Greg, ̶H̶a̶s̶ ̶E̶v̶e̶r̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶Under Control

Isla's throat quivered. Cheeks flushed. Dark eyes wet and glittering in the full moon light. Under her ribs, her heart pumped erratically. Thumpthumpthumpthump. My own chest ached. Throbbed and hummed like I was being zapped by an electrical current keeping perfect time with her erratic pulse. Zapzapzapzap.

"It's not as bad as it looks."

"My eyes must be going, darling," I growled. "Cause I'm not entirely certain what it is I'm looking at."

"Greg, I'm the necromancer."

I snorted. "You're a necromancer?"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell-why did you say it like that?"

"Because you're... you."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Elaborate on that for me, Greg."

"You of all people cannot be a necromancer," the words tumbled out, sharp and pricking my tongue, before I even had a chance to organize my thoughts. Suddenly I was babbling an incoherent ramble I was powerless to swallow back. "It doesn't make any sense! Necromancy is ugly work. Difficult work. You're all pretty parlor tricks and spirits. That's it, isn't it? Tricks. This is a trick, yeah? Tell me it is. Tell me you're lying to me, darling. It's all part of your game?"

The more I blathered, the less I recognized my own voice. It was fast. Frantic. Frightened.

A storm rolled over Isla's face, dark eyes turning blistery and cold.

"You can't be dabbling in this, Isla, you don't understand what it takes. I've seen the pursuit of it destroy brilliant minds. You have no idea what kind of cursed work-"

"I'm not dabbling," She huffed, sucking her cigarette down to a stub before tossing into Rocco's coagulating blood. "I know what I'm doing. I'm a professional."

She didn't understand. Syme, the doctor, the professional doctor, he was always a cruel bastard, but the pursuit of necromancy destroyed him. Body and mind. Hell, that was two hundred years ago, and an ocean away, and it felt like that son of bitch was still experimenting with ways to torment me.

That wasn't Isla. Isla was too carefree, too fun, too good to be in the same league as the doctor.

Ah, but look at the facts, old boy.

Isla communed with ghosts. Isla summoned a clowder of feral zombified cats to my rescue. Isla was arrested (as a minor) for conjuring the undead. Isla used her body as a vessel, bones glowing sickly and beautiful behind her own skin.

That was necromancy?

That wasn't anything like the (attempted) necromancy I'd seen before. Isla's apartment was a less than sterile environment. Where were the scalpels and antiseptic and electric rods? Where were the dissection models and leather straps? The discarded limbs of unsalvageable corpses? Her home wasn't like the lab I knew. She wasn't anything like him.

And, fact, a half-formed corpse was right there, pacing the patio.

"She doesn't really look like you know what you're doing!"

"Oh, so she isn't walking, talking, standing here in the flesh right now?"

"Correct. I am standing here right," grumbled Lily, "in case you two forgot."

"She's not even stitched up! How the fangs could you have reanimated her without the tools-"

"Technically, I resurrected her, not reanimated. There's a difference."

"Oh, is there? Is it one you have even the slightest bit of control over? Enough to fix her?"

"I-" her eyes darted back to Lily's sweater covered midsection, fingers shaking through another stress-induced nicotine craving. She rubbed her ankles together. The silver bangle round her right leg twinkled in the full moon's light. "I can't fix-"

"You can't?" Lily seethed.

"Of course you can't!" I snapped.

Good. She couldn't. She shouldn't. She was better than that. Better than Syme. Better than me. Better, so, so much better, than what we did together. I was relieved. Tell her, old boy, you were relieved she wasn't capable make the same gruesome calculations that always failed the 'good' doctor anyway.

Failed.

He had always failed. His experiments never achieving more than a few minutes more of tortured existence before expiring or falling to pieces or dissolving or simply unraveling in a bloody mess.

"You can't mess with what you don't understand-"

"Ugh, bite your tongue, Greg," said Isla. "I've had enough of your mansplaining for one night."

Teeth came down hard. Like somebody'd pinched my canines between their fingers and yanked. I grunted. About all I could do, while chewing off the tip of my own tongue. Fangs punctured right through tough meat. Throat itched as Isla's smoky blood seeped down the back of it

Oblivious to me nearly drowning on the patio, Isla cradled Lily's free hand in hers. The sight of it, of her hands enveloping the younger gal's, conjured the memory the way she traced my palm the night we met, feeding me utter nonsense about love lines and palmistry.

"If the Magistrate-our law enforcement-find out about you, they will hunt you, especially if you keep that book," she continued to Lily. "They won't take you to a hospital. They won't even kill you. They're already on my tail for it. I don't want to go to prison. Do you want to be incased in concrete and buried on triply consecrated ground, you know, just to be safe, for the rest of eternity? Didn't think so!"

Fact: Isla lied to me. The doctor lied to me. Isla used me. The doctor used me. The doctor roped me into his experiments, his transfusions. So did Isla. Save I was the receiver this time around, not the donor, but still an experiment to her, nonetheless. How far can the vamp be strung along until he gets wise?

Poor girl was another half-finished experiment. One I couldn't touch. Or stand near. Or even speak to. Not with Isla's pulse jackhammering in my veins, staking my feet to the patio, preventing me from inspecting her work any further. Testing me.

I wedged a finger into my mouth and pried open my lips. Swear a cloud of dust puffed out as I gasped: "You can't?"

A chewed off piece of my tongue toppled out over my gums, fizzling to dust as it hit the pavement. Figured at Lily might skitter back in revulsion to that, but neither woman did.

Instead of disgust, Isla's brow furrowed as if confused. "I didn't mean literally, my guy. It'll grow back, won't it?"

It always does.

Those three unspoken words echoed loud as klaxon bells in my ears. The doctor's words. Except I no longer heard them in Syme's analytical brogue. They rang in Isla's exasperated, smoky tone.

"You can't undo the spell"-I plowed onward as the hole in my tongue sealed closed-"Or is it that you just haven't figured out how to make the corpses not ooze anymore and decided to add one whose pieces grow back as one of your test subjects?"

Even Lily gasped at that.

Isla didn't. Isla sighed. Isla trembled. Isla bit her lip. Isla pretended she wasn't about to wipe a tear gathering in her eye by flipping me off instead.

"You and your fucking vampire-neurotic-stake-up-your-own-ass control issues."

"I don't have control-"

I snatched my shaking hands back. They'd run away with themselves. Nearly lunged at her. Hooked her throat under my fingers. Shook her till all the lies fell out in neat little pieces I could at least try and puzzle together in some semblance of an entire picture. But I didn't. Just pulled at my hair instead.

"You used me," I said.

"Seriously, where is this coming from?" she rolled her eyes, but her voice was hoarse, "Sure, I 'used you' to do exactly what your job is. Don't worry, I'll be sure to leave you a stellar Yelp review. Private eye surprised himself by accomplishing the precise feat I hired him for. Five stars."

"You lied to me."

"Would you have even believed me? Taken my case if you knew? Or would you have just reported me to the magistrate?"

"You both lied to me!" Lily screamed.

Our attentions- and the pointed fingers and tight scowls and hurtful remarks we'd both had loaded and ready to fire-were jerked back to Lily.

She stomped her feet on the patio, slickening with the werewolf's blood. Little waves of it lapped against her shoes. Briny and acidic and burning in my nostrils.

"Help me? Fix me? Rescue me? Neither of you fools know what to do with me!" Her grip on the grimoire was turning her knuckles white; or, perhaps, that was the lack of blood flow.

"For death-on-doormat's sake!" sighed Isla. "Can't you just be grateful you're alive!"

And Isla came at me for having no sense of customer service.

"Selfish twat!"

Lily wielded that spell book like a nun. Kind that taught Catholic school. The very thought of it seared another hole in my tongue.

"Don't touch her!" I shouted.

Tried to intervene. A reflex. Mad at her or no I couldn't just stand by and watch a woman get her face beaten in by a literal rotting heap of paper. But the curse, again, redirected my feet. I stumbled. Tripped over my own toes, unable to approach Lily.

Isla parried the barista's blow with her elbow. Book bounced off her. Flung out of Lily's hands and flipped across the patio. But Lily was quick with the second strike. Barista landed a firm shove against Isla's chest. She lost balance. Isla hinged backward, arms flailing, and tripped right over the werewolf's cooling corpse.

"Fucking, shit, nards," Isla yelled from the ground. "Lily. Stop. I said stop!"

The barista did not stop.

Isla'd gotten tangled up in her coat. Teetered around on her back, like an upended turtle. Sweat and panic colored her face. Her pulse spiked. Immensely. Anger and adrenaline and fear. It had me straining to reach out to her. Take her by the arm. Pull her close and gently help her to her feet and then her home and then under the soft covers of her bed.

Which would make you even bigger fool than you already are, old boy. Hell, that longing made me downright sick. She played me for a chump. I was supposed to be a professional, not taken in but every pretty, desperate broad who batted her lashes at me. You idiot!

Instead, I ran after Lily. See, the barista had spotted the book, unattended, and darted for it.

Beat her to it. Snatched the thing up. Somehow it felt both dry and greasy under my touch. Thing seemed to lurch in my palm. Like it was offended to be held. I fought back a gag. "Ms. Perez-"

Quick little mouse skirted right past me. For a moment, just before she swerved, her eyes narrowed, lip curled. She flung herself into the house. Only inches from me.

The house I couldn't enter.

Fang this. I was over chasing chickens for Isla.

"You might want to get up," I drawled, tucking the book under my arm and watching Isla finally find her footing. "She's getting away."

Isla hacked up an impressive string of bilingual swears when she noted her hen had flown this coop. She limped toward the house after her, but the obvious slam of the front door rattled the whole dang building.

"Fuck! Why didn't you stop her!"

Waggled my fingers. "Somebody asked me to keep my hands to myself."

"You could've tried enthralling her!"

"Ah, now she's jake with the brain melting." I snapped my fingers. "Wait! I've just remembered. You've been peachy keen with bending others to your will this whole time."

Isla ignored that remark. But I saw her eye twitch.

"That was my one chance," she paced. "I'm screwed. I'm so screwed. She's just-I'm going to prison. That's it. The fairy tits am I supposed to do, Greg?"

So keyed up she practically vibrated, Isla lit another cigarette, puffing smoke right under my chin. Even beneath that tar and tobacco, the echo of wine and coffee lingered on her breath. I held mine. Didn't want even those tendrils of her invading me anymore. Weakening my anger.

"See what happens when you don't have a plan? Your mark gets away," I kicked the pavement. "I'm a real chump. You had me going. But you don't really care about her- or me-we're playthings to you."

"Well, I wasn't going to sit around with my thumb up my snatch and wait to wind up back on the cuck chair with the banshees from cell block four cause some brat had the nerve to die on my rug! What choice did I have?"

She flicked ash at me.

Oh. That just about confirmed my hunch, didn't it? Dame didn't give a bat's wing about me. Damn. That ached more than it should have.

Right. Since we were just standing there like a pair of jabronis... I moseyed on up to Mr. Cabroni's corpse. Rest in pieces, you rotten bastard. Hope your wife has better luck next time. I wrapped my hand around his bicep.

"Help me clean up, then," I said. And then, softer, because I couldn't help myself. "Can't give me a give five-star Yelp review from prison."

Isla ceased pacing a divot into the concrete. "What?"

Crack.

The werewolf's elbow gave with only a firm tug. Popped right out of place. Broke a few bones. Managed to bend the thing till it was folded up and tucked alongside his body, instead of sticking out at the awkward angle it had been. I set about adjusting his other arm. We needed to take care of this before rigor mortis set in.

"The pack will come looking for him when the sun comes up. Hell, his wife is already calling me nightly, and-if I want to keep my fangs and you all your fingers-it be better for us both if they don't sniff us out for this. They got trash bags?"

Isla exhaled a cloud of smoke. "I'll go look."

The elderly Mrs. Cabroni did, in fact, have trash bags. Big, hefty kind. Probably for landscaping or tearing apart furniture. Whole box of them. Took Isla ages to find.

For a moment, my chest tightened, and I thought she'd up and left, just like Lily.

When she eventually emerged from the house with them, her make-up was streaked.

She helped me double bag a pair. I was careful not to touch her. Avoided every opportunity to gently graze my fingers over hers. Wasn't even tempted to bump into her hip. Feel the warmth radiating off her firsthand. She didn't say anything. Not an apology. Not an explanation. Her breath trembled. Couldn't even look me in the eye and her blood in my veins boiled.

I hoisted Mr. Cabroni's mass-all broken and mangled and compacted into a neat little werewolfy ball-and dropped him into the trash bags. Tongue lolled out his mouth. Stuck to his beard. I palmed his skull and shoved his head into the bag with an audible crunch.

"Think anyone's seen us?" Isla said from a good ten feet away, nursing her cigarette.

"If nobody's called the cops by now, I don't think they give a damn."

"Cool," she stubbed the end of her smoke out on the brick wall. "There's more inside."

"I can't go-"

"Do you trust me?"

"No."

"Okay, well, then sorry about this, but Greg, come inside."

The force of her curse was heavy. Cold and miserable and so, so heavy, the weight of it pressed against my back. Squeezed my lungs and veins and nerves inside my chest. Pushed my two feet forward beyond my control. I followed Isla's saunter into the house like a lost puppy.

House didn't want me. Felt it prickle and pinch against my skin. Pinpricks pushing against my chest, trying to force me back out. But Isla's curse held strong. I crossed the threshold into the kitchen, and the bricks seemed to sigh in defeat.

"Good boy," Isla murmured.

I ignored the shiver that set down my spine and into my groin.

Found the bodies in the dining room. What a sight. Rosemond's bones were splayed out on some kind of altar; her own portrait thrown over her like a blanket. The old lady Cabroni died in a hospice care bed, her skin as stark white as the sheets. Arranged all around the duo was a hellish shrine. Candle lit with black flames. Crystals scattered about. A spirit board looking as old as me.

Smelled like death in there.

"Fang's all this?"

Isla pressed herself against the wall. Keeping a careful distance. Always, always a distance. Always tucking that anklet behind her other heel. Something was up with that. Hex of some kind.

"My stuff," she said, throwing another trash bag at me. "Lily broke into my apartment. Same night we broke into her apartment, ironically. Stole my more spooky accoutrement." She saw me flinched and rolled her eyes. "Relax, none of this stuff can hurt the big, bad vampire. It's all for ambiance. Placebos and all that. But I need help to take it back."

I raised a brow. "Help?"

She kicked-not at me, per se, but shot her leg all can-can style up into the air. The anklet jangled.

"In case you haven't noticed-and I'm sure you have so don't lie-I can't get within six feet of a dead-dead body. Which means, Sherlock, I can't get in there and unframe myself for whatever this is without bringing the Magistrate right to us!"

"That's the hex that summoned the Magistrate to Dmitri's?"

"Duh!" her cheeks were pink from cold and anger and, combined with that outburst, it made her look cute. I ground my teeth, hating myself (but not her) for a moment for thinking she was cute like this.

"Will you command me? If I refuse?"

Silence. She bit the inside of her cheek. I could smell the smoky pull of her blood even from inside her mouth. Her voice was low when she spoke: "I don't want to do that."

I tugged another trash bag from its box.

"Be one hell of a sloppy clean up," I said, avoiding her gaze, "if we left anything that could lead back to either of us behind. For the Magistrate or the wolves."

Isla sniffed. "Thanks."

Eh, it wouldn't be the first time I cleared cadavers off their tables. Some intact. Most partially stitched together, their rejected limbs tossed into a bin in the corner of the lab. Clearing away the evidence, rolling the bones down to the incinerator, sometimes Syme paid more than retrieving the bodies in the first place.

Mrs. Cabroni's eyes were still half open. I closed them gingerly. Sorry, old dame. Bit of spittle and drool and blueish bruising had formed a ring around her mouth. There was a pillow out of place on the stack under her head. It too looked like it had some crusty, dried-up globs of spit.

I let her be. She had been ill and this was her home. She was the only corpse police, Magistrate, or her own relatives would expect to find here.

Something tucked inside the fragile cage of Rosemond's ribs caught my eye. I reached in, carefully slipping the wooden disk out between the bones. Was a needlepoint. Its white background had been yellowed from age, but at its center sat a diagram of a moth done in blacks and grays and greens. The threads of one wing were newer than the rest. Brighter, shinier, adorned with black beading around the edges. Done in a different shade of green than the other wing, but otherwise the shape and pattern matched with perfect exactness.

I placed the needlepoint and Rosemond's bones in a different bag. Dmitri was missing them.

On the table beside the dead old woman were the remaining two library books. Stickers on their spines gave them away. That, and the general aura of doom and foreboding that seemed to emanate from them.

"Swell, found the books."

"Grab those," said Isla from the hall. She then returned to the same murmuring I'd been hearing for the last several minutes. Soft whispers. Soothing. "Please, tell me what-how long was she here-oh that's it, you're just gone now? Yeah, okay, go in peace or whatever. Hag."

"Another spirit tired of you bossing them around?"

Isla crossed her arms over her chest. "You know, you're throwing a lot of shade at me for somebody who's also undead."

Already undead made the perfect control. The source. And endless supply in of reanimated blood to be transfused into specimen after specimen. Tubes after needles after scalpels. And when that didn't work, when he finally listened to me about what it took to turn, he switched to live specimens.

"I never asked for this curse," I hissed, inadvertently spitting around my fangs. "If I'd had the choice, I'd have preferred to stay dead several times over."

"What? And miss out on all the fun of meeting me?"

"Yes."

Isla pressed her lips together in a thin line. Stood there for a moment. Pulse ratcheting up and turning pink again. After a while, she exhaled slowly. "In other good news, Momma Cabroni wasn't a fan of her son and his cheating ways. But that's all she gave me before, poof, the other side took her. Pretty half in the bag unfinished business if you asked me. Here, toss me my stuff."

The trash bag full of her trinkets socked her in gut. She doubled over. Gasped for breath. Yeah, guess I may have regretted flinging it at her so hard.

"I didn't mean-"

"I'm going outside," she said. "Meet me out front when you're done."

Her curse strangled my limbs. Pressure of it making them instantly ache. Bit my lip as, once again, my body was no longer mine to control. Had she done that on purpose? Given the order? Or was it just a slip of the tongue?

Did it matter either way? I couldn't trust her to speak anymore. Not that I should have to begin with.

I blew out her candles. Plunked them and the crystals and so many other littler, sillier things into that trash bag. Couldn't identify any of it. Didn't even know there was a tarot deck hidden behind the spirit board, but somehow my hand found it anyway, without my knowing. My limbs obeyed without even fully understanding her command.

Nothing I wasn't used to, I supposed. My legs had flung me from plenty of withdrawn invitations before. But this manifested differently. Not as slippery confusion, but as an itching need. A hot, heavy pressure on my spine. A mantra echoing in an endless loop. Finish cleaning. No trace. Meet her outside.

Wiped candle wax off a shelf. Dusted ashy flakes of Rosemond from the table. Hosed blood off the patio and into the mud of the alley behind the house. Stuffed the rolled-up portrait of the lady in the same bag as her needlepoint and remains. Plucked a single strand of platinum blonde hair clinging to a lamp.

Unsure how much time passed before I was done. Wasn't thinking about that. Or anything else. Not till I stepped outside again, gulping fresh, non-death tainted air and shaking the house's tension out my shoulders.

Isla was sitting on the porch steps, lazily hosing the blood off the pavement, elbows propped up on her knees.

Walk to the river wasn't terrible. And also was terrible. Cold as a Valkyrie's breath, in both atmosphere and mood, but close. Cabroni was heavy as I hefted his bag over my shoulder, Dmitri's dame's bones in a duffle draped over my back, slouching along Gray's Ferry Avenue until we came to entrance path to the Crescent Park Trail. Just under the overpass and beyond the makeshift skatepark, the trail curved into a wooded park along the Schuylkill River.

Isla kept her distance from me, laden with her own bag of trinkets. I couldn't feel her warmth and hate how much I found myself longing for it. For any touch from her.

We paused on the banks of the Schuylkill. Right in the walking trail. It was not a typical spot for clandestine meetings between Otherworldly creatures (we preferred back alleys, speakeasies, under bridges, and abandoned buildings; someplace, always, in the shadows). Normally, in daylight, this spot was supposed to be filled with runners and cyclists and dog walkers. Just going about their average day. Dragging their pets along for the ride. Even if the little chihuahuas and labradoodles didn't want to slip their paws on the ice. Masters gave them no choice.

As we approached the river banks, I blurted: "I'm not your test subject."

"Oh, I don't know," she forced a chuckle. "That could be kinky."

"Kinky? This isn't kinky, this is torture!"

Isla dropped her bag of stuff on to the ground with a harsh clank. "You are being such a hypocrite right now. Least I didn't melt your brain on purpose."

"That was different. It was work. A necessary evil." A part of my nature I fought constantly to suppress. "It doesn't hurt."

"That first bite sure hurt!"

"Unlike your little hobby, it doesn't have to hurt."

"My hobby?" Isla spread her palms, gesturing to our heaps of incriminating trash bags, her eye twitching. "Welcome to a night in my office."

"Ah, is that why you lead me to this spot? You've dumped your offcuts here before?"

"Mine? Buddy, you, brought us here!"

Had I? No, surely it was Isla who'd suggested the Schuylkill. Not that I wasn't familiar with its reputation as a dumping ground. Had we even discussed it at all, before our feet took us here?

I grabbed the bag containing Cabroni's body and heaved.

"Tell me, darling, at what point the necromancer decided to make it her job to keep a pet vampire?" I gave the bag one last slap before heaving the dead mutt into the river. He sunk with a heavy splash. The lights of West Philadelphia, of the cluster of hospitals on the opposite banks, seemed to wink at me from across the water. "A stupid little toy to prance me around and do your bidding? Find your little mistake and help you cover it up, maybe satisfy your undead fetish in between?"

Isla's lip curled. It wasn't a sneer. Or a snarl. Or smirk. I couldn't read it. "Tell me how you really feel about me why don't you?"

Her magic infected my tongue.

"I feel like I'm falling in love with you-stop doing that!"

Slapped a hand over my own mouth. Best I could do, without the option of plucking the words from the air and shoving them back down my throat. The fangs was that? Why did I-did I even? Was that me? I admit everything in my brain felt foggy and thick and confusing at that moment. But did I really feel like that? Or was it her powers?

Isla's pulse, already so prevalent in my ears and nerves and very core, redoubled.

"Oh... " she took a step back.

This was crazy. We'd know each other for barely more than a week. I was acting crazy. A regular lovesick loony.

Dmitri's decrepit leer flashed in my mind.

That's it. I was done. Whatever tether of affection that had been grounding me to her snapped. I was a fool (and she was so, so stunning in the moonlight, wasn't she?). Isla never cared for me (even though she asked how I felt all the time). She was a liar (and smart and almost admirably cunning). She betrayed me (she was so fanging clever and funny). Didn't matter how much fun it was to keep her around when she couldn't be trusted.

"And I wish that I wasn't," I ground out. Tearing the words from my throat was like ripping off duct tape off your mouth. It was sharp, stung something awful, and had to be done quick. "Wish I'd never met you so I wouldn't have to feel your infectious curse poisoning me into thinking I love you-"

Isla slapped me. It stung. Her long nails caught my cheek. The tiny scrapes healed instantly.

"There," she sniffled, rubbing her hand over her nose to hide it. Her eyes watered. Dark eyes big and round and wet and yearning. "Another notch for your hit the face at work post."

Shame, thick and oily, curled in my gut. I deserved that smack. That wasn't me, saying all that hooey. Wasn't right. She made me say that. Somehow. With her curse. Possessed my tongue to speak utter fanging nonsense.

I opened my mouth. To take it all back. To shout: psych, got you. Being with you is the most fun I'd had in ages. You challenge me like no one ever has. Please don't go I'm so confused I don't what I'm feeling right now. But no sound came.

"Do whatever you need to do with the bones and the books," she said, hoisting her bag of stuff over her shoulder. "But leave my name out of it. That's a command, Greggy. I don't care how you explain it, but you don't breathe a word of me to anyone when you do."

"You don't trust me with your secret?"

"Think I trust you about as much as you trust me right now, bucko. I'll call when I've got your money. You can have Phoebe answer it, or whatever. But you already know I don't want to go back to prison, so whether you trust me or not, tonight stays between us. I'm no narc."

Wait, I wanted to say. Don't go. Be careful. Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.

"Have a nice afterlife, Madame," I grumbled.

"You too. Prick."