Chapter Five
“It could have been a grunt from the neighbors. You live in an apartment. A person outside in the parking lot. Someone’s television turned up too loud. Someone who snores!”
Junie is calm and factual. Fear falls off of me in the daylight as I listen to her voice.
“I’m just so afraid. I’ve been feeling so good, like a new person,” I whisper, clutching the phone as I sit in my car.
I’m on my lunch break, and I don’t want to know what my boss would do if he thought I was nuts.
No, that’s not the term people would use these days, but it’s the term people use when they whisper about you behind closed doors.
“Good, I’ll tell your mother. Well, I’ll tell your dad to tell her.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Oh, your mother and Arnie left some frantic messages this week saying you hadn’t called them back or answered their emails.”
“Arnie is slimy.”
There. I said it. I’ve never said it before, not blunt like that. I guess being afraid you’re losing touch with reality makes you stop beating around the bush.
“Slimy how? Honey, did he ever—”
“Not slimy like ‘call the cops’ slimy. Slimy like ‘I don’t trust him’ slimy.
He was always pushing me to change meds and try new ones.
I don’t want them in my life right now. I know that sounds horrible, but it’s true.
They... They won’t agree, but I feel like they kept me from getting better. I know. I sound ungrateful.”
“You sound confident and sure. You haven’t sounded like that in a long time. Arnie might be a slimy guy, and your life is your life. He doesn’t need to know anything other than you’re fine.”
“But what if I’m not?”
“What if you’re paranoid because you have legitimate fears? You’ve been down this road before. Did it start this way?”
“No! No, not all.”
“You know I don’t believe mental health is all mind over matter, but I believe you’re smart and sane enough to know what should concern you. One trick of the light and one odd noise when you live in an apartment building? Girl, please.”
I can picture June’s face as she says that, and my smile creeps back and overtakes my frown. “Tell my crazy to sit down and shut up?”
“Yeah—and if it talks back to you? Then we’ll worry. Okay, baby?”
“Okay, Junie.”
“Love you. I’m going to go haul your dad out of the well he’s helping dig to talk to you. Don’t go.”
“No, no. I’m good, and I don’t want to stand in the way of water for a community in need. I’m fine. I am. Really.” Yes. I’m holding onto that thought. I’m fine, no matter what my eyes and ears tell me.
“YOU FEELING ALL RIGHT? Do you need to take the afternoon?” Alban Wymark is competing for best boss ever.
“I’m fine,” I chirp, clacking around the office in my black granny boots with the white spat tops, the perfect complement to my pinstripe vest and skirt and ruffly white blouse.
“I don’t want to pry. You don’t seem fine. Not entirely.”
“Just... I heard a strange noise at my apartment. That’s all.”
Alain pops up from nowhere. Alban and he exchange a look. “Want us to come check it out?”
“What? No! No, I’m sure it’s not necessary,” I laugh and stammer, waving away their offer with the manila folder I’ve just collected.
“It’s okay if it’s unnecessary. You know you can call on us, right?”
My heart fills up fast, and it hits me in the eyes. I have to blink back tears. “Is this what people mean when they say they have a ‘work family’?”
Alban shrugs. “Probably.”
“Or they mean you get treated like crap and taken for granted. We prefer option A,” Alain chuckles and takes his cousin by the arm. “Alban, we have to have a word before Mrs. Withers arrives.”
“We do? But—Ow, I’m coming, I’m coming!” Alain hauls Alban away by the ear, and I can hear them squabbling like brothers.
I smile. I kinda feel like they’re my big brothers, too.
Fuck, I got tear drops on Mrs. Withers’ file.
“IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT. Berry. May I call you, Berry?
” I use my most ingratiating tone to the feline assassin who has heroically destroyed fifteen mirror-bugs and one real spider this morning.
“Humans are my only source of entertainment most of the time. Now, if I could see the television from here—or even a book... I know you don’t understand this, but trapped in this prison—there is nothing.
Nothing but myself. My mind only stays sharp by driving others to madness.
It makes me think. I have to watch, pay attention, and find the weaknesses to exploit.
You understand, don’t you? You have Agatha wrapped around your little pink paw. ”
Berry turns herself into a W and licks herself in a most embarrassing manner.
“Don’t think I haven’t been tempted to contort myself in such a fashion,” I mutter. “Doesn’t work. I have bones in the top half and none in the bottom. Cartilage. The mystic form of it, I suppose.”
Berry rolls over and bats a catnip mouse through the covers. I sigh and wish it were Aggie rolling about.
There’s another type of pussy I’d like to pay attention to.
The thought startles me.
It’s not that I’d hurt the girl to get it. I might scare her at first—and at the end. But I could be nice in the middle. I want to be nice in the middle.
That sickens me and shows me I’m going soft.
Something smacks into my stomach insistently.
All right, only parts of me are going soft.
“How come she’s sad, not scared?” I demand.
Berry bites the tail off of the mouse.
I guess I have to figure her out on my own.
AGGIE COMES HOME LATE. Very late. Eleven is like the wee hours for her. I admit that I sigh in relief when she comes back, and I prepare to take on her form, wondering which way she’ll turn as she enters the bedroom.
I didn’t have to wonder for long. Aggie comes marching into the room and stares at me, her nose almost touching the glass.
If only she knew she was staring deep into my eyes, her lips fractions away from mine as she hisses her declaration of war.
“I don’t know what’s in this mess,” she snarls, grabbing her forehead in one hand.
“But it’s better than it ever has been. A strange noise?
Ha! A trick of the light? Troxler Syndrome?
What the hell ever. I. Don’t. Care. Because you know what?
Let me go crazy here, in Pine Ridge, with Gloria, Georgia, Claire, Cindy, and Cathy to watch my back.
With Albain and Alan. Albain and Ellen. Alban and Alain!
” She slurs the words and shoves herself away from me, throwing her jacket and book on the bed.
I think she’s tipsy.
“I’m so drunk. Claire gave me a ride home, and Cindy drove my car back.
They’re so nice, and I’m practically a stranger.
Nicer than my stepdad. I’m sh-taying here, Berry.
If I gotta go crazy, I’m gonna go crazy here, where I can have a cat and my own couch.
My own bed. No slimy Arnie who likes to examine sick girlsshhhh.
Shhh. Shhh, I’m gonna have a hangover tomorrow because I don’t drink, Berry.
Berry, I don’t drink because it’s bad when you take pills like I take—but I’m taking less now.
The ones that are ‘as needed’? I don’t needs ‘em.”
Oh, she’s not tipsy. She’s toppled.
And that gives me an idea. Maybe this once... Maybe this is the time I can trick someone into letting me out. Once they’ve grown afraid of their own reflection, afraid of my voice, they never ask. No matter how cunning I am, my victims shout at me to leave, stay back, or go away.
This time, my first strike will be a different sort of blow.
“Why would you go crazy?” I whisper.
Aggie looks around, and her eyes settle on the cat. “Berry?”
And she blames the voice on the cat? Fine. As if that little thing could ever have my rich, sultry tones. Oh, well, you work with what the humans give you. “Yes. Tell me.”
“Oh. I never told you? That’s fair. I didn’t even know you could shpeak.
” Aggie hiccups and crashes down next to her “talking” kitten.
“Well... I had a breakdown in college. Too much stress. All the hard classes. Honor society. So many extra... extra.... Extracurriculars. I wanted to be perfect, so I would get a scholarship, keep the scholarship, get an intership—internshop—the thing before they give you a job. My dad was overseas. My boyfriend—serious boyfriend, not like some fling—cheated on me. I almost,” she pauses and drags a finger across her neck with a spluttering hiss.
“But I didn’t. But ever since then, my stepdad has been messing with my meds.
Yeah! Yeah, like I say that, and no one believes me.
Everyone just thinks he’s helping me, but what would you call it when someone takes you off your meds, and says ‘Try this one, try that one’?
I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him for so many reasons, Strawberry.
Listen, I’m going to tell you all the reasons. ”
I HAD NO IDEA MY CAT could talk.
She probably can’t, but I’m so drunk that I think she can, and that’s not crazy. That’s just hammered. I haven’t had a drink since I was twenty-one. Tonight’s book club came with three glasses of wine, and... nope. I can’t hold my liquor. Or grapes.
“But I can hold my Berry,” I giggle hysterically, holding the kitten and continuing my list. I’ve lost count, but I think I’m on reason seventy-three why I hate Arnie and don’t trust him.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, and change into a nightgown that looks like it belongs on a Hollywood starlet instead of a poor paralegal. “It’s nice to have my own style. My own brain. Even my drunk-ass brain. How can your ass be in your brain, Berry? Well, I don’t know, but Arnie’s a butthead.”
Laughing so hard my knees give out, I collapse onto the bed. “Good night, kitty.”
“AGGIE?” I WHISPER THE words, licking my lips. This is dicey, but I can do it.
I think.
“Mhm?” Aggie is almost asleep. Her speech slurs, and alcohol has dulled all of her senses. I’ve seen her body twitch in those last hazy moments of wakefulness, and sleep will be here soon.
“Aggie, you’re not mad. Not now. Not crazy,” I use the word modern Americans use. I was Roman. Once.
I don’t know if phantasms have a nationality. There’s no mortal blood to flow in my veins, so I suppose not.
“That’s what Junie said.”
After tonight’s drunken tirade, I know that Junie is her stepmother (she sounds wonderful, we like her) and Arnie is her stepfather. He’s evil. I’m convinced he has sinister designs on Agatha... and that’s not allowable. Agatha is mine to destroy. Or play with.
Or even protect.
“Not every voice you hear means madness, you know. Sometimes there are other things in the world.”
“Like cats?”
“Or... ghosts.” I don’t bother to explain that I’m not a ghost. Humans know about ghosts.
The other supernatural things in this world?
Not so much. I continue, “There are lonely spirits, my dear. People who just want to be your friend.” I smile as I lie to her.
I’m far from her friend, but she must trust me if I’m to escape my prison—at least for a few hours each night.
“I was lonely. I was lonely until I came here. What’s your name?”
This is going better than I'd hoped. Names have power, of a sort.
Once I have someone's name I can call them into my world—but that's a stupid trick.
The mirror, even though it is my prison, is also my safety net.
I'm bound to it. I'll cease to exist without it.
It's mine. To have another invade my space, live forever, or possibly end my existence?
Who knows if phantasms can harm one another?
I don't. I don't want to find out, either.
No, I don't want her to come in. I want her to invite me out to play.
“My name is Lucius. I’ll watch over you while you sleep. Would you like that, Agatha?”
“Are you lonely?”
Damn her. I’m taken aback. I want to prey upon her weaknesses, and she calls me on mine! With a hiss, I answer, “Yes.”
“D’you... D’you wanna sleep here? You shouldn’t drive home like that, you know,” she flings one arm across the vacant pillow beside her.
“I’d love to. Just call me over. Just ask me.”
“I did ask you, silly Lucius. You can sleep here.”
A jolt runs through the surface of my world, and I see the tiny cracks appear—a wall I can break through instead of the hard, invisible barrier that’s kept me trapped for eons.
I place both hands on the surface of the mirror and feel it flex and ripple. A knife-like sliver of light and dark meet, a flare of white flame that burns with cold.
Ages of waiting and hiding. Centuries of walking the line to keep myself “alive” in this half-existence.
No one has ever tempted me to reveal my name or come out of my prison for simple, peaceful exploration before. There are risks as well as advantages, and I’m always much more calculated.
Until her.
“You are quite special, sweet, scared, sad Agatha,” I whisper, flowing into the human world. Air fills my nostrils for the first time in a thousand years, so heavy and thick that I choke at first.
Her scent swallows me whole and turns me hard at once.
Berry is wide-eyed and hissing in the dark, tiny back a white arch of anger. I hold out my hands, and the little beast puts her pale pink nose on one grayish-purple finger. “I won’t hurt your human,” I promise, remembering how clever this tiny assassin is.
I’d like to bring Agatha pleasure, to use her to gain my own, but frankly, I don’t know if that’s possible. The air in my lungs (such as they are) is so heavy that I pant with each whispered word. The floor under my shadowy tentacles drags against me like the press of a rushing wave.
I’m so strong in my world, and there’s so much power in playing with the mind. This is new—and surprisingly arduous.
I heave myself onto the bed and feel the softness of the sheets and the plump firmness of the mattress—and Berry’s tiny claws on my currently solid tentacles. I’m tempted to whip one up and back, sending the kitten flying, possibly smashing it into the wall and killing the little thing.
“Stop that,” I warn in a snarl.
Aggie moans softly and burrows into my side. “Shh. Shh.” She awkwardly pats my arm and then pulls the blanket up over my chest. “You’re cold.”
I suppose I haven’t warmed up to human temperatures yet, but when I feel her press against me, my blood starts to simmer with lust.
How can she look so sophisticated and glamorous—even when she’s completely drunk and talking to cats? A smile plays over my lips. “Beautiful. You’re a rare one, Agatha.”
“Mmm. Thank you.”
“I’d like to visit you every night.”
“I have...book club. Wednesdays.” Her voice slurs with sleep.
“After.”
“Mmkay.”
My chest shudders with something like peace. Limbs go loose. Tentacles collapse into shadow, and Berry stops attacking me with a startled “mrr!” before stalking up to make a bed on the slightly concave space where ribs surround the navel.
I haven’t felt like this—ever. Not even while I was alive.
Something is terribly wrong with me, but I don’t want to know what. Not tonight.