by J. F. Lewis
I hit play. Ilsa begged Sam to play “As Time Goes By” and he did. I stopped the movie again. I was wasting time. Roger was out there plotting against me and I was watching old movies. All I had to do, if I believed Jill, was to run on over to the Highland Towers and pick up a magic rock that could make me immortal…and I was watching old movies.
“Even if you did come back to life,” I told the glowing cube, “even if you did still love me, it wouldn’t be the same. Knowing what I know. I mean, I might forget in time. It’s…”
I seized the cube. It felt warm in my hand. I held it long enough for the warmth to work its way through my fingers and seep into my palm, pretending that I was holding Marilyn’s hand, not just her soul in a box.
“I had to save you from the demon, Marilyn.” I turned the cube over and over in my hand, the purple light mixing with the blue from the projector and coming out red, which should have been impossible, but you can never tell with magic. “But you’re still dead. I talked to Magbidion and he says that’s really you in there. He can’t tell where you’re going to go when I let you out, though. I’ll avenge you or whatever, but I can’t just keep you here in this cube. I suppose what I’m saying is: I hope you don’t burn in Hell, but if you do—it’s on you.
“You make your decisions in life, in my case, unlife, and you hope you do the right thing. We never had Paris, but we’ll always have…” What? The backseat of a Mustang? Roger? A stolen moment on the sidewalk as cold dead ghosts? “Aw, fuck it.” Marilyn’s cube shattered in my hand with less pressure than it takes to crush a soda can.
She hovered before me, bathed in conflicting colors, purple, blue, red, orange. Where the colors touched they disobeyed the color wheel. The blood magic all over the stage didn’t mysteriously bring her back to life. She didn’t smile at me and float up into the sky with a choir of angels. She didn’t even get to haunt the Pollux like I’d secretly hoped.
She screamed, wreathed in spectral flame, and I knew which direction she was headed.
I couldn’t watch. The walk back up the stairs to the projection booth took under a second. My speed, activated by the stress, put me into fast-forward, prolonging the moment. Ages passed while I waited for the player to eject Casablanca. Marilyn dwindled by fractions while I swapped movies. By the time Singin’ in the Rain had loaded and begun to play, Marilyn was gone. I sat down in the dark and watched the movie. What else could I do?
I’d gotten to Cosmo’s “Make ’em laugh” routine when one of the theater doors opened. It was the wrong time for Talbot to saunter in smelling like Tabitha.
“Hi, slut,” I quoted Rachel. “Where you been?”
“You’re angry,” he said neutrally.
“What gave me away? The eyes?” I pointed to the purple glow. “Yeah, they used to go red more often than purple. I think it’s the whole sex kitten mind control thing screwing it all up, but I haven’t asked Rachel yet.”
“Where is Rachel?” he asked.
“Asleep,” I answered. “Humans do that.”
“So do most vampires.” Talbot advanced down the aisle. Smell is a powerful agent of memory. I smelled fluids on him that Tabitha shouldn’t have had anymore. “How long has it been since you slept? Even you need one or two hours of dead time—”
“You smell like Tabitha.” I picked up El Alma Perdida.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on her.” He tried to shrug it off. “Welcome—”
“And a cock in her,” I spat.
“—back.” He winced. “She’s not your girlfriend anymore.”
My anger simmered. “What happened with Tabitha?” A whisper would have been loud in comparison, I spoke so softly.
He didn’t answer right away, taking time instead to look around and survey the theater, making sure no one else could hear. “I fucked up, man.” The words leapt desperately from his lips and I was just as curious as he was to see how I was going to react to them. “She can turn into a cat, like you can, but when she does it, her heart beats, her body temp rises, and she breathes, okay? She moves like a cat, the whole deal. It’s obviously a favored form thing or something like it. The first time it happened, she came on to me…It may have been postmortem stress—I didn’t think it was, but from the way she tore up my car later, it easily could have been.”
“Was she a cat or a human when you did it?” I asked.
Letting his eyes close, he let out a long sigh. Booming, thundering heartbeats resounded in his chest and blood rushed through his veins like it needed to go as fast as it could because in a few moments it was going to stop forever.
“Which time?”
“I don’t have to kill you, you know,” I said acidly.
“Eric, you’re sleeping with her sister.” His tone made it clear that he was hoping I’d just let it go. “It’s not like you were pining after her.”
I walked down the aisle toward him. “That’s why I’m not mad at her. She can do whatever she wants. Did you know Marilyn’s soul got stolen by a demon?”
“No, but I’m sure we can get it back.”
“Did that. Broke the containment cube about an hour ago. Watched her get sucked into Hell.”
“That’s harsh, but what happened to her soul is not your fault.”
I cocked the gun. “I know. Did you know that Roger came back from the dead again? That a demon brought him back?” I aimed the gun.
“Shit. I suppose you could’ve used my help with that.” He took off his sunglasses. “Look. Just do whatever you’re going to do.” He braced himself to accept his punishment. I had no idea what I was going to do. It’s not like I was ever really going to shoot him.
“What is that thing anyway?” asked the voice of John Paul Courtney. “Is it a werecat, one of them rakshasa things, or what?” Thank God for interruptions.
I could tell that Talbot saw him, too, the ghostly cowboy sitting front and center in the mezzanine, looking down on Talbot and me.
“He’s a mouser,” I answered.
“Where I come from, that’s just another name for a cat,” Courtney drawled.
“Shut the hell up!” I snarled up at him. “They didn’t even have penicillin when you were alive. What the fuck do you know about anything?”
“I know a lot about werewolves.” He took my ranting in stride. Like before, the more angry I became, the greater the sense of bemusement I got from the ghost. He disappeared between sentences, reappearing on my left. His sidelong glance was ruined when his head lolled over again, but he kept talking. “And I know this. You’ve got a good soul. It’s why your eyes are still so blue.” He straightened his head and jammed it back into place, taking a hard, close look at Talbot. “Never seen anythin’ like it in all my born days. So since I don’t know anythin’, why don’t you be the one to educate me? What is a mouser?”
In any other situation, I wouldn’t have blown Talbot’s secret, but I was angry. “Okay, you’re right. He’s a cat.”
“You let a glorified house cat steal your sweetheart?” Courtney jeered.
“Okay, Statler. Not one more fucking word out of you or you’re going to be one dead muppet.”
“What’s a muppet?” Courtney asked. I lost it. Vampires can’t touch ghosts, but I’m not just a vampire. Color leached from my skin as the blue glow rushed in when my solidity left me. El Alma Perdida was still in my hand.
Talbot went wide to the far aisle, steering clear of me. “Eric, what the hell?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I popped off a shot at John Paul Courtney and wondered if the bullet would hurt a ghost since ghosts could touch it. The bullet sailed through his stomach and embedded in the ceiling.
“It cain’t suck up my soul, boy,” Courtney assailed with a laugh. “I ain’t no werewolf. You can club me with the barrel, though. Any Courtney can touch El Alma Perdida no matter what form they’re in. It belongs to the family.”
I drifted up as he spoke, my desire to reach him, to wipe the smile off his face, enough to send me
into the air. A parody of the song from Disney’s Peter Pan went through my head: Just think of a terrible thought. Any evil little thought.
Ghostflight didn’t work like winged flight. I sailed right past John Paul and plunged intangibly through the seats, losing my grip on El Alma Perdida in the process. It landed in one of the seats through which I’d passed. Leaving the gun where it was, I tried for Courtney again, again sailing right past him, coming up short of phasing through the ceiling. I rotated in the air to face him.
“You don’t want to fight me, son,” John Paul said. “I’ve been tied to that gun and this family for a lotta years. I’ve fought my share of ghosts along the way and—”
He let out an “oof” as I soared into him, arms wide in a tackle. We plunged through the mezzanine and into the lower seats.
“You cain’t kill me again, Eric.” Courtney slammed a knee into my stomach and it hurt; the pain was real. I smiled. It had been forty years since being injured hurt properly. Vampiric nerve endings don’t register pain beyond the initial injuries. Cut us and it hurts, but the wound doesn’t continue to ache unless you tear it open again.
“I cain’t rest until the curse has run its course.” He punched me twice in the back of the head and I let go with a snarl.
“What curse?” I backed away from him, waiting for my head to clear.
“The one I cain’t tell you about.”
“Can you guys hold on while I go get some popcorn?” Talbot called.
John Paul Courtney glared at Talbot in shock. “You can really see me? Ain’t nobody hardly ever able to see me.”
Talbot opened his mouth to reply but didn’t bother. I hit JPC square on the jaw, knocking his head back over his shoulders, where it dangled loosely at his back. My knuckles didn’t hurt as badly as they should have, but I chalked that one up to John Paul’s Nearly Headless Nick syndrome.
“Dude,” Talbot exclaimed, partially covering his eyes with his fingers, “that’s not right.”
Hammering Courtney’s stomach with blow after blow, I forced him back through the wall and into the lobby. We stood under the lights in front of the empty concession stand. “Well, what can you tell me, Hopalong, because you popping up to heckle me is getting pretty damn tiresome.”
He held up his hand and I waited while he snapped his neck back into place. “I can tell you this.” He stomped down on my foot, following it up with a right cross that sent me toward the ticket booth inside the foyer.
“I appeared to you for a few reasons, one of which was this: When you fought the werewolves of Orchard Lake, you didn’t use El Alma Perdida on them—you showed discretion. They weren’t evil. They were God-fearin’ folk, skinchangers or no. Later, when you used my gun against Roger, you fired it at evil in defense of the righteous.”
He held his arm out to his side and El Alma Perdida materialized in his outstretched hand. “That made your business my business,” he said as he holstered the gun. “You put yourself on the right path and seeing as how you’re Courtney blood, that means I can help you, but it don’t mean that I have to.”
“I don’t want your help,” I snarled.
“Then you don’t get my gun.”
“Fine.” I resumed my material form, eyes glowing red. Even the warmth of my newly re-formed clothes didn’t take the edge off of my anger. “Keep the damn thing, but don’t bother me, either.”
“Son,” Courtney tipped back his hat and looked down at the marble tile, “this doesn’t have to be hard. You know the demon’s lying to ya. You know he’s up to no good. All I want you to do is take yer foot outta the dern bear trap. Turn aside from the demon’s offer and—”
“You don’t know me very well, J. P.” Talbot walked through the theater doors and we both stared at him.
“You two keep on fighting,” Talbot told us, hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m just watching.”
“When I see a bear trap, when I know that everybody around me thinks I don’t see it, I don’t walk around it.” I took three steps forward. “I don’t skirt the danger. I ram my foot down harder just to spite them. And you know what, John?”
“What?”
“Nine times out of ten, the bear trap loses.”
Courtney smiled. “Courtney through and through. I’ll be watching, Eric.”
“What?” I asked. “You can just be around?”
“I can manifest near anybody that’s fired El Alma Perdida and to anyone of Courtney blood. I got you both ways, boy.” He faded away in the same burst of light as before.
“Guess I’m stuck with him,” I told Talbot.
“Yep,” came an echoing reply from the disembodied ghost.
El Alma Perdida appeared on the concession counter and I picked it up. “I thought you were taking this?”
“I can’t go too far with it anyway,” Courtney admitted in a disconsolate tone.
“I like him,” Talbot said, grinning.
It was either take a swing at Talbot, too, shoot him, or cut my losses and get on with my bear trap. Since I didn’t want to start in on him again about the Tabitha thing, I stepped toward the front doors, stopping with my hand on the glass.
“I’m supposed to go get something from the Highland Towers for a demon,” I said. “I’m going to go over there and beat the shit out of people until I remember what it was.” I looked at Talbot. “You coming?”
He didn’t answer so I moved on.
“Wait. We’re doing what?” Talbot burst out of the door behind me. And just like that, I was forgiven for being an ass. I wonder what Talbot sees in me.
“We’re taking your car.”
“Why?”
“It’ll be light out in a few hours. Mine might catch on fire.”
“Wait,” Talbot asked again, “it might what?”
I opened the front door of the Pollux and sensed Tabitha. “Jesus, I just can’t get a break tonight.” The click clack of her heels on the sidewalk was the loudest sound. She crossed the street as I sat down on the bench in front of the Pollux. The pad of cat feet softly disappeared toward the back of the theater. Obviously, Talbot didn’t want anything to do with whatever happened next. “Coward,” I mumbled.
19
TABITHA: IN HIS ARMS
Snow doesn’t last long in Void City. During the day it had mostly melted away, but a small patch was clinging to its icy state in the shadow of the bench, close to the base of the Pollux. Eric didn’t seem to notice or care. I’d parked the Lotus Phillip had given me next to the police signs warning that the street was closed. Eric still hadn’t redyed his hair. God, my thoughts were jumbled just looking at him. Phillip, Winter, they didn’t act like people anymore…even Dennis, in his quest to become a vampire, was already so fake. But Eric…Eric was still Eric and he always would be. He wasn’t perfect, but he was real and without him…I could see myself becoming just like the vampires at the Highland Towers, a caricature of me.
“Hi,” I said lamely.
“What?” Eric asked.
“Did Talbot—” I stumbled over my words, “make it back okay?” What do I say to you, Eric? Can we just talk, please?
“If it’s pussy you want, go to a pet store and get your own. Leave mine alone,” Eric said.
“What are you even talking about? No. I was just…” El Alma Perdida rested on his lap. He put a defensive hand on it when he caught me looking. “Why are you carrying that around?”
“Because my magic ice sword is in the closet.”
“No, seriously.”
“Because if I leave it unattended, someone always finds it and shoots me with it. I need to get a holster.” His nostrils flared. “Why do you smell like you?”
I stepped closer. “Who else would I smell like?” Can we talk please? I think I made a mistake and I don’t know how to tell you. I never should have left.
Eric seized my wrist and jerked me forward, pulling me off balance. He buried his nose in my crotch. Too shocked to act like a vampire, I struggled ineffectively
. “What the fuck? Eric, let me go!”
“Every woman has a unique smell. It goes away when you die. You still smell like you. It’s…nice.”
His grip relaxed and I slapped his face. He caught my hand and held it against his cheek. “How’d you get so warm just from feeding?”
My vampire speed wouldn’t kick in. I’d been practicing seeming human in the car on the way over and it still had me sluggish. I’d gone full out, heartbeat, saliva, warmth, breath. I’d even eaten a breath mint. My heart beat a few times, little skips as it slowed down. Eric heard it as clearly as I felt it, I could see the surprise in his eyes. I knew I should have waited in the car for twenty more minutes.
“Your heart just beat.” Eric put his hand on my breast and my heart beat again. He stood, letting El Alma Perdida tumble toward the ground. “I felt it.” He caught the gun with his left hand.
“Get off of me!” I shoved him hard, used to having vampire strength, but that wasn’t back yet, either. I stumbled backward.
“You did something to yourself. When a vampire feeds, the bones stay cold. You’re warm to the core.”
“Eric, stop it.”
“You smell like more fluids than blood.” It was an accusation. He kissed me and I responded. “Even your tongue is warm. You taste alive.”
I turned it all back on, body heat, saliva, the works.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “And how?”
“It’s my talent. I can be nearly alive.” He watched the pinkness creeping back into my complexion. I forced blood back into my veins, made it flow like it was supposed to. Pins and needles ran along my arms and legs. “There’s pain in the beginning when I go this lifelike, but it’s worth it.” I took a compact out of my handbag and showed Eric my reflection. “Do you like?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.” I ran my warm hands along his cold shoulders, across his chest, and he shuddered. His skin was like ice, but I didn’t mind. I’d warm him.
