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Fie, Fie, You Counterfeit
It was a perfect trap. She stood at the window, biting her lip, glancing frequently, obsessively, at her wristwatch. 3:10. 3:11. 3:13. She’d gone more than a minute without looking that time. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, butterflies dancing in her stomach. 3:14. She placed her palm at the nape of her neck, caressing the skin in an act of self comfort. She shifted her weight again, about to check her watch when she heard the tell-tale sounds of a large vehicle crunching its way down Gladiola Road.
Gracey leaned forward, her hips pressed against the counter’s cool formica. The school bus stopped just across the way, and she waited impatiently as Alejandro and Marco alighted from the bus.
Dammit, she thought, kicking herself mentally. She’d forgotten about Alejandro. How could she forget about the twin? She glanced back at the table she’d set for two with a huge peanut butter pie and two roast beef sandwiches. She could invite them both over, but it wasn’t Alejandro she needed to speak with.
Cursing again, mind racing as she revised her plan of attack, Gracey rushed outside, waved at the boys. Alejandro returned her greeting with perfunctory politeness and then hurried into the house. That was easy, she thought. He scrambled out of here like I had the plague.
Marco, however, lingered, looking at Gracey with an expression that seemed far too old for the eight year old to wear. Desperation colored the lines of his face, and for a moment, the child seemed ancient, too knowing, careworn. It was all Gracey could do not to rush to him and bring him into a furtive hug.
Instead, she dug her hands into her pockets, trying to appear casual. “Hey, Marco,” she began, her fake smile too wide. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” he said. “I got 15 out of 16 on my music memory test.”
“That’s great. Which one did you miss?”
“I couldn’t remember who wrote Gianni Schicchi.”
“Oh. Do you know now?”
“Puccini. But I remembered it too late. Hey, Gracey?”
“Yeah?”
Tears began to well in the boy’s eyes, his lower lip trembling ever so slightly. “I think I did something bad.”
The words came out as a whisper, and Gracey’s heart leaped when she heard them. She held out her hand, which the boy accepted gladly. “Do you want to come inside and talk about it?”
He said nothing, only nodding as he followed her into the house, bravely fighting the tears that tried to make their way down his cheeks.
She sat him down at the table in front of the pie, but she knew immediately that he wasn’t hungry. She cleared away the plates and glasses and sat down with him, folding her hands on the table, trying to smile. Her face felt tight. “It’s ok, Marco,” she said. “Just start at the beginning.”
The boy faltered, uncertain where to begin. But once he got going, the story rushed out of him like water breaking free of a dam. He told her about the Ouija board in the cemetery, about seeing Rubio Bautista in the tree, about the susto that caused him to sleep for three days. He told her about the visits from Two Rabbit and finally he told her about the woman at the funeral, the woman who Marco was sure, absolutely sure, was no woman at all, but something he had unleashed, something that had come to Love & War for reasons Marco couldn’t begin to guess at.
“She screams in her head,” he concluded, his nails digging into the flesh of his palm. “She walks around smiling but in her head she wants to burn everyone up.”
The deluge having dried up, Marco crossed his arms on the table and put his head down. Gracey leaned back in her chair, mind awhirl as she tried to take it all in. She felt her fingertips going cold, her stomach beginning to turn. She hoped she wasn’t about to get sick.
The boy’s story was outlandish, of course, and no sane person with an average understanding of the world could have possibly believed a word of it. It was all the fancy of an imaginative, lonely little boy. She wanted to believe that, even flirted with forcing herself to believe that. But every fiber of her being reverberated as he’d spoken, and she could sense the truth flowing out of him. The story was as true as silver, right as rain. And in a sick, horrible kind of way, it all made sense. At least, it all fit together.
But why a ghost would return to the manifest world simply to murder the descendants of the founding families was a question Gracey had not even the beginnings of an answer to.
“But if she’s a ghost, why does she have a real, tangible body?”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken the words out loud until Marco raised his head, his eyes red from crying. “She’s a witch.” He said this as though these words explained everything.
And perhaps they did.
They sat in shared, uncomfortable silence for a long time. She reached out, stroked Marco’s hand. She wasn’t sure how to console the child. Finally, she stood up, kicking her chair to the side. She walked to the refrigerator, poured two tall glasses of iced tea. Sat down again.“Crying always makes me thirsty,” she explained, putting the glass in front of Marco. “Do you want any lemon?”
Marco hesitated before taking a long drink. When he looked up again, his face was full of apprehension. “Gracey, there’s something else I didn’t tell you.”
“What’s that?”
Marco swallowed hard, nervously twisting his fingers in his lap. “The witch woman? The ghost? You know her.”
Now, Gracey felt her chest grow tight as a ball of dread welled up from her stomach, pressed against her lungs. “I do? Who is it, Marco?”
“She’s that woman with your friend. The magician. Simon St. Laine.”
It took Gracey a moment to process Marco’s words. What woman? Then realization rushed over her, turning dread into abject nausea as she leaned forward onto her elbows, hoping Marco couldn’t read the fear in her face. “His cousin? The woman he brought with him to the funeral?”
Marco only nodded.
Gracey pushed herself away from the table, her head swimming, everything moving slightly out of focus. It was difficult to breathe. She found herself suddenly cold despite the heat, and as she wrapped her arms around her torso, the only thought she could hold onto was, I can’t be sick in front of Marco.
At last she turned again to face him, searching his face for…something. She didn’t know what. He was only a child. “Does he know? What she is?”
Marco shrugged, shook his head. “I can’t read minds.”
She laughed then, needing to laugh despite everything else. No, of course he couldn’t read minds. She didn’t know the extent of his gifts, of course, but even Marco, as talented or cursed as he was, couldn’t know everything. What he did know was obviously a burden for him. The boy’s face had aged in the preceding weeks; she saw that now. How had she missed it before? But she hadn’t been looking then. She’d been wrapped up in her own world, subject to her own concerns and fears. Her thoughts had been full of Audra Fairgood, and her mother, and the Prime of Darkness and, of course, her ever-deepening affair with Simon St. Laine.
“Gracey?”
His voice yanked her out of the feeble cycle of questions churning though her mind. “Hmm.”
“Will you help me?”
The plea was so sincere she thought her heart might break into a hundred pieces. She gathered the boy in her arms, smoothing his hair as he rested his cheek against her shoulder. “Yes, Marco. We’ll figure it out. I’m going to find a way to make this all go away.”
She supposed she hadn’t yet outgrown the habit of speaking aloud to convince herself the idea was true.
The Prime of Darkness had nothing in the way of a cell phone, or a social network, or even an email address. Of course, most of the time, the last thing Gracey wanted to do was call upon the demon, but sometimes she needed his power to add to her arsenal. Today was such a day, and the Prime of Darkness was nowhere to be found. Undeterred, Gracey began pulling ingredients from her larder, mentally blending the perfect concoction of flavors and texture.
The only surefire way Gracey knew to attract the demon’s attention was to make a phenomenal dinner.
Chiles arboles went into the molcajete. The griddle was turned up high to inflate the corn dough into tortillas. She’d barely chopped the final clove of garlic for the guacamole when the air around her grew almost imperceptibly darker and colder, alerting her to the Prime of Darkness’s presence.
“You’re almost as reliable as Batman when I have the right tools,” she commented as she chopped, not even deigning to look up. “I need your help.”
The demon leaned over her shoulder, took a sniff. “Carnitas?”
Gracey shook her head. “Carne asada. Carnitas take too long. I need your help.”
The demon retreated, took a seat at the kitchen table. “I’m listening.”
Gracey dumped the garlic into a bowl, wiped her hands on her apron. When her eyes met the demon’s, they were unblinking and wide. “What do you know about ghosts?”
The demon shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
The demon drummed his fingers on the table, his head cocked to one side. “Why would I know anything about ghosts?”
Gracey threw up her hands. “Because you’re a demon!”
Gracey’s logic seemed to defy the Prime, whose expression broke into the barest resemblance of a smile. “Ghosts are things that were once human. I was never human.”
“Have you ever met one?”
The Prime of Darkness nodded. “Yes.”
“And?”
“I don’t know what you expect me to say, Gracey. Ghosts are humans who have died and yet, for reasons I don’t know, linger. Between the two of us, I should think you’d more about ghosts than I do. You, after all, are at least human.”
Gracey glanced up at the clock. After Marco had left, she’d invited Simon over for dinner. She’d argued with herself over the wisdom of this move, but in the end she decided she had no choice, and better to face her suitor on her own turf than in some neutral, public place.
At least at home she had the advantage of demonic backup.
“There’s a woman,” Gracey explained slowly, “who, it turns out, isn’t a woman at all and who is probably responsible for all the people who have died here recently.” Gracey checked the burner, turned the heat up a little higher. “If that weren’t enough, it seems I’ve been dating her cousin.”
The demon raised his eyebrows. “Your boyfriend is connected to this ghost.”
“She’s been staying with him. At his house. Does that seem strange to you? I mean, does that seem…suspicious?”
“Yes.”
Gracey let her head fall back, eyes closed, as she breathed out in a loud, slow sigh. “That’s what I thought.” She picked up a knife, cut thin slices of beef. “I assume you’re going to stay for dinner.”
“Of course.”
Gracey grunted, threw the steak on the griddle. “Well, good. I may need your help. If it turns out…” Gracey shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.
But the demon understood. “You don’t want him to kill you.”
Gracey blinked. “Well…god! That’s not what I…” She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I suppose. Not that I think Simon would ever hurt me.”
“Why not?”
Gracey sighed. “Jesus, after all this time you’re still so not human. Because, Darkness, I think, in his way, that he loves me.”
“So why do you want me here?”
Now, Gracey did face the demon. She searched his face, looked deep into those sparkling black orbs in the middle of his face, and saw nothing of recognition or understanding. In all his time on earth, in Texas, he knew nothing of the human condition.
“Relationships are complicated,” she began, leaning against a counter, arms crossed over her chest. “And people are complicated. I don’t know what Simon does or doesn’t know about this woman who may or may not be a supernatural murderer. But if he knows…I just have no way of knowing what his role is in all of that. Why he’d tolerate it. Does she have something over him? Does he secretly….enjoy it?” She shuddered, shaking her head. “I just don’t know what will happen, Darkness. And although I don’t necessarily trust you, either…What I’m saying is, I don’t think Simon would ever hurt me. But plenty of men are wolves in sheep’s clothing. And I don’t want any nasty surprises.”
The demon wrinkled his brow. “Isn’t that what I said from the beginning?”
Gracey opened her mouth to answer just as the doorbell rang. She turned her head, shouted, “It’s open!” She was glad not to have to continue the conversation. Try as she might, she couldn’t really explain human relationships to the demon. Nothing she could say would ever make him understand. It something that had to be experienced, and yet, of course, the demon would never, could never, experience it. It was one of man recent truths she couldn’t reconcile.
She was drying her hands on her apron when Simon walked into the kitchen. The soles of his shoes had barely touched the linoleum when the demon stood, eyes darting back and forth between Gracey and her suitor. The demon raised a hand, pointing. “This is Simon?”
Gracey smiled, preparing to make some kind of introduction, when she noticed the look on Simon’s face. Eyes wide, lips pressed together, nostril’s flared, color draining from his face.
He was afraid. No, he was terrified.
Gracey blinked, trying to make sense of it. Yes, the Prime of Darkness was startling — the blue gray skin, the comic-inspired armor, the odd impassiveness of his face all contributed to unease in his presence. But he wasn’t imposing, not with his diminutive stature. And moreover, Love & War knew him. They’d seen him. And even those who hadn’t actually seen him had heard of him. In a town this size people talked. But after a year in their presence his status had dwindled. He was nothing more than a curio. So why was Simon looking at his with such abject horror?
Gracey cleared her throat. “Ah, Simon, this is my…this is Darkness. Darkness, this is Simon.”
Neither demon nor man budged. The demon glanced away from Simon’s face only briefly. “This is the Simon you were just speaking of, the one who loves you?”
Now, Gracey felt Simon’s horror reflected in her face. Mortal embarrassment colored her cheeks a deep crimson as she swallowed, stammered. “Um, well, this is my boyfriend, Simon St. Laine.”
The demon’s expression was incredulous. “That’s ridiculous,” he said.
Gracey balked. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s ridiculous,” he repeated. “If there’s any love between you it’s entirely one sided.”
Embarrassment gave way to anger as Gracey watched both men steadily, her hands clenching into fists. “Why would you say something like that, Darkness?”
The demon wasn’t much of a laugher, but his expression betrayed a certain kind of mirth as he said, “Because that isn’t a man, Gracey. That is a homunculus.”
