Hannah Jayne - Under Attack

Grandma raised an eyebrow. “No, I’m in your bathroom mirror.” She dragged another finger across the glass. “Which could use a very good cleaning, by the way. Really, Sophie, I haven’t been gone that long. I know I didn’t teach you to clean house like this,” she tsked.

“Can you come out here?” I stepped back, offering her a space.

“No. Specters—that’s what we are, specters—isn’t that just a darling way to refer to us? So much better than dead or afterlifers or life-retired. Anywho, specters can only be seen on shiny surfaces.”

“But why now?” I felt the sting of tears beginning to pool behind my eyes, and I leaned in toward the mirror again. “Grandma, I’ve needed you for so long. The last year of my life has been so ...”

“Oh, honey, I know. I have been there; you just weren’t able to see me. It’s a different magic that allows this”—Grandma indicated herself and the mirror—“than you’re used to. This one you might actually not be immune to. I tried to appear before—in stainless steel dishes, in your rearview mirror. Even on a sunny day on the back of Mr. Matsura’s head. That poor man has been balding since he was twenty-three. Took me a little while to get the knack for it.”

“You showed up on Mr. Matsura?”

Mr. Matsura was the kindly old man who lived across the hall from me and walked his toy poodle Pickle three times a day.

“My grandmother appears in my bathroom mirror and on my neighbor’s bald head.” I sat down on the edge of my tub, rubbing my temples. “And now I know why I was driven to drink.” Seeing your dead grandmother projected on the bald head of an aging Japanese man would do that to you. “I guess this is a relief. I thought I was going crazy.”

“This seems like a really inopportune moment to say, ‘Gotcha!’” Grandma grinned her trademark toothy smile, both her wrinkled hands held shotgun style in front of her.

“Are you here to tell my I’m in mortal danger?” I asked warily.

“Now that would be cliché, wouldn’t it? Dead grandmother appears in bathroom mirror, warning of the evil to come. Wooooo, whooooo!” Grandma did ghostly hands, her wrinkled lips forming an ominous O.

I laughed. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”

“But really, Sophie,” my grandma said, the smile dropping from her voice, “you are in danger.”

“You said you weren’t going to do that!”

“No, I said it would be cliché. Cliché, but necessary. Now listen to me, Sophie. You are in serious danger. Have you ever heard of the Vessel of Souls?”

“Yup. You missed it. Alex Grace, fallen angel. Filled me in on the whole thing.”

Grandma appeared to be thinking. “Alex Grace? You mean that hot ball of cheesecake you had over last night?”

“How did you know?”

Grandma shrugged. “The man had to use the bathroom.”

“Grandma! Did you look?”

“Oh honey, I might be old, but I’m not—well, that phrase doesn’t work anymore, now does it? Anywho, enough about Alex. You need to know that you’re being tailed, watched. Someone is looking for you and believe you me it’s not Ed McMahon with one of those big Publishers Clearinghouse checks.”

“So the driver last night—that was real? Someone really was trying to kill me?” I felt my heart flutter when I thought back to his headlights piercing through the dark night.

Grandma nodded solemnly.

“Do you know who it is? Also, Ed McMahon is dead.”

Grandma looked pleased as she clapped her hands in front of her chest. “Really? Dead? I should look him up, maybe invite him to bingo. Oh, honey, I’ve got to run.” Grandma looked over her shoulder. “That’s the breakfast bell. You have to move quickly around here or you’re the only specter without a waffle.”

I sprang up, pressed my hands against the mirror. “Grandma, no! Wait! Who is it? Who’s tracking me? I have so many questions!”

“I’ll be back, sweetie. I promise.”

I pressed my forehead against the mirror and sighed when my own reflection stared back at me.

I dressed quickly and drove to work, considering what was more odd: that my dead grandmother had appeared to me in my bathroom mirror or that I wasn’t more freaked out about it. There was also the idea of her playing bingo with Ed McMahon and the issue of a waffle shortage in Heaven, but those rang in at a distant third, what with the apparition and the ominous warning.

Someone’s out to get you... .

It was a singsongy voice ringing in my ear. A thought I didn’t realize I was having.

Someone’s going to get you... .

I pulled to a four-way stop and scrunched my eyes shut, willing the voices and the ghosts to go away until the man behind me angrily laid on the horn, making me jump in my car seat and slosh a wave of black coffee across my pale-blue button-down.

“Oh, crap,” I said, pulling into the intersection, driving with my knees, licking the coffee from my wrist.

I managed to make it the UDA offices coffee-scented yet otherwise unscathed, and I was greeted by Nina at the front desk. She was wearing rhinestone-studded horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a clipboard, her long hair wound into a tight bun. She was tucked into a pencil skirt that made her appear as wide as—well, a pencil—and she had an embroidered pink cardigan that I swore once belonged to Donna Reed resting on her shoulders. Her crisp white blouse was unbuttoned just enough to reveal a tiny peek of her white lace bra, and somehow, she had hoisted her breasts to just under her lifted chin. She looked like a porn star for library fetishists. I stared at her breasts.

“Where did you get those?” I asked them.

Nina waved dismissively. “They came with the bra. Where have you been? Dixon wants to interview everyone today.”

“Everyone?” I asked.

Nina fell in step with me as I snagged a bagel and headed toward my office. “Okay, that’s no big deal. I’m comfortable with my job performance,” I told her.

In my last four years at the UDA, I never failed to lock up my werewolf boss once. After Mr. Sampson, I kept the interim bosses abreast of standard operating procedure, and I acted as the go-between for the under and upper worlds when the banshee was filling in. Whoever had given her the job had failed to realize the fact that for mortals, laying eyes on a banshee means instant death—hence the usual warning scream. The upper world lost two baristas and a meter maid before that little snafu was fixed.

I took a big bite of bagel and spoke with my mouth full. “The interview will be cake.”

“Yeah,” Nina said, looking disgusted, “as you are a veritable poster child for the proper businesswoman.”

I looked down at my coffee-stained blouse that was now spotted black with poppy seeds. “I had a bit of a rough morning,” I said, swallowing.

“Well, it’s about to get rougher,” Nina said, eyes trailing.

“Steve,” I said with a grimace.

As usual, I smelled him before I saw him. Steve was a troll and one thing that everyone should know is that trolls smell—badly. Like a slightly more pungent combination of bleu cheese and belly button. At one point, Steve and I had one of those love-hate relationships. He loved me and I hated him. At least I did hate him. That’s not to say that I loved him now—far from it. But when someone saves your life, you tend to have a soft spot for him.

“Never fear, ladies and demonettes, Steve is here.” Steve’s small grey troll hands clutched his lapels and he grinned up at Nina and me, his yellow snaggled teeth glistening in the harsh fluorescent overhead lights.

“Wow, Steve, you look nice,” I said.

Steve was wearing a slick sharkskin suit. Shiny, pointed black wingtips stuck out from underneath his stubby pant legs and his pink-and-grey striped tie sat lopsided over his stout stomach. What remained of his bushy black hair was oiled down into a careful comb-over that did little to conceal the overwhelming baldness on his ill-shapen head.