Zamani (5 page)

Chapter
Seven

“So, you don’t think Olivia knows about her?”
Lucy had stopped by Zofia’s house after picking up the supplies on Alex’s list
for her transformation.

Zofia shook her head. “If she knew, you wouldn’t
have had anyone to take to the morgue.”

“That’s what I figured, as well.
 
I don’t think that Wren realized she
turned her either. Such a mess. I’ve never seen someone quite so disfigured as
Alex was when we picked her up.” Lucy swallowed hard, trying to lose the image
of Alex’s bloody body as they’d zipped it up in the body bag.
 
Wren had nearly torn out her throat, or
at least it certainly looked like it when they’d arrived on the scene.
 
The damage was lucky on one hand; it
left no doubt in the minds of those who found her that she was dead. It was
also gruesome to the point that there would be no worries that her family would
want to see her corpse again, which made the swap effective.

“If it weren’t for the energy she put off I
wouldn’t have checked her later.”

“And you’re sure you felt Olivia there?” Zofia
wanted to be sure.

“Yes. I haven’t figured out all of the
connections yet.
 
Alex hasn’t
either. She and Wren were friends and former girlfriends, but I’m not sure why
Olivia didn’t get to Alex first if that’s who she was after. Why Wren?”

“Good question. What would she stand to gain by
Wren and Alex being together?”

Lucy thought for a moment. “What if it’s Liz and not
Alex that Olivia was after?
 
Wren
would be a way to separate Liz and Alex.
 
If Alex cheated on Liz or Liz thought she had, it could break up the
relationship, leaving Liz alone.”

Zofia nodded.
 
“And vulnerable. So, our next step needs
to be to find out if Liz is the one she’s after.”

Lucy hesitated to tell her about Alex’s plans to
attend the memorial, but knew it was important. “The memorial is soon; I’m
going with Alex.” She waited for Zofia’s reaction, expecting her to tell her
that she couldn’t go.

Zofia simply smiled.
 
“I suspected she might want to attend;
as you know, everyone grieves their old life in their own way.
 
If she is as powerful as you claim she
is, I am not surprised she wants to use the memorial as her new starting
point.”

“She’s ready to train once the memorial is
over.
 
I’ve planned a sort of
awakening party for her.
 
She is
reluctant to feed, but I think once she gets past the memorial and meets some
other donors she’ll be more comfortable.”

They made arrangements for Zofia’s first meeting
with Alex and Lucy headed home.

Chapter
Eight

The memorial service
attracted a lot of curious onlookers, so Alex and Lucy were easily able to
attend undetected.
 
As they
approached Our Lady of Guadalupe on North Rampart, they could see a group of
people filing into the church.
 
Even
though they had arrived early, they still were lucky to get a seat.

“I don’t know most of these
people.
 
I guess all you have to do
to have a big service is be brutally murdered by an ex-girlfriend.”
 
Alex kept her sunglasses on, even in the
church.
 
She felt safer behind the
tinted lenses.
 
She’d chosen a well-made
black suit for the occasion.
 
Lucy
had told her not to worry about the expense. Alex found a suit online and it
arrived quickly, but Lucy decided it could be improved.
 
She took Alex to a tailor she knew who
was also a donor.
 
He was only too
happy to make adjustments to the suit so that it looked custom made for Alex. She
had never been curvy, and now she was leaner than ever due to her new
metabolism.

Getting dressed the morning
of the memorial, Alex had had to pause and grip the counter in front of her
before putting on the tie Lucy picked out to go with the suit.
 
She and Liz often joked that she would
dress like this for their wedding. Anger washed over her at the thought of the
wedding she’d never have now.
 
The
anger and despair hit her hard and almost made her change her mind about going
to the service.
 
She wasn’t sure she
could control herself.

Lucy broke her out of it,
showing up in a breathtaking low cut but tasteful black lace dress.
 
She tied Alex’s tie for her. The pair of
them looked like a young couple in mourning only because Lucy insisted on
wearing a hat with a black veil.
 
Otherwise, they could have been going to the symphony.
  
Lucy left the VW van at home,
opting instead to have a car service pick them up and take them to the
ceremony.
 
She wanted to be able to
leave the ceremony and call the service to pick them up if needed rather than
having to park the van and make their way back to it. This was the first time
that she would be with Alex in a crowd of people she knew from her previous
life and she worried that it would be too much for her.

They sat toward the back; it
was obvious that everyone else had decided to show up early, as well.
 
The crowd, already quite large, was
still growing.
 
Alex craned her neck
enough to see the first two rows in front left open for family.
 
She wanted to move up, to sit next to
Liz and her father, but she knew she had to stay put.

Looking around, she recognized
a few regulars from Oz, the bar where she worked, as well as a few regulars
from The Ruby where Liz worked. Everyone was subdued, whispering condolences
back and forth and hugging tearfully.
 
She took great care not to look too long, lest someone meet her
gaze.
 
She didn’t want to chance
anyone recognizing her.

The buzz of voices stopped,
and she followed everyone’s gaze to the front pews. And then she saw Liz. She looked
frail and pale in black as she walked in, flanked by Alex’s dad, Robert James,
 
on one side, and Liz’s, Eliot Camp, on
the other. Kirby and Mike walked behind them, and Alex’s stepmother Lila
brought up the rear, looking irritated that Robert was not with her.
 
Alex choked back a sob, swallowing hard,
as Robert hugged Liz close to him.
 
Alex was his only child.
 
When she and Liz first became a couple, he had welcomed Liz into the
family.
 
Alex was glad that he and
Liz loved each other; at least he would have her in his life.
 
He kissed her on the cheek and made his
way down to the end of the pew where his wife, Lila, already sat. Lila stared
straight ahead and barely acknowledged Liz.
 
Alex knew she was irritated by having to
be in the presence of the family Alex had made for herself.

Alex was a little surprised
that she’d actually shown for the service, as things had never been great
between them.
 
Lila resented the
child of her husband’s first wife from the beginning. When she found Alex
making out with her first girlfriend, things got even worse. She’d told her
priest who tried to talk Alex into repenting.
 
After that, Alex made sure she and Lila
had minimal contact.
 
Robert, even
after Lila revealed his only daughter was a lesbian, had loved her and Liz
unconditionally and had been a good father.
 
He’d noticeably aged; grief ages so
quickly. Her biological mother was dead, as was Liz’s.
 
That was one of the many things they had
in common.

Now they had nothing in
common, Alex thought.

Eliot Camp, was not only a
good father to Liz, but he‘d also been a mentor to Alex as she pursued a
master’s in English.
 
He was tenured
at the University of Southern Mississippi, and he’d been trying to convince her
to come there for her PhD once her master’s work was complete.
 
Liz didn’t want to move back, but Alex
considered it a long range goal; she’d looked forward to spending time in the
town where Liz grew up and assured her that they would move wherever she wanted
once her coursework was finished.
 
She thought now that things would be so different if she had agreed to
go to USM for her Master’s and they had gotten out of New Orleans before all of
this happened.

Now it was too late.

Eliot hugged Liz, too, as
did Kirby and Mike.
 
They all sat
down, Liz flanked by Eliot and Kirby, protected.
 
At least there was some comfort in
knowing that Liz was loved and not alone. Alex felt selfish for the pang of
alienation she felt and the grief she felt for herself. She also felt angry
that she couldn’t turn to her family and friends for help.

In addition to guilt, love,
and sorrow, Alex also felt desire for Liz--desire so sharp that it took her
breath away. The moment she’d seen her, Alex felt her heart jump.
 
She was even beautiful in grief.
 
Alex also felt guilty for allowing Wren
to pull her into this.
 
How could
she have been so stupid as to let Wren get close enough to her to kiss her, let
alone for what happened?
 
She held
onto the back of the pew in front of her, white knuckled.
 
She knew that if she’d been standing,
her knees would have given way.
 
She
couldn’t explain it, but the desire and pull toward Liz were stronger than
ever.
 
She tried to tell herself it
was only because she never got to say goodbye, never got to kiss her one more
time. She felt tears sliding down her cheeks.
 
Lucy patted her on the knee.
 
Alex did her best to pull herself together.

Once the service started Alex
zoned out. She hadn’t been particularly religious, and she couldn’t process
what was going on.
 
There was an urn
on the altar; she assumed that Jane Doe’s ashes were inside.
 
Lucy sat next to her, fiddling with her
phone unobtrusively.
  
Alex
thought how odd it was that even something so normal and simple—having a
phone—seemed impossible for her.
 
She felt a pang of jealousy that Lucy knew people, that she had a life
and a phone with numbers in it. She needed to put a new phone on her list.
 
Undoubtedly, it would be a burner phone
that she’d put under her new name, Sasha West,
 
and pay by the month at Radio Shack or Wal-Mart.
 
Lucy had already schooled her in the
ways of pre-paid Visa cards and other impermanent and virtually untraceable
things.

Alex would have rather been
a drug dealer or in the mafia than being newly undead, but no one asked her or
gave her those or any other options.
 
Thinking about how vamps and crime bosses apparently had so much in
common almost made her giggle.
 
She
turned it into a tiny cough and shifted in her seat. Lucy looked up with one
eyebrow raised, checking to make sure Alex was ok.
 
They’d agreed ahead of time that if Alex
had to bug out that she would simply walk out and to a nearby bar.
 
Lucy had agreed to stay until the end of
the memorial, even if Alex left.
 
They’d
then meet up and call the car service and make the trek back home.

She didn’t leave, though;
once the priest she’d never met before finished his introductory remarks, her
father stood up and spoke.
 

“First off, I want to say
thank you for coming today.
 
I don’t
know most of you, but it doesn’t surprise me that my baby girl touched so many
people.”

Lila stood behind him, which
made the anger in Alex rise up, and she pushed it down.
 
She never could understand what it was
that her father really saw in Lila; she was nothing special, but her father
seemed to find comfort in knowing she was at home while he was out on the rig.
 
Lila embodied a certain type of southern
woman; she never left the house without her face on and unless she was shrouded
in a cloud of White Shoulders.
 
Alex
could swear she could smell her from the back of the church.

Thankfully, Lila didn’t
speak.
 

“Alexandria reminded me so
much of her mother, who we also lost way too soon.”
 
As he said this, Lila looked down toward
her shoes. Alex could feel her irritation radiating off of her.
 
Lila couldn’t stand to be reminded that
Robert had been married before her.

He choked up and she saw him
reach back to Lila for her hand. As their fingers intertwined, Lila took a deep
breath and Alex could see that her cheeks were wet from crying. Alex realized
that instead of being irritated by Lila, she should be grateful her father had
her in his life.
 
Better to have her
than to be alone, she guessed.

Next to speak was John
Kirby, Alex’s longtime friend. Alex was glad that no matter what happened Kirby
would watch out for Liz.
 
Kirby
brought the two of them together years ago.
 
As he talked, Alex replayed in her mind
how he had set out to get her completely plastered so she couldn’t refuse to
stay when his friend and housemate Liz just happened to show up to join them
for a drink.
 
He’d tried for weeks
to pull off the match making process, but Alex had sworn off relationships after
she and Wren split up, and Liz had been resistant to blind dates.
 
Kirby knew what he was doing, though,
when he brought the two of them together that night.
 
They’d been virtually inseparable since
then.

Until Wren had started
chasing her again.
 
Until Wren
caught her and killed her.

Alex was pulled out of her
anger spiral as Liz finally stood at the front of the church. She looked more
fragile than Alex had ever seen her.
 
Alex grabbed on to Lucy’s hand, squeezing it hard and held on to the
seat of the pew they sat in with her other hand, fighting the urge to run up to
the front, to reveal she wasn’t the pile of ashes in the urn, so put an end to
all of the madness.
 
Lucy squeezed
back.

“I am so glad to have had
Alex in my life. I have never known anyone so beautiful and loving, and I fear
I never will.
 
Her wishes were for
her ashes to be released as part of the St. Ann Parade on Mardi Gras day. I
hope that you’ll come with us then to say our final goodbye.”

Liz paused. Her hands
gripped the sides of the podium, knuckles white from gripping it so hard. “Alex
was one of the smartest women I’ve ever met. Because we want to honor her love
of literature, we’ve set up a scholarship fund in her name with the English
Department at UNO; I encourage you all to give what you can so someone like
Alex can pursue their dreams.” She paused and looked out over the seated
mourners. Alex could swear that she looked her straight in the eye as she said,
“I love you, Alex; I always will.” Robert stood up and hugged Liz, both of them
crying.

As the service ended, they
played slide show of pictures showing Alex from birth until a few days before
her death when Kirby had taken a bunch of pictures with his phone.
 
Alex sat in silence as she watched
images of her life literally flash in front of her as people hugged Liz and
Robert and gave what condolences they could.

Alex and Lucy were still
sitting in their pew after the other attendees all filtered out.

“It was a lovely service,
Alex.
 
It’s clear that you were
well-loved.” Lucy stared at Alex’s profile, looking for some sign of emotion or
any reaction.
 
Her face revealed
nothing about what was going on inside her head, though.
 
She just stared at the screen where the
video was looping and starting over again.