Fifteen minutes later, I sneak out of an alley and hug the shadows as I pass empty police cars flanking the hotel. I know Jane is fine. I would feel it if she weren’t, and I’m betting Dick’s presently dumbfounded by a shitload of cops hovering over him in room two-oh-seven of the Ambassador Hotel. I hope it scares the shit out of him.
Two blocks down, I hit the sidewalk heading east on West Colonial Drive, hips swaying, tits bouncing. I look exactly like Jane. With five one-hundred dollar bills stuffed in one boot, two Smith & Wesson 9mms—I have Jane’s and the one that appeared when I doubled up—in the other, I take long strides, pushing a real shadow in front of me toward Jane’s corner on South Orange Blossom Trail and the car we’ll be borrowing for the night. I’ll hide one of the pistols in Jane’s car so she finds it. Dick didn’t have a gun, and I didn’t want him to have a chance to use Jane’s. Down under individuals are not supposed to get this involved with a host above the sewer. But I want Jane, streetwise, bawdy, outspoken, and independent, she is a survivor. Together we are going to find Gaire. Besides, I think I covered our tracks, and I did not publicly try to avenge Dick’s behavior, or force his downfall, while dressed in a human double.
I’m betting Dick is wishing he were dead right about now. Neither of them will have knowledge of me, or that Jane is living a double life, one real and one fabricated by me. Underneath Jane’s skin, I am still a doppelganger, neither male nor female, and incapable of reproducing, with no sense of family, empathy, or kinship with anything. Doppelgangers are not just a myth. But we are singular in existence. Some stupid demon has to screw up a conjuring spell to get one of us instead of the scary entity it was looking for. Our kind is limited, but because of our uniqueness we are the only Down Under beings that are undefinable unless we choose to be, even amongst ourselves.
I don’t do evil possession; I just borrow the humans I wear and enjoy being part of humanity for a few weeks—no frothing, cussing, obnoxious, head turning human, writhing in a decomposing body from me. Demon guy isn’t exactly gonna get any demonic gold stars from the big guy from a human hopping mistake, so he dumped me in Limbo to lead a half-human existence.
Gaire is going to change all of that, because everything is wonderful when I’m with him—really wonderful … deep inside the doppelganger, not just the human I’m wearing.
I wonder if he’ll be attracted to Jane like he was to me. He won’t know it’s me underneath her skin, so I hope so. Her mind is slowly filling mine with past images, desires, fears, strengths, weaknesses, dreams, goals, and a streetwise mentality that I can definitely live with.
I wiggle and roll inside Jane’s double, filling its every part, much like struggling into a pair of skinny jeans that stretch, give, and soon fit comfortably—a second skin.
“Damn, it’s good to be human again,” I tell the early morning darkness, stretch Jane’s arms, and twirl a glance at a starlit sky over her corner on South Orange Blossom Trail.
No one is working her spot. It is quiet and dark outside the light from the streetlamp that will burn for a few hours more before daylight makes it wink out.
I jog down the alley where Jane parked her car, and five minutes later we’re heading for Purgatory, fifty miles north of here, Down Under.
“Alright, girlfriend,” I tell the rearview mirror, “all we need to do now is find Gaire.”
Chapter 9
SHOCK ME
Jane
Pushing the Smith & Wesson deeper into my right boot, I pull into Walmart in Mount Dora. It’s almost four in the morning. The store windows are bright even from the other side of the lot, and high pressure sodium bulbs on twenty foot metal poles light lanes throughout the parking area.