I’d seen weirder things than a haunted shoe but not many.
The Nike Pegasus sat on the office’s desk, inoffensive,
colored in shades of gray, white, and orange. Some of
the laces were loosened, and a bit of dirt clung around the
soles. It was the left shoe.
As for me, well…underneath my knee-length coat, I had a
Glock 22 loaded with bullets carrying a higher-than-legal
steel content. A cartridge of silver ones rested in
the coat’s pocket. Two athames lay sheathed on my
other hip, one silver-bladed and one iron. Stuck into
my belt near them was my wand, hand-carved oak and loaded
with enough charmed gems to probably blow up the desk in the
corner if I’d wanted to.
To say I felt overdressed was something of an understatement.
“So,” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible, “what
makes you think your shoe is…uh, possessed?”
Brian Montgomery, later thirties with a receding hairline in
serious denial, eyed the shoe nervously and moistened his
lips. “It always trips me up when I’m out
running. Every time. And it’s always moving
around. I mean, I never actually see it, but…like,
I’ll take them off near the door, then I come back and find
this one under the bed or something. And
sometimes…sometimes I touch it, and it feels cold…really
cold…like…” He groped for similes and finally picked
the tritest one. “Like ice.”
I nodded and glanced back at the shoe, not saying anything.
“Look, Miss…Odile…or whatever. I’m not crazy.
That shoe is haunted. It’s evil. You’ve gotta do
something, okay? I’ve got a marathon coming up, and
until this started happening, these were my lucky
shoes. And they’re not cheap, you know. They’re
an investment.”
It sounded crazy to me--which was saying something--but
there was no harm in checking, seeing as I was already out
here. I reached into my coat pocket, the one without
ammunition, and pulled out my pendulum. It was a
simple one, a thin silver chain with a small quartz crystal
hanging from it.
I laced the chain’s end through my fingers and held my
flattened hand over the shoe, clearing my mind and letting
the crystal hang freely. A moment later, it began to
slowly rotate of its own accord.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I muttered, stuffing the pendulum
back in my pocket. There was something there. I
turned to Montgomery, attempting some sort of badass face
because that was what customers always expected. “It
might be best if you stepped out of the room, sir. For
your own safety.”
That was only half-true. Mostly I just found lingering
clients annoying. They asked stupid questions and
could do stupider things, which actually put me at more risk
than them.
He had no qualms about getting out of there. As soon
as the door closed, I found a jar of salt in my satchel and
poured a large ring on the office’s floor. I tossed
the shoe into the middle of it and invoked the four cardinal
directions with the silver athame. Ostensibly the
circle didn’t change, but I felt a slight flaring of power
indicating it had sealed us in.
Trying not to yawn, I pulled out my wand and kept holding
the silver athame. It had taken four hours to drive to
Las Cruces, and doing that on so little sleep had made the
distance seem twice as long. Sending some of my will
into the wand, I tapped it against the shoe and spoke in a
sing-song voice.
“Come out, come out, whoever you are.”
There was a moment’s silence, then a high-pitched male voice
snapped, “Go away, bitch.”
Great. A shoe with attitude. “Why? You got
something better to do?”
“Better things to do than waste my time with a mortal.”
I smiled. “Better things to do in a shoe? Come
on. I mean, I’ve heard of slumming it, but don’t you
think you’re kind of pushing the envelope here? This
shoe isn’t even new. You could have done so much better.”
The voice kept its annoyed tone, not threatening but simply
irritated at the interruption. “I’m slumming
it? Do you think I don’t know who you are, Eugenie
Markham? Dark-Swan-Called-Odile. A blood
traitor. A mongrel. An assassin. A
murderer.” He practically spit out the last
word. “You are alone among your kind and mine. A
bloodthirsty shadow. You do anything for anyone who
can pay you enough for it. That makes you more than a
mercenary. That makes you a whore.”
I affected a bored stance. I’d been called most of
those names before. Well, except for my own
name. That was new--and a little disconcerting.
Not that I’d let him know that.
“Are you done whining? Because I don’t have time to
listen while you stall.”
“Aren’t you being paid by the hour?” he asked nastily.
“I charge a flat fee.”
“Oh.”
I rolled my eyes and touched the wand to the shoe
again. This time, I thrust the full force of my will
into it, drawing upon my own body’s physical stamina as well
as some of the power of the world around me. “No more
games. If you leave on your own, I won’t have to hurt
you. Come out.”
He couldn’t stand against that command and the power within
it. The shoe trembled, and smoke poured out of
it. Oh, Jesus. I hoped the shoe didn’t get
incinerated during this. Montgomery wouldn’t be able
to handle that.
The smoke bellowed out, coalescing into a large, dark form
about two feet taller than me. With all his
wisecracks, I’d sort of expected a saucy version of one of
Santa’s elves. Instead, the being before me had the
upper body of a well muscled man while his lower portion
resembled a small cyclone. The smoke solidified into
leathery gray-black skin, and I had only a moment to act as
I assessed this new development. I swapped the wand
for the gun, ejecting the clip as I pulled it out. By
then, he was lunging for me, and I had to roll out of his
way, confined by the circle’s boundaries.
A keres. A male keres--most unusual. I’d
anticipated something fey, which required silver bullets; or
a spectre, which required no bullets. Keres were
ancient death spirits originally confined to canopic
jars. When the jars wore down over time, keres tended
to seek out new homes. There weren’t too many of them
left in this world, and soon, there’d be one less.
He bore down on me, and I took a nice chunk out of him with
the silver blade. I used my right hand, the one I wore
an onyx and obsidian bracelet on. Those stones alone
would take a toll on a death spirit like him without the
blade’s help. Sure enough, he hissed in pain and
hesitated a moment. I used that delay, scrambling to
load the silver cartridge.
I didn’t quite make it because soon he was on me
again. He hit me with one of those massive arms,
slamming me against the walls of the circle. They
might be invisible, but they felt as solid as bricks.
One of the downsides of trapping a spirit in a circle was
that I got trapped too. My head and left shoulder took
the brunt of that impact, and pain shot through me in small
starbursts. He seemed pretty pleased with himself over
this, as over-confident villains so often are.
“You’re as strong as they say, but you were a fool to try to
cast me out. You should have left me in peace.”
His voice was deeper now, almost gravelly.
I shook my head, both to disagree and get rid of the
dizziness. “It isn’t your shoe.”
I still couldn’t swap that goddamned cartridge. Not
with him ready to attack again, not with both hands
full. Yet I couldn’t risk dropping either weapon.
He reached for me, and I cut him again. The wounds
were small, but the athame was like poison. It would
wear him down over time--if I could stay alive that
long. I moved to strike at him once more, but he
anticipated me and seized hold of my wrist. He
squeezed it, bending it in an unnatural position and forcing
me to drop the athame and cry out. I hoped he hadn’t
broken any bones. Smug, he grabbed me by the shoulders
with both hands and lifted me up so that I hung face to face
with him. His eyes were yellow with slits for pupils,
much like some sort of snake’s. His breath was hot and
reeked of decay as he spoke.
“You are small, Eugenie Markham, but you are lovely and your
flesh is warm. Perhaps I should beat the rush and take
you myself. I’d enjoy hearing you scream beneath me.”
Ew. Had that thing just propositioned me? And
there was my name again. How in the world did he know
that? None of them knew that. I was only Odile
to them, named after the dark swan in Swan Lake, a
name coined by my stepfather because of the form my spirit
preferred to travel in while visiting the Otherworld.
The name--though not particularly terrifying--had stuck,
though I doubted any of the creatures I fought knew the
reference. They didn’t really get out to the ballet much.
The keres had my upper arms pinned--I would have bruises
tomorrow--but my hands and forearms were free. He was
so sure of himself, so overly arrogant and confident, that
he paid no attention to my struggling hands. He
probably just perceived the motion as a futile effort to
free myself. In seconds, I had the clip out and in the
gun. I managed one clumsy shot and he dropped me--not
gently. I stumbled to regain my balance again.
Bullets probably couldn’t kill him, but a silver one in the
center of his chest would certainly hurt.
He stumbled back, half-surprised, and I wondered if he’d
ever even encountered a gun before. It fired again, then
again and again and again. The reports were loud;
hopefully Montgomery wouldn’t do something foolish and come
running in. The keres roared in outrage and pain, each
shot making him stagger backward until he was all the way
against the circle’s boundary. I advanced on him,
retrieved athame flashing in my hand. In a few quick
motions, I carved the death symbol on the part of his chest
that wasn’t bloodied from bullets. An electric charge
immediately ran through the air of the circle. Hairs
stood up on the back of my neck, and I could smell ozone,
like just before a storm.
He screamed and leapt forward, renewed by rage or adrenaline
or whatever else these creatures ran on. But it was
too late for him. He was marked and wounded. I
was ready. In another mood, I might have simply
banished him to the Otherworld; I tried not to kill if I
didn’t have to. But that sexual suggestion had just
been out of line. I was pissed off now. He’d go
to the world of death, straight to Persephone’s gate.
I fired again to slow him, my aim a bit off with the left
hand but still good enough to hit him. I had already
traded the athame for the wand. This time, I didn’t
draw on the power from this plane. With well-practiced
ease, I let part of my consciousness slip this world.
In moments, I reached the crossroads to the
Otherworld. That was an easy transition; I did it all
the time. The next crossover was a little harder,
especially with me being weakened from the fight, but still
nothing I couldn’t do automatically. I kept my own
spirit well outside of the land of death, but I touched it
and sent that connection through the wand. It sucked
him in, and his face twisted with fear.
“This is not your world,” I said in a low voice, feeling the
power burn through me and around me. “This is not your
world, and I cast you from out. I send you to the
black gate, to the lands of death where you can either be
reborn or fade to oblivion or burn in the flames of
hell. I really don’t give a shit. Go.”
He screamed, but the magic caught him. There was a
trembling in the air, a build-up of pressure, and then it
ended abruptly, like a deflated balloon. The keres was
gone too, leaving only a shower of gray sparkles that soon
faded to nothing.
Silence. I sank to my knees, exhaling deeply. My
eyes closed a moment, as my body relaxed and my
consciousness returned to this world. I was exhausted
but exultant too. Killing him had felt good.
Heady, even. He’d gotten what he deserved, and I had
been the one to deal it out.
Minutes later, some of my strength returned. I stood
and opened the circle, suddenly feeling stifled by it.
I put my tools and weapons away and went to find Montgomery.
“Your shoe’s been exorcised,” I told him flatly. “I
killed the ghost.” No point in explaining the
difference between a keres and a true ghost; he wouldn’t
understand.
He entered the room with slow steps, picking up the shoe
gingerly. “I heard gun shots. How do you use
bullets on a ghost?”
I shrugged. It hurt from where the keres had slammed
my shoulder to the wall. “It was a strong ghost.”
He cradled the shoe like one might a child and then glanced
down with disapproval. “There’s blood on the carpet.”
“Read the paperwork you signed. I assume no
responsibility for damage incurred to personal property.”
With a few grumbles, he paid up--in cash--and I left.
Really, though, he was so stoked about the shoe, I probably
could have decimated the office.
In my car, I dug out a Milky Way from the stash in my glove
box. Battles like that required immediate sugar and
calories. As I practically shoved the candy bar in my
mouth, I turned on my cell phone. I had a missed call
from Lara.
Once I’d consumed a second bar and was on I-10 back to
Tucson, I dialed her back.
“Yo,” I said.
“Hey. Did you finish the Montgomery job?”
“Yup.”
“Was the shoe really possessed?”
“Yup.”
“Huh. Who knew? That’s kind of funny too.
Like, you know, lost souls and soles in shoes…”
“Bad, very bad,” I chastised. Lara might be a good
secretary, but there was only so much I could be expected to
put up with. “So what’s up? Or were you just
checking in?”
“No. I just got a weird job offer. Some
guy--well, honestly, I thought he sounded kind of
skitzo. But he claims his sister was abducted by
fairies, er, gentry. He wants you to go get her.”
I fell silent at that, staring at the highway and clear blue
sky ahead without consciously seeing either one. Some
objective part of me attempted to process what she had just
said. I didn’t get that kind of request very
often. Okay, never. A retrieval like that
required me to cross over physically into the
Otherworld. “I don’t really do that.”
“That’s what I told him.” But there was uncertainty in
Lara’s voice.
“Okay. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing, I guess. I don’t know. It’s just…he
said she’s been gone almost a year and a half now. She
was fourteen when she disappeared.”
My stomach sank a little at that. God. What an
awful fate for someone so young. It made the keres’
lewd comments to me downright trivial.
“He sounded pretty frantic.”
“Does he have proof she was actually taken?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t get into it. He was
kind of paranoid. Seemed to think his phone was being
tapped.”
I laughed at that. “By who? The gentry?”
‘Gentry’ was what I called the beings that most of western
culture referred to as fairies or sidhe. They looked
just like humans but embraced magic instead of
technology. They found ‘fairy’ a derogatory term, so I
respected that--sort of--by using the term old English
peasants used to use. Gentry. Good
folk. Good neighbors. A questionable
designation, at best. The gentry actually preferred
the term ‘shining ones,’ but that was just silly. I
wouldn’t give them that much credit.
“I don’t know,” Lara told me. “Like I said, he seemed
a little skitzo.”
Silence fell as I held onto the phone and passed a car
driving 45 in the left lane.
“Eugenie! You aren’t really thinking of doing this.”
“Fourteen, huh?”
“You always said that was dangerous.”
“Adolescence?”
“Stop it. You know what I mean. Crossing over.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
It was dangerous--super dangerous. Traveling in spirit
form could still get you killed, but your odds of fleeing
back to your earth-bound body were better. Take your
own body over, and all the rules changed.
“This is crazy.”
“Set it up,” I told her. “It can’t hurt to talk to him.”
I could practically see her biting her lip to hold back
protests. But, at the end of the day, I was the one
who signed her paychecks, and she respected that.
After a few moments, she filled the silence with info about
a few other jobs and then drifted on to more casual topics:
some sale at the mall, a mysterious scratch on her car…
Something about Lara’s cheery gossip always made me smile,
but it also disturbed me that most of my social contact came
via someone I never actually saw. The majority of my
face-to-face interactions came from spirits and gentry lately.
It was after dinnertime when I arrived home, and my
housemate Tim appeared to be out for the night, probably at
a poetry reading. Despite a Polish background, genes
had inexplicably given him a strong Native American
appearance. In fact, he looked more Indian than some
of the locals. Deciding this was his claim to fame,
Tim had grown his hair out and taken on the name ‘Timothy
Red Horse.’ He made his living by reading faux-Native
poetry at local dives and wooing naïve tourist women by
using expressions like, ‘my people’ and ‘the Great Spirit’ a
lot. It was despicable to say the least, but it got
him laid pretty often. What it did not do was bring in
a lot of money, so I’d let him live with me in exchange for
housework and cleaning. It was a pretty good deal as
far as I was concerned. After battling the undead all
day, scrubbing the bathtub just seemed like asking too much.
Scrubbing my athames, unfortunately, was a task I had to do
myself. Keres blood could stain.
I ate dinner afterwards, then stripped and sat in my sauna
for a long time. I liked a lot of things about my
little house out in the foothills, but the sauna was one of
my favorites. It might seem kind of pointless in the
desert, but Arizona had mostly dry heat, and I liked the
feel of humidity and moisture on my skin. I leaned
back against the wooden wall, enjoying the sensation of
sweating out the stress. My body ached--some parts
more fiercely than others--and the heat let some of the
muscles loosen up.
The solitude also soothed me. Pathetic as it was, I
probably had no one to blame for my lack of sociability
except myself. I spent a lot of time alone and didn’t
mind. When my stepfather Roland had first trained me
as a shaman, he’d told me that in a lot of cultures, shamans
essentially lived outside of normal society. The idea
had seemed crazy to me at the time, being in junior high,
but it made more sense now that I was older.
I wasn’t a complete socialphobe, but I found I often had a
hard time interacting with other people. Talking in
front of groups was murder. Even talking one on one
had its issues. I had no pets or children to ramble on
about, and I couldn’t exactly talk about things like the
incident in Las Cruces. Yeah, I had kind of a long
day. Drove four hours, fought an ancient minion of
evil. After a few bullets and knife wounds, I
obliterated him and sent him on to the world of death.
God, I swear I’m not getting paid enough for this crap, you
know? Cue polite laughter.
When I left the sauna, I had another message from Lara
telling me the appointment with the distraught brother had
been arranged for tomorrow. I made a note in my day
planner, took a shower, and retired to my room where I threw
on black silk pajamas. For whatever reason, nice
pajamas were the one indulgence I allowed myself in an
otherwise dirty and bloody lifestyle. Tonight’s
selection had a cami top that showed serious cleavage, had
anyone been there to see it. I always wore a ratty
robe around Tim.
Sitting at my desk, I emptied out a new jigsaw puzzle I’d
just bought. It depicted a kitten on its back
clutching a ball of yarn. My love of puzzles ranked up
there with the pajama thing for weirdness, but they eased my
mind. Maybe it was the fact that they were so
tangible. You could hold the pieces in your hand and
make them fit together, as opposed to the insubstantial
stuff I usually worked with.
While my hands moved the pieces around, I kept trying to
shake the knowledge that the keres had known my name.
What did that mean? I’d made a lot of enemies in the
Otherworld. I didn’t like the thought of them being
able to track me personally. I preferred to stay
Odile. Anonymous. Safe. Probably not much
point worrying about it, I supposed. The keres was
dead. He wouldn’t be telling any tales.
Two hours later, I finished the puzzle and admired it.
The kitten had brown tabby fur, its eyes an almost azure
blue. The yarn was red. I took out my digital
camera, snapped a picture, and then broke up the puzzle,
dumping it back into its box. Easy come, easy go.
Yawning, I slipped into bed. Tim had done laundry
today; the sheets felt crisp and clean. Nothing like
that new sheets smell. Despite my exhaustion, however,
I couldn’t fall asleep. It was one of life’s
ironies. While awake, I could slide into a trance with
the snap of a finger. My spirit could leave my body
and travel other worlds. Yet, for whatever reason,
sleep was more elusive. Doctors had recommended a
number of sedatives, but I hated to use them. Drugs
and alcohol bound the spirit to this world, and while I did
indulge occasionally, I generally liked being ready to slip
over in a moment’s notice.
Tonight I suspected my insomnia had something to do with a
teenage girl… But no. I couldn’t think about
that not yet. Not until I spoke with the brother.
Sighing, needing something else to ponder, I rolled over and
stared at my ceiling, at the plastic glow-in-the-dark
stars. I started counting them, as I had so many other
restless nights. There were exactly thirty-three of
them, just like last time. Still, it never hurt to check.