Dead Corse (3 page)

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.

“Oh. Thanks. It’s my aunt’s house. I’m just staying there while
she’s in Europe. Uh…about the haunted house. The reason I’m there working as a
fortune teller is because I’m trying to find an old book. I was said to be the
owner’s Book of Shadows—”

I choked on a dumpling. Oh fuck. I should have realized this was
the person mom said wanted to find that book. It made perfect sense. A wanna be
witch looking for an old Book of Shadows.

“You okay?”

I grabbed the napkin and wiped my face as Jemmy sat down beside me
and started flipping through one of the books on the table. “Oh.”

“Nona told me you were looking for it too and that you might have
found where it could be?”

“I found a room on the other side of that door where they start
the haunted tours? I just didn’t have time to look.” I remembered the weird
painting. “Have you been in that room?”

“Yeah.”

“You know anything about that painting over the desk? The one with
the woman in it?”

Rhonda narrowed her eyes. “There’s no woman in that painting. It’s
supposed to be a rendering of the woods behind the house. Someone said a family
member painted it.”

The hairs on my arms stood on end. I wasn’t nuts. I’d seen a
little woman in that painting. And she’d moved. I hadn’t seen her move, but she
did. And she’d pointed at that damn door.