"Doesn't ring a bell, but I do have something you'd want."
Ian rummaged through his overcoat before he pulled out a slim book without any title or binding text. He stepped around me and knelt in front of Cecilia. The strange man smiled at her as he slipped the book into her lap.
She furrowed her brow and pressed her fingers against the smooth cover. "A book? You're kidding, right?"
"Open it up," he told her.
She opened the front cover and I saw there were raised blocks on the pages. Cecilia ran her hand over the bumps and her eyes widened.
"How the hell did you find this?" she asked him.
"I know a guy who knows a guy who owns a printing press. He can have these printed for you on demand. Whatever book you want and I'll foot the bill," he promised her. He stood and looked down at her. "That is, if you're willing to help my friend here, and tell me what you thought was different about her."
Cecilia set aside the book on the arm of the chair and frowned. "So you really didn't touch her?"
"Only if you call manhandling touching," I spoke up.
"What do you see around her?" Ian persisted.
Cecilia turned to me with her bright empty eyes and furrowed her brow. "A strange bluish hue around her aura similar to what's present around those of werewolves, but it's very faint. I thought maybe you'd just changed her."
"Not me," Ian replied. He looked to me and folded his arms across his chest. "You haven't dated any strange hairy men recently, have you?"
I glared at him. "I think I'd know if I was dating a werewolf."
"I don't know. We are pretty sneaky," he argued.
"Not if the other werewolves are like you," I quipped.
Cecilia snorted. "I think this one's a little too feisty for you, Mr. Ian."
He held up his hands. "I can see I'm outnumbered, and since you haven't solved the mystery of her strange glow I'll have to at least ask that you keep to the first part of our agreement."
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. "Train her? I've never trained anybody before."
"I know, but you're the only mystic I've got who doesn't have me on a mental hit-list or who isn't dead," he countered.
My eyes widened and I whipped my head to him. "Dead?" I repeated.
Cecilia gestured down at herself. "Do I look like a school teacher?"
"What's this about dead?" I interrupted.
"Come on, Ceci, you'll make a great teacher, and just think of the books," he pleaded.
I jumped to my feet and raised my voice to a near shout. "Why are there dead ones?"
The pair looked at me for a moment and then back at each other.
"There better be a lot of books in it for me," Cecilia commented.
"Many more," Ian promised.
I slapped my hand on my face and dragged it down. "I'm dealing with children. . ." I muttered.
Cecilia scoffed. "I've been through worse than you have, now sit down and shut up."
I whipped my head to her and glared at the small kid. "I don't have to do what she-" Ian slid up behind me and clapped a hand over my mouth.
"She'll be glad to do everything you say so her powers don't cause her to explode," Ian assured Cecilia.
"Mhmhm!" I screamed through his hand.
Cecilia rolled her eyes. "He's just teasing you. You won't explode," she assured me.
"No, but ignorance like that shows just how much you need her and are going to do as she says, right?" he asked me.
I rolled my eyes, but nodded. "Good." He released me and stepped backwards towards the door. "If you two ladies don't need me for this then I'll go check out some leads on our latest haunting."
"Just don't forget the books," Cecilia reminded him.
"And I'll bring back more books," he promised.
I glared at him as he grinned back. He waved to me and slipped out the front door.
CHAPTER 7
"Now are you going to sit down or what?" Cecilia snapped at me. I faced her and plopped back down on the couch. She looked me up and down, and sighed. "This is going to be a lot of work."
I stared down at myself and frowned. "Why?"
"Because you hardly have any powers, and what you do have is weak," she told me.
"I have enough to kill a phantom," I argued.
"You don't kill a phantom, you destroy it," she scolded me. She leaned back and folded her arms. "Besides, you can't have that much power. Your aura's too small."
"I did, too. You can just ask Cronus," I insisted.
She snorted. "Not likely. I've never seen him."
I frowned. "Why not?"
She shrugged. "He doesn't come by here. Mr. Ian says he's shy."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why do you call him Mr. Ian, anyway?" I asked her.
"Because old habits die hard, okay?" she snapped. "I was really small when he found me and got me a place to stay, and that's what I called him and it stuck." She leaned forward and shook a fist at me. I noticed there was a slight reddish tinge to her skin that illuminated the room. "Got a problem with that?"
I held up my hands and shook my head. "No problem except what's wrong with your hand."
She grinned and sprayed her hands out so her palm faced me. "This is the power of a strong mystic. A bunch of people can sense someone's emotions or feel trouble, but not many can actually move objects or destroy the Dark Evil."
"The Dark Evil?" I repeated.
She threw up her arms. "Didn't he tell you anything?"
"Nope," I quipped.
Says they'll do an emotion test. Girl pulls out a deck of cards from end table nearby with raised dots on the otherwise white surface. Placed them on the top of the end table. Says she'll read them and emit an emotion that won't show on her face, and she has to guess the emotion.
"Ready?" she asked me.
I shrugged and then remembered she couldn't see. "I guess," I told her.
Cecilia brushed her fingers over a card and waited with a blank face. I waited. She waited. I waited. Finally she frowned and slammed the card on the coffee table.
"Well?" she wondered.
"Well what?" I retorted.
"What emotion was I feeling?" she questioned me.
I shrugged again. This was going to take time. "I didn't feel or see anything."
"You weren't supposed to see anything, but feel it," she reminded me.
"I didn't feel anything, either," I added.
"We'll try it again, and this time pay attention," she snapped at me. She took another card from the deck and brushed her fingers over the dots. I squinted my eyes and focused on her face, but I neither felt nor saw anything that gave me a hint of her emotions.
"Nope, not working," I told her.
She growled and slapped the card on the table. "Can you even guess what I was feeling?"
"Stoic-ness?" I guessed.
"That isn't an emotion," she pointed out.
"I don't know. Maybe extreme depression?" I tried.
She leaned back and groaned. "Wrong again."
I threw my arms in the air. "Then I give up. This is easier when I don't feel like I'm taking a test," I argued.
"If your powers are spontaneous then you're as good as worthless. If you have any powers," she told me.
I jumped to my feet and glared at the girl. "Why am I even taking this bullshit from you? I don't even know you."
"You're taking this bullshit because you don't have any other choice," she replied. She stood and leaned against one arm of her chair. Her empty eyes zoomed in on mine. "You're with Mr. Ian because you fucked up and fell in with the wrong people."
"I didn't do anything!" I yelled. "They just came at me-"
"Because they thought you had something, and you don't," she interrupted.
"At least I have my sight!" I snapped.
A heavy silence fell over us. I should've apologized, but at that moment I was too angry to take back my words. I was hurt and frightened, frightened that she would take away the only reason I had to be
under the safety net of Ian and Company. That meant the bad guys would get me, and they'd be just as disappointed as everyone else. Disappointed bad guys made for a dead me.
A dark cloud slipped into her expression and she ground her teeth together. "Get out," she growled.
"Gladly!" I returned.
I turned towards the door and marched two steps before I heard a twinkling of laughter. I froze and spun around to find Cecilia in the same place and with the same dark look on her face.
"Are you enjoying this or something?" I questioned her.
She raised an eyebrow. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about," I replied. "That stupid laugh of yours. What the fuck's so funny?"
A smile slipped onto her lips. "I didn't laugh."
I frowned. "Then who-"
"I didn't laugh out loud," she amended.
My face twisted into confusion. "What the hell does that mean?"
Cecilia gathered up the cards from the table and sat back down in the chair. She turned them over in her hand as she smiled at me. "It means you have some ability," she informed me.
"Tell me something I don't know," I quipped.
"It could be useful to Mr. Ian," she added.
My shoulders sagged and I frowned at her. "But you said I was as good as worthless," I reminded her.
"And Hitler promised not to invade Poland. Welcome to the real world," she quipped.
"Seriously? You're pulling a Hitler on me?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "It's my rules."
"Well, fuck your rules, and fuck this test. I'm leaving," I informed her. I turned away from her and walked to the door, but her voice made me pause.
"Your ability is untrained. You could end up hurting someone," she warned me.
I furrowed my brow and looked over my shoulder at her. "What's that mean?"
She leaned forward and set the cards on the coffee table. "It means I want you to come back here next week at this time. I might be able to the help you."
I pursed my lips together and shrugged. "I'll think about it."
And with that I left.
I stepped into the hall and leaned my left shoulder against the wall beside her door. My body still shook from the shouting match. I ran a hand through my hair and shook my head.
"This is just too much. . ." I murmured.
Speaking of too much, I was out two protectors. Ian wasn't in the hall, and God only knew when, or if, Cronus would follow us from the house. I pushed off the wall and took the elevator down to the lobby. There was an eerie silence as my footsteps clacked against the tile floor. I hadn't noticed so much lack of noise on my first time through, but maybe that was because Ian had been so obnoxiously loud.
I stepped outside into the cool autumn air and pulled my-er, Ian's coat closer to myself. The street was deserted. There wasn't even a hobo on any of the stoops. I strolled down the steps and down the street. My footsteps echoed along the cracked sidewalk as I followed my steps back to the car. The distance felt longer now that I was alone.
I froze. Something had brushed against my arm, but I knew nobody had passed me. I half-turned to look behind me.
A shadow stood there.
It wasn't a perfect shadow. The outline was fuzzy and some parts were transparent. The eyes, however, were unmistakable. They glowed a bright green in the darkness, and in their depths was a hunger I didn't want to experience. It took a step towards me and I stumbled back.
"G-get away from me!" I shouted. The creature wasn't a phantom, but it was far from human. "S-stay back!"
My cries rang hollow down the street. No one was there to hear them. The shadow marched onward towards me. I stumbled over my own feet and fell on my butt onto the sidewalk. The shadow reached out its dark hands and lunged at me.
"Be gone!" a voice shouted.
A ball of light exploded inside the creature's abdomen. The thing burst into a thousand tiny sparkles of light and fell to the earth as a mess of dust. I looked up from the dust and noticed a small shadow that stood in the center of the sidewalk some two yards behind where my foe had stood. This shadow, however, was short and wore size-four tennis shoes.
"I told you you'd get somebody in trouble with your powers," Cecilia scolded me. In one hand was a walking stick, but she didn't use it as she strode towards me and stopped a foot from where I lay. She put her hands on her hips and her empty eyes glared down at me. "Now do you believe me?"
"W-what was that thing?" I choked out.
"I call them Sparrows. Their a shadow of a spirit and one of the lowest levels of wandering souls," she explained. Her pale eyes studied me and she pursed her lips. "You don't look hurt, so get up."
"C-can you really see me?" I asked her as I struggled to my feet.
"As I told you before, I can see your aura," she reminded me.
"Is that how you followed me?" I guessed.
A smirk slipped onto her lips. "It looks like you're not as stupid as I thought. Yeah, I followed your aura. You stick out like a sore thumb and you broadcast like a Mexican radio station."
I looked down at my dart and dirty clothes. "Stick out? I don't look-ooph." She had poked my gut with the end of her walking stick.
"It's not what you look like, you idiot. It's your aura. It's strong enough and wild enough to attract any wandering soul within a mile of you," she revealed.
I rubbed my sore stomach and glared at her. "So I have to do what? Cover myself with thicker clothing."
She placed her walking stick in front of her and leaned on it. "You have to train your aura not to show off all your power. That way if something does see you at least it won't know how strong you are at the beginning."
I raised an eyebrow. "At the beginning of what?" She rolled her eyes and rapped my shin with her stick. "Ouch!" I yelped. I clutched my leg and hopped on one foot. "What the hell is your problem?"
"You're my problem because I made a deal with Mr. Ian," she snapped. "And if you're too stupid to figure out he's going to get you into a lot of spirit fights then you're in deep shit."
"I already know that," I retorted as I gingerly set my foot down.
"Then you'd better learn how to fight well or you're going to end up on the sidewalk drained of your life force, or worse," she returned.
"What could be worse than death?" I questioned her.
A sly smooth slid onto her face. "Having your soul eaten isn't very pleasant. You can't even go to Hell without that."
I winced when I remembered what the hag had done to me. "Oh, that."
"Yeah, that," Cecilia agreed as she turned back in the direction of her home. "Now are you going to help me back or just stand there as fodder for all the spirits in the city?"
"Can't you just follow our aura trails or something?" I suggested.
"Aura's don't leave slimy trails. They're more like beacons blinking in the dark. Because you're standing here with me I don't have a beacon to get me back, and I don't get outside enough to memorize where everything is," she admitted.
I sighed, but moved to stand beside her and I offered her my arm. "Come on. Ian would probably kill me if I let one of his friends get mugged out here."
She snorted and raised her stick. "I can handle myself with the thugs. I just don't want to hit my shins against anything."
CHAPTER 8
We reached Cecilia's apartment a few minutes later and she plopped happily into her chair. I took my seat in mine and folded my arms over my chest.
"Now what?" I asked her.
She tilted her head to one side and smiled. "Now you go home."
I jumped when there came a knock on the door. The entrance opened and Ian peeked his smiling face into the apartment.
"Miss me?" he asked us.
"Like Europe misses the Plague," I quipped.
"Ah, then you did miss me," he teased as he slipped into the room. He moved to stand by my side and looked down at me. "So what'd you learn in school today, sweetie?"
&n
bsp; "That your friends are just like you," I replied.
"I only tested if she had some ability. You can bring her next week for her first lesson," Cecilia told him. She snatched a paper from the table beside her and held it out. "And don't forget these books, or no lesson."
Ian took the list and scoured the items. A smile slipped onto his lips and he pocketed the paper. "I think that can be done."
"It's either done or no lesson," she insisted.
"Then it'll be done," he promised. He turned to me and jerked his head towards the door. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah," I replied as I stood. Ian moved towards the door, but I paused behind my chair and turned to the small girl in the chair. "Thanks. Really."
She waved her hand at me. "Don't mention it. Really."
Ian led me to the elevator and we rode down to the lobby. "What was that about?" he asked me.
"She got me out of a jam on the street," I told him as we stepped off.
He froze just outside the elevator doors and raised an eyebrow. "Cecilia went outside?"
I turned to him and shrugged. "Yeah, why?"
Ian chuckled and shook his head. "It's nothing. Let's go home."
He passed me, but I caught up to him at the doors. "What's so funny?" I questioned him.
"I don't know if you noticed, but Cecilia doesn't get outside much," he told me. He paused at the edge of the stop and rubbed his chin. "Come to think of it, I don't know if she's been outside for two years."
"So what's that mean?" I wondered.
He turned to me with his wide grin. "It means she must've been really worried about you to go outside. That, or she really wants her books." He walked down the steps with me by his side.
"What was that book you gave to her, anyway? Some manual for mystics?" I guessed.
He gave me that strange half smile. "It was a book of fairy tales."
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and frowned at his back. "Are you serious?"
He paused and glanced over his shoulder. "Not everybody can be bribed with power or money. For some people it's the simple things in life that they enjoy."
I folded my arms over one another and studied him. "That's pretty heavy coming from a guy who keeps trying to get into my pants."
"And some day I'll succeed, but not tonight." He rolled one arm and winced when his shoulder cracked. "Tonight all I want is a warm bath." His eyes flickered to me. "Unless, of course, you wish to join me."
"There's no 'of course' there," I quipped as I walked up to his side. "Besides, I thought we were supposed to go find another friend of yours."
He waved off my question and walked on. "I found him, and he's agreed to help us out on this case. We'll meet him tomorrow at the building."