The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 24

Moira's picture from a charity luncheon grinned in full colour on the front page, right next to a blurred shot of twisted, smoking wreckage. Gooseflesh rose up all over me, nausea tightening my stomach into a ball. There, right below the vulnerable hollow of her collarbone she never gained much weight was a silver curve, the top edge of the pendant peeking up over a Chanel suit jacket worth more than I made in a month.

"Hey, Parkes. Can I get the Altman files from you?" Gene Withers, the junior partner, washed out and worn, tugged at his perfectly straight tie, a nervous tic that didn't do him any good in the courtroom. Then again, law school would probably make a nervous wreck out of anyone. Which was why I was just a lowly paralegal. "Or is Ben still using them?"

"I'll check." My voice sounded funny, faint and faraway, a whooshing in my ears. But Gene didn't seem to think so. He just poured himself a hasty cup of overcooked coffee and was gone, his wingtips squeaking a little.

I stood there under buzzing fluorescents, smelling Moira's cedarwood perfume, my purse heavy on my shoulder. I hadn't even set down my briefcase yet. My hands had turned slippery, and I scooped up the front section of the paper. I hid it in my briefcase like a criminal. Just like I'd hidden the pendant in my Chanel knockoff.

The day pa.s.sed in a blur. Gracie and Emily invited me to lunch, and I think we gossiped, as always, about who was sleeping with whom and which lawyer was the worst to work for. Everyone agreed Chaggs was the worst, and Emily preened.

A smooth gla.s.s ball of calm had descended over me. So what if Moira was dead? There was nothing I could do. So what if she'd looked me up, told me she had to meet me, and given me what was probably an antique? I'd earned it, hadn't I? I'd written every G.o.dd.a.m.n paper she ever turned in. I'd driven her home after every drunken party, tagged along whenever she needed the ballast of a plain-Jane friend, cosseted her and basked in her borrowed glow. I'd been the battery so she could shine, and what did it get me?

Two months before graduation she'd run off with some older guy. Probably the same billionaire she ended up with. She was always cut out for it, our Moira.

My Moira. Who left me adrift.

The trip home on the filthy dark subway was the usual, and the elevator in my building was still out of order. So it was four flights up in my heels, my back killing me, and five full minutes of f.u.c.king with the locks before I could get into my own little s...o...b..x. I shut the door, flipped the locks, dropped my briefcase, and decided to go for a bath. I left a trail of clothes, banged my elbow on the bathroom door, flipped on the light, and screamed.

Moira's ghost stood in the white glare of my tiled bathroom, a river of burn marks charring one side of her body and blood dripping scarlet over her bloated hands. She was livid-pale, her hair wet, smoke-crisped draggles, and completely naked.

I hit my head on something as I fell, and blacked out for a few merciful seconds. But not nearly long enough. When I woke up, I found out just how much everything had changed.

Traffic whooshed outside. It had started to rain. I held the icepack to my temple. "This is just temporary insanity," I told her. "Probably brought on by stress. You don't exist."

Her blue eyes had turned a murky grey, the whites yellowing and swelling like eggs. Her head lolled drunkenly, and the nakedness was distracting. A short but jagged appendectomy scar sliced up her abdomen, vanishing into the cracking, charred flesh gripping her whole side. I remembered driving her to the hospital through knee-high snow, the doctor swearing in wonderment, her being whisked away to surgery. I'd missed an exam and my grades took a hit, but Moira had pulled through.

Just like always. Even though the infection should have killed her.

"You were the only person I could think of." It was Moira's voice, certainly . . . but flat and uninflected, a straight line on a heart monitor. "That might help me."

The pendant lay on my secondhand mahogany coffee table, its chain spilling away, a river of brightness. Ice crackled as I shifted the pack against my aching head. "Head trauma. No, stress. Work's been really bad lately."

"You're probably angry. I would be too. I just dropped you for years, and now this. I'm sorry." Her usual apology, meaningless. The blood dripped, coating her hands, bright red gloves. Pearls of smoky water clung to her high firm pallid b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The tiny scars from silicone implants were purple-livid, and stippling ran down her back, her b.u.t.tocks cupped with bruised darkness.

That's where the blood settled, because she was on her back for a while. The thought sent a hot bolt of sourness through me, and I leaned forward, dropping my head. That just made it hurt more. I moaned.

"I look bad, too." She made a short tsking noise. "All that money spent on maintenance, but once you go over and you can't rest, you start looking like Frankenstein. I'm sorry, Georgie. You were the only choice."

The apologies, again. She must need something. "Shut. Up." I peered at her under one barely opened eyelid. "Am I insane? I've gone round the bend. Loony-bin time."

"Nope." One corner of her mouth twitched. It was a ghost of her famous smile, back when she'd been the redheaded college party terror. "You're sane, you've accepted the Seal. You're seeing my ghost, babydoll. I can't pa.s.s on without your help."

"Great," I moaned again. "I should just take your word for it? Tautology, Staufford."

"It's Hannigan now. Or maybe I can take my maiden name back. This qualifies as a divorce." Those clouding eyes fixed on me, and a spark of red lit in their depths. "He killed me, Georgie. My cheating, lying sorcerer of a husband. He wanted the Seal."

"Which is that thing on the table." I eyed its innocent silver gleam, balefully, and wished for a nice big jigger of Scotch.

"Right."

"Sorcerer?" This time I eyed Moira's ghost. The blood dripping from her hands and the water dripping from everywhere else vanished in midair with little popping crackles, a slow steady sound like a loose, sizzling faucet. She, however, stayed nice and solid. Or apparently solid. I didn't want to touch her and find out either way.

Thank G.o.d I couldn't smell her, too.

A short, very characteristic Moira nod. Water splatted dully from her lank, crisped hair. Her eyebrows were singed, and soot clung to her cheeks. "Right."

"Right." I hauled myself to my cold, bare, shivering feet. "Don't let the door hit you in the a.s.s on the way out, kiddo."

If only it was that easy.

I gave up trying to sleep and switched the light on. She hadn't moved. Still standing there next to my bedroom window, dripping blood that vanished in midair and staring at me with those clouded, accusing eyes.

She could always outwait me. I'd found that out the hard way.

So I went ahead and admitted defeat. "Fine. What am I supposed to do?"

A slow, twitching grin, her purpling lips pulling back from shocking-white teeth. "First things first. Put it on."

"Bring me my purse, then." I pulled down the hem of my tank top.

A roll of those discoloured eyes. "Don't be stupid. I'm a ghost, I can't carry your s.h.i.t."

Which was what I'd wanted to know. "Just checking." So of course I had to get out of my nice warm bed, pad out into the living room, and fish in my purse until I found the pendant. I worked the chain over my sloppy dishwater-brown ponytail. The metal was ice-cold for a brief second before warming, almost obscenely, against me. The pendant fluttered a little, caressing the skin over my breastbone, and the world rippled a little. "Whoa!"

"That's what I thought when I put it on." Moira smiled, another faint echo of her old devil-may-care grin. "Gramma Staufford's probably rolling in her grave that I didn't sp.a.w.n a little girl to give it to and ruin her life."

You mean, just like you're ruining mine? But I didn't say it. It was no use. She wouldn't see it that way. Moira never did. "So you could see ghosts?"

"Not all the time. Grams died right before midterms, remember? I went to the funeral and my mother had a cow because she couldn't find the Seal. Turns out Grams had taken it off and mailed it to me. Chose me over Mom, and that was not a happy cupcake, let me tell you. I was always Grams's favourite." Moira moved a little, restlessly, the water on her rippling. "You can't die while you're wearing it. But if you have someone in mind, sometimes you can take it off and give it. As a gift. Don't do that unless you're ready to die, though. I'm serious."

"Were you? Ready, I mean?" I touched the pendant gingerly, with one fingertip. Christ, how was I going to wear this all the time? It went with absolutely nothing.

"Dying was preferable to being married to Ryan." A shiver went through her. She blurred like a television image, static bursting through her almost-solid outline. "He's a sorcerer, Georgie. He kept experimenting. Trying to get it off me, trying to make it obey him. Seeing the dead is the least of its tricks."

"So . . . he reached out all the way from Europe and gave you a car crash?" I grabbed the chenille throw off the back of the ratty old couch an ex-boyfriend had helped me haul home from Goodwill, and wrapped myself up. "Come on, Moira. Give the rest of it."

"I keep telling you, he's a sorcerer. Use that great big egg brain of yours, Parkes." She half-turned, staring at the window for once instead of at me. "I helped him get filthy rich, too. The Seal only picks women. Or at least, that's what Grams told me. Ryan was studying it for aeons. He figured out he couldn't hold it, so when Grams died he waited until he knew who it had settled with and swooped down on me. Wined and dined me, and I was stupid enough to fall for it."

"You always did like attention." It was snide, yeah. But I figured I'd earned some snide.

She didn't even register the hit. Just considered it, head c.o.c.ked sideways and a bead of water trickling down one cheek. "I did, didn't I? Anyway, he was pretty wealthy, but he wanted more. Lots more. He knew about how to use the Seal. Called it a Grand Talisman. There's major and minor ones, all tumbling around the world, but the Seal is one of the big players. Gram said it was only for the dead, but there are plenty of . . . other uses. Anyway . . . first we got Ryan filthy stinking rich, then that wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough. He wanted the Seal himself. Only he couldn't get it off me, so . . . do you know what it's like to have a sorcerer on you all the time?" A delicate little shudder. Her tone was still flat, uninflected, and completely eerie. "I wouldn't let him divorce me for a trophy, and he wouldn't divorce me anyway because I had the Seal and he wanted more. That's the thing about sorcerers. Greedy f.u.c.ks."

It's not just sorcerers, honey. I bet I can find a lawyer who's worse. "You read entirely too much sci-fi growing up."

"Some fantasy novels get it right. Anyway, I started thinking about you. The Seal intimated that it wouldn't mind you, if I really wanted to give it up. So I found you. You didn't move very far."

How could I move? I barely had enough energy to tread water. "Neither did you." I scrunched back into the couch, the blanket wrapped securely around me, and I was still freezing. It wasn't an external thing the cold was way down deep. The pendant warmed, rea.s.suringly, and I forced my fingers away from it with an effort. "So, what is it you want me to do exactly, Moira? It's late and I need my beauty z's."

"Go to bed and get them, then. Now we wait." Her slow smile was all the more chilling because I recognized it. It was the same grin she used to use when contemplating a nasty prank to play on her helpless flavour-of-the-week boytoy. "Ryan will come to you. I'd bet my afterlife on it."

The most disconcerting thing about taking a ghost to work was other people walking through her. Moira grimaced each time, rippling, and I flinched because the pendant would twitch against my skin. Like a little live thing.

Another disconcerting thing? The world was brighter. Literally. I blinked and squinted my way through that first day, and everyone from Emily to Gene to Anderson told me how nice I looked but asked me if there was something wrong, since my eyes kept watering. It took a little time to adjust. Plus, the pendant kept twitching. Like an insect, or a little animal settling into a new burrow. And it really did go with nothing in my closet, but n.o.body noticed it.

Their gazes just slid right over it.

Moira's running commentary on my day was hysterical. Or it would've been, if I could have talked back.

"Jesus Christ," she noted when Anderson leaned over the back of my chair in the meeting room, "looking" at the paperwork in front of me but certainly taking the opportunity to rub against my shoulder. "Please tell me you didn't sleep with this guy? He reeks of Vitalis. Oh, and chlamydia."

I hadn't, and I almost opened my mouth to say so. I settled for giving her a filthy look and she laughed, the blood dripping off her hands snapping out of existence with sharp lightning crackles. A naked woman in a lawyer's office is a distraction and a half. Especially when she's corpse-livid and the discolourations keep spreading through her flesh. Not-flesh. Unflesh. Whatever.

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 G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 maitre 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 c.o.c.ked 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, G.o.ddammit-"

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 rea.s.suringly 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 n.o.body would have even sn.i.g.g.e.red. 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 f.u.c.king 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 ma.s.s," 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 f.u.c.king riding me, Moira! I'm not in the mood. The man makes me feel dirty. If you can't bring me a gla.s.s of Chablis then at least shut up and let me enjoy my bath." I heard the b.i.t.c.hy 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."