Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,30

number, for only sixty-six cents per minute plus ten dollars for the connection fee. I wasn’t sure if the connection fee was imposed by the phone company or by the astral plane, but I declined.

The fourth psychic hung up.

I tried number five, six, and seven, and I got more offers from them to part the veil and probe the inner darkness, which sounded a lot like the treatment my gay vampire was getting.

I went back to number four. Her name was Suzette Davis, which didn’t sound particularly psychic, and her psychic parlor was located half a mile away, just off the Quartier. I guessed a psychic parlor was probably pretty similar to a regular parlor but with more crystals and polyester, but I kept thinking about how she had hung up: no hesitation, no fumbling. Solid and definitive. I called again, and the phone rang until it went to a pre-recorded voicemail.

So I walked half a mile, carrying my books.

Suzette’s store was located on the second story of a strip mall that dated back to the 70s and had survived the Quartier’s purge and redevelopment. She was located above a Chinese take-out place, and the smell of eggrolls filled the staircase as I went up. From the landing at the top of the stairs came the sound of keys jingling and then hurried footsteps. A woman came into view, barreling toward me.

“Hey,” I said. “Hi.”

She froze.

Suzette—if that’s who she was—had coppery ringlets, the color obviously out of a box, and hard eyes. She was wearing a track suit that had slipped a few inches, exposing the lacy waistband of her underwear. For a moment, she studied me, and then she slipped a vape pen out of her pocket and hit it twice. Some of the vapor slipped out of the corner of her mouth.

“Well?” she said.

“I called.”

“Sorry, I’m closed.” She took a few steps, obviously trying to sidle past me.

I moved into her path. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions about those firefly things. I’ll pay.”

“Kid, you’re very pretty, but I’ve got pepper gel on my keyring, and I’ve got a knife. I will fuck you up if you don’t get out of my way.”

“Ok, ok,” I said, moving down a few steps. Holding up my hands, I said, “You’re the only person who acted like they knew what I was talking about. Everybody else just wants to charge me sixty-six cents a minute to channel the Prince of Darkness.”

“You’re serious? You’re really asking about this? It’s not some messed-up prank?”

“I saw one come out of a guy’s mouth. He was dead, and he grabbed me. Another guy tried to shoot me. I saw one of these things with him, too.”

“You want psychic advice? Here’s psychic advice: get on a fucking plane, or you’re dead.”

She charged down the steps.

“Please,” I said, getting into her path again, already preparing myself for the pepper spray. “Please, I think . . . I think this thing killed my parents, too.” I bit my lip, trying to hold back a crazy laugh, because hearing it out loud was ten times worse than skirting the edges of it in my brain. “Please.”

Hitting the vape again, Suzette eyed me. When she pulled the pen away, she said, “Hands.”

“What?”

“Show me your hands.”

I held them out.

“Left one.”

I offered it.

She took it; her touch was dry, and she was shaking slightly as she ran a finger across my palm in one direction, then ran it again at a diagonal. When she released me, she let out a breath like she’d been running.

“What’s going on?”

“If I tell you, will you get out of my way?”

“Yeah, whatever you want.”

She held up three fingers. Her nail polish was chipped. “One: this thing, what you’re talking about. Here, it used to be called a hashok, the thing in the grass, but you can call it a vampire or tiyanak or a bantu or goddamn chupacabra. Pretty much every culture has a name for it, and even though the details might be a little different, it’s the same damn thing. Two: it feeds on human lives, especially on pain, and it’s always hungry. Three: if you’ve seen it, it wants you. So I’m going to stay with my sister, God help me, and I’m going to spend the next few weeks listening to holy rollers try to save my soul until this shitstorm clears. And if you’re smart, you’ll do exactly what I said. You get on a plane today, and