Midnight Magic, page 183
“Do you have any idea how frustrating this is?” He phased through my door as I turned the lock and shut it behind myself. “I know you can hear me!”
If he expected an answer, he was shit out of luck. I’d already opened Pandora’s box once. I wasn’t going to do it again. If I engaged with him in any way, it would just make him stick around longer. “This isn’t fair. You’re so mean!”
Life wasn’t fair. And he was very dead—technically, not a part of life. And no one said I was a nice person.
I headed towards the elevators but paused when a soft cry reached me.
It was coming from the stairwell, and it sounded disturbingly familiar.
My heart squeezed and my stomach cramped. I spun, skipping around ghost boy, and pushed on a heavy metal door with my shoulder. It popped open with a rusty groan to reveal the source of the sobbing.
Isla. My next-door neighbor’s three-year-old daughter.
“Hey, sweetie,” I cooed. She waddled towards me, full diaper banging against her knees. Her cheeks were flushed red and fat tears dripped from her chin. I scooped down, gathering her against my chest. “Shh. Shh. You’re alright.” I rubbed her back; she flopped her head down on my shoulder. Her frizzy blonde curls were encrusted with filth. If the smell was any indication, it wasn’t just urine soaking her diaper either.
She popped her thumb in her mouth as I pushed out of the stairwell.
How had she even got in there?
Of course, the better question was how did she even get out of her apartment?
“There, there.” I bounced her when she started to sniffle against my shoulder.
“So you do have a heart,” Ghost Boy muttered, following me back down the hall. I ignored him.
“Mrs. Taffett!” I banged on the wooden door of apartment C6 and waited a moment. No answer. “Mrs. Taffett!” I tried again; once more, my efforts went unanswered which wasn’t really surprising. This wasn’t the first time I’d found Isla in the hallway and her mother unaware she was gone. “For fuck’s sake,” I muttered as I tried the knob. It turned under my hand. I stepped into the apartment and gagged. It was a cesspool.
There was dirty laundry spilling out of the laundry room. Unwashed dishes covered the counters. The trash was overflowing with dirty diapers. Roaches scurried into the darkness. A fly landed on Isla’s cheek and I blew it away as she gave a sleepy yawn.
“Gross. Who lives like this?” Ghost Boy asked as he looked around.
At least I never saw drugs during these unannounced visits.
“Mrs. Taffett!” I walked deeper into the apartment, kicking toys out of the way. “It’s Sekani! I found Isla—again.”
No answer.
Was the woman dead? Or just not here?
“Mrs. Taff—” There was a thump, then a door swung open.
A young woman in a dirty t-shirt and panties stumbled down the hallway. “Isla!” She tripped over her own feet and banged her knee on the secondhand coffee table, but didn’t slow down in her bid to get to her daughter. “Oh God. Did she get out again? I don’t know how. I must’ve fallen asleep.” She reached for Isla, who went into her arms easily.
“She wasn’t tired from all the cleaning up she was doing,” Ghost Boy said from my side. It wasn’t as if I disagreed with him. This place hadn’t been cleaned in weeks.
“I’ve told you, you have to lock your door, Mrs. Taffett,” I said as she sniffed at Isla’s ass then yanked her back, gagging.
“I know. I do. I mean . . . I thought I did.” She snagged a diaper from the pile on the sofa and a pack of wet wipes. Isla lay across a sofa cushion, her thumb still in her mouth, as Mrs. Taffett began to change her. “She just keeps getting out.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose; the space behind my eyes began to throb. “I found her in the stairwell, Mrs. Taffett. She could have fallen.”
She sniffed, turning and rubbing her nose against her shoulder as she wiped shit from Isla’s ass. “I’ll do better. I’m trying,” she said, her voice cracking.
Her effort sucked.
But she loved Isla. I knew that much. The fact she was trying at all was the only reason I hadn’t called CPS. If this kept up though, I was going to have to. It was the last thing I wanted to do. The system wasn’t kind to kids—even cute ones with blonde curls and blue eyes.
“Lock the door behind me,” I told her as I turned away. My gaze drifted to her trashcan and I stopped beside it, giving it a hard kick to shake the bag loose. I tied it and yanked it out.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Taffett said.
I turned the lock on her door—because she probably wouldn’t remember to do it—and took her trash with me, closing the door firmly on my way out.
“So now that you’ve saved a little girl, save a lost soul.”
“There is no saving the dead.” I headed towards the elevator. “Pop off through your door and let the living get on with their lives.”
“My door?”
I glanced at him and frowned. He’d been following me for three weeks and . . . only now did I realize, not once had I seen a door—his door. At least, none of the doors I saw clearly belonged to him.
Shit.
GHOST BOY
—endings are not always bad;
most times they’re just beginnings in disguise.—
Kim Harrison
* * *
He was an asshole.
He made everything so much harder than it needed to be.
I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just help me. It wasn’t fair. I was . . . dead. I didn’t even remember how I died. I didn’t remember anything about myself actually—name, age, favorite fucking color. In movies the Ghost Whisperer was supposed to guide the lost soul. Clearly the movies got it wrong.
“What do you mean, my door?” I asked. This was the most he’d said to me in three weeks; of course the first thing he said was something I didn’t understand.
What did a door have to do with anything? Was it like seeing the light? I don’t remember seeing a light.
Or a door.
“Fuck me,” Sekani muttered as he jabbed the elevator call button. “The door that appeared after you died. That should have appeared, at least.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember any doors.”
I remembered waking up on the street, not knowing who I was, what happened to me. I remembered begging people to help me, but no one ever responded. And I couldn’t ever get further than a block or two from the street I woke on before I was yanked back. It was like something was trapping me there.
Until I ran into this guy, the only person who could see or hear me.
And he was useless.
“What do you remember?” he asked.
“Waking up. Begging for help. Walking down the street, just a few blocks and then being back where I started.” As if I was an NPC who could only do what was pre-programmed in the world’s most boring video game.
“How did you die?” Sekani asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Was it normal for people to remember that?
“Where did you die?”
“I don’t know.” My voice cracked. I didn’t know anything.
“Do you remember anything besides waking up and walking?”
I could hear the annoyance in his voice as he tossed Mrs. Taffett’s trash away. He walked towards the parking lot. I followed.
“I . . .” I shook my head. He got into his car; I phased through the door and settled into the passenger seat. “I remember . . .”
I paused, squeezing my eyes shut.
Did I remember anything at all?
What happened to me? Why? Had I killed myself? Was it an accident?
I looked at my hands. “Paint, I think.”
I remembered paint. Smudges on my hands.
“Thank you. That was super enlightening and helpful.” Sarcasm dripped from his tongue.
“I don’t remember, okay!” I glared. Did he have to be so rude? He wasn’t calling CPS on the child abuse he’d witnessed, but he was being a condescending dick to the ghost without memories. I looked down at my hands again. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Then what do you expect me to do for you?”
“I don’t know. Help me? Please,” I begged. But could he even do that? I didn’t think Sekani helped anyone. Or . . . well, that wasn’t true. He helped the living—like that little girl. But fuck the dead, I guess. My eyes burned. What would happen if he didn’t help? Would I be stuck like this forever? “If you don’t help . . .”
He pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. Of course he was heading to work. I knew his routine by now. He was a Private Investigator—former NYPD Detective—and he was surprisingly effective at his job. So why wouldn’t he—
“You’re not giving me a lot to go on here, kid,” he said.
“I’m not a kid,” I snapped.
“Oh, so you remember something?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Clearly, I’m not a child.”
“Clearly.” He wasn’t agreeing with me. I wanted to scream. Or to storm off. But where was I going to go? Better to stay and yell at Sekani than walk down the same street—trapped there alone—forever.
“You’re a detective; detect something.”
He glanced over at me. “You’re young. But legal, I’d guess. You’re well-dressed, so not homeless. Not a lot to go on otherwise. Where did you do your endless walk?”
“The street I met you on,” I said. “I was trapped there until you told me to fuck off.”
As soon as he’d spoken to me, it was as if I was free of that place—free to follow him. If I stopped following him, would I be dragged back there?
“Tethered.” He sighed. “You probably died in the area.”
“So that’s a clue!” I bounced in my seat as Sekani turned a corner. He was clearly heading towards the coffee shop before he went into his office. The man lived off glorified bean water. He should probably start taking better care of himself or he was going to be in the same boat as me.
“It’s something. But don’t get your hopes up,” Sekani said.
We didn’t have much to go on, but it was something at least.
“You’ll help?” I asked, voice far softer than I intended. Or was he going to pretend like I wasn’t hanging around screaming in his ear all day after this car ride? I twisted my fingers together.
“You’re not gonna go away otherwise,” Sekani said.
I smiled. “I’ll do my best to remember everything I can. I’ll be like your ghostly sidekick. And if we find my family they can pay your fee . . . I think.”
Did I even have a family? Was anyone missing me?
“Assuming you have a family.” Sekani voiced my thoughts.
“I hope I do.” Maybe there was someone else out there looking for answers. Or maybe someone already had all the answers. Maybe we needed to find that someone.
“Not everyone is so fortunate. But if you do, I’ll do my best to find them. I’ll make some calls later, get in touch with a sketch artist so we can get a basic image of you, show it to shop owners along the stretch of street you walked.”
“That sounds like some real detective work. Pounding the pavement and all.”
“Yeah, well, I was a real detective once upon a time.” Sekani said. I still didn’t know a lot about him—it was hard to learn anything about a person when they didn’t acknowledge your existence—but a couple of overheard phone conversations with his former partner had told me that already. It had seemed as if he enjoyed the work—had passion for it, even—and he was too young for retirement.
“So what happened?”
“I quit.”
Obviously. I forced myself not to roll my eyes. “You didn’t like the work?”
“I liked it,” he said.
The short answers were annoying—no details, nothing to hold onto so maybe we could . . . I don’t know, become friends? If he was going to help me and I was going to be his sidekick for a while, it would be nice to know the guy a little. I had this inexplicable feeling if I was alive he would be the kind of person I’d be interested in. Something drew me towards him that day on the street. Maybe his eyes, or his relaxed attitude. He was a dick, but he had an aura of calm around him and it was . . . nice. “Are you going to open up and tell me or is it going to be like pulling teeth with you?” I asked.
“Neither.” Sekani said.
I sighed and folded my arms over my chest. “You’re so mean.”
Sekani chuckled. I glanced over. He’d never laughed before, and this hardly counted, but I smiled as I looked out the window. We were silent for a mile or two before Sekani spoke. “I liked the job—did it for ten years. Sometimes, a change is necessary.”
He probably wouldn’t tell me why if I asked.
“Well, thanks—for helping.”
SEKANI AELOR
Being a private investigator wasn’t all that different from being an actual detective: footwork, paperwork, and sitting around with our thumbs up our asses.
This morning I was going to waste a few hours sitting outside some douchebag’s home to find out if his wife was having an affair. It promised to be brain-leaking boring—shit like this always was—but the paycheck was too nice to pass up and if she was cheating, the guy deserved to know. I had zero reservations about informing him—I had a special dislike for cheaters. It was the worst thing you could do to a person short of physical and emotional abuse.
I’d parked in the perfect vantage spot and the wife never closed the blinds; if there was anything to see, I’d get it all on video. Plus, the client often returned at three. I was free to leave after that—it wasn’t as if his wife would be fucking someone else while he was in the house.
I kicked my seat back, stretched my legs out and settled in.
“How long do you have to stake out here?” Ghost Boy asked.
I glanced at him. “Client paid for the month.”
If by the end of his thirty-day contract I had no proof his wife was cheating, she probably wasn’t, but he was free to re-up and pay me for another week. I wasn’t going to say no to his money—not when I could still take on other jobs in the afternoon.
“So what do you do on a stake out then? Stay quiet the whole time?” He turned in the passenger seat to face me.
I shrugged. “Sit. Observe. Try not to die of boredom.”
He pulled one of his feet up and rested his chin on his knee. His dirty blonde hair flopped over his ears as his storm cloud eyes searched my face. “You used to have a partner, right?”
“I did as a detective.” It had been a few years since I left the force but I still went to dinner at her place from time to time, always showed up for her daughter’s birthday parties. She called, at least once a week, to update me on . . . everything.
“Was it like one of those cop shows and you had to quit the force because you and your partner fell in love and there was a huge scandal?” he asked, words slamming together, trembling out of his mouth as he started to vibrate.
“Uh . . . no. Barnet is married, for one.” My gaze slipped to the window so I could watch the house. No change. The wife was in the kitchen, organizing the cabinets. She wasn’t dressed for a visitor either. Or, I assumed she’d dress up for a meeting with a lover. The fluffy pink robe wasn’t exactly appealing. “And I was engaged at the time.”
“Engaged?” A furrow appeared between his brows; he grinned and shook his head. “I almost feel sorry for the woman who had to put up with you. You’re so mean all the time.”
“Man. And he liked me just fine—” or so I thought.
Turns out he didn’t like me enough, considering.
He’d fucked my brother.
“You’re gay?”
“Is that going to be a problem?” I asked. He wouldn’t be the first homophobic ghost I’d encountered. As it turns out, dying didn’t make anyone less of an asshole. Sometimes, it turned them into bigger assholes, in fact.
He shook his head, blonde hair flapping against his cheeks and chin as his eyes widened. “No. I don’t mind. So why aren’t I harassing you and the Mister?”
I shrugged. “He’s dead.”
“Oh.” His voice dipped. “I’m sorry.”
“So, paint.” I glanced back at the house. The wife had moved on to the upper levels. She was yanking the blankets and sheets off the guest bed. Probably to wash them. “Do you know what kind? Was it the kind you’d paint a house with, or a canvas?”
“It was on my hands—smudges of it,” he said, looking down at his hands. His nails were painted a pale blue. Maybe he wasn’t straight either? “Canvas, I think.”
If he wanted my help, he needed to remember . . . something useful. Paint wasn’t much to start off with. “We can grab some supplies on the way home, see if anything triggers your memory.”
“You think that might work?” he asked.
“No clue. It’s worth a shot.” We had nothing else to go on other than the possible location of his death. If slapping a paintbrush in his hands didn’t help, we wouldn’t be any worse off than we were right now. But if he did remember something, we’d be one step closer to finding out who he was and how he died so he could move on. Ghosts weren’t meant for this world. The longer they stayed, the worse their situation became. Some of them got stuck—doing the same thing over and over, like he had been. Others become angry—poltergeists, seeking only pain and suffering.
“Eventually, you’ll have to pass on. With or without your memories,” I told him.
“The door thing, right? But I don’t remember ever seeing a door.”
“To be fair, you don’t remember anything.” His door could have appeared and he just didn’t recall. Or maybe because he didn’t know who he was, his door didn’t come for him. Except . . . as far as I knew, doors always showed up for their spirit.
