The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) (42 page)

It didn’t take long. She died on Tuesday. On Friday I came in to find a blue message slip on my desk, Sharon the receptionist’s angry scrawl as familiar as my own handwriting by now.

Ryan Hannigan had called.

“Meet in a neutral place,” Moira insisted. So it was the Metropole Hotel, because they had a restaurant and if he was picking up the tab – which I was fairly certain he would – I could do with a steak.

I was seeing my dead college room mate. Cholesterol was the least of my goddamn worries.

Ryan Hannigan certainly didn’t disappoint. Trim, tanned, wide-shouldered, in a suit that would have cost me a month’s pay (if I’d ever wear black worsted) and dark-eyed, he rose as soon as I approached the table and offered his hand. “Miss Parkes.”

“Mr Hannigan.” I shook it once, wearing my “pleasant-but-noncommittal” smile. Took my hand back decisively. “I’m a bit surprised by this.”

“Yes . . . I’m sorry.” He was fetchingly awkward, running his hand back through a shelf of dark hair. “I just . . . Moira. It was a shock.”

I sank down, the bald maître d’ hovering long enough to drop a napkin in my lap and bustling off. “Thank you for telling me about the memorial service.” I tried not to look at Moira, who hovered behind him as he settled in his own chair. Instead of flat disinterest, her entire face had turned predatory, her discoloured eyes suddenly piercing, red sparks burning in their depths. At least she was quiet, for once. “I feel bad,” I said, all in a rush. “She . . . it was so sudden, and I hadn’t seen her for years—”

“She was good at keeping secrets.” He cocked his dark head, and I had the sudden vivid mental image of a shark smiling before it opened wide. “She’s standing right behind me, isn’t she?”

I swallowed hard. The pendant twitched again, decisively.

“For Christ’s sake.” His faint smile didn’t alter. “You’re wearing the Seal. You keep looking up over my head, right where she’d be standing if she wanted to slip a knife between my ribs. Which she’d probably love to do. The dead
lie
, Miss Parkes. Did she tell you that?”

“Never,” Moira whispered, leaning over him. “We
never
lie. Don’t take the bait, Georgie.”

Another hard swallow, my throat dry and slick as a summer windshield. “Mr Hannigan—”

“Ryan. We’re past formality, Georgia, wouldn’t you say? Do you know you can shut her off? Now that you’re wearing the Seal, you can tell her to go away so we can have a leisurely chat over dinner. Just concentrate on making her fade.”

Moira leaned forward, taut, the blood crackling as it dripped off her hands. “Georgie—” Another real emotion instead of just flatline.

Fear.

Her eyes bugged, the whites turning even more jaundiced. She faded, static buzzing and blurring her sharp outlines. I stared over Ryan Hannigan’s shoulder, letting out a slow whistling breath, my eyebrows coming together.

“Isn’t that better?” Ryan leaned back in his chair as a slim Hispanic boy filled our crystal water goblets. A paper-thin slice of lemon floated in mine, twisting as it settled. Like a yellow scarf, or a grimacing mouth.

Moira winked out of existence. The pendant twitched again, and the new sharp colour and clarity in the world intensified. Like I’d been seeing through gauze before putting the necklace on, thinking I had 20/20 because I didn’t know any better.

My heart leaped, pounded thinly in my wrists and throat.

“Now.” He settled back, watching me with bright, reined interest. “Let’s get to know each other a little. I can’t use the Seal, but I can teach
you
how to use it. And we can make each other very happy.”

She materialized in the middle of my living room, her face squinching up into a twisted, plummy root-shape. She didn’t even have to take a breath before starting in on me. “Do you have any idea how
uncomfortable
that is? What did he say to you? What did you
do
? He’s dangerous, Georgie. You have no idea how dangerous, and you just threw me under the bus, goddammit—”

I dropped my purse, stalked into the kitchen. Put the paper box of leftovers in the fridge. When I closed the door she was right there, and still going.

“—and we
can’t
lie as long as you’re wearing the Seal. Jesus Christ, Georgie, when did you start listening to anything a man says? Especially a man like that!
He killed me, Georgie!
Why aren’t you listening to me?”

It took her a good ten minutes to wind down. She trailed me while I undid my hair and stepped out of my shoes. She ranted while I filled the bathtub, and when I slid my clothes off and stepped into the water she shimmered in the steam filling the air. The blood crackled angrily off her hands, and when she flung them around to accentuate certain points, the droplets winked out of existence with tiny red sparks.

I settled back in the water and closed my eyes. The Seal pulsed reassuringly against my chest. Finally, silence ticked through the bathroom. A drop of water plinked from the faucet. For the first time in days, I was thoroughly, blessedly warm.

“Are you finished?” I wiggled my toes. Water rippled.

I cracked an eyelid. She was staring at me, her irises gone muddy, the jaundiced whites bulging, and her lips even more purple. The charring had spread. Her breasts sloped a little, the implants sagging, and there was absolutely no dignity in her nakedness. Not like during college, when she could have walked the length of the entire campus stark naked as a jaybird and nobody would have even sniggered. Her raw, blood-drenched hands hung at her sides, and sudden shame bit me high up in my throat, right where the bitter copper taint of mute rage and failure had lodged since childhood.

“He invited me out to the house on Sunday.”

“Georgie—” A faint horrified cricket whisper.

I felt nastily, faintly glad that she was the one looking horrified, instead of me. “We’re supposed to drain some of the charge off the Seal so he can use it in his—”

“
Georgie
—”

“Shut
up
, Moira. You brought this to me, I’m going to fucking fix it. The way I fixed every other problem you had in college. I cleaned up after you for
years
and I’m still doing it. I thought I’d gotten away from it.” I wiggled my toes again, for punctuation. “Anyway. If I can make you go away, I can make you more solid, right? It’s elementary logic.”

“I can borrow mass,” she whispered. “Yes. For a short time.”

This is why I wrote all your papers. You just don’t think, do you?
Well, of course not. She never
had
to. Everything just fell into her arms or her lap. Fell – or was sucked in by her sheer unconscious voraciousness.

I made a restless movement. Water slopped against the sides of the tub. “Well, OK then. Between now and Sunday you’re going to teach me more about using this thing. Just quit fucking riding me, Moira! I’m not in the mood. The man makes me feel dirty. If you can’t bring me a glass of Chablis then at least shut up and let me enjoy my bath.” I heard the bitchy whine, softened it up a little by habit. “I mean, Christ. I’ve pulled you out of the fire every other time, right? Why don’t you trust me now?”

She was motionless, even the crackles of vanishing blood oddly muted.

“Georgie?” She spoke faintly, almost in a whisper.

If she dropped
one more thing
on me . . . “What?” I shifted again. Water lapped. I tried not to think of the charring spreading all over her, the faint reek of burning that was beginning to permeate the bathroom,
or
the things Ryan Hannigan had told me. I wanted very hard not to think at all for a little while. Ten minutes, twenty if I was lucky.

“Thank you.”

For the first time, Moira sounded like she meant it, not just like it was the thing to say when you’d twisted someone’s arm. My eyes opened fully just in time to see her drift through the door to the hall, slipping through it like smoke. The steak I’d managed to choke down rose in a hot wad, but I set my jaw and swallowed hard again.

I’d earned every bite. And I was going to keep earning it.

The limousine arrived precisely at twelve-thirty. Long, sleek, and black, and I only had a moment’s misgiving before climbing in. The newspaper said Moira had died in a silver MG.

The chauffeur was a slightly tubby blondish man in an uncomfortable-looking suit. “New hire,” Moira sniffed. The seat didn’t dimple under her, and the blood crackled away before it reached the upholstery. “He probably fired Enrique. I
liked
Enrique.”

I wanted to ask how
well
she’d liked him, but kept my mouth shut. Settled back on the seat and watched the city slide by.

“We can go over it again.” Was she nervous? She was back to that uninflected flatline, it was hard to tell. “Once you’re in the circle, you’ll be insulated, but you won’t be able to get out. You’ll have to concentrate really hard to get me the mass I need while he’s distracted.”

I nodded, slightly. The smoked-glass partition between me and the driver was half-open, but I could see his dark eyes in the mirror. They were fixed front, and looked dilated.

That was not a good sign.

Both Ryan and Moira swore I couldn’t die as long as I had this thing on. I found out I was playing with it again, running my fingers over the fluid curves, the chain sliding warm and soft against my nape.

“Bastard,” she hissed, softly. “You know, I probably
bought
this for him. He’s nothing without the Seal. He’s scared.
Good
.”

It was the only time she didn’t sound monotone, when she was telling me how much she hated him. I nodded again, half-closing my eyes. I was glad I’d worn jeans and a T-shirt for this. The boots had good grippy soles, too, and as the limo turned uptown I propped one on the seat and imagined the limo was mine.

The house reared up in a grey wave under an overcast sky. The English gardens were clipped and lifeless, winter settled in to stay for a while. The driveway was pitch-black and newly sealed, and an honest-to-God butler offered to take my coat. I declined, clutching my purse to my side with one elbow as if it might wriggle away, and Ryan Hannigan came down the great sweeping staircase like he was in an MGM musical. I expected to hear the voice of God telling Moses what the hell to do, or for Hannigan to bust out a cane and start tap-dancing, at any moment.

“Thank you, Chilton. I’ll take Miss Parkes from here. If you could just leave the week’s menu for Cook before you go? Good.” Hannigan arrived at the bottom and surveyed me as the butler glided away. “Hello, Georgia. I trust the drive was pleasant?”

“I think your chauffeur’s stoned.” My palms were hot and slick.

“He’s temporary.” He’d just stepped out of some European version of
Vogue
– charcoal and black, cashmere pullover and sharply-creased slacks, his dark hair perfect and his smile a white slash. A chunky silver watch gleamed on one tanned wrist. “Especially if you don’t like him. We are, after all, going to be working together.”

I made a noncommittal noise. All of him was so impossibly vivid, burning with stolen life.

Just like Moira. Two of a kind, both high aces. And what was I? A two or a three of spades. Maybe I could graduate to joker, though, when all this was done.

“He got rid of my grandfather clock,” Moira noted, ripples passing through her in bursts. “Probably my dinnerware too, before my body even got cold.
Bastard
.”

I only saw a little of the house, but I liked it. Despite the Eastern thing Hannigan had going on – cushions and Zen hangings, at least two huge stone Buddhas, and various poor village tchotchkes re-made so rich people could play at being peasants. I searched for something to say. “So, are you a Buddhist and a sorcerer? How does that work?” It sounded stupid, like cocktail-party conversation, and I wished I could rub my palms against my jeans to dry them off, and get rid of the pounding in my head too.

“Buddhism’s a technology, Georgia. Not a religion.” He liked educating dumb females, his tone said. He liked it a
lot
. He continued, and I quit listening, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. The pendant quivered against my skin, nestling close. I could almost see its outlines shifting under my shirt as the lion-dragon-thing moved, flowing in a circle.

“Oh, Christ.” Moira rippled some more, drifting after him. “I
hate
that tone of his. And look at him. Hasn’t missed a workout, I can tell you
that
much. In between getting rid of all my— oh, no, my O’Keefe’s gone!”

Shut up
, I wanted to tell her.
You’re distracting me
. I followed him through a library, suspecting that most of the leather-bound spines filling the glassed-in shelves were fakes. Interior decorators can do that, books by the yard. I wondered if some of them were magic books, decided not to ask.

“And here is where we make the magic, Georgia.” He swept open a pair of heavy mahogany doors, and I followed him through into a circular stone-walled room.

It must have cost a pretty penny, from the star in a circle cut into the floor to the grey-black stone covering walls, ceiling, and floor. Custom-built cabinets and counters ran across one half of the wall’s curve, jammed with fascinating things – jars of bones, smoke shifting like liquid inside rows of jewel-glowing bottles, feathers and bits of things, a baleful little obsidian statue of a gargoyle or something that tapped on the glass, furiously, as it shivered and reformed, the cracks vanishing. Ranks of candles stood on twisted iron candelabra, some of them taller than I was, and there was a pleasant spicy smoke-smell from the cloud of incense.