholic Church who did. She was the patron saint of the downtrodden. Prisoners, gunrunners, drug dealers, assassins, kidnappers—a saint for people who had to assume God was going to disapprove of their life choices, but who still felt a need to pray.

  If disenfranchised people prayed to her for aid, she was my kind of deity. “If you’re not too busy helping murderers, maybe you could get off your lazy Saint-ass and heal my mom,” I told my computer screen while I clicked through to the next page.

  While Santa Muerte was interesting conceptually, she didn’t seem to be of any current help to me. I doubted the Shadows were chasing a nebulous concept. They’d been holding someone physically imprisoned who had then escaped, which implied an actual person, someone who probably liked the name. Being the Saint of Death sounded majestic and grim, no matter what language it was in.

  Once I got away from abstractions, there were a thousand other things she could be. If she was even a she. I snorted. She could be anything. A person whom they’d trapped, an ancient vampire, or some unknown werecreature. A cryptid. I knew there were weird things in the world now, things I hadn’t even imagined existing a year ago. Santa Muerte was just the final piece of strange straw on the were-camel’s back.

  I closed my laptop’s lid and curled into a ball on my couch, and when Minnie came over to snuggle me, I didn’t push her away. I must have fallen asleep there, because the next thing I knew my phone was ringing in my hand.

  “Hello?” I mumbled. I hadn’t looked at the incoming call on purpose. Then I could pretend it was someone who could help me, calling me back.

  Instead I got the peeved voice of the receptionist at the sleep clinic that I’d left hanging for my night shift. “I don’t suppose you’re coming in to work tonight?”

  “No,” I told her, and hung up.

  * * *

  There was no way to get back to sleep after that. I couldn’t believe that my mother had cancer. A couple of months. Less than a year. By this time next year, I’d be … without a mom.

  It was too horrible to grasp. I tried to do things to distract myself, seeing as feeling bad for myself or her wasn’t going to help. I read books without reading them, flipping pages at random. I tried to watch a comedy, but the whimsical acting felt like an insult to my current life.

  As I wandered around my place, I wished I had someone to talk to about things. I didn’t mean to be a loner, but that’s just how it was. My zombie boyfriend had left town months ago, and I couldn’t see the werewolf I’d briefly dated—one-night-standed—again, after the shun. Same thing for Asher. I was tempted to call him up again regardless, but leaving repeated messages on his voice mail would be too pathetic for words.

  I just wasn’t good at keeping track of people. The fact that no one ever seemed to keep track of me either was not lost on me. I’d never known how to relate to the real world, or myself; I’d just run from crisis to crisis trying to even things out. Fix my parents’ divorce, fix my addict brother, fix my patients at work—with all the placating and atoning I was doi
ng, in a previous life I must have been an asshole. I’d managed to maintain a vague sense of self via helping people, and in return it gave me a feeling that I had a semblance of control.

  But losing my mom would send me reeling. I could feel it. Everything beginning to spin away.

  I went back to my room and poured the Ambien out of my pill bottle. I popped two of them, drank a full glass of water, and surprise! It was eight A.M.

  I woke up normal, only remembering that I’d been upset about something and what was it, when memories hit me in the stomach like a physical blow. I reached for the Ambien again and spilled them out to count them.

  I could just stay in bed. They said that Elvis had a diet where he took sleeping pills so he wouldn’t get up and eat. I wondered how long that’d work for me. Just because I’d lost fifteen pounds didn’t mean I was thin—as long as I drank some water with my pills, I could probably keep going on stored fat for an easy week. I’d be like Sleeping Beauty, up until I got evicted.

  If I remembered right, I’d sort of quit my job yesterday. It wasn’t too late to call in and play the I-just-found-out-my-mom-got-cancer excuse. They were nice to me there, even if the work was slow.

  I tried to imagine myself going in tonight, though. Sitting in the small video booth, listening to people snore, thinking about my mom, all alone.

  That wasn’t going to be healthy for me. Worse even than double-Ambiening it for a few day-nights.

  I shoved myself to sitting and reached for my computer.

  There were tons of nursing jobs on Craigslist, mostly wanting experience that I didn’t have. I sent my résumé out anyway, scattershot, just to give me something to do. And then I cleaned my place—it was bigger than the old one, but funkier too, so my rent had stayed pretty much the same after I’d moved. The hardwood floors meant that Minnie’s hair had collected in tufts in the corners of the living room. Suddenly hunting all of these down seemed monumentally important, and I set myself on the task industriously.