Madame Margarita, Reformed Necromancer

Oh, yeah, that night started like any other. Slow and cold. Until she walked into my parlor.

Waifish. Too pale. Obviously, a Tourist. Yet another ordinary human who couldn't tell you the legal difference between a werewolf and shapeshifter if her life depended on it. I doubt she even knew they existed at all. So few of her kind do.

Ah, but who was I to judge? I'm the necromancer operating out of a kitschy Psychic Readings parlor. My bread and butter are Tourists itching for a taste of the paranormal.

Forgive, I mean to say, reformed necromancer.

"Welcome. Bienvenido." I said, waving a bundle of sage at the girl. Tendrils of smoke caught the neon glow from my sign in the window, enveloping the room in a purple fog. "I am Madame Margarita. If you're religious, I suggest you say whatever prayers you need before we begin."

The girl crossed herself.

Mumbling a Spanglish Hail Mary, her eyes flicked around the room. From dying plants to candles to the shimmering crystal ball on the coffee table. She was shaking. Sweating in her puffer coat too, despite the January sleet outside. The black bangs of her shag cut curled and stuck to her forehead.

Poor thing looked downright awful.

When those fidgety eyes finally settled on me, she touched her side and whimpered, of all things.

Kicking off my pumps, I reclined into my wingback chair and crossed my legs. The shoes clunked to the wooden floor and my velvet cocktail dress hiked an inch too high up my thigh and the girl looked away. I shooed my cat off an antique chaise and gestured for her to sit. She collapsed onto the wobbly thing. The chaise. Not the cat.

"Place your palm on the orb and spill it, sweetheart," I said. "What troubles can a glimpse beyond the veil ease for you tonight?"

She grazed the crystal with shaky fingertips. "Are you for real?"

I lit a cigarette.

"As real as death and taxes."

"What does—" she sucked in a sharp breath and clutched her hip.

After taking a moment to collect herself, she leaned across my coffee table, voice a conspiratorial whisper, "I heard that if I came here, you could, you know."

I blew smoke in her pretty face. "Do I know...?"

The girl gnawed at an already worse for wear hangnail. A few of her baby pink acrylics were missing. The beds of her exposed nails were a filthy ruddy brown. Thumb at her lip, she said, "I want the, um, Palm Reader's Bargain?"

Ah. The magic words. The ones given only to a select portion of my clientele. So, she was a grieving Tourist. Poor thing. No wonder she looked such a wreck.

"Animals under twenty-five pounds are five hundred." I ashed my cigarette into a teacup. "Anything above is a thousand, non-negotiable. And no refunds if Fluffy doesn't come back the same."

What? Even a reformed necromancer has got to make a living. Or unliving. Nuance.

Slowly, steadily, I peeled an elbow length glove from my left arm. She watched me, transfixed at the sudden reveal of all the tiny scars dotted and slashed over my skin, her eyes growing wide.

"Did you bring the animal?"

"No!"

I sighed. "I can't work long distance, sweetie. Come back another night, but don't wait too long. There's not much I can do about the rot once it sets in."

"No!" she gagged. "No. I don't need, um, all that. I just need to talk to someone..." again, she dropped her voice, like a child who didn't want to be caught saying a bad word, "who's passed."

"So... you don't have a deceased animal?"

She shook her head so hard I thought I heard her neck snap.

"Oh," I smoothed my dress, feeling the nervous sweat pool between my thighs. "I believe you're actually looking for my Divination Deal."

A pained look crossed her faced as she nodded.

My coded menu was meant to weed out the plain-Jane-mundane Tourists. The ones that popped in between frozen margs as their bachelorette party booze cruised down South Street. The desperate, thrill seeking—and well-paying—Tourists didn't usually mix up my lines for resurrecting my dead pet and conjuring a ghost.

I took a long drag from my cigarette. "Who did you say referred you to me?"

"Please." She coughed. It was a wet, hacking sound she buried into her sleeve. Under the chaise, my cat rubbed his head against her ankles. She didn't seem to notice. Once she cleared her throat and wiped her mouth into her elbow, she choked out: "I don't care how much it costs."

She dropped the money on the table. Ten one hundred buckeroos. Soggy and stained a reddish brown, but there. Normally, I'd have told her chatting up abuela for the long-lost family tres leches recipe was only three hundred an hour, but my rent was due.

Without thinking, I reached for her cash, but stopped myself before snatching it up like a greedy dragon. Reel in your excitement, I reminded myself, she was just a kid. A naive Tourist.

"Communing with the dead's not exactly a cakewalk. Your contact didn't tell you I needed a focusing—is that a fucking finger?"

The cracked distal phalanx of some poor slop's little finger—an unmistakable bit of anatomy to a professional such as myself—tumbled out of the girl's fist and came to rest on her haphazard stack of bills. Bits of whitish dust flaked off onto poor Ben Franklin's cheek.

I cleared my throat. "The heck did you get this?"

She gave me the tiniest shake of her head.

Well I'll be damned. And I very well might be.

Show time, I guess.

I stubbed my cigarette out in the teacup, flung it over my shoulder, listened to it crack against a wall, and slid her the empty saucer. "Money here." I said, standing, I plucked a cylinder of salt off a shelf and poured a wide circle around my coffee table, nudging her off the chaise and into the floor so she could fit inside. I lit a thick, tapered candle on the windowsill. Its black flame flared to life before settling down. She didn't complain and I clicked off the lamps, plunging the room into a misty, candlelit glow. In the low light, her face was ghastlier.

"How do you know the deceased?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Relative? Stranger? Ted Bundy?" I settled on my knees inside the circle. "Babe, trust me, we'd both prefer if I didn't summon a dead person who doesn't like you."

"We're... close." Her face scrunched up, like answering left a sour taste in her mouth.

Very well then.

"The spirits like their secrets kept. Even when you get a chatty one. No matter how well you knew each other. No soul, corporeal or not, has a soft heart for a narc." I gave my crystal ball a shine with my glove. "You, uh, understand?"

She nodded.

Digging into a magazine holder, I found my first aid kit. The prepackaged needles tumbled out. I tore open the plastic casing of a sterile syringe.

"And you were how close?"

Keeping her eyes on the needle, the girl bit hard into the side of her thumbnail.

I lowered the needle. "Uh uh, we're not inviting anonymous souls into my home tonight. Not how I operate."

"I know h—I know who they are... I... I don't want to... por favor, no me hagas decirlo—"

"Shh, calmante," I threw up a hand. "I don't have to know intimate details. But you do. I'm just the switchboard operator. I'll dial, but it's your conversation. I do get to say when your minutes are up, though."

A seemingly relieved breath escaped her.

One quick swipe of the alcohol pad and I plunged the needle into my most reliable vein. It stung a little, always did. She flinched. I didn't. Haven't since I was sixteen.

Drawing blood didn't take long. For this, I only needed a spritz.

Leaning in over the bone, and ushering for her to do the same, I let a drop of blood fall onto it. It was cold, powdery, but pulsed as my blood seeped into it. For a moment, the smoky air constricted, making my throat tighten. She felt it too, no doubt, as I watched her scratch helplessly at her jugular.

I took her clammy hands in mine and placed them on the crystal ball. She closed her eyes and trembled under my palms.

With an exhale, I stretched my will out into the void, picturing it like a cat stretching its back, purring. It felt natural. And easy. Tension that had been building in my spine eased and a little sigh escaped me.

"Spirits. Souls. The ones beyond the veil. We welcome you here, on the mortal plane, tonight."

The room was dark. Chilly. But there was a warmth from my spilled blood stretching out, reaching up, filling the cracks in the cold until the air itself felt like it was splitting open. I sucked in a breath as a tingling sensation spread up and down my arms, and the intoxicating rush of that free fall feeling leapt into the pit of my belly.

Her eyelids fluttered. Perhaps she felt woozy. A common side effect. I kept barf bags hidden between my St. Patrick and Santa Muerte statues for particularly weak stomached clients.

I smoothed my palm across the cool surface of the ball. "Spirits, please, we seek one of whom is... who is..." I snapped my fingers. The girl's eyes flung open. "Who is?"

She tucked her chin against her shoulder and mumbled a name. One I didn't catch.

The candles blew out.

She gasped, hands flying off the ball. I snatched her fingers and crushed them back. "No sweetie. We don't break the circle. You do not want an untethered ghost following you home tonight."

The void in the room no longer graced me with a comfortable purr, but a nasty hiss.

A crack spidered across one window. Landlord's not going to like that.

Opposite me, my hands keeping hers in place, the girl's breathing had slowed to an eerie calm.

"The floor is yours," I prompted.

"Um," she squirmed, hunching closer to the table as if to escape some weight against her back. "Do—are you—"

Damn it. She wasn't prepared.

"Hey now, don't lose your focus."

"S'it... working?" she slurred.

My grandmother's teapot picked itself up off an end table and hurled across the room, shattering against the door frame. Bits of porcelain rained into the girl's hair.

I figured she'd scream. But with a shuddering breath, her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Her hands slipped from mine as she collapsed onto the coffee table. I yelped. Her face had slammed into the ball, crunching her nose, causing her to bounce off and slump across a line of salt, breaking the circle.

One still lit candle fell over.

"Shit!"

I snatched a pillow off the sofa and smothered the burning patch of carpet. The air smelled of smoke and sulfur and metal. Had nothing to do with the small fire. I coughed.

Under the chaise, my cat released a guttural growl at an apparent empty corner of the room.

"Hey, don't faint." I poked the girl's cheek. "This isn't over yet!"

And it certainly wasn't. Whatever entity she'd channeled me to summon was lingering. I felt its presence. Heavy. Aggressive. It wanted me to feel it, but not see it, hiding in the shadows. The crack in my window continued to spider. My breath left me in a fog.

"Girl. Get up."

I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her upright, off the carpet.

It was sticky with the blood dripping from her lifeless mouth.

Oh crystal balls.