October Girls: Crystal & Bone (8 page)

“Careful with that,” Crystal said. “It’s Aristotle’s ashes.”

“Okay, it’s like this. The Judge—that hooded little Hitler I was telling you about—
let
me cross over. And they know about Dempsey. Whatever they have planned, it’s happening right here in Parson’s Ford.”

The toilet lid thumped. Moments later, it lifted a few inches and a black, slimy tentacle probed the air beyond the porcelain. Bone leaned over and flushed. The tentacle hovered for a moment, quivering for a grip, then was lost to gravity and slithered backward, the lid closing as it disappeared.

“They followed you,” Crystal said.

“That’s what I’m saying. You, me, Dempsey, somehow it’s all connected.”

“Dempsey’s making a movie. He wants me to push his product.”

“He’s using you. But if you’re going to be used, you may as well be used by a hottie.”

“I told you, I’m sticking with Pettigrew. Unlike you, I know the meaning of loyalty.”

“You and your dorky dictionary.”

“All right, now that we’ve confirmed your lack of morals, let’s figure out this ‘end of the world’ business. Because if all hell breaks loose, I’ll never graduate from community college.”

“Your momma said the third Orifice was the key.”

“Yeah, magic always works in threes, and it always has a price.”

“And you have to guard the hole, cast a few spells, blah blah blah.”

“Yeah, but you know the price. If I become the guardian, I’m stuck in trailer-trash hell for the rest of my life.”

“Beats the
real
hell. If there is one.”

“Darkmeet’s feeding you all this ‘Tweener’ business, like the afterlife is one long ride on a sideways elevator. But maybe that’s as good as it gets.”

“No wonder they want to take over the world. I mean,
candy
. The Judge has a serious Jones for a sugar buzz. And this guy I’ve sort of been seeing—”

The concoction in the beaker began to fizz, oozing an odor like rancid bacon. “Jeez, Momma must have rigged a time-delayed spell,” Crystal said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Last one’s a rotten egg,” Bone said, fading into thin air and leaving the rumpled towel on the floor.

Crystal paused at the door, giving one last glance to make sure the beaker was in its original position. Momma had warned about Crystal’s meddling, and there was an unspoken understanding that Crystal was welcome to learn the family craft when she was ready. It was no different than the daughter of a musician who always had fiddles and pianos lying about, except in this case, it was bat wings, owl feathers, and navel jelly, and the craft was that of the witch.

Still, you didn’t mess with someone else’s spell without permission.

Crystal entered the hallway and came face to face with a blue-eyed young man with a gelled sweep of tawny hair and bags under his eyes. He leaned against the wall with one hand on his hip, smirking around a cigarette.

She squealed in shock and he laughed.

“How did you get in here?” she said, eyeing him warily.

“The door that swings both ways, sweetheart,” he said.

“Did Pettigrew put you up to this?”

“I don’t know no Pettigrew.” He glanced up and down the hall.

Crystal followed his eyes, looking for Bone, who was nowhere in sight. The man wore a plain cotton T-shirt, blue jeans, and black leather boots. And he was muscular, his face rounded and with high flat cheekbones. He looked dangerous, but not in the “rapist” kind of way. More like “I’ll kiss you, raid your refrigerator, and leave your heart in crumbs.”

“Who do you think you are?” she asked, angry that he’d walked into the trailer without knocking.

Or crossed over.

“Where’s your friend?”

“I asked first.”

“Yeah, and I ignored you. Where is she?” His piercing eyes settled on hers and they were like miniature suns with dark solar flares, but they quickly flitted elsewhere. Across her body.

“You’re trespassing in my home,” Crystal said. “Get out before I call the cops.”

“I’m not leaving until I get what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.” He smelled of cologne, sweat, and leather, a heady mixture, but despite his rugged looks and bad-boy aura there was vulnerability about him. And a certain familiarity.

“Did I know you in high school?” she asked.

“Never been to no school,” he said, with an insouciant toss of his mane, though the thick gel prevented all but the mildest movement. He brought out a switchblade, which Crystal thought had gone out of fashion after the “Grease” revival. He flicked open the blade and began cleaning his nails.

“I’m going to call the cops,” she said.

“I’ll cut the phone wire.”

Even from 10 feet away, she could see the knife was plastic. No instrument of terror was this.

She decided it was his old-school, swooped-up hairstyle that made him boyish and absurd, like a demonic teddy bear. “I’ve got a cell.”

“Cell?” He glanced around. “Like, you in the hoosegow or something?”

“I’m in Parson’s Ford.”

“Good. You don’t look like the law-breaking type. Too goody-goody. Nothing personal.”

“You’ve broken into my house, you won’t tell me your name, and it’s nothing personal?”

He yawned and flipped the toy switchblade closed, worming it into the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans. “Where’s your friend?”

“My
boy
friend? Pettigrew? The one who’s six-four and kind of jealous?”

“Nah, the other one. The dollface.”

Damn, I thought
I
was the dollface around here. Does he mean Momma? What in the world has she conjured up this time?

“Momma’s going to be back any minute, but I’d be gone if I were you. She doesn’t take kindly to intruders and she rides a mean broom.”

“I’ll be going as soon as I get what I want.”

“Sorry, whatever-your-name-is, but you don’t look like you ever get what you want.”

He slammed his fist against the cheap paneling. His blue stuffed-animal eyes shifted to red, with tiny streaks of lightning in them. Puffs of smoke jetted from his ears.

Oops. The little tyrant has a temper to match his ego.

“My”–he repeatedly pounded the wall to punctuate each word–”name—is—
Royce
.”

Crystal contemplated fleeing to the bathroom and fumbling among Momma’s potions, hoping to come up with a concoction that would ward off minor-level demons, or perhaps make them disappear. But she’d shirked her studies. She was just as likely to turn him into a toad, or herself into a toad for that matter.

“Okay, Royce. Chill a little.”

The puffs of smoke thinned. Even his cigarette quit burning. “You know how it gets when some dollface messes with your head.”

“I reckon. What did this ‘dollface’ do that was so horrible?”

“Nothing.”

“I see.”

“I followed her here.” Now he simply looked lost, as if he’d been searching for something and had forgotten what it was. Or where he was. Or
what
he was.

Happened a lot with Tweeners.

“Well, sorry I can’t help you,” Crystal said. “Now, you be a good boy and get along home.”

“I don’t know how to get back.” Now he looked wounded and a little cute. “I don’t have the script yet.”

Damn. I
hate
it when guys do that. Just what I need. Another hottie in my life.

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You go sit in the living room while I… uh, check my email… then we can figure this out.”

“What if your momma comes?”

It wasn’t the first time a guy had asked her that question, and she used the old stand-by answer. “Might be worth the risk, Royce.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe Dollface will come by while you’re waiting.”

“Sure.”

She closed the bedroom door behind her, wondering if Royce would steal the silverware. Not that they had any silverware. Most of their utensils were chewed-up plastic sporks from Bojangle’s.

Bone was lying on the bed reading
Cosmopolitan
and wearing a lipstick-coated smile. She’d been playing in Crystal’s make-up kit and wore black smears of eyeliner and blotches of rouge on her cheeks. Her eyes resembled Roscoe’s, but the possum’s were closed in sleep. Roscoe would probably nap through Armageddon.

“So, Dollface, where’d you pick up the boy toy?”

“Just a coffin cutie I found in Darkmeet.”

“And you let him follow you here? I thought that was against the rules.

“I didn’t
let
him do anything. Besides, you know how I am about rules.”

“I only know how you were. I don’t know
nothing
about how you are now. Ever since you died, you’ve been a little weird.”

“Well, thanks for the unconditional love, Crystal. ‘Best friends forever’ has an expiration date, huh?”

Crystal saw that her computer was booted up. “Were you messing with my Internet?”

“Checking Facebook. Seeing who
else
unfriended me after I died.”

“Score.”

Crystal tossed her a bra, one of the white, unsexy ones. It was hard watching Bone strain her 16-year-old boobs into Crystal’s C cups without being jealous. She got her revenge with a hideous ensemble that was four months out of season and clashed with Bone’s red hair. She grabbed a floral-print blouse and lime-green Capri pants from the closet and flung them on the bed.

“Make yourself decent so we can go out there and deal with this before Momma gets home,” Crystal said.

“Hey, don’t get mad. I’m just a teen Tweener trying to make her way in the world. Whichever world it is.”

Bone’s eyes were milky and gleaming, like twin moons on a foggy night. Crystal reached over and stroked her friend’s hair, surprised to find it silken and solid. “I’m here for you, Bone. You’re still my soul sister.”

“Okay.” Bone’s pout retreated.

Crisis over, for the moment
.
Nothing like dealing with the Drama Queen of the Damned.
Crystal nodded toward the door. “Now, what are we going to do about
him
?”

“Not my problem.”

“Whoa. He came tagging along like a puppy at your heels. And I’m sure you didn’t do
anything
to encourage him.”

“Well, maybe I talked to him a little.”

“A little? He’s calling you ‘Dollface.’”

“I asked him out, sort of.”

Crystal got off the bed in a rusty rush of squeaks. “What, like you guys were just going to cha-cha-cha from the Land of the Dead and go get a Big Mac on bowling night or something?”

“I was trying to throw Tim off the scent.”

“Tim? That dweebie boy who died of cancer in seventh grade?”

“He’s not a dweeb, he’s just kind of…not hot. Gives off this ‘little brother’ vibe.”

“Well, Royce here has got him all beat on the Fahrenheit scale. What does he measure, 55 degrees or something? He’s so cool, he’s frigid.”

“I don’t meddle in your love life, so please stay out of mine.”

“Except for two things. You
do
meddle in my love life, and your coffin cutie is in my kitchen, probably trying to figure out how to work a microwave.”

As if on cue–and Crystal wasn’t sure how keen a ghost’s sense of hearing was–a pot clanged in the kitchen and Royce called out, “Hey, Dollface, come cook me up some eggs.”

Crystal folded her arms. “It’s your date, you take care of him. And you’re
not
borrowing my bed.”

Bone’s lips tried to curl in disappointment but it was a lost cause. Crystal wondered if her best friend was a
permanent
lost cause. But friends were friends, until the end and back again.

Bone rolled off the bed and slouched toward the door. “All right.”

“He
is
kind of cute,” Crystal offered in encouragement.

Bone sighed and adjusted the hideous floral-print blouse. “Isn’t this a Cindy Summerhill hand-me-down?”

“Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

Bone went out, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

As the door swept closed, Crystal called out something Momma might have said. “And have him back in the grave before midnight.”

M
inerva had suspected something was up as soon as Crystal had assured her nothing was wrong. When nothing was wrong, that meant everything was wrong.

But she hadn’t suspected things were so far gone. The Lurken had been growing bolder by the day, apparently annoyed that the Year 2000 hadn’t resulted in the End Times after all. They’d have to destroy the world in a steady, measured, and fairly exhausting fashion.

The Aldridge bloodline had warded off evil for at least a millennium, despite the culling of the herd by the Catholic Church and the Salem Witch Trials. Now it was down to her and Crystal, and she wasn’t sure her daughter was up to snuff.

The way Crystal avoided talking about Dempsey led Minerva to suspect a crush. And she didn’t doubt for a second that Darkmeet would play dirty. All was fair in love and war and interdimensional conquest.

Minerva had intended to circle the trailer park and then cut the engine, because her Chevelle had a couple of holes in its rusted muffler and a stealth approach was out of the question. But the dang-blasted Spindale tomcat, which was black as night and twice as slick, darted in front of the car.

A little voice implored her to mash the gas and grind the little puff-puss to Purina, but she’d learned to ignore those little voices. Instead, she swerved, running her passenger-side wheels into a drainage ditch and getting stuck tighter than a cork in a guinea hen’s noonie.

The cat was perched on the fence, its tail whisking joyfully under the orange streetlight. Minerva was hunting for a chunk of gravel to hurl when headlights swept over her.

The truck rumbled beside her and the driver’s window descended. Pettigrew’s strong chin thrust out.

He’s not up there in looks but if you ever needed to hammer a tent peg, his chin would come in mighty handy. Plus he’s tall.

“Hey, Miss Aldridge, you need a hand?”

“I got two already, but if you got a chain, I’d sure be obliged.”

“Happy Hooker Towing Service & Auto Service at your service.”