DEAD: Confrontation (40 page)

“But…” I could see her seeking some sort of defense. Lisa wasn’t a dumb kid…just misguided.

“When did you run away?”

“I didn’t,” she mumbled, her eyes going down and suddenly finding something interesting about the hands in her lap.

“Folks kick you out?” What is it with parents? Okay, your kid screwed up. Is tossing them into the street and simply turning your back to the problem really a choice?

“Uh-huh.”

I reached over and took Lisa’s hand. I saw and felt her flinch.

“You’re hands are freezing.” She pulled away and had the decency to blush.

That’s because I think I’m dead and now I eat people.
  Nope, can’t say that. At least not right this minute. I’d have to save that for later.

“How ‘bout you come home with me,” I suggested. “This is no place for a girl to be calling home.” Not that my place was all that much better.

“I don’t even know you,” Lisa said, but I could tell that her attempted hold out was a mere formality.

“Ava Birch.” I stuck out my hand.

Obviously she still remembered my cold touch because she scooted back a bit.  Then she seemed to catch herself and sat up straight like she was gathering all her inner strength and resolve. I noticed how she pressed her lips together and that was the first time that I would wonder just how much of a monster I’d become after The Change. I’d have other epiphanies, but that’s for a later time.

“Lisa Jenkins,” she said and shook my hand. Points for her, the wince of revulsion was hardly noticeable. “So, what’s your deal?”

I glanced at my watch. It was almost five. The sun would be coming up soon and I needed to be back home.

“Let’s talk as we pack and go,” I urged.

“Are you like a…vampire?” Lisa asked. She sounded unsure of herself.  As well she should, asking such a silly question.

“No.” I stuffed a wadded up bundle of her clothes in a gr
ocery bag. Of course, I was no longer certain that vampires were a myth. After all, I was a …what? At that moment, I didn’t know what I was.

“A zombie?”

“Did I try to eat your brains?” I snapped.

“Is that what zombies eat?” Lisa ducked into the bathroom to grab some things. “I thought they ripped out people’s guts.  I saw this weird mini-series called
Dead Set
at Brenda’s Halloween party, but—”

“I’m not a zombie.”

That’s what I said, but at that moment, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain. I didn’t know what she was talking about, the last horror movie I’d seen was
Friday the 13
th
, part 3
. It was awful. I’m more of a
Sleepless in Seattle
girl.

“Well, you’re not normal,” Lisa said, standing in the middle of the room holding two grocery bags with a carry bag slung over one shoulder.

“We can worry about this later,” I huffed. Suddenly I had this urge to find out what the hell I was.

We left the rundown room with the big, dark stain on the carpet that used to be Greg Pitts.  Even if somebody called the police, there wasn’t all that much to go by. I had Greggy’s wa
llet, which, minus the thirty-two dollars it once held, I stuffed into a garbage can that was sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up that day. Besides, places like that don’t want cops crawling all over the place. I’d almost be willing to bet everyone who frequented that dump had a record…if not outstanding warrants. No…Greg was probably sucked up by a Stanley Steamer rented from the corner grocery store. I never heard anything about him on the news that next night, or any other night for that matter. The big story was about the ‘miracle baby’ and the heroic gas station attendant. Lisa didn’t cry…much.

When we got back to my place, I let Lisa have the bed.  Fo
rtunately for me, she was out like a light in no time. I ducked inside the closet just as I heard the daily ritual of daytime begin.  My phone still hadn’t made a peep, and continued to remain pathetically silent all day.

I heard Lisa get up once and make her way into the bat
hroom. I was batting around a bunch of very lame excuses that would make my being in this closet sound reasonable. Nothing really stood out, but fortunately, Lisa flopped back onto my bed and was back asleep in minutes.

I spent the day experimenting. I played with my SEEK abi
lity. I tried to make myself mad so that my claws would come out. I figured it might be useful to have those weapons at my beck and call. Unfortunately, my claws aren’t like most of the men I’ve had in my bed…they knew I was faking it. However, I was able to bring on my shark mouth. All I had to do was think about my last meal. Sadly, it didn’t work when I thought about all my former faves like chocolate, bacon, and Ben and Jerry’s.  In fact, thinking about ‘normal’ food didn’t do a thing for me. 

If I could have cried, that would be worthy of my tears, that’s for sure. Just because I don’t respond to those things doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about the special place a pint of Chunky Monkey or a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough had for me on one of those crappy days when nothing went right, or my PMS was worse than normal.

I poked my head out when the little crack at the bottom of the door was dark. Lisa was still sleeping. I didn’t smell anything, so I figured that, at the very least, she wasn’t dying. I let her be and went out to my living room.

I was sorting her clothes so that I could wash everything when I heard a knock at my door. The thing was, I knew as soon as I heard it that it wasn’t really an actual knock. Whoever it was had
placed
their hand on the door twice. That ‘knock’ wasn’t meant to be heard by anybody other than me.

I focused my hearing on the other side of the door and heard…nothing. No breathing. No rustling of clothes. In fact, it was a complete absence of sound. Hmm. There went my grizzly bear claws.  Fear brings them out. Who knew?

I moved to the door and, like a total airhead, put my ear to it. Yep, my super-hearing didn’t pick up anything, but maybe if I place my ear to the door I’ll get something. I considered peeking out my curtains, but that seemed silly. Do people really think they can move their curtains and somebody standing outside won’t see? And seriously? Besides the breeze, does glass really protect you from anything?

Still, a girl can’t be too careful I took off my sunglasses.  There was something about this stranger at my door that made me want to be at my scariest. I thought about last night’s snack.  Yay! Shark mouth! Now I was ready to open the door. I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, ready to pounce.

“Mrrgmph!” That was supposed to be
“What the hell do you want?”
I need to remember that I can’t speak with shark mouth.

“Miss Birch?” A woman was standing at my door. She seemed to take the whole monster version of me in stride. I’m pretty sure she stifled a yawn!

“Murgl?”
Stupid shark mouth
.

“May I come in?”

I cleared my head of all thoughts of food and wiped the thick, syrupy strand of drool off my chin. “Sure,” I said after an over-exaggerated swallow.

The woman stepped past me and I realized that all my claws had retracted as well. I closed the door and clicked on a lamp.  My guest was trying to politely find an uncluttered section of my sofa to sit on.

“My name is Morgan,” the woman began, and then paused.  She looked around with a raised eyebrow, quickly stood, and went to my bedroom.  She turned with an angry look on her face.  “I was led to believe you lived alone.”

“Oh,” I hurried to the door, edging past to close it, “that’s Lisa,”

“You’re childless,” whispered Little Miss State-The-Obvious.  “And you have no siblings.”

“She’s a friend.”

“You don’t have any friends.”

“And you’re kind of a bitch,” I huffed. I felt my fingers and toes start to tingle.

“Oh please,” Morgan said flatly, glancing down at my feet.

“How about you tell me who you are and why you’re here,” I demanded.

“I told you, my name is Morgan and—”

“Morgan what?” I interrupted.

“Just Morgan.”

“What…like Cher or Madonna?”

“Sure.” Ooo, somebody was getting ruffled.

“Okay,” I agreed.  “But what do you want? I’m guessing you are some sort of scary night creature. That would explain why I couldn’t hear or smell you. Also, that might account for why you don’t seem to care that my eyes are like two black ma
rbles, my mouth looks like something out of
Jaws
, and my fingers and toes sprout Ginsu knives when I get agitated.”

“You failed to mention your unnatural pallor.”

“Huh?”

“Your skin tone,” Morgan sneered and made an attempt to sound like she was talking to a six-year-old.  “But I’m here on business.”

Okay
, I thought,
maybe I am stupid
.

“You tried to take your life recently.”  That was a statement, not a question. “When you came to, it was to…this.”  She said it like it was something dirty.

“Fine,” I said with a nod. “But you haven’t really told me anything about why you’re here or who you are.”

“I’m a psychic,” Morgan stated that like it meant something.  When it was obvious that I didn’t have even a smidge of a clue, she continued. “I have a link with anything undead in my territ
ory.”

“Your territory?”

After rolling her eyes, she went on to explain that the fiction out there had it all wrong. Sure, vampires and such were real, but they didn’t run the show. Many cities—not all—had psychics.  Not the kind on television commercials or with cheesy ads in the papers. Real psychics don’t tell futures…
per se
. What they can see is something to do with a person’s proximity to death. Their other big ‘power’ is the ability to locate undeath. That is what makes them so powerful. A city’s psychic can tell where every vampire, ghost, shade, wraith, poltergeist, and yes, ghoul is located. That is what makes them so powerful…as well as feared.

“Van Helsing was a psychic,” Morgan said.  “But what the stories didn’t talk about was the fact that he found religion,” she said that last word like it was dirty. “He decided to use his po
wers to try and eradicate anything undead. Dracula was simply a big name, sorta like the Oprah of the times.”

“So this whole undead thing,” I’d stood there listening long enough and had questions, “it ties to me how?”

“You’re a ghoul.”

Well…there it was. At least now I knew…sorta. I didn’t have even the slightest clue what a ghoul was…is…whatever. It must’ve shown on my face.

“You feed on the dead.”

When she said it like that, it sounded so gross. But this was a big moment for me…now, at least, I knew what was going on. Okay, I still didn’t know what was going on, but I knew what I was. That counted for something.

“So, what’s that mean? Being a ghoul sounds a bit vague. I know what a vampire is and a ghost…some of those other things, though…” I shrugged my shoulders.

“I just told you,” Morgan said, not sounding at all like she was talking to the class idiot. “You eat the dead.”

“People? Animals? You’re being a bit vague.” I did my very best to not sound like I was whining. Also, I’d just used the word ‘vague’ twice in a sentence which made me feel smarter.

“Actually, ghouls are fairly rare.” Then she went on to e
xplain that it is something genetic. She also explained that we put off pheromones in life that repels most people. Most ghouls come into being after suicide. Only, we couldn’t have done anything like blow our brains out, because that is unrecoverable. Hanging causes something to go wrong and makes the ghoul crazy. That is one of the big tasks of the psychic. They have to put down the messed up misfits of the undead community. Also, they are the welcome wagon; hence, this visit.

“But I’ve got so many questions,” I insisted. “You haven’t told me that much.”

“I told you that you’re a ghoul and that you eat the dead,” Morgan said, like that explained it all.

“Well, there is one more thing that I am required to tell you.” Morgan glanced past me to my bedroom where Lisa lay sleeping. “The undead don’t like publicity. They keep to the
mselves. Occasionally, one or two will get a craving for celebrity. But fortunately, nobody ever really takes it seriously. However, if you start showing up, making the public aware of us as a collective whole…you will be extinguished.”

“So much for selling my memoires,” I sighed in my best overdramatic and sarcastic manner.

“Actually, you’re free to write whatever you want.” Morgan ignored my sarcasm. “The market for that sort of thing is really booming. Nobody believes it, and it makes an okay living if you can hit it big. The key is to find a willing face.” Once again, she looked past me to my bedroom.

“Lisa?” I asked.

“Well, you only have two choices with her at this point.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“She knows your nature.  Plus,” Morgan raised her voice a bit, “she’s been faking being asleep and has heard all of our conversation. At this point she is a liability and can either be your front, or tonight’s dinner.”