No Humans Involved

All those hours shuttling her to the dance studio, watching her rehearsals…'

'Ungrateful kids,' her friend said, shaking her head. 'You want them to grow up with some culture, some grace, and all of a sudden they have better things to do.'

'Well, if that's what she thinks, she can think again. I made an in-vestment. And like all my investments, it damned well better pay off. Ungrateful little…'

My jaw clenched so tight my head hurt. I lifted my cup to sip my coffee and watched the surface quiver as my fingers shook.

How many times had I heard some variation on those words from my own mother? My earliest memory was of her dragging me from a preschool pageant, her fingers clamped around my arm, where I'd have welts for weeks, all because I'd been ungrateful enough to cry when the hair stylist's curling iron had burned my scalp. Even the last time I'd spoken to her, I'd heard the speech. My eternal ingratitude for the sacrifices she'd made on my behalf.

As the women continued, my mother's voice rolled over me, taking me back to when I was first coming into my powers.

'Do you have any idea what it's like, Jaime? Getting calls from high school that you're cowering in the bathroom? Having to delay a commercial shoot because some ghost is bothering you? Changing your wet bedsheets? Pissing the bed at your age because you're scared} I've worked my ass off to make something of you. Your father saddles me with his screwed-up family problem and his screwed-up kid, then kills himself-takes the easy way out. Your precious Nan is no help, always coddling you, putting me down because I ask a little of you in return. You should be tripping over yourself to help, not complaining because you missed a week of school, failed another test. As if you wouldn't have failed anyway. At least I gave you an excuse. Any other parent wouldn't put up with this, you know. They'd have shipped you off long ago.'

I'd grown up believing her-that any other parent would've gotten rid of me. A child has no other point of reference, no wider view of the world.

I'm sure I wasn't easy to raise. I had my problems, supernatural and otherwise. But now I look around and see the way other parents raise supernatural children. Jeremy taking in a feral child werewolf, no relative or responsibility of his. Paige adopting the daughter of a dark witch, a stranger. Even other human parents faced with supernatural children handled it just fine. Talia Vasic raising Adam on her own, helping him deal with his demonic powers before she knew what they were. Hope talking about how close she was to her mother, a woman who probably still didn't know why her daughter was 'different.' It didn't matter. A parent loves. A parent helps. A parent accepts.

Still, I wasn't the only supernatural raised by an unloving parent. Jeremy talked little of his father, but from what I've gleaned, the man had been a cold killer with nothing but contempt for his quiet, nonaggressive son. Jeremy got over it. Flourished. Grew up to be a leader, a man who accepted his differences and didn't complain about them or feel sorry for himself.

'You should have called.'

I looked up. The other women were gone and Eve now sat in their place. She propped her long legs on the table between us.

'Yeah,' she said, cutting me off as I started to answer. 'You wanted to handle it yourself. I know. But see, that's not how this arrangement works. We're partners. If I need a ghost contacted in another plane or I need something done in the living world, I call you. If you need a pesky spook scared off, you call me.'

'And you know what? I'd love to be able to find any ghost myself, to surf the Internet when I need information. But I can't. No more than you can deal with jerks like those three.'

I looked around, then took out my cell phone, pretending to talk into it. 'You took them to Glamis, didn't you? To Dantalian.'

'Oh, they'll have fun,' she said. 'Dantalian's not so bad. Gets lonely, though. Six hundred years is a long time to be cooped up, even for a demon. Like a cat confined to a small apartment. He appreciates new playthings to bat around.' She stretched one leg and 'nudged' my knee. 'And if you think that distracted me from my lecture, you're wrong. You need to call me, Jaime. If I'm around, there's no need for you to deal with shit like that.'

'I know. I just-'

'-don't want to need help. Fine. But everyone has her specialty. Yours is helping ghosts. Mine is kicking their asses. Whole different skill set.'

'I didn't help them,' I said as I looked out across the shop. 'Didn't even try.'

'You were breaking and entering, for God's sake. You can't stop to take requests.'

She went on, trying to convince me that I hadn't been wrong to ig-nore the ghosts. But I knew I hadn't handled it well. I should have told them I was busy, but would speak to them later, outside. They still might have turned on me, but at least I could say I'd done my duty.

Duty? I balked at the thought. I wasn't their servant. I didn't owe them anything.

Or did I?

I thought of the analogy I'd made earlier. Necromancers as the Elvises of the ghost world. They all want to catch a glimpse of us, to talk to us. Just a little of our time. And, yes, it can be overwhelming, as I'm sure it was-or is-for Elvis. But if someone walks up to him and just wants to say, 'Loved your stuff,' does he have the right to ignore them?

I've spent enough time in Hollywood to know this is a contentious issue-the artist's obligation to the public versus his right to privacy. While I don't think you owe it to your fans to provide tabloids with your vacation itinerary or details of your sex life, I don't think an autograph or thirty seconds of your time is too much to ask, not when these are the people who fund your dream-buying your movies, albums, books, whatever.

I told myself the analogy wasn't a fair one. I'm quick with a signature or a smile for my fans. What obligation do I have to ghosts? They don't pay for seats at my shows. Yet, without them, without my ability to speak to them, I'd have no career. Sure, I could fake it-I usually did-but it was my real contacts, like my seance with Tansy Lane, that kept me in business.

But ghosts ask for more than an autograph or a handshake. Am I obligated to provide it more often than I already do? Am I obligated to at least listen more often than I do?

Jeremy arrived and I started to get up, but he waved me down again and told me Hope had taken a cab and I should finish my coffee. He got one for himself, then started to sit on the sofa.

'Uh, not there,' I said.

He looked over his shoulder at the seemingly empty seat. 'Hello, Eve.'

'Tell him I said hi… and bye,' she said. 'I need to check a few things, then I'll come by the gardens.'

AFTER WE left the coffee shop, Jeremy told me the results of their break-and-enter. He had hoped to uncover the name of the lover Botnick had shared with a member of the magic group, and he had found a book with dozens of women's names, all classified by codes. Find the key to the code and he might find the right lover but he suspected that key had existed only in Botnick's head. Eve was trying to gain access to Botnick, but those first few postdeath days were difficult.

Hope hadn't fared any better. As she'd feared, the vibes she'd picked up were old. She'd finally tapped into the chaos enough to see what she'd been sensing-a vision of a man killing his wife with an axe, back in the twenties. A gruesome reward for all her effort, and one with no bearing on our case.

I hesitated for a minute, then told Jeremy about the women in the coffee shop and how they'd reminded me of my mother.

'I guess I was feeling sorry for myself, thinking of how other parents handle supernatural things so much better. But you didn't have it easy yourself.'

A half-shrug. Did that mean he didn't want to talk about it? Or just didn't want to complain? After a moment, though, he said, 'I just wasn't what Malcolm hoped for in a son.' He often referred to his father by his first name, which said a lot about their relationship.

'You weren't a fighter, you mean.' I flushed. 'Not that you aren't-'

'I'm not. I can be, but it's not who I am. A wolf instinctively wants to pass on what he knows to his son. I just wasn't that son. He tried transferring his attentions to Clay, but-' a shrug, '-that didn't work out so well.'

'Your father and Clay?'