Phantom prey

closed her eyes, held on to the bathroom counter, and flipped back through the comic- book images, the last time she’d seen Frances…

Nothing there. She opened her eyes, relieved and puzzled. She hadn’t killed Frances.

She looked at the towel in her hand, draped it through a rack, wandered to the dressing room. Pulled on clean underpants and a soft bra, a tracksuit, soft woolen socks, and running shoes. Warm and comfortable.

My God, she’d killed three people. With a knife. Where was the knife? Where was it? Still in the little car. On the floor, under the front seat. Have to get rid of the car. Clean it up, get rid of it.

She went out into the bedroom, turned off the ceiling lights, lay on the bed in the dim light coming from the bathroom, and thought through it.

She hadn’t gone to Shockley’s place as Fairy, because Shockley wouldn’t have let Fairy in the door, not with Davenport roaming around, asking people about her. And shit, she had to get rid of the Fairy stuff.

She started to roll off the bed, but then thought, Wait, wait, slow down. Think it through. Manage it.

She hadn’t gone to Shockley’s as Fairy, so if anyone had seen her, they might be able to identify her. If they had, or if they would, she was gone. She hadn’t seen anybody, but she hadn’t covered her face, and people did watch the street from windows, lonely people, curious people…But it had been dark, and she’d been moving; and nobody inside the house had seen her.

If they suspected, though-and Benson, the first BCA agent, suspected that she had something to do with Frances’s death, even though she didn’t-if they suspected, they’d go through the house. They’d eventually find the Fairy stuff, and probably blood and hair on that, DNA stuff, and she’d be done.

They’d look at her car, and if there was blood on the car, they’d find it, and they’d match it to Shockley’s, and she’d be done.

If they learned about the hangar, they’d search it and find the car, and that surely had blood in it, and she’d be done.

If they looked in Fairy’s purse, they’d find the photo that Fairy had used to track Frances’s friends, and she’d be done.

Manage it.

Loren called her: “Alyssa, please, please help me. I’m fading.'

'Fuck you,” she said. “Dragging me down, Alyssa. They’re dragging me down…'

'Fuck you. Go,” Alyssa shouted, but his words were as loud as her own.

The first time she’d seen him, a month after Frances’s murder, she’d run into the night, had called the police from a neighbor’s house. The police were at her house in a minute, more coming in behind, just as they’d come in the first time, when Frances was killed. Again, they went through the house inch by inch, pistols drawn.

As they hunted for the intruder, it came to Fairy’s mind that the intruder wasn’t so much reflected in the mirror, as he was inside the mirror.

The police found no one, but didn’t doubt her. Not at first. They were back the next day, in the daylight, to interview her. The intruder, they believed, must know her-must know the house, to get out of sight and out of town so quickly. Or perhaps was a resident. The woods were thick enough that somebody dressed in black, as the intruder had been, could come and go at will, if he was careful and familiar with the terrain.

But he hadn’t looked like a neighbor. The neighbors were sometimes eccentric, but the intruder had been theatrical, in the old sense of the word, the Oscar Wilde sense, loose silk shirts and tight butt hugging pants, side- zip boots.

That, the neighbors weren’t. He came back; not all at once, but with hints, a few piano notes here, a figure at the corner of the eye. He frightened her at first, and then not so much. Late one night, he was simply there, in her dressing room mirror.

“Who the hell are you?” Fairy asked. “I’m a ghost,” he said. “A ghost.'

'That’s right. Not many people can see us, though we can see you

We’re dead, and mirrors are our windows into your world.'

'Why are you showing up now?'

'I’ve always been around,” he said. “Around somewhere. I drift around the city, watching people. You couldn’t see me; but now you can! I’m amazed. Nobody can see me.”

“Really…'

'Really.'

'What do you want?” Fairy asked. He smiled: “Not much. A little time, a little conversation. A little piano playing, a sing- along.'

'I’m crazy, aren’t I?'

'You have to be a little crazy to see me, but you’re not insane, if that’s what you mean. I’m really here.'

'I’m insane,” she said, and she turned away from him. “No, no,” he said, the anxiety high in his voice. “Don’t go away

Don’t go. I can help you…” He told her about death. About rising up from his own body, then losing sight of it. He’d been in water, he thought, with other people around, but he couldn’t see them after he died. He’d been wandering in a fog forever, it seemed like, coming upon little shafts and rectangles of light, and looking through them, realized that he was looking out of mirrors. All over St. Paul, all over the whole area… He’d been inches from living people, but they’d never seen him.

And then he’d seen Alyssa, first drawn by her body. Then one day, he’d played a few notes on the piano that was in the mirror with him, a reflection of the piano in Alyssa’s music room.

And he’d seen her react. “I can’t tell you how excited I was. You heard me.”

He knew about Frances. Knew she was dead. Could feel her there, on the dead side of things.

“She’s gone for good, isn’t she?” she asked. “Not yet from this plane,” he said. “She’s restless, she wants to move on-but can’t, not yet. She can’t find peace.'

'Could you find her for me?'

'No. I can’t see anybody else here. It’s like night, like a foggy night…'

'Maybe she’ll come to me,” Alyssa said. “Finding the way is… hard,” Loren said. “From here, you can’t see anything but lights from the mirrors, and other shiny things, little threads of light here and there, and rectangles and circles of it, the mirrors. I found your mirror, at random. The mirrors look like campfires around a lake. When I go back, during the day, I sit there, waiting for night to come, so I can see the mirror again. And the light. I’m afraid sometimes that night will come and your mirror will be gone and I’ll be wandering, crazy, looking for it, seeing all those people on the other side, eating and fucking and playing music, and all I get are shadows…” He was running on, and he shuddered.

He said, “Frances can’t leave here until she has justice. She can’t go on.”

“Go on to what?'

'To heaven. To rebirth. To whatever it is-I don’t know myself.'

'Why haven’t you gone?'

'I don’t know. I just can’t… I can’t…”

“Let me help you find justice,” he said. She was skeptical: “How will you do that, mirror- man?'

'We can work this through. We can explore it. We can get… documents. Talk to people.'

'People will talk to a ghost?'

'No, but I can advise you. I can come with you when you hunt them… you can pull me through.'

'Pull you through,” she said. She stepped back, out of reach. “Pull me through,” he said. He couldn’t hide the eagerness in his voice. “Take my fingers, pull me through. I can’t stay, I fade when the sun comes around, but for a