Isla, Tipsy

The vamp took up residence in the bar across the street. He was watching me. That bloodsucker. I closed the curtain and flicked off my neon. Shop was closed. Vamp totally ruined my vibe to do business tonight. Seriously. How could I be expected to entertain customers after experiencing such a fright.

I opened a bottle of bottom shelf prosecco, poured a generous portion in a Netherworld's Okayest Sister mug and peeked outside my window again. Grumpkin sat with me on the bed, purring in my lap. I lavished him with ear scratches for being such a good little monster.

Gritty's furry sack, that was close, wasn't it? I mean, that vamp could have melted my brain, picked at my skull fragments for the info he wanted, slit me open and drank his fill and there's nothing I could have done to stop him. Every nerve in my body tingled. He'd been so close. So close to tearing out my throat and he just... let me kick him out?

And left his card. Gregorio Vasilescu. Private Investigator.

I checked out the window again. Yep. Still there, not drinking his beer, doodling in his little notebook. Damn it, he was doodling about me wasn't he? I said too much when I was under. I know that. Should've kept that damn finger a secret.

I tapped Grumpkin's nose. "You could have lent a paw, you know."

He swatted at me.

I needed to know what that vamp was writing about me. And why he was looking for Lily.

Son of witch's left tit. Lily. How did I not recognize her? All this time I could have just gone downstairs and asked about her... but now she's missing... and vampires are looking for her. Was she a bloodbag? Shit. Vamps hate it when you mess with their food. Crap. That ragged wound in her side, was that a bite? Was that vamp style? Bite to the abdomen? Screw it, who cares, she's missing. She's alive (you're welcome) but she's missing—

Oh, goatsuckers. What if she's missing because she isn't supposed to be alive? What if the vamps looking for her want her dead?

My heart hammered in my throat. My throat which came so very close to being slit open tonight.

Okay. Fine. Shit. Shit. This was fine.

I could fix this. I needed to find her before the vamps looking for her filed an actual Missing Property Report with the Magistrate and got me arrested. Again.

And simply, shrug, undo that teensy weensy resurrection spell. Just, you know, not in my apartment this time. S'not like that be killing her. She was basically already dead when she got here.

Grumpkin's whiskers twitched.

"Don't give me that look."

I checked the window. Oh. He was gone. I scanned the street and was surprised to actually find him heading west up South. That's it? He was really just leaving? Was that good?

Well, it gave me a chance to do a little digging of my own, at least. Vamp said Lily's coworker had spilled the beans on me.

He was only out of sight for like, twenty minutes by the time I shoved my fat ass back through the doors of the Bean & Brew.

Mason gawked at the robe hanging off my shoulder.

"Mason!" I roared. "What the cat piss did you tell the—" I ground my teeth to stop from yelling vamp. Mason was, after all, only human. I'd sure hate to add another charge of Revealing Otherworldly Secrets to my rap sheet. "That, guy. The skinny guy. Pale one. With the leather jacket. What did he want to know?"

"He was looking for psychic." Mason shrugged and kept on wiping down the espresso machine. "Something about Lily."

"And? What did he say about me?"

"Nothing. He asked a bunch of stuff about Lily."

"What else did he ask about me?"

"No. Thing. Like I said, he asked about Lily. I don't exactly remember what he said."

"He said you saw Lily heading up to my place the other night."

"Yeah, she was looking for a psychic too."

"She was—wait, did you recommend me to her? Do you have my menu?"

Mason squinted at me, like I'd sprouted a second head. I touched my shoulder just to check. "I'm confused. Am I, or am I not, supposed to send customers up to you?"

I rubbed my eyes. My head ached and spun. "You're supposed to, like you're supposed to tell me when people are looking for me!"

He didn't respond.

"So you could have told me Kyle was upstairs before, too, asshole!"

I didn't mean to snap. But I was tired and woozy and confused, and my mouth was dry from the cheap wine.

Mason, again, stared at me in confusion, rubbing his temple. He sighed like he was about to regret his next words: "Who?"

"The big guy!" I groaned, gesturing broadly. "Bald. Jersey Shore DJ looking type."

"Oh. That guy? He's here all the time. He's one of yours?"

"He's here once a month. He works for the landlord."

Mason snorted. "Small matcha latte with extra protein powder comes in at least weekly to hit on—"

"Whatever!" I snarled, already marching toward the side door. "Just let me know if he comes back!"

I think I heard Mason curse me off as I left the café. Fine. I had bigger things to worry about than whether or not he'd spit in my next coffee.

Back upstairs, I deadbolted my door and poured myself another generous mug full of prosecco. Where had a third of this bottle already gone? Oh well. Didn't matter. On to phase two of my own investigation.

The fingerbone sat in a Liberty Bell souvenir shot glass on my coffee table. I built the pentagram around it, in salt. Kosher. Though I'm not sure if that would really help any. Then I lit a row of mostly melted votives along my windowsill and dimmed the lights. There. We were all ready for a nice, romantic, candle lit séance.

I took a long swig of wine and scratched Grumpkin behind the ears. He purred. And his neck swung around till his cloudy eyes were looking at me from upside down. The new position didn't stop him from leaping up onto my favorite chair and kneading the velvet till it was just right. He curled himself into a fluffy circle and went to sleep. Guess I was sitting on the floor.

I didn't have anything else to connect me to Lily. Aside from my literal blood in her veins. But if the blood connection failed, then with the bone, something that was hers, even if just for a little while, I could use it like a can on a string through the ether. A line cast that could hopefully connect us. Probably. I think.

As usual, the air in the room pulsed and constricted when my blood made contact with the bone. The corners grew a shade darker with the thinning of the barrier between this realm and the realm of the dead. Their whispers wove between my ears. Some faint and others strong. All of them pleading to be pulled back into the land of the living. Or to pull me beyond the veil with them.

Since I first taught myself the necromancy craft, I always imagined communing with the netherworld like opening a door. Lame, right? But still. An invisible, cliche door. One for which only I had the key. And since blood magic was powerful stuff, it only took a few drops to open that door just a crack. And that tiny crack let a sliver of light shine into the darkness on the other side. And like a moth to flame, that sliver attracts the ghouls, ghosts, spirits and what have you. I still picture their boney and translucent hands curving around the doorframe, skeleton fingers poking up from the crack at the bottom.

That door's only supposed to be open a crack. And only for the littlest of whiles, if you wanted to keep your soul and your sanity, that is.

I gulped another big girl sip of bubbly and mentally kicked the door open like this was a raid from the fuzz.

Everything went dark. The candles hadn't gone out. Simply vanished. Along with the glow of the street and building lights outside my window. It wasn't an electric problem (this time). It was my eyes, staring into the black, dizzying, endless abyss of death.

I groped blindly at my coffee table till I snagged the bone. Holding it out in front of me, I could barely make out the outline of my own arm amidst the dark. It was faint. All I saw were my bones, a grayed and decayed skeletal arm smeared in a hazy aura.

Hey, nobody ever said blood magic was glamourous.

Jingling the glass like a bell, I called into the void: "Lily? Lily Perez, late night barista. Can you hear me?"

A thousand incoherent whispers responded.

Somehow, the blackness seemed to both expand and tighten around me. Like it was breathing. Pulsing.

Shadows twitched.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a few flashes of ghostly white and gray and shapelessness.

But none of them could be Lily. She wasn't a ghost, she was alive and still pulsing, somewhere.

What if she'd left the city? Balls. Could I track her down if she was states away by now? So far I'd felt nothing of her. No reply through the ether. No tug on my awareness to say my Frankenstein-ish creation was receiving the messages and phoning home.

A heavy pressure leaned against my shoulders.

I shrugged it off.

I had to concentrate. On her soul. On my blood pounding in her veins. Stretched my will as wide and far as I could spread myself, just, feeling. Hunting for a little snippet of my own aura thrumming inside somebody else. I fisted my other hand and tugged. I felt the thread. Invisible but steady. Yet when I pulled on it, I felt no responding weight or pull or anchor on the other end.

"Lily, if you can hear me, you will return to the Bean & Brew. Tonight. Please. Okay?"

Who was I kidding? Even if she could hear me, feel me reaching out across the void, she was under no obligation to comply. That's the thing Society doesn't get. Sure, Command of the Soulless Undead was one of the seven Rites of Necromancy, but so was True Resurrection. Society, they think it's all armies of the undead. I mean, that's an option if you have enough sturdy cadavers handy, but it shouldn't be a reason for anybody to fear for their afterlife once they've vacated said cadavers. I can't control a soul. Nobody can, with free will and all that, and not even after they've died and returned to their body.

Lily wasn't a true zombie because I'd fully resurrected her. She was more of a... human twice baked potato.

But just because she didn't have to obey didn't mean she couldn't hear me. Maybe. Because, magic.

I caught the scent of Mason emptying the burnt coffee grounds wafting up through the floor, but still the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Whispers and rippling shadows kept their distance. Still, no reply from Lily.

Zip. Nada. Zilch.

You could almost hear crickets.

Except I felt a slimy and cold thing creep its way around my ankle and nope, that's all I had the nerve for this evening.

With a mental heave I shoved the imaginary door closed.

Fuck me, it was too bright. Even with just the candlelight.

My head pounded. The floor bruised my knees and the cat was chirping anxiously from the sofa. I pushed a pair of scratched shades onto my nose and squinted around my seemingly undisturbed apartment. And took a sip of wine.

"The heck does a necromancer got to do these days to get her own Lazarus to show up to a party, huh?!"

I slumped against the sofa. It wobbled. I spilled a smidge of wine on it.

"I'm doomed, Grumpy."

My zombie cat rolled onto its back, satisfied it could relax again without the threat of me inviting a hundred ghoulies and ghosties into the studio, and nuzzled its fuzzy head into my open palm.

With my wine mug empty, my hand found the vampire PI's business card. It had sharp edges. Sharp as his jaw line. And his teeth.

And Kyle's, in another few moons.

The vamp had left me three hundred. In cash. He hadn't even stayed for the full hour. It was nowhere near the full sum I owed for my rent, but it should be enough of a deposit to tide me over for a few more days.

And what if a few more days is all it took for the vamp to find Lily, with the thousand dollars she owed me, and a real wild story about how she died and came back to life. No, I needed to find her before that happened.

I caught the corner of the vamp's card under my nail. Hard. I popped my thumb into my mouth, tasting blood... but I wanted more bubbles.

Ugh. There was barely enough left for a glass, er, mug full in the bottle. I took a swallow straight from it and thumbed through my phone. What was his number again? Two one five...

The phone was ringing.

It was ringing.

"Gregorio Vasilescu, Private Eye," a bored sounding woman answered, "we're watching you and see your every move, so who can we watch for you tonight?"

A woman?

"Hello?" she asked.

"Hi!" I blurted, afraid she'd hang up and then I'd have really blown it. "Hello, sorry, I, uh, was expecting, uh, Gregorio."

"You can leave your message with me and I'll make sure the investigator sees it when he is," she paused, "no longer indisposed. If you're a new client, however, I suggest we schedule you a consultation first. Mr. Vasilescu's standard operating hours this time of year are—" she paused again and I heard the sound of papers shuffling, "—6:07 PM to 6:23 AM."

I ran to my window and ripped open the curtains. Shit, sunlight? How'd I manage to stay up all night?

"Um, okay, who am I speaking to right now?"

"Oh," she said, sounding confused or startled that I had asked. "This is Phoebe. Mr. Vasilescu's personal dayshift secretary. You won't see me hanging around here after dark."

Phoebe laughed at her own joke. I didn't get it.

Well, well. The vamp had a personal dayshift secretary. Did he have a nightshift one as well? Was Phoebe part of a whole harem of secretaries Greg kept as servants? That was a thing vampires did, wasn't it? Keep harems of brainwashed bloodbags? My cheeks grew hot remembering the cool feel of his gaze on my bare skin, the tingles his voice sent shooting up and down my spine, and how easily he could have turned me into his subservient little sex toy. I mean, not that he mentioned anything about sex. But he didn't have to. I could see the hunger in his eyes. The desire to make me his little snack.

Which would have been, just, you know, awful.

"Excuse me," Phoebe continued, "did you say you were an existing client?"

"I'm not a client. I'm, uh," what choice did I have now? I was already here. "Yeah, I'd like to make an appointment. For I— Margarita."

"Oh!" she squealed. "It's you!"

Her voice switched from bored to humming with excitement. I heard drawers opening in the background. More papers rustling. Jeez. Did the vampire detective already have a file on me?

"I'll schedule you for first thing in the evening, Miss... do you have a surname I could file this under?"