Chapter 32 #2
Fuck me, I forgot the marble didn’t make me invisible to Frank. Maybe he couldn’t touch me. I wasn’t about to test that out. Cowering on the floor, I shrugged on the leather jacket, the warmth covering my shoulders and giving me security I shouldn’t feel. Like it was armor.
Then, heart pounding, I waited for Frank to pass and darted over to Wald, as if his body would give me strength.
I laced fingers with what were probably cold stiff ones.
If I was going to die here, we could be dead together.
Closing my eyes, I slipped my other hand into the pocket of the jacket to grab the ring.
I stuck the massive hunk of metal on my third finger and squeaked as the silver bit into my flesh.
Ripping my other hand out of Wald’s, I twisted it.
More horror froze me from the inside. Nine hells, now it fit, but it would not come off. My only hope was that in the short term, it might protect me from Frank.
I couldn’t just wait here and hope not to die. I had to do something.
It took every ounce of strength I had to stick the marble back in my bra. Frank’s glowing red gaze locked on to me, and his smoke form shot at my head. I screeched, dropping flat across Wald’s stomach.
Frank missed me by an inch, leaving me with a trail of woodfire smoke combined with that scent you get before the rain.
My nose flooded with the candied violets my grandmother used to put on top of my birthday cake, back when I still had a family.
I twisted around, looking for the source, and Agatha’s voice sent rippling shivers over my skin.
“Harlan, you need to turn the page.” Agatha’s form was not fully materialized, and my grandmother’s face flickered across hers. Agatha was more defined than Frank, but I had a hard time focusing because of the reflections from the cracked mirrors and sheer terror.
Frank spiraled toward me. I crawled toward the table with my heart thumping at a terrifying beat. Still crouched, I reached up, flipped some pages, and then hid beneath the table as Frank swirled overhead. The scent of violets came again.
“The page with my photo,” Agatha said, wafting off toward the wall.
I scanned the room, waiting for Frank to be on the rise, and darted out.
The album photos were glared by the downlight, and Smoke-thing was almost at me again.
I grabbed the book and crawled under the table, paging through it, tilting it to get light without glare.
I had no idea who any of these people were.
There were parents and children, men and women of all ages doing things and standing in a static setting.
There was even a carnival busker and a fortune-teller.
All looking at me. None of the photos looked like Agatha.
“All in the fortunes, honey,” Agatha said in my ear, but I’d already figured it out. The fortune teller photo didn’t look anything like Agatha now, and the photo itself looked too old to ever have been Agatha, but if I squinted, it could be Agatha.
“So now what?” I called out.
Frank swooped by again, and I ducked. Bolstered by the fact that he still hadn’t touched me, and maybe the ring was keeping him away, I clambered out from under the table.
With every fiber of my soul praying this would work, I left the book on top, open to the fortune-teller page. The light glared over Agatha’s photo.
Nothing happened.
I hovered my hand over it and then pressed my hand on top of it.
Still nothing.
“Agatha? What the hell am I supposed to do?” I called out to the gloom.
An ear-splitting screech sent me skittering back under the table, gripping the base like it was a lifeline. All conscious thought left as Frank’s smoke was sucked into the nearest mirror piece, his red eyes dimming as his swirl disappeared with a mirror-rattling thunderclap.
Then there was silence. The air was still and dusty yet charged with an after-rain freshness. I stood up shakily. The book looked the same, but Wald was still dead, and the ring still would not come off.
The mirrors began to rattle.
With a squeak, I dropped under the table again, squelching the urge to cover my eyes. Agatha walked out of the mirror that Frank had disappeared into.
Holy crap. She was not dead or a ghost with form, although the reflections of the mirrors made it seem like I could see through parts of her. Like she wasn’t totally there.
She walked over to me and crouched down. “The marble?” she asked, holding out her hand. The scent of wood smoke lingered around her.
I crawled out from under the table. “Not so fast, Wald has passed over. I need him back.” I said, gesturing to Wald’s body.
“You need?” She laughed at me, the sound of tinkling glass especially eerie under the circumstances.
It was not the reaction I was expecting.
“You would bring him back and not me? I would be so much more interesting, and I could provide you with so many pleasures,” she said, running a hand down my back and cupping my ass.
Mother of hell, I was being felt up by a ghost. I squealed and stumbled back to get the hell away from her.
“Back off. I’m not making deals. I want Wald back.”
“I could fix the ring for you,” she purred.
“Yes, when you fix the ring and give me Wald back, then I’ll give you the marble. That’s the deal,” I said, smacking the fortune-teller photo in the book with my beringed hand.
Her eyes flashed, and she turned into smoke with a hiss swirling around me. “You bitch,” the smoke whispered.
I had highly suspected the Agatha who had groped my ass was not the real Agatha. It seemed a lot more like my dead prick of a cousin, Bill. That cemented it. I pulled the photo out of the old-fashioned photo corners and called to her. “Agatha, I need you. Please come.”
Nothing. The smoke continued to swirl, cursing at me.
Maybe it needed blood or something. I scraped the ring over a finger.
It hurt but didn’t break the skin. I tried harder.
The smoke thing swooped over me. My ringed hand went for the marble, but it missed me again.
I grated the ring harder over a finger. It finally broke the skin and a reddish spot appeared.
It was going to have to do since the Smoke thing was coming for another round.
I ducked again and rubbed the raw finger over the photo.
The smoke thing exploded into thousands of swirling whirls that twirled and shrank and then disappeared. There was dead silence, and then a tinkle of glass, followed by heels clicking against a shiny floor. I whipped around, my ringed hand hovering over the marble.
“Oh my dear, you can’t imagine how happy I am to see you. ”
My eyes widened. “Grandma?” The person in front of me was like a projection or a hologram. I could see through her, but it looked like my grandmother. Memories surged back of sugar cookies and tea, the powdery cheek to kiss, and the hug that meant home.
“Yes and no, I am Agatha as well. Your mind has turned me into your grandmother. Your need for her has altered the image.” She laughed, but it was the deep throaty Agatha laugh.
I choked back a sob. She was right. I wanted my grandma more than her. “Can you help me?” Tears began to flow, and I chewed my lip to make them stop.
“Wald, you mean? Yes, he’s here.” She paused, and her voice changed, as if she’d looked away and then back again as she spoke. “You can call Wald, but then I will have to go and your connection with me will break, so first, we must repair the ring.
“Right, the ring. How do we fix it?” I held out a shaking hand, turning it over so she could see the ring.
“The crystal has to be reformed. I can’t do it because I’m not here. So you will have to do it.”
“What? No, how? I can’t reform crystal. I don’t even know what that means. I thought you had to be family or something to fix it.”
“You can do it if I help you.”
“Help? How? I thought you were gone? Passed?”
“I’m tied to you, and we are family now. That’s how I could give it to you in the marble. In the marble, we can also fix it.” That sounded like the sanest plan I’d heard in a while. My hand reached for my cleavage.
“Wait, it’s not safe yet. Frank is looking for you and will continue to do so until the taste of your blood leaves his lips. But you can sever the connection.” Her voice phased in and out as if she was turning away and back again.
“How?” I asked, ready to do anything to make sure Frank never came back again.
“Close the album and lick the cover.”
“What! Lick? The cover? How the hell will that send Frank away?” The ewww factor crawled over my skin. My tongue darted out of my mouth as I considered the book.
“And I mean lick. Like lots of saliva and full tongue out. Lick it like you mean it.”
“You’re serious?” I asked, picking up the book and considering it.
“Deadly. The saliva will break the blood connection you made to the cover.”
“Why the cover? I thought the photos were the connections.”
“Not with Frank, he was before photos, and his skin was the only thing we had to pull the photos together.”
“Hang on, you mean the album is made of human skin?” I yelled the last bit and dropped the album on the table like it was a striking cobra.
“Not human but skin, yes. It’s your choice. But as long as the album exists he will always look for you.”
Mother of hell. Well, that was a non-decision. I eyed the album, though wondering how disgusting this pact was going to be.
Closing my eyes, I stuck out my tongue and licked the length of the cover, concentrating on not throwing up. My mouth tasted of Britannia’s stale perfume, the soft black leather of her messenger bag, and something like what I would imagine graveyard dirt mixed with dust would taste like.
I would never untaste it .
“Now the spine and then the back,” Agatha directed.
“Oh my God.” I groaned, but I licked the side and back as she instructed, wiping my tongue on the inside of my wrist in between, which helped to dampen the taste. My mouth was dry as the Alford Desert in summer. “Now open it and test it.” Agatha pointed to the table.
With my teeth clenched in expectation of something horrendous, I set the book down and flipped it open.
Nothing happened.
“Excellent. Now bring my photo with you when you grab the marble,” Agatha said, but I saw my grandmother run a hand over her hair, patting the curls into place, and the scent of violet powder wafted through the air. The image on the photo in my hand moved, and I almost dropped it.
“You aren’t really here?” I glanced from the photo to the glassy image in the room.
“No, and yes, the image you see is from your head. I’m able to speak with you, but I don’t have a form here. Your thoughts are giving me form.”
“I never imagined the smoke-thing. I’m sure of that.”
“Frank is different. He was tortured, flailed, then burned at the stake. The last of his form is the tanned skin of the book, so he has a connection to this time and place which I no longer have.”
“No wonder he’s so cranky.” The part about the skin sent a shiver across my shoulders.
“Warlocks were not popular in some parts of history. It happens. The marble dear, our time is limited by Wald’s form. It won’t be usable in a few hours.”
“What?” The fire lit under me. “How long will fixing the ring take?”
“I don’t know. I hope not long. It depends on you.”
“Me?” I asked as my fingers closed around the marble.