Dead Corse (2 page)

“You’ve got to come up with some kind of way to monitor how long
your’e out of your body, Zoëtrope.” She smacked my butt. “Take a shower and
come downstairs. You need to eat to keep up your strength. You’re too skinny
and that is very unattractive with your height.”

Did I mention I was kinda tall?

“I just want to sleep.”

“I know. But you have email.” I heard her moving around the room
picking up my stuff and then the bathroom door opened and the she turned on the
shower. “Now Zoë. Or I will get an ice-cube.”

“All right all right,” I muttered as I unrolled myself and
stumbled past her to the bathroom. She stopped me as I started to pull my
pajama pants down and put a hand to my face. She turned it to the right, then
the left.

“You look awful.”

“Mmmm,” was all I said as I pushed her hand away and slipped under
the blessed avalanche of—
“Christ woman this water is scalding!”

“Ten minutes, Zoë.”

Ten turned into fifteen but I made it to the table downstairs.
Mom’s shop in Little Five Points was a converted Victorian with a wrap-a-round
porch. The first floor was split into two shops—a botanica on the left full of
books, candles, dried herbs (that mom sucked the life out of herself), sachets,
statues, etc. A junk shop. And on the right—where the front door brought the
customer in, was a tea shop. Mom thought of herself as a tea aficionado. Me nor
Jemmy Shultz, mom’s cohort in all things old, had the heart to tell her she
sucked at it.

So the shop also sold home made pies and cakes, treats and coffee.

The place was decorated post modern eclectic. That’s what mom
called it. What that translated into was several different sized tables and all
sorts of chairs. She’d found them all over Little Five, sanded and painted
them.

It was Monday so she didn’t open the shop till one. That gave
us—me, mom, and Jemmy—time to eat and relax before the rush. I know she’d like
it if I helped her in the store but I just didn’t know anything about what she
sold, other than some of it, in my opinion, was just over priced.

The two house ghosts—Tim and Steve—a long lasting couple that gave
me hope that maybe one day I’ll find me a soul mate—sat in their usual spots.
Steve at the table next to mom and Tim on a stool next to the display case.

Yes. That’s right. Not house guests.

House
 
ghosts
.

They were in the house when mom moved in and since the two of them
got along with her and we could all see them, it was a perfect fit. And don’t
get all judgy. Mom offered to exorcise them but since no one knew what that
meant or where they’d go, they respectfully declined. It’s not like she’s
keeping them there. They just couldn’t go beyond the boundary of the house.

I plopped down in a chair as Jemmy put the biscuits on the table,
along with bacon, sausage, grits, butter, eggs, jam, coffee and juice. I
grabbed a cup of the coffee, dumped about five cubes of sugar into it, cream
and then held onto it with both hands.

Mom set my computer in front of me before she settled down in the
opposite chair. Jemmy sat at my right, mom’s left.

I stared bleary-eyed at my email. “You look at it?”

“No she didn’t, Zoë,” Jemmy said. I liked the way she said my
name. Zo-
eh
. “She heard it go off in the other room and brought it
in.” She poured me a glass of juice.

I moved my finger over the track pad to scroll down the list.
Junk. Junk. Ah, the third request for an update from Grayson. Patience
 
grasshoppah
. And…

There was a new email from someone on Craig’s List. I opened it
and looked at the information. “Anyone ever heard of someone named Ma-” I frowned
at the bleary little email address and tried it all at once. “Ma-
har
-bah?”

Mom, Steve and Jemmy shook their heads and continued on with their
conversation. Tim was busy looking at a newspaper spread out on top of the
display case. To anyone else coming into the shop, the pages would look as if
they were turning themselves.

Well pooh on you all.

The subject line said “request for intel.”

Dear Miss Martinique,

It is a great honor to see you alive and very much in
control of your facilities. Imagine our delight to see you are testing your
boundaries. We wish to aid you in your journey of discovery by giving you this
opportunity to show us just how valuable you can be.

We would like for you to gather intel on a person of interest.
This is someone we believe has the capacity to create great things. Our present
intel is based on her physical records: birth, weight, height, eye color, hair
color, address, etc., but what we would like is to know more about the person.
The individual herself.

Since this is your first job with us, we would like you to
answer a simple question for us: Is this person a witch?

Included in this email is a pdf of physical, tangible
information. Please study it and use it to your best advantage. The sum of
$50,000 has been deposited in your account, and upon your report, a second
deposit of the same amount will appear.

We look forward to working with you.

Maharba

I blinked at the screen.
 
Fifty
thousand dollars?!
 
Even
through the blur I could make out that number. I sat up and typed in the
command for a new window so I could check my bank account. A few held breaths
and—

Holeeee crap.

My balance as of this morning read fifty five thousand and
sixty-two cents, which should give you a good idea how much I’d had in there to
start.

“Da-
Yam
!”

That stopped mom and Jemmy’s nattering. They both looked at me and
I read the email out and showed them the account.

Jemmy started clapping and singing ‘Happy Day’ even as mom took
the computer and started clicking keys.

I grabbed up the buttered biscuit and took a big bite.
 
Mmmm. Butter.

“Why is this person curious about Rhonda Orly? Who is she?” Steve
spoke up for the first time that morning as he leaned over and read off the
screen. Of the two ghosts, Steve was more the serious, analytical one. All
business all the time. Tim was more the free spirit geek with a love of Disney
memorabilia.

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.