Queen of the Dead

“Gigi gi-ant ass.” I snickered. Love it. Out of habit, I looked down at my hands, just in time to see my fingertips start to flicker. Damn it. “But she seems to make my dad happy,” I said dutifully.

My father stared for a long time at the paper Gigi had given him, and then he held it up to the light on his desk with a shaking hand. He needed glasses — everybody knew it but him — he was just too vain to admit that it was his eyes rather than the world that had gone blurry. God. Shoot me if I get like that when I’m old. Oh…never mind.

“Is this accurate?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “What it says at the top?”

I sat up a little straighter. From my perspective, overmy dad’s shoulder and to the side of Gigi’s ever- expanding backside, the paper he held looked like one of those abstract, blobby things Dr. Andrews used to try to get me to identify in our completely useless sessions. (I’d just told him everything looked like handbags, varying the designer to keep things interesting. Apparently Steve Madden means I’m suffering from severe repressed hostility.) Only this page was mostly black with a white shape instead of the other way around. But my dad had certainly recognized it, whatever it was.

Gigi sniffed and nodded.

Sniffed? Was she crying? I pushed myself off the sofa and moved in for a closer look at whatever this was that could have provoked such a reaction from my step-Mothra, taking care not to bump into my dad or Gigi. I would pass right through them, and while they might shiver at a touch of cold that would be blamed on a random draft, I’d be treated to a stomach-rolling and head-spinning blast of dizziness.

Even inches from the paper, I still had no idea what I was looking at. It looked like a grainy photograph of some big white blur with little arrows and tiny corresponding letters pointing out — I squinted, leaning farther over my dad’s shoulder — feet, heart, spine, and…Oh, shit. There, at the top of the page. Baby Girl Dare. Due Date: 12/24.

Gigi was growing my replacement.

I stumbled back and my elbow crossed through Gigi’s chest. She shivered, and I fell to my knees, trying to breathe, and fighting the urge to retch while the room spun around me. A baby? Step-Mothra was reproducing? But my dad had always said he was done with kids. Too expensive, he’d claimed, and besides, what did he need with another one when he had a perfect one already? That’s what he used to say to me when Gigi was bitching and moaning about her decrepit eggs.

“A daughter,” my father said weakly.

Gigi nodded again. “I know it’s not the same. But you’ve been having such a hard time with the idea of a baby, and while nothing can ever bring Alona back, I thought it might help in some way.”

“Help?” I shouted at Gigi. “How can that help?” I staggered to my feet. “You can’t substitute one person for another! You can’t just switch me out with an…imitation of the real thing, like one of your cheap-ass Gucci knockoffs. He’s my father. He knows the difference. He knows what you’re trying to do and it’s never going to work. I’m the only one.” I could hear myself losing control and getting a bit hysterical, which would lead to more disappearing body parts. And sure enough, when I looked down my hands had disappeared, along with my feet and ankles.

Calm down. Breathe. If I lost control now, after the hit I’d taken from Mrs. Ruiz earlier, I’d vanish and probably be gone until tomorrow morning…at best.

I clamped my mouth shut and waited breathlessly for Daddy’s infamous temper to kick in, for him to shout at her for even implying that anything could make the loss of his only daughter more bearable.

Instead, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, and I watched in horror as he propped the ultrasound picture against the framed photo of the two of us, blocking me out entirely except for the top of my ultrafrizzy head.

“Daddy,” I whispered. “No.”

He beamed up at step-Mothra and pulled her in close, burying his face in what I realized now was an expanding waist. “I can’t wait.” His voice was muffled, but the broken joy in his voice was very clear.

And my last thought before I disappeared for the second time today was this: my half-sibling was still practically microbial, barely more than a handful of cells, and already she’d beaten me. Unacceptable. This was war.

5 Will

I couldn’t fall asleep right away. Not for the obvious reason, either.

Well, okay, maybe that was part of it. I could still smell the flowery scent of Alona’s shampoo on my pillow and imagined I could still feel the heat of her against me.

But there was more.

Not five minutes after Alona had vanished through the far wall of my bedroom, my mom had poked her head in my room to say good night, and let’s face it, probably check up on me.

Her face was glowing with happiness. She must have had a good time with Sam at the movies. Where I was absolutely sure they did nothing but actually watch the movie, and refused to believe any evidence to the contrary. It was too…weird.

“Just wanted to say I’m home,” she said, beaming at me. My God, was that red patch on her chin stubble- burn? No, no, I wasn’t looking.

“Right on time for curfew,” I said instead, even though I actually had no idea what time it was.

“Ha, very funny. Good night.” She reached for my door to pull it shut again.

“Wait.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to destroy her good mood, but I had to know.

Of all the crazy stuff Alona had spouted earlier about the other ghost-talker, one part of it had actually made sense.

If there was one ghost-talker around here, maybe there were more.

“Did Dad ever say anything about anyone else? Like us, I mean?”

Her smile faded a bit. “Honey, I didn’t even know what was…special about him until you told me about your…gift.”

Nice avoidance of the words “wrong” and “problem,” Mom.“No, I know, but did he ever have any visitors or talk about people who weren’t from work or whatever?”

She was quiet for a long moment. “Your father was a complicated man, dealing with many…troubles.”

Like allowing himself to be misdiagnosed as schizophrenic instead of just a guy who could see and hear the dead.

“When he was having a tough day, I didn’t want to make it worse by asking questions,” she said.

I remembered that — Dad coming home from work early, and my mom hushing me as soon as I walked in the door from school. On those days, the house had to be as quiet, dark, and still as possible. I never really put it together until recently that he needed the peace and quiet because he’d probably spent the whole day trying to tune out all the ghosts he encountered through coworkers and the various locations he had to go to for work. It would have been miserable. At least when I was in school I’d had a rough idea of which ghosts were around, what they might do, and how aware they were or were not of the living, and in particular, me. For him, working as he did, on assignment from the railroad company, he’d have always been encountering new spirits and new problems.

“When he was having a good day,” my mom continued, “I…I didn’t want to ruin it. I’m sorry. That must seem horribly selfish to you now.” She gave me a rueful smile, and her eyes were watering.

I winced. “Mom…” I started to get up.

But she stopped me, holding her hand up. “I’m fine.” She cleared her throat and blinked back her tears. “He wasn’t always like that, though. He used to be happier, more social. In fact, when you were much, much younger, he was forever taking off for a weekend ‘with the guys.’” She laughed. “He called it book club, though what kind of book club involves coming back exhausted and all banged up, I have no idea. They were probably off paintballing or some other roughhousing nonsense they didn’t want the wives to know about.” She gave a laugh tinged with sadness and stared off in the distance at a memory I couldn’t see. “I used to get so mad at him.”