Out Of The Dark Part 10

"Zoe!" Rhonda was at the curtain between the two stores and looked at me. "Are you okay?"

I pushed myself up--and I was very light headed--to a point where I simply let go-- And was back in my body before I knew what hit me. I could hear Mom, Dags and Jemmy--and then there was someone touching my forehead. I opened my eyes and saw Rhonda bending over me. "Oohh...I'm sorry Zoe. I mean...I figured it'd do something, but not that. Are you okay?"

Mom was suddenly behind her--and I saw worry on her face. "Can you get up?"

What the h.e.l.l did you people do?

Dags translated.

Rhonda looked sheepish. "Well, we used a little of your Wraith essence--as a sort of an invisibility cloak."

I frowned. You did what?

Dags said, "You did what?"

Mom reached down past Rhonda and offered me her hand. I took it and let her help me up to a standing position. Oh man was I wobbly or what. "Dags needs something that makes him invisible to what Bonville is doing. So we came up with the idea of using a bit of your Abysmal essence to make Dags seem to be made of Abysmal. It should protect him for at least twenty-four hours. Silver can hold a charge for a while, but it can't last. Now gold, that'd probably retain the blast a good bit better but then--"

I grabbed her shoulder and waited until she was looking at me. You took a piece of me to use in a bracelet?

Dags translated. He had the bracelet on and was now standing up and walking to us. Rhonda pulled away from me. I could somehow tell she was a little upset--but at who?

Whom?

"No, Zoe," Mom looked a little fierce. "I took a piece of the Abysmal stuff that is the Wraith. That boy could die if he's pulled physically into the Abysmal, and this jacka.s.s Bonville apparently doesn't care about the lives he's ended." She took in a deep breath, and her b.o.o.bs expanded exponentially. "I'm not sure how all this ties together, Zoe, but I am going to take offense to some a.s.shat using power for personal gain at the expense of innocent lives. We don't have proof. But we will."

And with that she turned and walked out of the room.

I looked at Rhonda and Dags. They were looking where Nona disappeared, their own expressions mirroring my own surprise at mom's reaction.

And somehow--I had the impression I was watching a movie with half of it missing. But it was in a foreign language. There was something else there--something that had mom p.i.s.sed.

It was closer to dinner by the time we got to Maureen's apartment. Mainly because we just drove around near the shop for a good twenty minutes to make sure Dags wasn't going to like, get sucked into some Ceremonial Abysmal Hoover. When we were sure the bracelet was working we headed out to Maureen's apartment.

It was a nice one-bedroom in a complex off of Holcombridge Road in Roswell. Rhonda drove Nona's car again and I stayed in the back. I wasn't really feeling all that spiffy--I was still light headed and a little nauseated.

There didn't seem to be anyone watching the place--or nothing I could sense on the oogie radar--and Dags let us in. Rhonda went all CSI on us, pulling rubber gloves out of her coat pockets. I played along, as did Dags. Snap!

It was like any other apartment I'd ever seen. Beige. The carpet. Beige. The kitchen. Beige. Just sort of...beige.

Maureen had done a nice job of decorating it with pictures of mountain scenes--many of which Dags said she'd taken herself. He moved to the kitchen and Rhonda came up to me and whispered, "I get the impression they were more than friends."

How do you sign, "Duh?"

A sectional defined the living area from the dining area. A low coffee table, a generic square dining table--covered in mail. I moved to the mail and started sifting through it--and noticed something was off. Dags? This mail is all postmarked three days ago.

He came up beside me. I smelled cologne. Drakkar. Daniel wore Drakkar sometimes. I pouted silently. "It is? But why is it in here? Maureen's been missing two weeks--and I haven't been here since then." He took pieces from the table and checked himself. "Who's been in this apartment."

I looked up and didn't see Rhonda. Where's-- That's when a scream made both of us jump and drop the mail.

"Rhonda!" and Dags was running into the bedroom with me close behind him.

The bedroom was about the same size as the living room, with a walk-in closet (the door was open), a queen-sized bed, nightstands, dresser and small flat-screen television, which looked more like a computer monitor. Everything was decorated in burgundy and green. Rhonda was standing in the farthest corner by a nightstand.

No, correction. She looked like she was backed into that corner.

"Zoe, do you see it?" Dags said.

I looked around Rhonda--who appeared more frightened than I'd ever seen her--but didn't seen anything out of the--and then it was there out the corner of my eye and gone. A fleeting shadow about three feet high that seemed to vanish just as my eyes focused on it.

Shadow People.

"It's gone," Dags said.

I doubted it. I could feel something again, like I had in the loft. And this time it was the same malevolent undercurrent I'd sensed when we first stepped upstairs. It's still here. Angry apples!

Dags moved past me to Rhonda and held out his hand. She took it and then folded herself into his arms. I was amazed how they were the right height and build for each other. And even the same hue of basic black. "What happened?"

Rhonda disengaged and looked over at me. "I was looking in the closet--and it just sort of melted right out of the shadows and came at me. I was--G.o.d I feel like such a girl but I've never had anything happen like that before."

I moved to the closet myself--oh it wasn't that I was brave--I just wasn't in the mood to let some three-foot spook get in my way. I was bigger, and I was Wraith--and that was a good thing. Right? I stood in front of the closet. It seemed unnaturally dark in there and I flipped the light switch on the outside of the door. Nothing happened.

"I did that, too."

With a glance around the room--taking in the fact that I wasn't picking up any stray misty shadows like I usually did--this place was picked clean--I moved to the bed and lay back on it. I pointed to Dags. You watch this, and then pointed to me.

I went OOB and stood up. Everything changed. The closet no longer looked like a closet but more like a hole. And there was that spidery misty stuff, only it was concentrated in the closet. What the hey? How B-horror movie was this? And why couldn't I see this when I was in my body?

I moved toward the closet and stepped inside, expecting there to be like a cave interior with a fire pit. Nope. Looked like a closet. Clothes hanging to my right, shoes below, and then cardboard drawers stacked three high on the back wall. Those seemed to be the only thing of interest so I moved toward them.

And abruptly there were three of them, misty, shadowy little people that wavered in and out of sight, standing in front of the boxes. I put my hands on my hips. Oh please. Move out of my way.

As I stepped forward the middle one launched itself at me, and I mean sprouted a shadowy mouth like the The Scream painting and then I saw teeth. I instinctively reached out and caught it around the neck with my right hand and it hung there, wriggling to get loose. What did it feel like? Kinda like I'd caught air. There wasn't anything to it except a sensation that I had something in my hand.

But I wasn't paying attention to the other two. One grabbed at my upper left thigh while the third one went for my arm holding their little buddy. They started biting me with their shadow teeth. There was pain, but it was more of an echo. And it was starting to get annoying. I figured there was something in here they didn't want me to find and I'd had enough of the whole chew-on-the-Wraith game.

Like I've always said, I don't know how this stuff works, but sometimes it seems to be keyed to my emotions. Anger, happiness, hatred, irritation. And I was irritated at the moment--how would you feel if you had shadow munchkins chewing on your body? I looked at the one in my hands and caught its attention. It looked at me--and by that I mean I could make out two holes I thought were its eyes. And then it trembled and opened up some garish hole below the eyes and screamed.

A similar feeling of euphoria came then, warmth tingling up my arm it vanished in a spray of gold dust. The feeling evaporated as quickly as it came, but what happened wasn't lost on the other two. They let go and jumped off, their own sets of hole-eyes wide and their mouths open as well. I motioned for them to move and I went to the boxes, opening each one of them.

About the third cardboard drawer I found a set of journals, a pen, a manila folder and beneath those I found a book wrapped in a velvet covering. I pulled everything out, stacking it into the crook of my left arm. The two remaining shadows watched me but didn't make a move to stop me or prevent me from leaving the closet.

Dags and Rhonda were right where I left them, but no longer arm-in-arm. Instead they too had wide eyes as I came out.

"What are those?"

I put them all on the bed beside my body. These were in a cardboard drawer--you know the kind you can buy at Wal-Mart or Target? And these little f.u.c.kers didn't seem all that enthused on letting me get to them. I turned and pointed to the closet where the two shadows lingered.

Rhonda shook her head. "I can see them--but then not see them."

"You have to look at them almost out of the corner of your eyes--like peripheral vision." Dags turned his head to the side. "Zoe, you can see them just fine?"

Uh huh. Just like in the restaurant.

Keeping an eye on the two by the closet, Rhonda moved to the bed and picked up the velvet covered book. Dags and I picked up a journal. As I flipped through it I realized that's exactly what it was. A journal. A diary that Maureen kept. I moved to the back of the book to the last entry. March 22, 2007. She moved to Georgia and was scheduled to do the Starbucks Experience that night. She was going to be a barista.

I tossed the book back on the bed--that apparently didn't work out since she'd been a hostess at the restaurant.

Dags started reading and then sat down on the edge of the bed. Rhonda moved beside me. "Zoe--this is a Book of Shadows."

I raised my eyebrows. Hadn't Mom mentioned one of those?

"And--I can't make it out. I can't even figure out whose it is--" she looked up at me. "But I don't think it's Maureen's."

I pointed to the two watchers and then the book and then made an attack motion. I also rubbed my right arm--it was starting to ache where that little fiend bit it. Which in itself should have been clue-bell number one.

"If you're asking me if I think they were trying to prevent us from finding this book then I'd say definitely. But we have to figure out why."

Dags spoke up, the journal in his hand. "According to Maureen's last few entries in this," he looked up at us. "She and someone named Alice found the book and hid it." He looked back at the journal and frowned, then smirked. "A friend named Dags McConnell put a protection on the apartment."

Rhonda and I dropped our jaws. "You did a what?"

Dags shrugged."Hey, she didn't tell me why or what for. She said her apartment had things in it--that it was haunted. So I did a blessing on this place. That was two days before she disappeared."

Did you do that? I pointed to the closet--but the little shadows were gone. Where did they go?

"I don't know," Dags said. "But I don't feel them at the moment--not anymore. But I can tell the blessing I put on the apartment is corrupted. It's there--but it's got some serious holes in it. Kinda like something was beating on the outside trying to get in."

"Does it say whose book this is?" Rhonda held it up.

"No--but maybe we should like get out of here and back to the shop so Nona can look at it?" Dags closed the journal and smiled.

"How come she asked you?" Rhonda said. "To bless her apartment?"

"Because she saw me do what you two saw me do--at the restaurant--when the little f.u.c.kers upstairs were breaking bottles."

Rhonda stared at him. "So she knew you had power? And it didn't freak her out. Instead she asked you to use it," she touched her lower lip. "So maybe she was a part of the Cruorem as well?"

"I dunno. I dunno anything anymore," Dags said.

Rhonda took up the velvet cover and the other journal and slid them into her shoulder bag. "Let's go."

I handed my book to her and then slipped back into my body. I would have screamed if--you know--I could have. Fire burned in my left thigh and my right fore-arm. I curled up on the bed and held both of them, almost moving into a fetal position. My G.o.d that hurt!

"What is it?" Rhonda was beside me, pulling my left hand from my arm. Her eyes widened. "Oh G.o.d--is that blood?"

"Blood?" Dags was on my other side and between the two of them they had my coat off and my blood soaked right sleeve pulled up.

"What the f.u.c.k?" was all Rhonda said, echoing my thoughts exactly. "What the h.e.l.l did that?"

On my right forearm was a bite mark as big as the Ches.h.i.+re cat's smile and was bleeding pretty bad.

Ow.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

This was one h.e.l.l of a Sat.u.r.day--and it wasn't going to slow down.

Once home Mom did two things: first she grabbed the book and started pouring over the content and saying she could decipher it and second-- She called Dr. Maddox.

The last person I wanted to see was Melvin Maddox--the family physician. And it's not that I really disliked my doctor--but he had an obvious thing for my mom.

Ew.

Oh, and he had a personal ghost--his creepy dead son that always hung about.

I went to school with Joseph Maddox. We didn't really hang with each other--he'd been catered lunches at school and I'd been more tuna-fish samiches. He had money--me and mom--not so much. He and his mom were killed in a car accident and unfortunately Melvin's attachment to his son kept Joseph's shade fettered.

To the physical plane. Now I don't pretend to understand any of this, I only knew I could see Joseph, and he was always hanging around Melvin. Usually. Mom and Rhonda didn't see him.

Just me.

Oh joy.

Because of the bites--they were deep and I was bleeding--Mom felt Melvin needed to be there. So I was subjected to an evening of alcohol and a couple of st.i.tches. I wanted to take a long soak in the tub upstairs at Mom's house--but that wasn't going to happen since one of the bites was on my leg.

No warm bubbles for me--I got bandages and a needle in my a.s.s.

Mom and Dags ended up in the kitchen as Rhonda tried to explain to Dr. Maddox how I ended up with bites those size on my body--while she was reading one of Maureen's journals.

Even I was a little grossed out by the appearance of the bites. Shadow People had some serious dental issues.

Eventually the smells of something good came from the kitchen. We were in the Botanica. When we came into the Tea Shop, I was a bit shocked at the spread on the table. Nona stood by Dags and put her hands on his shoulders. "Zoe--he can cook j.a.panese food!"

And he had. There was--well--what was this stuff? It smelled heavenly. And to my happy delight Dr. Maddox got a page and had to leave. Yay!

"It's easy, guys," Dags started pointing to each of the dishes as Nona showed Melvin out the door. "This is Tonkatsu--deep friend pork with Panko breading. Over here is sticky rice--and I used Jasmine rice because I like the taste better. Over there is edamame, seaweed salad, cuc.u.mber salad, Teriyaki chicken marinade with orange slices, and miso soup." He snapped his finger. "Oh, and I have oolong tea steeping in the kitchen."

I grinned as big as I could.

Rhonda whistled. "Will you marry me?"