Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

It was a man, bald-headed, but with a black wiry beard twisted and forked into two sharp points. He stood barefoot and in tattered jeans, though his chest was bare. I began counting his ribs until I realized that, no, I was seeing his every bone -rib cage, chest, clavicles, shoulders and sockets, forearms and fingers. Their outlines sat tattooed atop his skin, fully inked, like his body had reversed its layering.

Yet his fingertips were the eeriest, nails an unnatural extension of all that bone, twining in and out of one another for a good foot each, effectively making his hands useless. Shellacked a shiny black, they matched his beard and, for some reason, reminded me of the dead plant lying next to the door.

“Yes?” he asked, like he expected me to offer him a magazine subscription.

“I want you to leave me alone.”

“You knocked on my door.”

“I mean all of you!” I hissed, and his smile spread like black syrup. “I gave everything I had to the world of Light and Shadow, and I want no part of it anymore. Leave me and my friends alone. Got it?”

“You should at least take the trident.” His voice was a liquid warble, and though his eyes were sunken, his attention was locked on me. Just like the rest of that damned world.

“It’s not mine,” I answered with clenched teeth.

“I thought you’d be taller,” he said, waving an envelope at me that was too pristine for hands with such gnarled knuckles. I wondered how he’d picked it up. I didn’t even want to know how he went to the bathroom. But what he held was clear: the next clue on the treasure hunt.

Damn.

I didn’t move to take it. He could have me pinned against the wall before I blinked, mask removed before I cried out, dead before I’d taken another breath, but I wasn’t going to extend myself to him in any way. It was vital, I somehow knew, that I didn’t do that.

“Warriors are supposed to have some height to them.”

The inky divots where his eyes should have been remained pinned on me, and I shuddered, feeling my nausea return. For a moment it looked like the darkness was spreading from his body, like an airborne stain. I shook my head. “I’m just a girl now.”

“Olivia?” Cher’s concerned voice echoed up the stairwell. I swallowed hard. I did not want her back up there.

“Let me feel your fingers.” He reached out with his free hand, palm up, his fingers five branchless black trees angling in tangled growth from his nail beds.

“I don’t know you,” I said, as an excuse not to touch him, not to extend or accept…not to reveal the smooth fingertips that would give away my past. My future lay somewhere else. Even if it turned out to be in the chest behind me, a coffin.

Cher’s voice again. “Who are you talking to?”

I had to keep her down there. “Hold on! I’m coming.”

“You don’t know me yet,” he corrected, slowly lowering his arm. The nails on his right hand clacked together.

“But you will soon.”

And he flicked the envelope onto the landing, backed up-arm straight out to the side-and slammed the door shut before I registered his first movement. Another larger chunk of plaster fell at my feet, and I dove for the clue, and then the staircase as the entire ceiling creaked. He wasn’t the creepiest thing I’d ever seen, but that’s why I moved so quickly. I couldn’t combat even the slightest form of creepy.

Once outside, I shook chunks of dust from my hair, sucking in deep gulps from the crisp winter air. Now shiv ering in earnest, Cher sneezed next to me. I tilted my gaze to a boarded window, wondering if I only imagined seeing movement between the slats. Just in case, I kept the mask pressed to my face. Damn. Why’d I have to knock on that door?

“Oops. I guess we broke it.” Cher sniffled as the old neon sign sizzled and abruptly snapped off. The house sunk further into shadows, the darkness a quicksand, and I took another step back. I could not get sucked back into that world.

“That’s okay. I’ve got the next clue. Let’s just go.”

We scurried away at a fast clip, both happy to be away from the decaying house.

My glances around the hunchbacked streets were less furtive now than before. Whether I was just wired from the encounter with the psychic, or if we really were being followed, I waited until we found a brightly lit street corner without a prostitute on it to lower my mask and wipe my brow. That man had been expecting me, and as I’d never seen or met him before, it was unlikely he was working alone. Hopefully he would tell whatever allies he had that I refused their…what? Offering? Gift?

Meanwhile, Cher sneezed, pushed her boa feathers aside, and opened our next clue.

“Looks like a strip club,” she said, studying it.

“Good,” I sighed in relief, and turned toward Glitter Gulch and away from the house, its war chest, and its living skeleton. “I’m ready for something normal.”

It took four hours, and a mixture of happenstance and luck, but thrice more we found our baubles, and thrice more weapons were tucked behind or beneath or beside the awaiting adornment. Each time I imagined breath on my neck, and had to fight not to whirl. Each time I felt eyes in the shadows.

And each time I cursed under my breath. I managed to distract Cher twice by telling her to look out for the guides handing us clues. I then ignored the conduits, and gingerly, hurriedly, picked up beads and bindis instead. Okay, so I paused to study the antiquated gun and its bubbling liquid vial bullets. And reaching for the saber with a firearm welded to its hilt was an involuntary reaction to such a fine piece of warfare. But by the time I spotted the cane with a pommel blade, Cher was over the fear she’d shown in the little shack of horrors, bored with the entire hunt, and sneezing uncontrollably in her sparkly dress. So despite the promise of a warm, tropical cruise, she only flicked an irritated glance at our fourth guide…thus catching sight of the last weapon before I could sweep up the studded bangles and shut the BMW’s trunk.

Sneezing, she turned an accusing gaze on me. “What the hell is going on?”

I had no intention of telling her, and shot her Olivia’s most stunning smile instead. She lifted a brow. I batted my lashes. She batted her own. I thought about lying, but even Cher wasn’t likely to fall for something simple, and a complicated lie took too much time and energy. Not to mention you had to remember later what you’d lied about. What would happen, I wondered, narrowing my eyes, if I just told the truth?

You’d piss off any paranormal creature who might be lurking in the shadows .

What the hell? I was kinda tired of being pissed off all by myself.

“Okay. It’s like this. There are, like, these people who believe I’m the savior of a paranormal underworld based on the signs of the Zodiac. See, they think my real mother was Light and my father Shadow, which makes me both, and that makes me the Kairos.” I paused, but Cher only stared, and no one attacked me, so I continued talking. “Except it doesn’t. See, I sacrificed all my powers ten weeks ago to save a mortal child’s life, along with the entire Vegas population. So now I’m mortal, and re-engaging with that world, including all these weirdo weapons, would obvi ously be very dangerous for me. So let’s just pretend we didn’t see them, okay?”

Cher remained still for almost a whole minute, model-perfect face characteristically blank. Then, with just as much seriousness as I’d shown, she sneezed and said, “I think I’m allergic to my boa.”

“Really?” Sympathetically, I linked my arm in hers as we headed back to the bus.

“I blew out my nose ring back there.” She sniffled. “You didn’t even notice.”