by Hannah Jayne
There was no sound except the drumming of rain on metal and the thundering beat of my heart. I peeled my aching hands from the steering wheel and gulped lungfuls of air, waiting impatiently for the imminent post-traumatic-experience heart attack. When it didn’t come I clicked off my seat belt and pressed my forehead against the cool window glass, my gaze sweeping over the desolate highway. Mr. Bright Lights was long gone.
I looked at the cement wall a hairbreadth from my car and realized that I could have been gone, too. Gone—dead.
The tears started to pool again and I rested my head on my steering wheel, crying until my heartbeat had resumed its normal, steady beat, until I was numb to the horror of a complete stranger in an SUV trying to kill me on a deserted stretch of San Francisco highway.
I started my car and exited the freeway, turning around and heading home. My arms felt as though I had just completed a marathon workout session; it felt like it took hours to drive the eleven miles back to my apartment. I don’t think I took a breath until my car was parked in my designated spot and my feet were back on solid ground.
“My God, what happened to you? You look horrible!” Nina shrieked when I pushed open the apartment door.
I watched Alex give her an annoyed look, gently flicking her shoulder. “I mean, are you feeling better?” she corrected with a forced smile.
I dumped my sweatshirt on the floor and flopped onto the couch, Nina and Alex surrounding me, looking concerned but confused.
“Look, Lawson,” Alex started, taking his hand in mine. “This thing about your dad ... well, we don’t know for sure that he was hunting the Vessel. Or why.”
I pulled my hand away from his. “It’s not that—at least not right now.” I looked from Alex’s cobalt eyes to Nina’s coal-black ones. “Someone just tried to kill me!”
Nina frowned, halfway through tucking a fuzzy pink blanket over my shoulders. “Again?”
I ignored her. “On 280. I was driving ... thinking ... and this guy slammed on his brakes right in front of me! I spun out and almost hit the wall. I was this close,” I held my thumb and forefinger a miniscule distance apart. “And then he just drove away. I guess he thought he accomplished his mission.” I felt my lower lip pop out crybaby style.
Nina looked slightly skeptical. “His mission being to kill you?”
I nodded, feeling the familiar lump in my throat. My eyes searched Alex’s. “Why does everyone want to kill me?”
“No one wants to kill you,” Alex said, rubbing my arm.
“Right,” Nina agreed, rubbing my other arm. “You know that most people have no idea how to drive. He probably didn’t even notice you were on the road.”
I shook away from both their patronizing arm rubs. “I was the only person on the road!” I snapped. “He knew I was there. He saw me. He looked directly at me—he glared at me.”
Alex sat back. “He glared at you? You saw him? What did he look like?”
I bit my lip. “Well, it was dark, so I couldn’t really see his expression that clearly. Or him. But I could feel he was glaring at me.”
“Through his car window.”
“Yes,” I said solemnly.
“In the dark.”
I nodded again.
Nina snorted, her effort to quell her laughter failing miserably. “I’m sorry!” she said.
I watched Alex’s bent head as he looked down; I watched the gentle vibration of his shoulders as he laughed silently. “Thank you both for your heartfelt concern.” I kicked the blanket off me and stood up, hands on hips. “Please remember it when you’re scraping me off two-eighty.”
I started to stomp toward my bedroom when I felt Alex’s soft hand on my shoulder. He squeezed gently and pulled me toward him, curling me into his chest. I kept my stern, angry composure for all of a millisecond while I melted into his warm, firm curves, while his arms slid around me, hands resting at the small of my back. Alex inclined his head so the tip of his chin brushed against my nose. His familiar cocoa-bean and cut-grass scent comforted me and I tried to remind myself that it was the safety of a trusted friend that was warming my heart; that the slow, delicious churning in my stomach had nothing to do with the way his body molded so perfectly against my curves. I stiffened immediately when I felt the hard coldness of Nina pressing up against me, her arms splayed in group-hug format, her head resting on my shoulder. “This moment is just so beautiful,” she murmured.
I broke away from our threesome and stared at Nina.
“You know, I think I am going to take this warm, fuzzy feeling outside.” She grabbed her purse and disappeared out the door, leaving Alex and I alone together in the silent apartment. We were still in a loose hug. I flushed and Alex straightened, then smiled. He pulled me close.
“This feels good,” he murmured.
I wanted to resist, but his arms around me were like warm chocolate. “It does,” I said finally.
“Look, Lawson, I—” Alex looked down at me and his cobalt eyes were deep, and soft. He licked his lips. “I just couldn’t take it if anything ever happened to you.”
I smiled. “I think I’ve proven I’m pretty resilient.”
Alex’s lips pushed up into his trademark half-smile and my stomach fluttered. He brushed my bangs from my forehead. “That, you have.” Alex leaned close to me, his soft curls lolling over his forehead. I drank in his warm scent and rolled up on my toes as his arms tightened around my waist, his lips brushed against mine, and then he was kissing me.
My head spun in delicious chaos as Alex’s palms caressed my back and he kissed and nibbled my lips, my ears, my neck. My heart thumped and I started to lose my breath and Alex broke away, raking a hand through his hair. His curls resettled in that perfectly tousled way.
“I should go,” he said quickly.
I looked at him, deflated, rejected. “Oh. Okay.”
He took my hand, squeezed it softly. His eyes were warm, sad. “I’m sorry, I just—I need to go.”
I hugged my arms to my chest, forced a smile. “Hey, no problem. Thanks for the information. I should go to bed now anyway.”
“That’s a good idea. We can take this up tomorrow.” Alex strode to the dining room table, began unzipping his backpack and stacking the books to go inside.
“Alex,” I started, once his back was to me. “What’s it like?”
He turned slowly. “What’s what like?”
I studied the carpet. “Heaven.”
The slow smile of memory spread across his lips, but his eyes were far away. “I can’t describe it.”
I sat down at the table and Alex followed suit. “Why?” I asked. “Are you not allowed or something?”
Alex slowly wagged his head from side to side and then looked at me. “There are no words.”
“Do you miss it?” I asked, my voice sounding small. “So you miss Heaven?”
Alex slid the leftover Chinese food boxes closer to him and plucked out a fortune cookie. He broke it, popped a piece in his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “Of course. It’s home. It’s all I’ve known for”—he shrugged, swallowed—“forever.”
“Oh.” I picked at a glob of solid grease on the dining-room table. “Is there anything you like about being here?”
One corner of Alex’s mouth turned up into a wry grin. “I like you.”
I blushed, went back to studying my table. “Thanks.”
“And the food.” Alex pushed the last bit of fortune cookie into his mouth. “I absolutely love the food. We didn’t have Chinese takeout like this when I was there last.”
I crumpled up a napkin and threw it across the table at him. He started sliding the books into his pack again until I put my hand flat on the table, pinning a single volume under my palm. “I’m keeping this one,” I said, my eyes firm and holding his.
Alex looked at the book. “You don’t need to ...”
I picked up my father’s journal and held it against my chest. “Yes, I do.”
Chapter Five
I slammed my hand against the nightstand again, trying to quell the infernal racket of the morning-show DJs cackling on my alarm clock. Instead I managed to knock the whole thing over. “Crap,” I muttered, sitting up in my bed.
It was just after six-thirty and the last time I looked at the clock—just before I fell asleep in the greying light of dawn—it was five-forty. My eyes stung and my eyelashes were clumped with bits of post-sleep goo. My cheeks felt tight from the hours of inexhaustible tears and the spine of my father’s journal was wedged into my rib cage, leaving an angry—though impressive—red indentation.
I made it to the bathroom without completely opening my eyes and yawned through a hot shower. It wasn’t until I was showered and pink and standing in front of my fogged-over bathroom mirror that I noticed it. In the snatches of clear mirror my reflection looked odd—my fire-engine red hair had a noticeably silver hue and rather than the usual wet-rat look of my post-shower curls, my hair fell in elegant long waves. I yanked off my towel and used it to scrub the steam from the mirror.
I looked at my reflection.
It looked back at me.
I ran a hand through my hair, patted my cheeks, leaned forward, and scrutinized myself.
My reflection did the same, and then it started laughing.
I jumped back, slipped on my discarded towel and steadied myself by ripping down the shower curtain. I landed in a naked vinyl heap on the bathroom floor, jaunty electric-blue shower-curtain fish swimming over my naked stomach.
“What the hell?” I screamed.
“Now, Sophie Annemarie Lawson. Watch your mouth. Hell is a heck of a place and you don’t want to mention it too much.”
I scrambled to my feet, steadying myself with both hands against the bathroom sink, then used one finger to poke at the offending mirror.
“That is so annoying. Now I know what all those poor fish feel like at the dentist’s office. Poke, poke, poke.”
I watched my grandmother’s index finger poke against the mirror glass, watched the windy ridges of her fingerprints smudge the inside of my mirror.
“Grandma?”
“Ah!” Grandma said from behind the glass. “She remembers me!”
I rubbed my head, looking behind me, trying to recall if my naked acrobatics had resulted in a head wound.
No such luck.
“Grandma, are you in the mirror?”
Grandma nodded slowly, her expression a combination of amusement and annoyance that I remembered from breaking curfew in my teen years.
I swallowed. “But you’re dead.”
“That’s my Sophie,” Grandma said, snapping her fingers. “Smart as a whip.”
“No,” I said again, my hands on hips. “You’re not here. You’re dead.”
Grandma crossed her arms in front of her chest, her lips set, her expression indignant. “And you’re naked. Really, Sophie, you amaze me. Is seeing your dead grandmother in your bathroom mirror really all that unbelievable? Really? Maybe we should ask your vampire roommate. Nina, is it? Nina ...”
Witches, I’m used to. Banshees, vampires, werewolves, trolls, hobgoblins, and other—provided that “other” was a corporeal being. My dead grandmother showing up in my bathroom mirror (and me being buck naked to receive her)—was odd. Very, very odd.
I pulled my bathrobe from the hook and yanked the belt tight around my waist. “What are you doing here?” I asked as I wrapped my hair in a towel turban. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you. Where are you?” I leaned in closer, peering around the sides of the mirror, trying to see behind her. “Are you in Heaven?”
Grandma raised an eyebrow. “No, I’m in your bathroom mirror.” She dragged another finger across the glass. “Which could use a very good cleaning, by the way. Really, Sophie, I haven’t been gone that long. I know I didn’t teach you to clean house like this,” she tsked.
“Can you come out here?” I stepped back, offering her a space.
“No. Specters—that’s what we are, specters—isn’t that just a darling way to refer to us? So much better than dead or afterlifers or life-retired. Anywho, specters can only be seen on shiny surfaces.”
“But why now?” I felt the sting of tears beginning to pool behind my eyes, and I leaned in toward the mirror again. “Grandma, I’ve needed you for so long. The last year of my life has been so ...”
“Oh, honey, I know. I have been there; you just weren’t able to see me. It’s a different magic that allows this”—Grandma indicated herself and the mirror—“than you’re used to. This one you might actually not be immune to. I tried to appear before—in stainless steel dishes, in your rearview mirror. Even on a sunny day on the back of Mr. Matsura’s head. That poor man has been balding since he was twenty-three. Took me a little while to get the knack for it.”
“You showed up on Mr. Matsura?”
Mr. Matsura was the kindly old man who lived across the hall from me and walked his toy poodle Pickle three times a day.
“My grandmother appears in my bathroom mirror and on my neighbor’s bald head.” I sat down on the edge of my tub, rubbing my temples. “And now I know why I was driven to drink.” Seeing your dead grandmother projected on the bald head of an aging Japanese man would do that to you. “I guess this is a relief. I thought I was going crazy.”
“This seems like a really inopportune moment to say, ‘Gotcha!’” Grandma grinned her trademark toothy smile, both her wrinkled hands held shotgun style in front of her.
“Are you here to tell my I’m in mortal danger?” I asked warily.
“Now that would be cliché, wouldn’t it? Dead grandmother appears in bathroom mirror, warning of the evil to come. Wooooo, whooooo!” Grandma did ghostly hands, her wrinkled lips forming an ominous O.
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”
“But really, Sophie,” my grandma said, the smile dropping from her voice, “you are in danger.”
“You said you weren’t going to do that!”
“No, I said it would be cliché. Cliché, but necessary. Now listen to me, Sophie. You are in serious danger. Have you ever heard of the Vessel of Souls?”
“Yup. You missed it. Alex Grace, fallen angel. Filled me in on the whole thing.”
Grandma appeared to be thinking. “Alex Grace? You mean that hot ball of cheesecake you had over last night?”
“How did you know?”
Grandma shrugged. “The man had to use the bathroom.”
“Grandma! Did you look?”
“Oh honey, I might be old, but I’m not—well, that phrase doesn’t work anymore, now does it? Anywho, enough about Alex. You need to know that you’re being tailed, watched. Someone is looking for you and believe you me it’s not Ed McMahon with one of those big Publishers Clearinghouse checks.”
“So the driver last night—that was real? Someone really was trying to kill me?” I felt my heart flutter when I thought back to his headlights piercing through the dark night.
Grandma nodded solemnly.
“Do you know who it is? Also, Ed McMahon is dead.”
Grandma looked pleased as she clapped her hands in front of her chest. “Really? Dead? I should look him up, maybe invite him to bingo. Oh, honey, I’ve got to run.” Grandma looked over her shoulder. “That’s the breakfast bell. You have to move quickly around here or you’re the only specter without a waffle.”
I sprang up, pressed my hands against the mirror. “Grandma, no! Wait! Who is it? Who’s tracking me? I have so many questions!”
“I’ll be back, sweetie. I promise.”
I pressed my forehead against the mirror and sighed when my own reflection stared back at me.
I dressed quickly and drove to work, considering what was more odd: that my dead grandmother had appeared to me in my bathroom mirror or that I wasn’t more freaked out about it. There was also the idea of her playing bingo with Ed McMahon and the issue of a waffle shortage in Heaven, but those rang in at a distant third, what with the apparition and the ominous
warning.
Someone’s out to get you... .
It was a singsongy voice ringing in my ear. A thought I didn’t realize I was having.
Someone’s going to get you... .
I pulled to a four-way stop and scrunched my eyes shut, willing the voices and the ghosts to go away until the man behind me angrily laid on the horn, making me jump in my car seat and slosh a wave of black coffee across my pale-blue button-down.
“Oh, crap,” I said, pulling into the intersection, driving with my knees, licking the coffee from my wrist.
I managed to make it the UDA offices coffee-scented yet otherwise unscathed, and I was greeted by Nina at the front desk. She was wearing rhinestone-studded horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a clipboard, her long hair wound into a tight bun. She was tucked into a pencil skirt that made her appear as wide as—well, a pencil—and she had an embroidered pink cardigan that I swore once belonged to Donna Reed resting on her shoulders. Her crisp white blouse was unbuttoned just enough to reveal a tiny peek of her white lace bra, and somehow, she had hoisted her breasts to just under her lifted chin. She looked like a porn star for library fetishists. I stared at her breasts.
“Where did you get those?” I asked them.
Nina waved dismissively. “They came with the bra. Where have you been? Dixon wants to interview everyone today.”
“Everyone?” I asked.
Nina fell in step with me as I snagged a bagel and headed toward my office. “Okay, that’s no big deal. I’m comfortable with my job performance,” I told her.
In my last four years at the UDA, I never failed to lock up my werewolf boss once. After Mr. Sampson, I kept the interim bosses abreast of standard operating procedure, and I acted as the go-between for the under and upper worlds when the banshee was filling in. Whoever had given her the job had failed to realize the fact that for mortals, laying eyes on a banshee means instant death—hence the usual warning scream. The upper world lost two baristas and a meter maid before that little snafu was fixed.
