Chapter 4 A Glass Half-Full… of Irony
THOSE TWO WERE NOT HUMAN,” I say the moment the vampire couple leaves.
The head rolls himself on the floor, seeming happy to continue functioning like a Roomba on a dry-mop function. Right, of course this revelation wouldn’t impact him; he’s not a real live human himself. At least, not anymore.
“I thought you wouldn’t notice,” he says.
“I’m not an idiot. I know that more than humans live in Salem.”
Knowing and seeing are different things, though. It’s rare for vampires and other paranormal beings to interact with humans. Grandma always said they keep out of sight, avoiding human notice by wearing magical jewelry with markings called runes. Unless, of course, you’re friends.
I bolt the front door and slip the vampires’ contact information into my pocket. Not to save it, though. The phone numbers for Dave and Amanda, whose names hardly suggest creatures of the night, now join a wad of lint and rubber bands in transit to the trash can.
“So this must be why you took my presence in stride!” declares Bulan the deviant head. “You do share Rose’s predilection for the supernatural. In spite of your attempt to bury me—”
“I am taking nothing in stride. I am severely traumatized and masking.”
The head laughs because he thinks this is a joke.
“Also,” I add, “if you’re trying to make me think you knew Grandma Rose, it’s not working.”
“How come?”
“I don’t share a predilection for anything supernatural.”
“I suppose it was a poor choice of words. A penchant, perhaps? A partiality? As I understood from dear old Rosie, your family line is fully human and non-magical yet has been allowed to dabble in the paranormal world ever since your ancestor was scapegoated in a witch trial for an infestation of albino pigeons.”
“Crabs,” I correct. “It was crabs.”
“Be that as it may, with a name like Mortifie, who’s surprised he got targeted? Not me! Ha!”
I fold my arms as I consider the head-turned-dust-collector and his knowledge of my sordid ancestry. “Fine. So maybe you did know Grandma personally,” I allow. “And you two seem to have ended on good terms, in spite of your dismemberment.”
“Of course we did! My limblessness was a preexisting condition, nothing to do with dear Rosie. So if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you refrained from another burial attempt. It’s rather rude.”
“Noted,” I say, although it’s not a promise or anything.
Maybe Grandma’s possession of the head wasn’t a convoluted scheme to make me to befriend her little cabal, like I’d suspected. But why is it, or he, still here?
“What do you want?” I ask the head. “Seriously.”
He looks up at me earnestly.
“At present? To know why you aren’t thinking of helping the happy couple,” he says.
Nope. We’re not revisiting that.
“You must be aware already that there’s nothing to fear,” he says as I actively ignore him.
I am instead busying my hands with herb organization.
It’s concerning how many of these vials are labeled Poison.
What’s more concerning are the ones labeled Poison, Maybe.
“Vampires aren’t all bad. In fact, they’re kind of wimpy.
I’ve heard of their victims biting them back and winning.
Of course, they still turned into vampires afterward. ”
I pick up a concerning vial of Balm of Kitten. What does that even mean?
“I’m not calling them,” I tell the head. “Or taking on that job. Or staying in Salem.”
“Hmm. So if it’s not a predilection you have, is it fear?”
I roll my eyes. I’m not afraid of the paranormal itself. But do I harbor a fear of falling into Salem’s paranormal world? Of it consuming me, destroying me, making me an irresponsible and inadvertently cruel mess of a person, like it did to my mom and my grandmother and countless Spüks before them?
Maybe.
Also, I would never extract the balm from a defenseless kitten. I’m morally flexible, not a monster.
“All your misgivings aside, Sabby, I think the idea of a paranormal wedding business is magnificent!” says Bulan.
“Getting paid four thousand dollars for a handful of bouquets is a good living, especially if you don’t have to pay taxes.
And you do have a knack for design. Look how neatly you lined up your belongings on that table. Such effortless style. Mmm.”
Internally I wince. Generally speaking, it’s my goal to avoid compliments. They mean you’ve stood out instead of blending in.
“Design skill or not, I won’t be sticking around to plan weddings,” I say, bumping said table so my sling bag slumps a little less artistically. “You might not have heard, but staying in Salem puts me at risk.”
“The vampires wouldn’t—”
“At risk of losing my job,” I clarify. “My real one. In New York. That I start on Monday.”
With this revelation complete, I retreat to the back of the shop and behind the wooden door to Grandma’s office.
Bulan has the audacity to follow, rolling and bouncing with a smile unabated by contact with the dirty floor.
I’m not sure how he propels himself, but I don’t know how cars work either, and that hasn’t affected my life or anything.
I sweep aside clutter and loose potpourri to sit on the edge of Grandma’s desk, only to stare into a framed four-by-six of me and Mom.
This must be how Bulan recognized me. Mom and I are on a weather-worn dock in coastal Oregon, eating hot dogs and smiling messily at the camera behind windswept blond bangs.
That was my thirteenth birthday. The year Mom taught me how to dye my hair from blond to a mousy, run-of-the-mill brown. The year I started to go by “Sabby.”
Considering that Grandma Rose wasn’t with us at the beach, and was in fact supposedly out of contact, I’m not sure how I feel about her having this photo. Maybe a little bad? As much as Grandma aggravated me, I suspect she might have actually liked me.
Or at least, the idea of me.
I tip the frame over so it lands face down, splat. I wait for the guilty feeling to go away, and when it doesn’t, I focus on Grandma’s knickknacks.
“Look at you go,” says the head, apropos of nothing.
“Excuse me?”
Chuckling as he eyes the newly rearranged desk, Bulan says, “You’re making this office more appealing already, Design Queen. For you, decorating would be a cinch. As for the rest of your new wedding planning enterprise—”
I draw my hand back and slide off the desk.
“Here’s the deal, Bulan,” I say. “If you’re going to stick around, I’m putting you to work.”
“As a Roomba again?” he asks hopefully.
“You’ll find out.”
In short order, I enlist Bulan to roll me around the shabby little shop, then later, around Grandma’s house, introducing me to her favored drawers for tucking away money and random papers, her indexing files and Post-it Note novels, her knitted scarf collections—which are definitely getting donated—and her plastic shrine of Dave & Buster’s prizes.
Straight to the trash with those. He helps me log on to her computer and regales me with tales of her overzealous use of spelling and grammar checks.
I spend a good five minutes holding the door open to Grandma’s freezer, toying with fate.
For all I know, tossing out overcooked pasta might trigger some kind of ghostly conniption fit.
The last thing I want is to be haunted by oily zucchini pesto.
By the next afternoon, I manage to consolidate all the family heirlooms Mom might want into two storage tubs, slap sticky notes on four boxes of questionably valuable collectibles that might get sold to some sucker online, then lock both the shop and the house up tight.
In a few weeks, I’ll come back and do a massive eBay push and prepare the place for a Realtor.
For now, I’m satisfied with a job complete—or at least, complete-enough-for-now—and so I settle atop Grandma’s leaf-strewn porch stoop, dial Baldy, and wait.
“He’s not answering.” Hypocrite.
Bulan, who I had to forcibly remove from Grandma’s house along with the scarves, wobbles around my feet with relief.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I guess you should stay.”
I side-eye him. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“I may have overheard that oddly top-heavy man tell you about a magical contract keeping you here until the passing of seven tides, twice—”
“It’s a will, not a contract,” I correct. “And you said it yourself. Grandma Rose had no actual magic. Baldy might have bought her playacting, but you should know better. Anyway, my work here is done, at least until the next court date.”
“It didn’t sound that way to me.”
At my pointed glare, he explains: “I meant that lovely vampire couple. They’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“All the more reason to nip out of town fast.” I bend and pat the head’s dusty crown.
He’s wearing a big-eyed pout, endearing enough to make someone forget he’s an undead abomination.
For a split second, I can see why Grandma Rose let him live in her closet.
“Good luck with everything, Bulan. By which I mean finding somewhere else to live rent-free.”