Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (12 page)

Clay goes silent, watching the burning logs. She nudges him. “Hey where’d ya go?”

“Ah. Wondering if you could taste the strychnine I put in your orange juice.”

“Clay, you wouldn’t! Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.”

“You hurt my feelings back there, you know?”

“Back where?”

“Boner boy. Messing in your room. What’s up with that?”

She pulls away a little. “My stuff gets moved. Hate when people snoop me.”

“You’re the one with all the spooky friends. Don’t look at me.”

What she does do is look straight at him. He looks back. She sees only calm.

“Well okay. But I’m freaky to males in my house.”

“How come you’re messed up on anyone who could actually care about you?

“Who ya thinking?”
Does he mean him?

“Like Rayne. Like your mom.”

“Don’t be a 'tard. Rayne and I were done way before.”

“Yeah? So why move her in here?”

“My hunter was hungry.” She sighs.

Clay looks at her.
She said more in that sigh than I’ve said all day.
“So that boner boy thing…”

She laughs. “Your morning junk sometimes, in your shorts.”

“Sometimes you get up too early. Alright, then what’s a knuckle-dragger?”

“Oh, that. Males living in their reptil
ian brain. They understand eating, fighting, fucking, running.”

“Ah. Then for sure you can
tell us the source of your true wisdom.”

Tharcia considers
this. As in, what kind of answer suits her at the moment. Maybe she has been messed up on Clay. He wouldn’t be the only thing. Her funny side surfaces, she grins at the thought, first tells herself no. Then laughs, doesn’t care what he thinks. With a solemn wise-woman expression, she points a finger at her crotch.

He
chuckles. “Your wisdom comes from your hunter.”

She tries to answer but instead
can only laugh, looking at his eyes.

“Well, if that’s how all your problems get solved
…”

“No,” she says, points at her head.

“May I borrow this?” Clay takes her hand, turns her finger around so it points at her heart. “This is where you are.”

She looks at him. Bomber has materialized in his lap
, unnoticed. Clay strokes the animal’s ear. Of the two of them, he listens to her advice more than she does his. She doesn’t feel that makes her smarter. Clay doesn’t need to put in his two cents worth every time, his spirit is calm. He’s right. Her heart is where she is.

“Mm.”

“So men are reptilian? What part of the brain do females hang with?”

“Limbic system. Where all the feelings are.”

“Well la de dah. Hey, I see a foot.” Her feet stick out of the blanket. Clay strokes a fingernail up the center of a bare sole. Tharcia screeches, twists her legs away, but her laughing eyes are the most welcoming in half a year.

“You lunatic!”

Clay turns it serious. “You told me about your mom’s boyfriends. I’m sorry.”

She gives him a look. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”

Clay waits a beat. “Your mom left me twisting in the wind.”

“Yeh. Must have been hard. I feel bad about it.”

“About what she did?”

“Being messed up on you.”

“You actually know you do that?”

“S’truth. I’m maladjusted. Maybe it’s genetic.”

“Speaking of genetic, what about your friend Porterfield?”

Tharcia’s eyes flash. “Omigod, Clay, that dweeber majorly put me off. Creep city.”

“Talk about messing in your stuff…”

“Perv. Did you see the way Bomber ran from him?”

“Cat goes freaky sometimes. What do you think about his claim to fame?”

“Huh? Oh, he’s no father of mine, I don’t care how many times he proves it.”

The fire burns low. Clay moves a strand of hair out of her eyes. Both her arms are wrapped in the blanket. He finishes his whisky, she dozes on his arm. When he eases off to bed, she wakes. Sits thinking until he is quiet in his room. Walks to his door, listens, says his name. She enters, gets on the bed beside him wrapped in the wooly blanket.

“Not sleeping in my room tonight,” she informs him quiet from her warm cocoon.

Afternoon sun
warms Tharcia’s room. Incense smolders and oiled candles glow. Hooded in the long velvet robe, she carefully chants a spell from a book Althea suggested. Occasionally she hears the distant whine of a drill, clang of metal. Clay in his shop, with his airplane, won’t come in here.

Kneeling on the floor
before a purple-chalked pentagram, Tharcia closes her eyes, mind reaching for the other side. In her stillness she visualizes an orb. Shapes within dance to music. At the very center is pure emptiness. She sees plants, animals, people, hills, rivers and mountains, sun and moon, all connected, all coming to birth. They move in intricate dance, living patterns drift and evolve within the hazy-outlined globe. Sees her mother’s face, happy, eyes for only her that glow with accepting love as once they did when Tharcia’s life was new. She wants to reach out, to be held by that, but cannot move. Tears lash her cheeks while the orb in her mind’s eye glows strong, holds her focus, leaving her without will, thought or volition, aware only of wanting to become part of what she sees. Within the longing lies compassion, openness, without sorrow, without judgment. A joining.

S
he opens her eyes, the image gone. Nothing is changed. She tries not to be disappointed.

Outside her window sunlight bathes a sea of green, tall trees
and calling birds. She begins the careful process of putting things away, off with the robe, into jeans. On her dresser the tissue-wrapped package from Althea, her parting gift. Inside there’s a nice T-shirt, lavender, the words
Goddess Culture
on it in graceful curlicue script. Lifts bare arms and slips into it, admires her reflection. The shirt holds her snug, feels womanly, the lavender ignites her eyes. Smiling, Tharcia opens the window to let the smoke out.

On the hallway floor
, a piece of paper. Scanning the lines she sees it’s a prayer or a poem. Her own handwriting, but she can’t remember writing it, sometime very late at night, no doubt. Could be one of her old spells. Slips it folded in her jeans.

Downstairs in
the kitchen she peeks outside, sees Clay moving in the shop. Pulls out a couple of beers. With her fingers fishes a pickle from a jar in the fridge, walks out to the workshop. Clay looks up from his laptop, tools and a scatter of airplane parts on a workbench.

“Well
. Good evening.”

“Don’t get cute I been workin’.” She hands him a bottle.

“Now this is weird. I was just thinking I’d come in and have a beer with you.”

“What’s this?” It occurs to Tharcia that she hasn’t been inside the shop since he completed it months ago.

“It’s a 1977 Mace R-1 single seat racer. I’m restoring it.”

“But this one has a motor. You don’t fly motor ones.”

“I will when it’s finished.”

Tharcia
absently licks her dripping pickle, washes down the taste with a swig of beer. “You gonna race it?”

“Might take a lesson. Mainly I’m rebuilding it for sale.”

“Mm.”

“What are you up to?”

“Conversing with the dead. Trying to. Doesn’t seem at all dependable.”

“
Still texting the departed? Anyone we know?”

“Yeh.
It’s interesting though. Someday maybe I’ll give you a tour of my temple.”

Amused
expressions cross Clay’s face, digesting what Tharcia’s temple tour might take in. Reading the words on her T-shirt, he’s certain women buy those to make sure men look at their boobs. Or in Tharcia’s case, to make women look.

“
Sure, show me.” He follows up the stairs to her room in the quiet hallway. At a walking pace she turns the knob, splats against wood, bounces off.

“
Hey!” She rubs her shoulder. “This thing’s stuck.”

Clay tries t
he knob, it turns reluctantly. Sound of something cracking, tinkly things falling to the floor in there. Clay puts his shoulder to it, rams it once. Looks at it, gives it a harder shove. Door pushes in a few inches, something stops it. Darkness in the narrow opening. A cascade of cold into the hallway. Clay reaches through the door for the light switch. Reaction jerks his hand back fast. Like he touched something hot. But that’s not it.

“
Dayum! The wall is covered with ice.”

Tharcia
looks puzzled. “It was all normal a minute ago.” Clay kicks the door a couple feet inward. Hallway light illuminates the small room. A sharp intake of breath. Tharcia tries to see past his shoulder. Everything exactly as she’d left it, except that walls, ceiling, and floor are bound in a two-inch layer of crisp blue ice. Clay runs downstairs for a light. In the torch beam her made-up bed, her dresser with the vials of scented oil, altar candles, the dagger, dressed and inscribed candles, her incense wand, the arcane books. All are encased in ice. The open window, in spite of the bright afternoon, is night black.

Clay runs
a hand over the frozen wall. The ice is completely dry, no sign of melting. He picks up a jagged piece that broke off when he forced the door. Like a shard of freezing rain. They stand in the hallway, not speaking. Their breath mists white in the air. Tharcia has a sudden urge to pee. Clay remembers something.

“Babe, tell me about stuff that gets moved in
your room.” He can see the whites of her eyes, a horse about to bolt.

“Little things.”
Breathing high in her chest. “Like someone pawed through my drawers, a sketch book open to a different page. Papers rearranged. Tarot cards spilled out.”

“But this ice,” Clay says, at the bottom of his
voice, unable to finish the thought. He pulls the door hard closed until the latch clicks. Outside on the porch all is peaceful around the home, natural sounds of wind and forest animals.

Clay and Tharcia thoroughly inspect the house, walk the property. Inside and out, the old bunkhouse seems normal, no eerie noises or marauding ghosts. Nothing out of the ordinary. Only her room is affected. The deep freeze
, Tharcia’s fucked-up spell. She does some web searches, a hopeful thread, that kind of thing not necessarily permanent.

Tharcia gets on the phone with Althea, who
’s pleased to hear from her, and immediately concerned about the freeze-up in her bedroom. Althea comforts her with useful advice.

“Tharcia, what I am hearing from you is some kind of belief you hold.”

“Something I believe?”

“Yes. It is possibly not an external force, but a projection
of your inner reality.”

“Hold up. I am making this happen?”

“There are two things. Either it is a genuine demonic presence, which may not even be evil, it could be benevolent. Or, it is something that you think should exist there, for reasons of your own.”

“So what do I do?”

Althea knows that if it’s Tharcia’s projection, then any suggestion will work. “Gather some ferns from the woods, any winter flowers if you find them. Tie them in a bundle with rawhide or a leather shoelace. Put a drop of lavender in it. Hang it from the door. That will keep the spirit contained. Soon it will fade.”

“That’s it?” From her reading, Tharcia
understands that intention goes a long way in dealing with spirits.

“That’s all you need to do.
I’ll make a few calls. I might know someone.”

Tharcia does
as Althea suggests, and soon there is a neat bundle of green ferns with small white blossoms tied to the door, which is firmly closed. The lavender a calming fragrance in the house. Gradually she and Clay become okay with it, waiting for the ice to fade away.

Clay doesn’t mind her sleeping bag on the edge of his big bed
, or at least he says he doesn’t. Tharcia wonders what Dr. Novack would make of it, if she told, even as a dream.

Ooh, sleeping
on daddy’s bed. Bad girl!

Out of the shower, bath towel around his waist, Mark Hermon nervously opens his second beer of the evening. His fingers tremble. He had lied to the Homicide cop.
Stupid. Stupid.
He does not know why, does not understand what made him blurt out the part about the restaurant menu, which now lies on the made-up bed in his small apartment, the detective’s white card beside it. Hermon had pocketed the paper as he got the pretty woman’s car open and started the engine, so there was no point in mentioning that to a cop.
Tell him now? No, safer to just shut up, get rid of the thing.

Hermon picks up his phone, flips through the images. Yes, he had clicked off a few photos and a short vid of the
raven-haired goddess with the fancy car. But he sure as hell did not hurt her. He didn’t want to admit he was sneaking photos of her to look at later.
God, she is so damn pretty.