the more it was deformed and ravaged by its own intent. But Amie didn’t look right. She had too many arms and legs, and they were really stinking big. When she pulled her head and torso through the door, though, Velvet could see that it was definitely Amie. But she was different. More voluminous.
“Gee Amie, you look so much ... fatter earthside,” Velvet said without really thinking.
The girl banshee hissed and flicked a tentacle out with a whip crack that cut a blood red line up Willa’s arm. Velvet was stunned. Her mother had always told her that her mouth would get her in trouble one day.
Or on many days, concurrently, as she’d discovered.
“Watch your mouth,” Amie shrieked, the sound echoing off the walls like the squelch of a poorly tuned guitar.
“Hey,” Velvet hissed. “You’re the one in the wrong here. Beating up your ex-boyfriend.”
“What else could I do? He was going to leave me!”
“You’re dead!” Velvet shouted. “
Amie twisted and writhed, even as a banshee she was dramatic and irritating. “Yeah, but only temporarily,” she whined. “I was there for him. I came back.”
“And I’m sure he appreciated that,” Velvet said sarcastically.
Velvet clutched her bloody limb and backed away. She couldn’t let Amie hurt Willa’s body. Not again.
She spun and dashed for the street end of the alley. Behind her, bricks clacked against concrete and Abner started shouting, “They’re onto you Amie!”
Velvet dispossessed Willa mid-stride, and the girl continued to jog a few steps out onto the sidewalk, shaking her head a couple times before noticing her dripping arm and dashing toward the front of the restaurant.
When Velvet twisted to peer back down the alley, she froze. Amie was orbiting Abner like a solar flare, her gaseous tendrils wafting in the breeze like toilet paper off a tree that had been pranked. Conroy wasn’t giving up any ground. Nick’s little girl was nowhere to be seen and though Velvet felt woefully unprepared considering the turn of events, she knew they couldn’t let anything happen to the child Nick had possessed.
“Nick!” she screamed, expecting to see a tiny hand gesture from one of the piles of rubble littering the alley. But there was none. The door to the kitchen was slightly ajar. She hoped he’d gotten the girl out of there and to her safety, but as she approached, readying herself to launch at the banshee, the door slammed open. The little girl rushed out, pigtails slapping the sides of her head, a big empty saucepot in one hand and its lid in the other.
Nick was thinking ahead. They’d need a metal container to hold her. But his timing, as usual, was a bit off. One smoky banshee tentacle shot out and flattened the little girl to the wall. The pot went clattering off the pavement, rocking back and forth to a standstill.
Velvet rushed forward, all her thoughts focused on her hands, on making them a solid enough entity to connect with the banshee. Beside her, she saw Abner disconnect from Emile and crouch; the freed waiter ran in the direction of the door.
Abner was older than she’d expected, in his ghostly wavering form. He looked like a college student really, in an argyle sweater, jeans, and penny loafers. His hair was short enough to have been shaved, and he wore glasses over eyes that were probably too large for his head, unless you were into Japanese anime.
She and Abner both lunged, tackling Amie’s contorting form at chest height. Velvet wrapped herself around Amie, holding the banshee with her legs as though riding a horse, squeezing against her. Velvet stole a glance upward. Abner climbed higher up the banshee’s undulating frame and promptly head-butted her.
Amie wailed dramatically, her tentacles beating them across their backs. “Let go! I’ll kill you!”
Velvet thought she heard a
“Abner!” Velvet cried. “Pull!”
The action was akin to wringing out a wet towel. The more they twisted and tightened on the banshee’s struggling form, the thinner she became until, high above, Abner was whipping about the evil witch as though he was a flag on a pole.
“No!” Amie screamed. “Noooo!”
They were making headway.
They had to.
Nick yanked at the smoky trunk of the banshee, scrolling her into the pot like a hose on a feeder. Amie shrieked with anger and tried to pull herself away. Unable to dislodge herself, she fell finally, the entirety of her smoky mass dropping straight into the pot. Nick slapped on the lid with a wet tomato saucey squish.
“Nice choice going with a dirty pot,” Velvet admired.
The little girl nodded and wiped her marinara covered hands on the yoke of her dress. “Now for you, Abner. Are you going to go quietly?”
“Hey, guys,” Abner said. “You got me all wrong. Every time I tried to sneak back out to tell people about what she was doing, I’d bounce right back. It’s like I’m trapped here or something.”
“You’re locked in,” Velvet said. The vision of Amie with the shiny bronze key scrolled through her head.
“What?” Abner cocked an eyebrow.
“She’s right, the crack is covered up by this metal door. Amie had the key. She was reluctant to even have us slip through.”
Velvet nodded. “Definitely reluctant. But it’s open now or she wouldn’t have been able to get through herself. You can go on back and explain what’s been happening.” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the pot. “We’ve got some work to do to get this one off to the Station cellar where she belongs.”
Abner smiled and reached out his ethereal hand. Velvet made the effort to touch it, despite being exhausted. The show of effort was the thing. People shake hands all the time—it’s easy and familiar—but when a ghost does it you know it really means something because they have to focus all their intentions on the action.
Nick stepped out of the girl and offered his own hand. The little girl wandered around for a moment, not sure what was happening. After he shook Abner’s hand, Nick glanced at Velvet—more of a gaze, really—a sad smile curled on his lips. He lingered a moment, and then repossessed the girl, to walk her back to her parents, presumably.
“I really thought he’d cheated on me with Amie,” Velvet said, but Conroy just shook his head.
“Why would he when he’s got you?”
Velvet cringed, who was this guy, a relationship counselor? “How do you know?”
“Jesus, did you see the way he looked at you? He’s so into you, it’s scary.”
“You think? Like serial killer scary?” she asked. The conversation was getting a little too serious with this stranger.
But then he said, “Yep,” and started to walk toward the door.
“Hey,” Velvet called after him, chuckling. “Where’s the closest morgue, or cemetery?”
Abner grimaced, holding his stomach, sympathetically. “County Coroner is on Fourth. Two blocks that way.” He pointed.
“I know what you mean, disposing of these things...” she gestured toward the pot. “It isn’t my favorite thing either, but this one I don’t think I’ll mind too much.”
He nodded and waved as he disappeared through the door.
It’s true what they say. Anyone can thieve a body, but it takes a real specialist to be an undertaker. There are the worms and flies to deal with, obviously, and the smells. She didn’t begrudge Nick a single thing.
Later, after the flies Nick had accelerated from the Jane Doe at the morgue had carried Amie to her prison under the pagoda—in tiny, incredibly gross, bite-sized portions, no less—Nick and Velvet held hands and took a long walk on the nearby beach.
“You know I’d never do that to you, right?” Nick said, pulling her close and pressing his lips against hers.
“Chase me into the world of the living with your tentacles?” she kidded.
“I got your tentacles, right here.” He smiled and held out his arms, then chased her up to the boardwalk and back toward the restaurant.
Back in Vermillion, the compound was in an uproar, people chattered back and forth about the events of the day, about Amie’s deception and treachery and the stranglehold she’d had the community under with the shadowquakes.
Howard waved them into his quarters and held his hands out. “Please accept my most genuine apologies,” he
