“Oh,” I said. Of course, I already knew this, as it was one of the reasons my then foster mother had taken me in for my first gynecological visit at age thirteen.
“Why didn’t you mention this before now?”
“It didn’t seem like a conversation we needed to have.” I sat up and untangled myself from him. “Anyway, most men run from these kinds of conversations like you’d asked them to donate their testicles. Buying tampons is pretty much the equivalent of a Purple Heart in our social currency.”
He shot me a strange smile as he pulled up and fastened his pants. “If blood bothered me, I’d be in the wrong line of work.”
It was a grin I couldn’t return. This reminder of his chosen profession retrieved a measure of my forgotten fear.
“My sister was able to have kids, you know,” he continued. “Those were the nieces and nephews I was watching in Tahoe.”
I recalled the chirping voices of Maddy and Caden in the background of the terse phone conversations we’d had when I was dealing with a suicidal Easter bunny.
Liam Whatshisface, Vegas mob hit man and part time nanny.
Until this point, the aspect of my diagnosis hadn’t even been a question. Single still at thirty and with a thriving therapy practice, I had scooted the possibility further and further away.
“Do you want them?” Liam asked.
I fished my bra from the front seat and fastened it behind my back. “Do I want what?”
“Kids.”
“Are you serious?”
He shrugged, the casual gesture incongruous with the topic of conversation. “I’m just curious.”
“We are not talking about this.” I opened the door and got out and walked around to the front seat, figuring this would be easier than making a second expedition over the armrest.
Liam followed suit. “Don’t most married couples talk about whether they want kids?”
“Most married couples didn’t meet when one party was abducting the other. Also, most married couples don’t defraud the government by filing marriage paperwork with a forged signature.”
“Details.” He turned the engine over and backed out of the parking lot. The sea receded to a moonlit strip on the dark horizon.
I slid a sideways glance at his profile. “I take it you haven’t put through the annulment?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Busy finding a place for my mother to live. Busy tracking down information about whomever it was determined to get at Rolly through me. It was these realizations that kept me from nudging the conversation further. And anyway, in light of all that had happened, a fake marriage to a hit man was the least of my worries. “Okay.”
“I meant what I said.”
I found I was almost afraid to ask. “About what?”
“Stopping.” Streetlights washed across the windshield, turning the raindrops into starbursts. “Seems like a fair trade. I stop doing something you don’t like if you stop doing something I don’t like.”
“It’s the opposite of fair. You’re using my desire to prevent other people from being harmed to force me to do something I don’t want to do. It’s manipulation.”
“It’s effective.”
Irritation at him surged through my bloodstream, bringing with it a prickling sensation at the back of my neck. That same, gnawing buzz crept upward from the base of my skull.
Then came the whispers.
His face. He hurt me. He—
“Take me back to the inn.” My hands tightened into fists, the pain of nails digging into my palm a sensation I could cling to. “And hurry.”
*****
“You said,” I paused, gripping the bedpost against a wave of vertigo before I could continue. “You said you could make them stop.”
Sinpants and I were alone in my bedroom. Dean and Kim still out chasing ghosts and Liam waiting down in the foyer. What I had to say, I didn’t want to be overheard, judged, or evaluated for an indication of mental deterioration on my part.
“And I did,” Sinpants insisted. “I didn’t say for how long.” He lingered near the fireplace, eyeing the breeches I had clutched against my chest. I had yet to offer them up officially—an act Sinpants informed me was necessary in order for the transfer to count. “It be symbolical,” he had said.
“That was not the deal. I said I would get you your pants and you said you would get rid of the spirits. How did you get them to stay away while we were at the museum?”
He looked down toward his boots and stroked a hand across his chin. “I told them ye were helpin’ me get me breeches.”
“And they agreed to stay away just for that?”
“That.” He cleared his throat. “And I told them that ye’d help them all when ye got back.”
“You what?”
“Well, you bein’ a professional head swabber n’ all. I thought ye’d do a right jack-fancy job o’ helpin’ them finish their business, so to speak.”
“I help humans! And the occasional leprechaun or suicidal rabbit. I do not do ghosts!”
“What be the difference?” he asked.
“The difference? The difference?” I scrambled, looking for a solid excuse to fling at him. Among the rejected:
It’s not just me who can see them. Nope. Felicitous Firecratch McWhiskeybottom had taught me leprechauns, along with many other supernatural beasties, could be invisible if they chose.
I can close my door and keep them out. Scratch that. I had replaced more doors in the past months than a housing contractor.
I can maintain professional distance between my feelings and theirs. Except for when Adonis zaps you with insta-lust and you shatter Sigmund’s fish tank riding him to kingdom come.
Perhaps Liam had a point about the fallout from my paranormal clients. I sagged onto the edge of the mattress and wiped a tear away with the crusty leather.
The bed failed to depress when Sinpants seated himself beside me.
“Come on, Doctor. It be a great service you’re doin’. Just think of all those lonely souls ye could set free. Ye’d be a saint, you would.”
“I’d sooner be the patron saint against pirate attacks,” I snorted.
“Tharr’s really a patron saint against pirate attacks?”
I nodded. “I forget the name though.”
“Just as well.” He laid a ghostly hand on my knee, chilling the flesh beneath. “Ye can do this, Doctor. I just knows it.”
“I’m afraid,” I admitted.
“Ain’t nothin’ to be scared of. Look.” He brought the cleaver out from behind his back and chopped through my thigh like it was a summer sausage.
I was halfway across the room with my own scream ringing in my ears before I registered his rumbling laughter. “Ye’ve nothin’ to be afraid of, Doctor. We can’t do a thing to ye, no matter how much we blusters.”
I swung my arm and pretended to sling the breeches into the crackling fireplace.
“No!” he bellowed.
“Kidding,” I said, refolding the leather over my arm. “This is why we use our words to communicate.”
“See? Ye’re teachin’ me things already. I’ll go to me afterlife a right sophisticatedly gentleman.”
“What about the book you threw at Crixus? I saw it hit him.”
“Books ain’t living things,” he explained. “And Crixus ain’t human. The same rules as applies to you don’t applies to him.”
This sentiment, I readily agreed with.
I took a deep breath and walk backed over to the bed. “So how do we do this?”
“Just hold out the pants, and says something official-like, so’s they know ye’re giving them to me of your own accord.”
“All right. Ricardo Sin Pantalones—”
“Wait!” Gaybeard shot through the fireplace, his sword stabbing between us. “Ye can’t set him free!”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he be my unfinished business! If he crosses over, I’ll be havin’ to go too.” He lo
oked paler than usual under the dusting of white powder. His wig had migrated toward his shoulder, taking his hat with it. He looked sad and scared, just another person with a tired mask.
“It’s time,” I told him. “I know you’re afraid now, but what’s next for you is better than anything you can imagine here.”
“How do you know? Ye’ve never died, have ye?”
I was on the point of agreeing with him when I remembered my run-in with the business end of some nasty leprechaun magic. “Actually,” I said. “I have.”
“Well, no wonder ye sees us so clearly, then,” Sinpants said, clapping a hand through my shoulder. “Ye’ve been to the other side!”
“Not for long. I was barely dead at all, really.”
Thanks to Crixus. I felt a pang of guilt and regret. He hadn’t returned since I had gone to fetch Liam and Dean. I imagined our next conversation would be less than pleasant.
“But what if they don’t like me?” Gaybeard asked. “What if they make fun of me hat?”
“Awk! Sissypants goodfernothing!” the parrot on Gaybeard’s shoulder croaked. I wondered how many other insults he had absorbed over their long years.
“Then they’ll be tradin’ words with ol’ Cap’n Keelhaul before they can say blow me meat cannon!” Sinpants followed his assurance with a wave of the same cleaver he’d hacked into my leg.
“Ye’d do that fer me?” A tear cut a flesh-colored track down Gaybeard’s powdery face.
“O’course. We buccaneers gots to stick together, ain’t we?”
Gaybeard pounced on Sinpants and wrapped him in a hug. “I be mighty sorry I run you through all those times.”
“All’s forgiven. But—” Sinpants peeled a lacy cuff from his still-naked butt “—
hands above the waist, me hearty.”
“Old habits.” Gaybeard winked his unpatched eye and adjusted his dusty cravat.
“Ready then?”
Sinpants and Gaybeard looked at each other, then nodded. “Aye,” said the latter. “We be ready.”
“Ricardo Sin Pantalones,” I said, holding out the breeches. “I offer you these pants as a thank you for a life will-lived, and pronounce your business in this earthly realm finished.”
Unbearable brightness poured into the room, into my heart, filling everything until there was no part of the entire world untouched. In that moment, I knew I was part of it. Part of everything. We all were. Sinpants and Gaybeard. Crixus and Liam. Every particle of every thing that had strayed beneath the sun.
“Ooh!” cooed Gaybeard. “It tingles!”
“Awk! Fire in the hole!”
Light erupted from Sinpants’s smile, shrinking his silhouette until there was nothing left but these two words: “Bless ye.”
“Be at peace,” I whispered, hoping it may prove true for us all.
*****
“So, I see you two found each other after all.” Ruth Hilliker rose from the sofa opposite from Liam.
I set my luggage down in the entryway, having decided I had had more than enough vacation to last me for a while. I’d slipped a note with my contact information beneath the door to Kim’s room, hoping Dean might be with her when she found it. “It appears we did.”
“Did what?” Liam looked up from the copy of Treasure Island he was leafing through.
“Found each other,” I said.
“It will take a hell of a lot more than a couple states to make me not find you, lady.” It struck me as a challenge he might like to take on.
“Leaving us so soon?” Mrs. Hilliker asked, looking at my suitcase. “But you didn’t even get to meet my Charlie. You must come back and visit us again.”
“I’d love to.”
“You’d love to what?” Liam asked.
“Come back here. Like Mrs. Hilliker was saying.” I smiled at her, half wanting to apologize for Liam’s slight.
“Who?” Liam rose from the couch—and walked right through her.
Mrs. Hilliker smiled and wiggled her eyebrows.
I opened mouth and closed it again. “Never mind. How would you feel about taking a side trip?”
“Sure,” he said, picking up my suitcase. “Where we headed?”
“Connecticut.” I shrugged on my jacket and closed the door after me as we stepped out into the early dawn. “I think there are a couple things I need to ask my mother.”
<<<>>>
To be continued…
Don’t miss Matilda Schmidt in Undeadly, coming October 2014!
About the author:
Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. Though her early work debuted to mixed reviews, she never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master's degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren.
Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she started writing instead. When she's not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she's hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. She lives in Colorado with the love of her life and three surly cats.
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Table of Contents
Other Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist Novellas:
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the author:
Unassailable: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #5 (The Case Files of Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist) Page 9
