Blue Moon (26 page)

Zorovin just stared at him, for so long Alex feared he had offended him. Finally: “You must have thought eventually I would seek you.” He shrugged. “You are my son.” He smiled slightly and gave Alex an awkward pat on the shoulder.

"I'd forgotten everything.” Alex caught him up on the events of his life to date. He did not mention his feelings for Libby, and if Zorovin had asked he wasn't sure what he would say.

The morning of the blue moon dawned bright and unseasonably warm. People left their coats in the car and took deep breaths of the warm breeze, sweetened by the smell of the sun on dead leaves.

Libby didn't enjoy it. She was digging a hole, slowly troweling the dirt aside and thinking of what she had to do next. Dashiel could not help much, since he stood guard over the box. It had felt lighter this morning, and she thought it was because of the rest she'd gotten.

Alex frightened her more than ever now, but she desperately missed him. She thought of how he had called lightning, and wondered. He could be the same man who'd rescued her years before. They were built the same, she realized, but the memory, surrounded as it was by fear of other dangers, was not very clear.

"I hope he escaped."

"I looked for his body,” Dashiel said helpfully. “I think he managed to distract them and left out the back. I scented his trail there."

She paused in her shoveling. “I'm sure he didn't abandon her. I mean, he seemed to be really trying to save her."

"I think,” Dashiel said carefully, “it would go against his honor to abandon someone who fought at his side."

"You keep speaking of honor. Does he seem ... particularly honorable to you?"

Dashiel thought about this for a while, and Libby wondered what he wasn't saying.

"I think so."

She went back to working the dirt away. She felt raw, mourning for her sister—again—worrying over a man who was going from sweet white bread plainness to darkness and mystery. She wanted the white bread again. Plain. Dependable. Men of mystery were people she could do without.

Well, she would work with what she had. If she was meant to she'd run into Alex along the way.

"I think it's deep enough,” Dashiel said.

Libby straightened and stood for a long time with the shovel in her arms.

"Libby” he said gently, “we have to hurry. We only have today."

"How do you know?"

"It's the second moon of the month, and it's the first full moon on Halloween in ages."

She pushed her hair out of her face, transferring mud onto it. Not that it really detracted much from her “spent the night in a hole in the woods then several hours digging” look.

She dropped the shovel and walked over to the sheet-wrapped bundle. It was tied with crinkled scarlet packaging ribbon around the ankles and middle.

She picked it up. It was already decomposing, crumbling at her touch, the form the cloth concealed as light as ashes. She placed it carefully in the grave and said an awkward prayer over it. She put crossbow bolt, black-fletched and rancid smelling, at its feet.

"Goodbye, Rita. I've seen you die twice. God forbid I have to see it again."

"Amen,” Dashiel said.

They moved the dirt back where it belonged, and she ringed the grave with stones so she would be able to find it again, if this time next year she were still alive.

She gave the dirt a final pat and stood, scrubbing her face dry with a dirty sleeve.

"I don't have time for this, you know."

Dashiel nodded, and she picked up the box.

"I guess we'll go inside."

"I'll go ahead and check the house for uninvited guests. No offense, but you really need a bath."

"I can't afford the time.” She scratched her head. She looked at her nails—dirt and dried blood from some cut she'd sustained mingling together. “Then again..."

Sierra, who had been Rita, stood over the grave for a long time. It was her grave, in a way, as well as the grave of a tiny blonde Sabin had captured and toyed with, showing her he could trade her being with anybody he wanted, that she could be whoever he desired. All he had to do was make it happen.

Where is my soul? Sierra/Rita wondered. Who am I, really? She put her hand on it, trying to feel through the dirt to her own body below. The one she now wore didn't really belong to her but to an orphaned teenager named Cathy.

She—the dim tiny part of her that was Rita—remembered waking to awareness in this body while Sabin suffocated her old one.

"I hate this body,” he'd said, leaning his weight on the pillow while Cathy's soul struggled within that foreign place, fingernails scratching for purchase on his hands and arms. One snagged the skin and ripped, and Rita, in her new vehicle, tried to command the unfamiliar muscles to do something—anything—to save the other. She could barely manage to breathe, let alone move to stop him.

"It's a filthy body,” he continued, “a whore's body. I've given you one that's clean, that's new."

She felt her former body die, felt her lungs cease to breathe, her heart cease to beat. She felt Cathy's soul leave, with a flutter like the brushing of feathers. The body she occupied froze, and she knew it felt the final connection sever as well.

I'm dead, she thought, staring at the ceiling, weeping. I'm dead.

He stood over her, and she waited for what he would do next.

"You're new home isn't quite ready to accept you,” he said. “When I get back, I'll finish making the connections. Then you'll be able to order it around.” He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “And this time you'll tell it to do what I tell you to. Understand?"

Trapped inside, she shuddered.

He laughed. “Don't bother to answer. I'll just take your silence for a yes."

He bent and took the pillow off her old face. The eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, the body limp; and he picked it up and slung it over his shoulder like a sack of grain. The long arms trailed down his back; and she saw the sparkle of the bracelet her sister had given her, and wept as he took her body away and left her alone.

He would be busy for some time getting rid of the evidence. She struggled to remember how he had “hooked up” her soul to the eyes so she could see with this new body. Slowly, painfully, she merged her consciousness with the new body, taking over the brain inch-by-inch, settling in as comfortably as she would settle into a tub filled with cold mud. She felt an odd flow of power inside her, and she used it to key the spell that joined soul to flesh.

She stood on shaky legs and left, taking both purses with her. Cathy's held a notebook, some keys, a tarot card deck and a wallet with a couple of fives in it.

She took over Cathy's life for a few months, looking over her shoulder constantly, filling in her time by going to Cathy's job, which was waiting tables. She longed for the eight thousands dollars Rita'd had in her savings, but the day after the transfer the money became impossible to get—Rita was found dead.

Eventually, she scraped together enough, and took the money to a place she'd known in a previous life.

"You knew Rita? I don't care if you knew the—"

"I have two and a half thousand dollars here. That's enough to get me one driver's license and a birth certificate."

"Birth certificates have gone up since computers."

She smiled thinly. “Then find me some podunk little town to be born in."

That was how she became Sierra. She packed a couple of things from Cathy's wardrobe and left, locking the keys inside the apartment.

And now here she was, full circle, standing over her grave and wondering, Who am I? Where is my soul? And what am I if both those souls fled long ago?

She put a rose on the grave, a dried-up thing from one of Libby's bushes, and walked away. She had other worries now. Like what Sabin's plans were for her, since he'd gone to all the trouble of tracking her down.

Raul was raking leaves. Underneath, in odd patches, he found purple blades of grass and tiny pink flowers. He washed his hands thoroughly and decided to ask Sierra if someone had poured a weird chemical on the lawn. He shrugged it off and sat by the window to study for a while during his lunch break. He looked out once to see a stone bench walk to the other side of the driveway. It shifted back and forth, a bit like a cat trying to get comfortable, before settling under a tree.

I knew this book was boring, but I didn't expect it to put me to sleep.

He turned his attention back to the text, figuring he'd wake up sooner or later. Outside his window, scarlet butterflies the size of dinner plates winged through the yard, but he studiously ignored them, even when one alighted on the window and began chewing on the screen.

"Hey, bud!” it said to Raul. “Ya got any salt to go with this?"

Raul looked at it, looked down at the book, then back up.

"I would rather you didn't chew on my screens,” he said.

"Oh, ya would, huh?” it said, and kept chewing—more for spite, Raul thought, than anything else.

He stood and marked his place then set the book back on the shelf. He closed the window and the curtains, set the alarm and crawled into bed.

If life is still this weird in two hours, he promised himself, then we'll start worrying.

Nimue, Morganna and Melnue sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast. Nimue and Morganna looked calm as they sipped their tea from paper-thin porcelain and cut into their omelets. Melnue was distracted, looking over her shoulder as if expecting attack.

An axe leaned against the chair nearby. Why Morganna possessed an axe she hadn't bothered to explain. Melnue kept an eye on it, as well, for anything could suddenly come alive. The fainting couch in the living room, now fluff and splinters, attested to that.

She looked at the sisters and tried to imitate their serenity but finally broke down. “Why are you so calm? Any minute now the stove could try and bake us. Or the—"

"Shh,” Morganna warned. “Don't give them any ideas."

Melnue subsided, embarrassed. She looked into her cup. The rooster-shaped teapot on the shelf behind her shook and jumped off the ledge. She picked up the axe and hit it without even looking. It shattered, pieces clattering to the floor.

Nimue swallowed. “She has quick reactions, our girl."

Morgan pouted. “I liked that teapot."

"Perhaps it's not the things. Perhaps it's us. Maybe we ought to go for a walk before the rest of your pretty things get ruined.” Melnue set the axe back down.

Morgan sighed. “Well, of course, it's us, but there's nothing we can do about it."

"What she means, child,” Nimue explained, brushing crumbs off her hands, “is that anywhere we go things like this will happen. There's nothing we can do about it."

"Yeah,” Morgan said, “but at least it won't be my things getting ruined."

Nimue rolled her eyes.

"If we go into the woods,” Melnue suggested, “only organic things that can grow back will be hurt. How's that?"

A sound like paper rustling interrupted their conversation. A book, just discernible through glass, winged at the now-closed kitchen door and smacked against it before falling like a dead bird. Others followed, magazines and books of all sizes taking wing and fluttering to commit simulated suicide.

"I think they're trying to get at us,” Nimue said.

There was a groan behind them as the stove shifted, as if trying to get its feet under itself, the burners flipping sideways and turning, like spiral-shaped eyes, searching. The glass in the door cracked, and a piece fell onto the floor.

"Yeah. Just like Melnue was saying.” Morgan threw open the kitchen window. “I could use a stroll."

She crawled out onto the fire escape. Nimue pushed Melnue to the window. The younger elf jumped through then waited until she saw Nimue safe before she descended the chipped metal ladder. She imitated Morgan, who hung by her arms and dropped the last few feet to the alley.

When Nimue landed beside them, Morgan asked, “Did you shut the window behind you?"

Nimue pointed up. A roar of aggravation echoed down to them. “Are you really afraid of burglars getting in?"

"No,” Morgan said, grabbing the other women's hands and dragging them down the alley. “I suppose not."

Alex and Zorovin worked their way back through the woods to Libby's cabin. A blond woman stood on the front porch, the same woman who had threatened Alex in his hotel room.

"She's not here, Zorovin,” she said. “She wasn't in the cabin when I got here or anywhere around. I'm sorry."

Zorovin put his hand on Alex's shoulder. “I have found my son. Alex, this is Sierra Morgan."

Her eyebrows rose. “So, you're the one all the fuss is about, huh?” She looked around at the singed front yard. “No wonder Sabin was afraid of you."

Alex went past her. He could smell steam on the air, the faint scent of strawberry shampoo. “How long have you been here?"

"A couple of minutes. But I banged at the door, called her name."

She would not look at Zorovin, Alex noticed, and he wondered what had gone on between them. He didn't point out that Libby wouldn't have opened the door for her.

"You mentioned Sabin. You were in touch with him?"

"No, I..."

"He attempted to hire her to ... check up on you, I think the phrase is,” Zorovin said.

"I was just about to tell him that,” Sierra protested, blushing. Zorovin looked at her, and she grew redder. “Okay. Fine. You two can have fun playing your little boy's-club games. I am most supremely out of here."

Zorovin caught her arm. “I need the things I bought the other day. I left them in the room you lent me. Will you take me there to get them?"

"Fine,” she said, in a way that made it sound like it wasn't, and stalked off.

His father looked at him then. “Are you coming?"

"I'm going to wait for her. Libby's got to come back here sometime.” He settled down on a porch step.

Zorovin nodded, his gaze lingering on the door. “If you think so."