Touch the Dark
Page 2

I had a second to see the frightened faces of the tourists who were hanging on for dear life in the back seat, before the carriage ricocheted off the sidewalk and careened down the street out of sight. I dragged my mud-covered self out of the gutter and glared around suspiciously. Merry laughter from behind me explained how that fat old horse had been convinced to try for a new speed record. A trail of mist, almost indistinguishable from the light rain, drifted by. I grabbed it, metaphysically speaking.
"Portia! That wasn't funny!"
The laugh tinkled again and a pretty southern belle complete with swinging hoopskirts materialized in front of me. "Oh, yes, it was. Did you see their faces?" Mirth sparkled in what had once been eyes bluer than mine. Tonight they were the color of the churning clouds overhead.
I fished around in my purse for a tissue to wipe off my boots. "I thought you weren't going to do that anymore. If you scare off the tourists, who will you play with?" There aren't a lot of companies willing to pretend that Atlanta, like Savannah or Charleston, has enough of a historic district to make horse-drawn tours worthwhile. If Portia kept up her games, whatever southern charm had managed to survive the urban sprawl—which offered such time-honored favorites as the World of Coca-Cola, the CNN Center and the Underground Atlanta mall—was doomed.
Portia gave me a pout so attractive that she must have practiced it in front of a mirror when she was alive. "You're no fun, Cassie."
I shot her an unhappy look as I tried to clean the mud-splattered leather, but all I managed was to streak it. Never once had I made a run for it looking chic. "I'm plenty of fun, just not tonight." It had started to rain, and the droplets were falling through Portia to spatter on the concrete. I hate that; it's like looking at a TV through too much interference. "You haven't seen Billy Joe, have you?"
I call Billy Joe my guardian spirit, but that isn't entirely accurate. He's more of a pain in the ass who occasionally turns out to be useful, but right then I wasn't feeling picky. Billy is what remains of an Irish American gambler who failed to lose the right hand of cards in 1858. A couple of irate cowboys, who correctly assumed they'd been cheated, shoved him into a sack and tossed it in the Mississippi. Luckily for him, he'd recently relieved a visiting countess of a large, ugly necklace that served as a sort of supernatural battery, collecting magical energy from the natural world and storing it until needed. When his spirit left his body, it came to rest in the necklace, which he haunted the same way other ghosts did more conventional things, such as crypts. It gave him enough power to continue to exist, but it was my occasional donations of living energy that made him as mobile as he was. I had found the necklace in a junk shop when I was seventeen, and Billy and I had been a team ever since. Of course, he couldn't take a message to the club for me so I didn't have to go in person, but he could serve as lookout in case any bad guys got too close. Assuming I could find him, that was, something that required a little ghostly help.
There are a lot of ghosts in Atlanta, and most are your run-of-the-mill, let's-haunt-something-until-we-work-through-our-issues-or-fade-away types like Billy Joe. There are also a few guardian spirits and an occasional psychic imprint, not that the latter are technically ghosts. Imprints are like a supernatural theater that shows the same movie over and over until you want to scream. Since it's usually something traumatic, running into one isn't fun. I'd spent my free time for a couple of months after I moved in learning the streets in the area, and one of the main things I'd been looking for was imprint zones. I'd found about fifty dealing with the burning of the city during the Civil War, but most were too weak to cause me much more than a twinge. But there was a big one between my apartment and the agency where a slave had once been ripped apart by a pack of dogs. I started taking the long way around after I got caught in it one day. I have a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget; I don't need other people's nightmares.
Portia, however, isn't an imprint. Sometimes, I thought she was worse. Portia is one of those ghosts who relive the tragic parts of their lives over and over, but not like a mindless movie. They're haunters with a fixation, similar to an obsessive human who wants to wash her hands fifty times a day. And they're mobile, so they can follow you around and run on about whatever is bothering them 24/7. I broke Billy Joe of that early—he's upset because he died young, but I can handle only so many choruses of "the life I should have had" before I start to get crabby.
Unfortunately, I'd caught Portia in a talkative mood, and it took more than ten minutes to find out—after a detailed description of the ivory buttons she'd sewn onto her never-used wedding gown—that she hadn't seen Billy Joe. Typical. I spend most of my time wishing he'd go away, but he never gets lost until I need him. My level of aggravation must have shown on my face, because Portia stopped in the middle of the story about a party where two officers had fought each other over the last place on her dance card. It was one of her favorites and she was clearly not pleased to see my attention wandering. "You aren't listening, Cassie. Is something wrong?" An angry snap of her little lace-edged fan said there had damn well better be.
"Tony's found, me and I need to get out of town. But I have to go by the club first, and I need a lookout."
I knew as soon as I said it that I should have kept my mouth shut. Portia's eyes got even bigger, and she clapped her dainty gloved hands together delightedly. "Oh, what fun! I'll help!"
"Um, that's really generous of you, Portia, but I don't think… I mean, there's a lot of ways into the club, and you couldn't cover all of them." But Portia got a familiar, steely glint in her eyes and I immediately relented. Most of the time she was sugar sweet, but get her upset at you and things could get bad fast.
"I'll find help," she promised. "It'll be like a party!" She disappeared in a swirl of petticoats, and I sighed. Some of Portia's friends were even more annoying than she was, but any lookouts were better than none. And I didn't have to worry about Tony's boys noticing them. Even if he'd sent vamps, they wouldn't see a thing.
As strange as it sounds, a lot of people in the supernatural community don't believe in ghosts. Oh, some will agree that there is the occasional troubled spirit who hangs around its grave for awhile before accepting the inevitable, but few would accept it if I told them just how many spirits stick around after death, how many different types there are, and how active some of them can be. Spirits like Portia and Billy Joe are, for the supernatural community, like vamps are to the human—old stories and legends that are dismissed without proof. What can I tell you? It's a weird world.
I arrived at the club a few minutes later, out of breath and with aching arches, but intact. Showing up was, of course, a really bad idea. Even if nobody had followed me, a dozen people at the agency and my apartment building knew I worked there part-time. It was also only a block from Peachtree, which was not a coincidence I liked. If it ended up getting me killed, I planned to come back and haunt Tony. But I couldn't leave without warning my roommate and making some kind of arrangement for him. I had enough guilt without adding another messed-up life to my total.
The club, with its high ceiling of exposed steel joints, graffiti-covered concrete walls and massive dance floor, was larger than most, but that night, there were enough gyrating figures under the hanging disco lights to make it almost claustrophobic. I was grateful for the crush, since it made it less likely that anyone would notice me. I slipped in the back way and didn't encounter any problems—at least, not of the gun-waving, homicidal variety.
One of the bartenders had called in sick, so they were shorthanded, and Mike tried to talk me into subbing as soon' as he saw me. Normally I wouldn't have minded, since my usual job as one of his novelty acts didn't provide much in tips. I read tarot three nights a week, although I've never liked the cards. I used them because it's expected, but I don't need to squint at archaic images to know what's about to happen. My visions come in Technicolor and surround sound, and are a lot more complete. But most people would have preferred a standard reading to what I gave out. Like I said, I'm better at Seeing the bad stuff. Tonight, though, I declined the chance to make a few bucks. I didn't think bartending was the way I wanted to spend my last hour.
"What's the word?" Mike yelled at me cheerfully, doing a Tom Cruise with the liquor bottles to the rowdy appreciation of the crowd.
I sighed and dug in my purse. My fingers clenched around the greasy tarot deck that had been a tenth-birthday gift from my old governess, Eugenie. She'd had a charm put on the cards by some witch with a sense of humor, and I kept it with me because it was good for entertaining customers. But the predictions—which acted like a kind of karmic mood ring—had an eerie habit of being right on the money. I held it up and a card popped out. It wasn't one I wanted to see. "The Tower," a booming voice began, before I shoved it back in the pack and deep into my purse.
"Is that good?" Mike asked, before getting distracted by a pretty blonde's cleavage. I merely nodded and hurried off, losing myself in the crowd before he could hear anything else. The voice was only a muffled croak from my overcrowded bag, but I didn't need to hear it to know what it said. The Tower signifies a huge, cataclysmic change, the kind that leaves a life completely altered. I tried to tell myself that it could have been worse—it could have been Death—but it wasn't much comfort. The Tower is probably the most feared card in the deck. Death can have many meanings, most not the literal one, but the Tower always indicates trouble for anyone who wants a quiet life. I sighed—what else was new?
I finally located Tomas in the Dungeon—Mike's nick-name for the basement room—wading through a sea of black-clad bodies with a tray of used glasses. He looked edible, as usual, if your thing is slender muscles, skin like honey over cream and sable hair that brushes his waist when he doesn't keep it pulled back. His face should look too rugged to be handsome, all high cheekbones and strong angles, but the delicacy of some of the features make up for it. His hair was off his face in a thick braid, a sure sign he was working, since he prefers it loose, but a few pieces had worked free and billowed about his head in fine strands. Mike had picked out the outfit: a black silk shirt knitted in a cobweb design that revealed more than it covered, sleek black jeans that fit him like a second skin and black leather boots that climbed halfway up his thighs. He looked like he ought to be headlining at a strip club instead of waiting tables, but the exotic, melt-in-your-mouth sex appeal pushed a lot of buttons for the Goths. I didn't exactly find it hard on the eyes, either.