Dead Corse Read online

  Washing the bite down with coffee I wiped my mouth and pointed. “Is that her name?”

  “Yes. There’s a large dossier attached with her birth records, bank accounts, parents—” Mom stopped and closed her mouth. She looked at me. “You need to return the money.”

  “Are you kidding? The only thing they want to know is if she’s a witch. How hard can that be to tell? I just have to find her and—” I pursed my lips. “How do you find out if someone’s a witch?”

  “Hun, it’s not something you can just tell. You have to know,” Jemmy said as she ate her eggs with gravy—there was gravy?!—and a biscuit.

  “Isn’t there like, some kind of test I can do? Throw salt on her like that freak threw salt on me?”

  “Doesn’t work,” mom continued reading stuff on the computer. “I’m serious, Zoë. You need to give back the money and not get involved with a puppet account.”

  “A what?”

  “This,” she pointed to the screen. “This is a front for someone or a lot of someones who obviously know who you are and what you can do. As far as I know you didn’t put your full name on the Craig’s List ad, did you?”

  Blink. “No.” Chew, chew.

  “Then why are they calling you by name? And why are they happy you’re alive and well? Are you not supposed to be?”

  My mom had always been paranoid. But not the normal kind. For example, I could leave the front door unlocked, just forget to turn the dead bolt and she’d be irritated but not freaked out. But if I messed up one of her salt barriers or interrupted a candle or something she had going in the shop? Woof. You’d think I’d just shot her.

  She had that same look on her face, like I’d messed up some salt again. Yeah what she was saying did make it seem creepy—and there might be a possibility that this Maharba was a perv and watched me through my bedroom window. Which made that sound all rapey.

  “Look, okay, I get it. But mom…fifty thousand dollars. And if I just find out and give them a yes or a no then that’s one hundred thousand dollars!” My voice squeaked even though she was looking at me as if I’d just done something really bad.

  With a sigh she leaned over to the display case where the pies and cakes were and grabbed a pen off the top. She wrote a few things down on a napkin and pushed it my way. “That’s her full name and her address. Go over, see if you find any occult or Wiccan paraphernalia—”

  I blinked at her.

  “—just see if she has stuff at her place like in the botanica. Write it up and send it to them. But then I think you need to distance yourself from both this Rhonda Orly and Maharba.”

  That’s my mom. Take the money and run like hell.

  • • •

  Needless to say I couldn’t go back to sleep. Not with fifty thousand dollars in my account, and another possible fifty K just waiting to be deposited. There were so many credit cards I could pay off with that.

  I could even get my own place!

  I decided to get this assignment done asap. Mister emails-twenty-times-a-day Grayson could wait. I had my eye on this condo over in Morning Side. But it was uber expensive and had a maintenance fee to give me ulcers.

  So I got up, got another shower and drove mom’s old Volvo station wagon to the address on the napkin.

  Rhonda Orly’s apartment was in Morning Side. And a very nice part of it. In fact, it was in a very nice house.

  Mental Note: I hate her.

  I realized at that moment I had no idea what she looked like or how old. I’d never actually opened the files. Mom had. Well crap. Didn’t matter. I parked down the street after making sure I wasn’t in a tow-away zone, leaned back and slipped my mortal coil.

  Okay not slipped. It took a bit of struggle to pull out of myself and if anyone could see I was pretty sure it looked—for lack of a metaphor—weird.

  Once outside the car I looked in the window to see my body covered in a blanket in the back of the wagon. Mom’s car was the best car to do this with since there was more room to put me. That and I didn’t have a car yet.

  Jemmy and mom wanted me to keep my body at the shop so they could watch it, but I figured this way when I was done I could go shopping!

  First order of business, getting into the house. Mom said to feel for wards. A witch would protect herself from influences and ward her home against them. I knew what mom’s wards felt like so that was a snap. I got all the way to the front porch, which was as big as my bedroom at mom’s, thank you very much, and nothing. Not even a tingle.

  Miss Orly had the usual Halloween decor up. Cardboard hissing cats, bats and several cotton spider webs spread out over the windows. A pumpkin carved with a traditional smiling face sat to the right of the door and a plastic black caldron joined it at the ready for Halloween night candy.

  The door was painted a rich maroon, more on the brown side. I took in a deep breath expecting a steel door and was pleasantly surprised to find wood.

  Once inside the Halloween commercialism continued. More hanging bats made of nylon and wire, zombies trailing torn fabric. She had purple lights strung up the banister and at the top stood one of those life size Frankenstein mannequins.

  “Great, how am I supposed to find anything in here that’s witchy when all this crap’s out?” With a sigh I started a little tour of the place and realized pretty fast that this old girl had money. A parlor was on the right, the kind no one actually went in except to entertain. On the other side was a pretty impressive den with a humongous desk, wall shelves and a couch. Nice!

  The kitchen was all modern with stainless steel appliances and the dinning room looked pretty traditional with a long table for eight.

  Upstairs wasn’t any different. Nice bedrooms, four of them. Two full bathrooms, all modern. But I didn’t see anything that was like what mom had in the botanica. Mostly it was just cheap Halloween stuff.

  By the time I finished my exploring about two hours had passed and I was starting to feel…bad. I’d had several dizzy spells. Once back downstairs I heard something slam, followed by the unmistakeable utterance of a swear word.

  Someone was home!

  Or it could be a very clumsy burglar. And if it was then I could do good and scare them off.

  Wait a minute—the sound and the voice sounded as if they were underneath me. Basement? I did a quick once around and spotted a door under the staircase. Huh, what was it with putting doors under staircases? It could either be stairs down or a bathroom.

  Stairs. A flickering light illuminated them and the movement reminded me of a candle. I took the stairs one at a time, delighted I didn’t have any weight to make them creak.

  When I got to the bottom I nearly fell over for two reasons. One, I was really, really dizzy now and wanted to just take a nap. And two—

  The whole basement looked like mom’s botanica with a little bit of Hollywood thrown in for dramatics. The ceiling, which I assumed was usually little more than a display of the under side of the floor above, was covered in a black material, stapled to the wooden beams overhead. The floor had been painted black and on top of that in the center of the room was a huge pentagram. On the far wall was a table decorated with candles, incense, deer horns and what looked like one of those concrete garden statues of Aphrodite.

  In the middle of all that stood some girl in a black robe, hood up, arms in the air over her head.

  And she was chanting.

  Yeeeah. I’d say this chick was a witch. Or she thought she was a witch because honestly this looked like a scene out of Midnight Offerings.

  I had what I needed for a report so I stood—and fell right back down. Only this time I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

  “Who’s there?”

  I lay half on my side and propped up on my elbows. I needed to get back to my body so I looked for the silver cord…

  Nothing happened. It was there and I could feel it, but when I surrendered to it I stayed right where I was.

  Oh snap. WTH?

  “You! It’s you
again!”

  Wait—no. No, no, no, no…that voice.

  I jerked my head to look up at the robed girl standing over me and when she pulled her hood back—

  “Holy shit! The Fake Fortune Teller!”

  That…might not have been the right thing to say. Her face grew red and she ran across the basement to that table, grabbed a handful of something, ran back and threw it at me and shouted something in latin again.

  And again, nothing happened.

  “Why aren’t you gone? Why can’t I banish you like I did before?”

  I sighed and looked up at her. I tried to stand but when I did the whole room tilted to the right. “You didn’t banish me before. I’m not some weird demon or whatever to banish. And you’re definitely not a witch.”

  “Yes I am a witch.” She squatted down and looked at me as if looking at a very weird bug. “What what the hell are you?”

  “I call myself a Traveler.”

  “Time traveler?”

  I was starting to see where that label just wasn’t going to work. I gave her a sour look. “I’m out of body and having a hard time getting back into it.”

  The girl’s whole demeanor changed. She shifted to her butt and looked me up and down. “Are you saying you’re astral traveling?”

  “If astral traveling (see?!) means I’m out of my body then yes. Only I can’t get back in my body.”

  “You should be able to just go back down your silver cord. Do you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And nothing’s happening?”

  “No.” Oh hell. Nausea. And a lot of it. “I don’t know if astral travelers can throw up, but I really want too right now.”

  “Dude, if you’re really stepping out of your body—how long have you been out?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. No watches down here. Which is what I was working on. Making a watch that would work around magic. It’s really sort of easy if you think about they physics involved but I really need the spell I’m pretty sure is in this book I’ve been—”

  “Rhonda? You are Rhonda Orly, right?”

  “Yeah. How did you know my name?”

  “Just…stop talking.” I started breathing funny too and wondered if my physical body was reacting the same way under the blanket in mom’s car. “What do you know about astral traveling?”

  “Well what I started to say is that the longer or more often you disengage from your body, the harder it’s going to be to get back in. You really should time yourself more often—” she paused. “What do I call you?”

  “My name’s Zoë and I think I’m in big trouble. I need you to call my mom.”

  “Call your mom? How old are you?”

  “Fine. I’ll try and get back to my body myself.” I did manage to stand but it wasn’t a good stand. In fact, the lower half of my body was sort of—missing. “Oh, this isn’t right.”

  “Damn Zoë. Where is your physical body?”

  I told her where it was, what it looked like and when she ran out of the basement, I ran out of time.

  • • •

  I’d only ever been in the hospital a few times in my life. Once to get my tonsils removed. And then once after I was attacked in Piedmont Park. The park attack was the one that I didn’t like to remember. Mainly because that’s what started all this shit.

  My point is when I came to I knew where I was even before I opened my eyes because I could hear people being paged overhead as well as a familiar beeping noise. The silver bar along the bed came into view first and then I saw mom looking down at something. A shift of my head and I saw she was stitching something on black cloth.

  “When are you going to learn I’m always right?”

  Closing my eyes I sighed. I felt—awful. Sort of like I still wasn’t attached to myself. I cleared my throat before I answered and I still sounded a little like Harvey Fierstein for a few sentences until I cleared out the garbage. “What happened? Where am I?”

  “You’re in Grady Hospital and what happened was your body slipped into a coma. Miss Orly managed to find the car and break in—you owe me a maintenance appointment on the Volvo for that and don’t say you can’t afford it because you can—and called nine one one.”

  Coma? Seriously? “How long?”

  “A day, which is long enough. Dr. Murdock said you should recover soon. Your blood sugar dipped down into the danger zone.”

  “What does that mean?” I reached up to wipe at my face and encountered a tube in my nose. Ew.

  “He’s looking into the possibility that you might be hypoglycemic. He’s not sure yet.”

  “Ah. Great. So…” I pushed myself up in the bed. “I guess I owe that chick a thank you?”

  “Yes.” She lowered her hands and the stitching to her lap and finally looked at me. “Zoë, what happened?”

  Blink. “Why are you asking me? I went to her house, I looked around and then when I found the stuff in the basement like you said to look for and she was all robed up and chanting shit, I just got nauseous and my whole body started to disappear.”

  “Your astral body.”

  “Whatever you want to call it. I was missing from the waist down and that was spooky.” I looked around. “You got my laptop? I need to write up my report and send it to that client.”

  “The one on Rhonda Orly?”

  “Mmhmm,” I pushed myself up all the way and looked around. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Zoë—” Mom slipped her work into a bag on the floor by her chair and stood. If there was one thing about my mom it’s that she looked a lot like Debbie Reynolds. She had reddish hair cut pretty short and she had big boobs. As a kid I always thought they were cushy and warm. As an adult, I wondered what happened to my fair share. “A man claiming to be a client of yours called the shop yesterday while you were out. He was very insistent you needed to fulfill your contract in finding this Book of Shadows.”

  Oh…whups. The flood of money into my account had sort of pushed Grayson’s case out of the way. I remembered the room I found behind the door and figured it needed a once over. Maybe even another look at the house and if I couldn’t find it, well, so be it. I could afford to give him back his retainer. “Yeah. I can go back in there and take a look tonight—”

  “Not by yourself,” she clasped her hands behind her back which was a sure sign she was up to something. “I think you should limit your OOBing for a good twenty four hours. You could continue and finish that case if you had help.”

  “Help? What kind of help? I’m the only one I know that can slip out of my body and snoop.”

  “Actually, there is someone else looking for the same book, Zoë.” Mom tilted her head to her shoulder. “And they’re willing to work with you to find it. But I don’t think the book should go to your client if you find it.”

  I just sat on the bed with the stupidest look on my face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She patted the side of my face and walked to the door. “Sit tight. I’m going to go find a nurse and see about getting you discharged. And no going out of body until after we get home.”

  Mom scared me sometimes. And watching her leave the room I got the strangest impression that while I’d been in a coma (wow) she’d been out plotting something. And that thought made every hair on my arm stand on end.

  • • •

  The last thing I expected to see when I got home was Rhonda Orly sitting at the larger table in the tea shop with Jemmy. The two had a whole bunch of the books from the botanica side strewn on top of the table along with a bunch of pencils, erasers, an ink well and a quill.

  My mom made and sold real quill pens. Me? Gimme a ball point.

  Whoa…wait. What was that smell? It was like heaven…

  Jemmy was the first up and coming to me with her arms out wide. “Wellll Zoë you look a lot better than you did yesterday. But you can’t be scaring your mom like that anymore, you hear me? Now, come sit down over here. I made
a pot of my chicken and dumplings. Would you like a bowl with some garlic bread and glass of iced tea?

  That was the smell!

  Mental Note: insert large, embarrassing stomach growl here.

  “I think that was a yes,” my mom said from behind me and the two of them steered me to the table to a chair beside Rhonda.

  She was looking at me. And I was looking at her.

  The dark and spooky make-up was gone and her hair was pulled back from her face. It was brown with what looked like a bad black dye job at the tips. Her finger nails were painted a chipped black. She had a roundish face which somehow made her look like a pixie. And when she stood up I realized how short she was.

  “You do look a lot better,” she offered me her hand. “Rhonda Orly, but you already know that.”

  “Yeah,” I shook her hand. Warm. Strong. No biggie. I sat down and so did she. “I need to thank you. For listening to me and finding my body.”

  “No prob,” she said as she sat down. “I was a bit surprised to find it where you said it was. I really thought you were a ghost.”

  “Most people can’t see me. I was surprised that you did in the haunted house.”

  “Me too,” she looked at the book in front of her and I sensed she was a little shy, which seemed a bit odd given what she was doing at that house.

  My face broke out into a wide grin when Jemmy put a huge steaming bowl of chickeny, doughy goodness in front of me. The glass of tea was the best as I drank half of it while Rhonda spoke.

  “About that—what happened at the old house. I’m sorry, and a little disappointed. I thought I’d actually banished one of the ghosts in that place.” She put her hands on the table. “Uh—sorry I threw salt at you. You were out of time again weren’t you?”

  “Mmhmm,” I was now deep into the zen of dumplings. “Oh nice house by the way,” I said around a mouthful of heaven.