I whip around as Gaire steps into the sewer about fifteen yards down the tunnel. What was he thinking? “I told you to stay put!” I shout.
But my damn doppelganger essence betrays me and quivers at the site of his muscular body stuffed into a gray, Army tee and even tighter blue jeans. He’s not wearing a belt, and as his arms rise in exaggerated exasperation I see his navel and a strip of blond hair running below and above. I long to rub my nose there.
They never listen, do they, dear? Nan says.
“No, they don’t,” my mother agrees.
I hardly register the conversation. Gaire’s eyes are sparkling anger and it’s making me deliciously dizzy.
Nope, sure don’t, Nan adds, and often try to finagle total control of everything.
Mom nods in agreement. The body she’s wearing smells so bad, poor Gracie is gagging. Talk about a buzz kill.
“I’ll be damned if I stay in front of a warm fire,” Gaire says, “while you tiptoe around the sewer with only a ghost for support.”
“You’re damned already,” my mother says. “You’re a wendigo.”
Sad but true, Nan adds. But I seem to be growing fond of the devil.
I’m about to slap the both of them.
“How long have you been lurking in the shadows?” I ask a bit too loud and with a fair share of mind your own business.
“The whole time,” my mother answers for Gaire.
I huff frustration.
Imagine that, Nan says. You would think—being like your mamma and such—that you’d be able to sense the creature you been sleepin’—”
I try to cup my hand over the ghost’s mouth and only grab air, when my fingers slide right through her face, and I almost land on my ass, but bounce off the sewer wall instead.
Mother giggles. I have never heard her giggle.
She still has some growin’ to do, Nan says to the rotting flesh my mother is covered in.
I take another swipe at her and the ghost’s body gusts out of my reach. The dress she is wearing mingles with her arms and neck and head, and she’s a discombobulated ball of gray.
Mom laughs the cadaver’s left cheek right off his face.
“Where did you find the dead guy?” I ask Mother as Gaire steps behind me and puts both arms around my waist.
“A car accident on Seminole Boulevard.” Mother shakes the horrid head of her host and tries to lift both arms. But one is hanging oddly by his side, now totally useless, and just flops around when Mom moves. The dead guy’s left leg is bare all the way from his bloody knee to his thigh and a windshield wiper blade is sticking out of it.
“I thought I’d give your suggestion a try,” my mother says. “I didn’t kill this one. He evidently killed himself along with three others—alcohol can be as lethal as Jane’s Smith & Wesson in the hands of the wrong human. The real guy still had a heartbeat when I left the site. I even called for help with his cellphone.” Mom uses the guy’s good hand to flash us an iPhone.
“Look at you tryin’ t’be someone betta, eh?” I sound like my last host. “And are you tellin’ me you used a cellphone, too? Sheesh.”
“How about I text your answer,” my mother snarks. “Do I have your number?”
Gaire chuckles.
I want to push my elbow into his ribs, but Nan distracts me. She’s floating down the sewer.
“Where are you going?” I shout after her.
A doppelganger dressed in a human just walked into the bar down there, Nan says. I thought maybe I should check that out. You coming?
My mother and I freeze.
“What?” Gaire tightens his grip, placing his chin on my scalp.
I can feel his head move from side to side. He’s searching the area.
“My daughter’s ghost just told us a doppelganger has walked into Purgatory wearing a human.”
“Nan wants me to follow her down there to have a look,” I say.
Gaire suggests, “Why don’t we let the ghost go see if she can find out who or what this doppelganger is wearing?”
The cadaver my mother is dressed in finally winks out. It floats down her smoky body, and black sparkly confetti pools around her feet for a few seconds before disappearing completely. There’s always a draft down here, and the stench of the cadaver dissipates as the sewer sucks the vapors away.
“Oh, great Goddess of olfaction, thank you!” Gracie says.
Gaire laughs. My mother glares.
I smelt a skunk easier to stand near, I did, Nan says and dashes down the sewer toward the bar.
Mom warbles a chuckle.
Ten or twelve really uncomfortable moments later, my mother is saying, “That ghost of yours is a keeper, dear. And the host you’re wearing is doable. At least she isn’t proudly displaying and overabundance of cleavage.”
I take it y’all are talkin’ about the prostitute, Jane, your last host, and the doppelganger in the bar’s obsession? Nan’s voice arrives before her ghostly image does.
Eyes searching for the ghost, I ask, “Is he dressed in her?”
Gaire tightens his grip. “Nan’s back?” Gaire asks my mother.