by J. R. Rain
“I guess I’d always thought of the Afterlife as being brighter,” she’d whispered after she stopped crying. “And, you know, full of loved ones waiting to welcome you. Instead, it’s like…I don’t know, being stuck in Canada. You know, really dank and gloomy, full of strangers and weird stores and everything looks so old-fashioned.”
“There are worse places to spend eternity,” I told her, stroking her hair and trying to shush her back to sleep. “Vancouver’s nice.” I still don’t have the faintest tremor of desire for the woman, but I guess I have a soft spot for her now, like she’s the sister I never had. In fact, I’ve been worrying about her all day, just like I do my kitty cat. I guess because they’re my family now.
On the way back to the stationhouse to check in with Ayon and clear my desk for the week―again―I give Marine a call and get one of the clerks there to email me a list of nautical vessels already docked in port. And those due in the next week. And their national registry, ports of origin, and any ports of call along the way. I’ve been acting stupid for weeks―ever since I got shot, actually―just reacting to things and letting all the crap that keeps happening just sweep me along with it. But I haven’t been playing things smart or looking a step or two ahead. Or even taking full advantage of having Bull and Gimpy and all their contacts on my side in this little war, in spite of the fact that I’ve been paying for their help.
It’s time for Richelle Dadd to wake up and take charge of things again, like she’s basically had to do since she was a little girl. If I don’t look out for her, who will?
Although, for sure the Gypsy King is making noises like he wants to. He’s gone from zero to sixty in the space of just a couple of days; I have to lay down the law with him to convince him that I really, truly want to go back to my own squad room on my own and that I can’t come back to his place later and spend the night. He says he’s worried about me and gives me plenty of loving soulful looks which, quite frankly, might even totally work if I hadn’t just watched him making pretty much the exact same ones to the IA bimbo. Before I get into my car, he makes me promise I’ll see him tomorrow. Next thing I know he’ll be proposing. And the way the Toyota’s transmission is grinding right now, I might just say yes…
“Surprise!” says Ayon when I spot her sitting at her desk. “Look who the cat dragged in.”
It takes me a minute to recognize the teenage girl sitting at my desk, directly across from my partner. “You’re…”
“Nancy,” says the girl. She’s Nancy Nichols, the youngest of the three women Malena and I evicted from her Uncle Sylvestro’s house months ago. One of the Horvath clan; Nastasha’s daughter, Gana Kali’s niece. Now she’s all cleaned up and is dressed like a normal girl her age―in other words, like a porn star or an underage hooker in tights and a skirt that barely covers her crotch―and is chewing gum while she scrolls her iPhone.
“Nancy’s agreed to turn state’s evidence. She’s got some real interesting things to say about those people you’ve been looking into, the Horvaths.”
“I’m still thinking about it,” says Nancy. She sounds like an ordinary teenager, too, except for a hint of an accent that’s almost impossible to define, a little European, a little red-necky. Something about its cadence reminds me of the way Val talks. The way my Traveler father might have sounded. “I don’t want to be fostered, though.”
“How old are you?” I ask her.
“Seventeen.” She’s lying; she’s still sixteen, according to her priors.
“She says she wants Witness Security before she tells us anything.”
I groan inwardly when I hear this. The department has almost no budget for Wit Sec; we run a few safe houses for wits in high-profile cases, but aside from the shelters for abused women and minors, there’s really nothing else. For a genuine witness protection deal, the kind you see on TV cop shows, I’d have to involve the Feds. And I really, really don’t want to do that. For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to control what Nancy here would tell them about what her aunt has done to me.
“There’s lots of shit I can tell you people,” the girl says to me, as if reading my mind. She pulls out her earbuds to indicate sincerity. Her dark eyes are sly, and never quite meet mine. “About something big…but they can’t ever find me, okay? If they do, they’ll keep me in a dog cage until they sell me!” This time, her fear makes her sound totally sincere. If true, this certainly casts a new light on the camp I saw a few days ago.
Malena looks at her skeptically. “Seriously? Your own mom? Sell you?”
“Yep, my ass would get pimped to death out of some trailer in fucking Alberta.” Nancy looks around nervously. “Who do you think supplies the sex-slave rings up there, aside from Asians? Can I smoke in here?”
“No. I’ll take you out to the parking lot in a minute. Mind if my partner and I have a moment?”
“Sure,” says the girl and gets up out of my chair. I notice several of my desk drawers are cracked open slightly, like the girl’s gone through them. There’s a Mountain Dew can sitting there; I’m guessing she sent Ayon downstairs to get it for her before I arrived.
“Just wait in the hall for me. I won’t be a minute.” Then, when Malena and I are alone, “What do think?”
“I think that little bitch is a bad news bomb waiting to go off. Don’t let her play you, girl.” She’s right, but my problem now is I don’t know who to trust. Malena would be telling me exactly the same thing if she were trying to foist the girl off on me.
“I’ve got no choice. No way we can get protection set up this soon―and I don’t want her downtown in the juvie system. I’ll have to take her home with me tonight and try to work on her there.”
“Holy shit, I can’t believe you’re serious.”
“I need to hear what she has to say. It’s kind of a matter of life and death.”
Ayon stares at me for a long few seconds, then nods. “Well, watch your back, gata. I’m going home to catch up on some sleep, but give me a call if you need me.”
’d been worried Tamara and the Gypsy Princess might not get along. I couldn’t have been more wrong; they seem fascinated with each other. Tamara treats her like the subject of a TV documentary, cooing while asking her wide-eyed questions and giggling sympathetically at her replies. Nancy―she still won’t tell us her Romany name―can’t keep her hands off Tamara’s fuzzy thick orange hair.
“Maybe I’ll be a hairdresser when I start my new life,” she says. “Maybe I could go to someplace, like, tropical and open my own salon.” She seems to have a very inflated idea of what the Federal relocation program offers.
“What would happen to you if you’d stayed?”
Nancy shrugs. “I’d just keep stealing and learning the family scams, I guess. Have a few kids. Probably have to get married to one of my cousins next year―you know, ‘cuz tradition.”
No, Tamara and Nancy are getting along fine. It’s Kitty and Sluggo who are the problem. Any lingering doubts about whether or not cats can see ghosts was resolved the moment the little mutt trotted through the front door, nails clicking. Kitty freaked out immediately―back arched, tail puffed out and sticking straight up, hissing and spitting, and hurling herself, claws extended, through the empty air where Sluggo appeared to be. To make matters worse, he seems to be genuinely baffled and hurt by her rejection. When she retreats to another room, sulking under the dining table or my bed, he starts whining and looks increasingly morose, licks his testicles for a while, and then sets off to look for her.
Meanwhile, Lorna is fuming about him, too; literally. “Can’t you do something about that animal?” she keeps asking me, referring to the dog, while she lights cigarette after cigarette, until half my vision of the room is shrouded in a haze of ectoplasmic smoke.
“Maybe Bull can when he gets home,” I tell her. What’s keeping him? I’ve had him and the Gimp out covering the docks―there’s a big tanker due in tonight―but neither has reported back.
“It freaks the shit out o
f me that she talks to ghosts,” Nancy says with a histrionic shudder, meaning me. She makes a secret sign against the Evil Eye every time I slip up and do it in front of her. “Does she go around doing that the whole time?”
“Pretty much,” says Tamara, neglecting to mention that she’d met the ghosts herself last night and has been leaving half-filled glasses of Manischewitz wine around the house ever since, in a futile attempt to get Lorna to like her. My house is suddenly full of cats and dogs―and sometimes I find myself forgetting which are alive and which aren’t. And which are human.
“I guess it makes sense, though,” Nancy goes on, fiddling with her cigarette pack. This is a signal that I’ll have to take her back out on the rear patio again soon to smoke, something she seems to need to do like every five minutes. “I mean, you’re like…dead now, right?”
“Right. Were you around when your aunt performed any of her ceremonies?”
“Not really. I hate all that spooky shit.” So far, she’s told me a lot about her male relatives―her three male cousins who killed Gluckstein, for example―but hasn’t really given me much to go on with Gana Kali. Or her grandfather, the patriarch of the Horvath clan. She just turns fearful and evasive when I bring them up. Or ask where I can find them.
Finally, I lose my patience and just ask her flat out: “Look, Nancy, even if you don’t know where it’s going to happen, I really need you to tell me when the money ship hijack is supposed to go down. You’ve got to give me something to take to the Feds.”
She swallows hard and nods. “Okay, it’s tomorrow night―I don’t know where. And I don’t know where the rest of my family’s staying right now, either. I mean, I don’t know the address, but I know how to get there. I’ll take you there tomorrow―if we have like a deal. It’s in a sort of abandoned mall off the main highway? They pay off the cops and security guys to use it. But I’m not going anywhere unless you bring a SWAT team with us.”
So I get on my cell and give Joe Avery a call at ATF, who I met at a HomeSec briefing conference last year. He’s a funny guy, middle-aged and secretly gay, I think; much more fun than the brash young horndogs and ambitious sistahs in suits the Feds usually send to lecture at us. ATF’s got a lot bigger budget for Judicial Protection than we do.
When I tell him everything I’ve got, though I leave out the Maltese Money Ship for obvious reasons, he says, “I know we run a joint task force with the FBI on child trafficking and Romani-related RICO issues―but I think we normally deal with your gang guy on this kind of deal.”
“Val Tabori?”
“Name rings a bell. Listen, everybody here’s gone home for the day, but I’ll shoot an email over to our Task Force reps and you’ll probably hear back from them tomorrow morning. If we don’t approve your Wit Sec, maybe the Federal Marshals can. Meanwhile, put a call in to your DA’s office, just to cover your ass.”
That will have to do for now. After I get off, I start to wonder if Val knows more than he’s told me. But why would he be hiding anything from me? Unless he’s in deeper with the Horvath clan than I’d thought. Maybe that’s what all the “running away together” talk was about this afternoon―maybe he’s scared of them, too… too scared to level with me. But if today’s any indication, he’ll come around. I send him a text, but there’s no reply.
At bedtime, I ask Tamara if she’s planning to hang with me tonight after lights-out, meaning does she plan any more nocturnal excursions while lucid dreaming. She shakes her head emphatically no. “No fucking way! Excuse my language. I may never go to sleep again, actually, last night was so scary.”
“Well, if you’re seriously planning to stay awake all night, do me a big favor? Keep an eye on Nancy for me?” The Gypsy Princess was sleeping on the living room couch, and I knew she’d be in and out all night smoking on the back patio. And maybe stealing my shit, like she did Uncle Sylvestro’s. “I don’t trust her.”
“She’s just young and restless and confused―she reminds me of myself at that age. Except skinnier. What are you doing?”
I actually blush. “Getting dressed,” I mumble.
“Huh?”
“I’m getting dressed up, okay? There’s this cute guy out there―you know, that young lieutenant I told you about, the one who helps dreamers from getting lost. I’m sort of hoping I run into him, and I’m tired of looking like a cop.” I want to look like a normal person for a change. Okay, I want to look like a hottie.
“But I thought you and Val..?” Unlike Ayon, Tamara still hasn’t met Val, but I guess I’ve indiscreetly given her a little TMI about him. And about this afternoon. Now I’m blushing again.
“I know, I know. I feel like a total slut. But it’s not like anything’s gonna happen with the soldier. I just want to look semi-okay when―if―he sees me on the other side.”
“You’re seriously wearing heels to bed?”
I take my best dress, my most stylish one, anyway, out of the closet, and smooth it out on the bed. My trusty Ralph Lauren scarlet metallic sheath, kind of last year, but it’s not like I have anyplace to wear it, anyway. I don’t have time to do my hair, so I just tie it up with a butterfly clip; then go into the bathroom to refresh my blusher and eyeliner. The rabbi follows me in and watches me in the mirror like a little girl.
“God, I know I shouldn’t say this, Rishya, but I really, really wish I looked like you.”
“And I really wish I was you, Tamara,” I say. I turn around and impulsively kiss her. “The envy’s mutual. You’re an amazing person, and somehow you’ve turned into an amazing friend, and I totally don’t know what I’d do without you.”
When it comes time for the salt ceremony, turns out there’s no substitute for the dorky mutilated jacket with all the sewn-on pockets, so I have to put it on over my dress after all. Maybe I can just take it off once I’m on the other side; maybe the fact that it’s never occurred to me to do that before is what Lorna meant the other night about “habit.” The habits from our lives seem to carry over, like wearing the face and the clothes we died in. Why not wear a Star Trek costume? Why not just go naked? Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a single soul naked in Shadytown yet. Except Lorna, sort of.
Where is Lorna, anyway, I wonder as I fly upward to the ceiling. I need a cigarette.
So basically I wander around the neighborhood looking for Wiley Fontenot, the Dream Soldier. And maybe wishing for something counts on this side, because I find him just down the street. Down the present-day street, I mean; on the shady side, it’s still just a dirt track through some orchards lined with farmhouses converted into boarding houses. What we’d call a B&B, except they’re basically the equivalent of retirement homes or welfare hotels―why anybody would want to hang around a place like that after they die in it beats the hell out of me. But maybe for the same reason as when they were alive: because it’s cheap.
“Hey, Lieutenant, remember me?” I say when I spot him. Jesus, I sound like Lauren Bacall or somebody.
“Surely do, ma’am,” he says. He offers me a Camel and then lights it for me.
“Richelle, not ma’am.” Maybe age still does matter here. “I’ll be honest―I’ve been looking for you tonight.”
He takes a deep drag and turns his cool, smiling gaze on me. His eyes are a deep blue-green, and I’m guessing they were in life, too. His cleft chin is slightly blue, too, in spite of being closely shaven. I don’t know what it is about him, exactly, but he’s the most masculine man I’ve ever been around. And he’s dead.
“Truth is, I’ve sort of been doing that, too,” he says after a minute. “Lookin’ for you.” Incredibly, he actually looks bashful; when he casts his eyes down, I can see how long and thick his dark lashes are. Now it’s my turn to feel shy.
“Things are different here,” I say. “I’m not sure I know what to do.”
“Pretty much the same thing, if memory serves. I’ve been dead quite a while. What say we just walk out together a spell and talk and get to know one another? Take it from th
ere?” Dude has a Cajun name but sort of talks like a cowboy. Still, why not? Honestly, he thrills the panties off me―and when I cautiously take his arm, it feels like my first date.
“You first,” I tell him―and he’s got so little to tell, it breaks my heart. Grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, joined the army at eighteen, fought in the Great War, and died at twenty.
“Never even saw the bullet that cut me down…but maybe that’s as how it should be,” he says, sounding rueful. “Growin’ up, all I ever thought about were girls and football. And skeet-shooting. Which is why they made me a rifleman in the army. But once I was over in France, I guess you could say my real education commenced. Halfway speakin’ the language was one reason why. The other was because when you’re out on sniper patrol, you’ve got a lot of lonely time to kill. So I’d always take along a book or two to read. Jeffery Farnol, I liked him a lot. Rafael Sabatini…Edgar Rice Burroughs. That’s who you remind me of, ma’am―I mean, Richelle: the Princess of Mars.”
Okay, so at that point, I totally had to stop right there and kiss him. Wouldn’t you? And as his lips met mine, I realized I was right; it felt unbelievable, like we’d merged into one person. Holy crap, I thought to myself―one kiss, and I’m in love.
With a ghost.
Except…how is this gonna work? As soon as we pull apart, I’m suddenly filled with guilt, as if I’m cheating on Val somehow. What am I planning to do? Get all hot and sweaty with the Gypsy King every afternoon, if actual heat and sweat were even technically possible for me; then slip away every night into the arms of my demon lover? And what if Wiley―he’s asked me to call him that now―sees me with Val? You know, like…watches us? That would totally creep me out in so many ways.
Also, Val seems to have real feelings for me now, so doing anything more with Wiley would be totally unfair to him. But to which him? Okay, to both guys. Yet I’ve never been on fire like this for anyone before. For the first time ever, I feel that thrill of recognition, you know? The one you read about in novels. Like I’ve finally met my soulmate; someone I was once madly in love with but separated from in another lifetime.
