Isla,  ̶M̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶A̶m̶e̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶Spilling Coffee

I thumbed the back of Lily's hand. Which, seeing as how she was a ghostly spirit invisible to (most) mortal eyes, must've looked heckin' weird. Luckily for me the café hadn't quite hit its morning rush. Mason was distracted enough prepping for said impending rush he didn't bat an eye at me sitting at a table in the corner, seemingly talking to my sad self.

Took some coaxing to seat the ghost at the table with me. Poor thing acted on repeat. A broken record stuck in a loop, performing on fractured muscle memories alone. Those ghost hunting pervs on TV call it residual. Usually, I find it insurmountably irritating. But seeing Lily like this was just sad.

And irritating.

Her quivering breath twanged like a ringing bell in the back of my head.

"We're close," she kept whispering, rocking back and forth in her chair. "We're close. We're close."

But, it seemed, with my touch anchoring the thin fragments of her mind in the moment, Lily's ghost bordered on coherent.

"Slow down," I whispered, throwing a nervous glance over my shoulder. Mason, of course, remained occupied, but a customer could pop in at any moment. I sipped my coffee, burning my tongue. "Lily, stay calm, okay. It's me, Madame Margarita. H-how did you get here?"

She was upright and walking and talking only days ago. Crap, did the Magistrate catch up to her after all? Nah, they wouldn't be so kind as to just kill her again. That burying her in cement line was legit. They've done it before.

My voice seemed to startle her. Lily blinked. Her cloudy gaze cleared a moment, letting a spot of light bleed through. She squeezed my hand back. "I want the, um, Palm Reader's Bargain?"

Something akin to a rusty fishhook snagged in my stomach. The over enthusiastic fisherman on the other end pulled and tugged and ripped my guts out and up through my esophagus.

"Lily, you came to my parlor already. We... we did this. I—well technically it was the Divination Deal you wanted, ah, nuance. It worked. The ritual worked." Didn't work well, but it worked. "We summoned your ghost. It wasn't Cary Grant," I forced a little puff of laughter. She didn't seem to notice. "Do you remember any of that?"

"I just need to talk to someone," cold hand iron tight on mine, Lily leaned in close, whispering conspiratorially. "Who's passed."

"Yeah, Lil, uh," I sucked in a breath. "We did that. We contacted Dmitri's ex—"

Lily gasped. "¡Por Dios! How do you—how did you know about Dmitri?"

Big yikes. We've got a selective memory spooky over here.

Took another swig of my coffee, absolutely melting the back of my throat and stalling for time. Okay Madame. Better sell this performance.

I gave Lily an entirely phoned-in wink and with a clumsy imitation of a child's birthday party magician's flourish, I produced the crusty fingerbone from the sleeve of my robe.

Lily clutched the imaginary pearls at her chest.

"Living, dead, and," with my free hand and open palm I gestured at the ghost of the barista sat across from me, "stuck between, Madame Margarita sees all beyond the veil, honey. Including whose finger you stole from their tomb, and your connection to this restless spirit you long to know."

Lily bit deep into her thumb nail. Of course, no blood or bruising or even a shredded hangnail followed. But for moment, she seemed to flicker in and out of existence. Despite cloud quickly gathering in the gray sky, early morning sun shone through her transparent forehead, haloing in her in a yellow glow.

"Y-yes, please, tell me! Madame! ¡Por favor! Tell me, the spirit—"

I squeezed her hand. "Hey, hey, it's okay, stay calm. We summoned the ghost of the Dmitri's wife, of Rosemond. Listen Maddy Margs may know all beyond the veil, but, uh, only what the stars permit me to know on this mortal plain so... help me fill in the blanks here. How did you get back here?"

"I—I—I," Lily's eyes went glassy as her form faded at the edges, dissolving and blurring as she shifted in her seat. I pulled on her cold hand. She seemed to solidify, again drawing her fidgety eyes back up to mine. "I just needed the money. Just to get away. I didn't think I'd hurt Dmitri, he's so, powerful, but he believed me when I said I was her and he—he cherished me for..." she sniffled. "That felt nice. To be wanted like that. Wanted for real."

Lily's vice was soft and shaky. She barely spoke above a hushed whisper. Nothing like the enraged woman a few nights ago, screaming as she tried to beat the pus out of me with a cursed grimoire (have I mentioned my ass still hurts from falling over?). This version of Lily though, this reminded me of the girl who came into my parlor.

A scared Tourist desperate for a phony psychic's help.

"Did Kyle cherish you like that too?" I said, "or was it his idea, to take money?"

Lily stared at the table. Quiet. Just breathing and dripping. Wound spilling out into the ether. Blood never staining the checkerboard floor. Eventually, her lip warbled, and she nodded.

"We're leaving. Together," a small smile twitched in the corners of her mouth. "To the ocean. An island. Somewhere where nobody knows us. Where we won't be trapped anymore." She half sobbed; half giggled. "We're going to learn how to surf. He'll get me the pink board. He promised."

Oh. Oh, this poor, dumb girl. She loves him. Kyle's an unhygienic, inarticulate, roid-raging, slobbering meathead of a werewolf working the Otherworldly mafia's equivalent of a dead-end job he earned through pure nepotism. He's an asshole. Was.

And yet, Lily loves him. Red flags waving frantically in front of her own bruised face thoroughly ignored. He turned on her. Held her hostage. Abused her. After Greg shot him – shy and sweet and dorky, Greg – she seemed relieved to finally see Kyle dead. Heck, I sure was.

But her confused ghost still loves him.

Love was pathetic.

I didn't want it.

Nor did I want to see Greg's lopsided grin, fangs poking out over his lips, every time I closed my eyes so...

I adjusted in my seat, folding the anklet on my heel up and under my opposite thigh. The pits of my silk robe were damp. Oh well, no use awkward sweating over Lily's truly heinous taste in men forever. Better rip this Band-Aid off quick.

"No, babe. I'm sorry, but Kyle is never going to leave his wife for you."

Her head popped up. "He will! He says he will! Soon as I break things off with Dmitri. We'll take our money and get away—"

She stopped. For moment, Lily's expression went as cloudy and gray as the worsening weather.

"Lily?"

"¡Por favor!" she gasped, brown and gray flickered in those wide eyes. "Tell me, Madame Margarita, the spirit—Am—Am I—are we the same?"

"No, no, hush, Lily. It's okay. You're yourself. Nobody else. Trust me. You are your own person."

I smiled. My anger at her peeled away like burnt skin. She wasn't pathetic. Or a hussy. She was mistreated. She was scared and naïve and had been taken advantage of by more than two creatures of the night. Present company included. Greg was right. My reviving Lily hadn't helped her. That was never my intent.

Unlike Greg, I was too selfish for such altruistic motivators.

I did not, however, have too big of a stick up my own hole to engage in empowering girl talk. Not like she'll remember this when I let her go anyway.

"Don't let anybody gaslight you into thinking you've got to be somebody else to be cherished, anymore, alright? You're a badass all on your own, you know that?" I said. "Balancing two jobs, two relationships, and studying dance? What kind of dance?"

Lily gave me a little shrug. "Ballet."

"You're going to be a heck of a prima ballerina. Don't give that up to go running off to some remote desert island for any guy!"

She chuckled a little. Just a tiny bit. The smallest glimmer of laughter.

"Girlfriend, any man who tells you to fuck into oblivion instead of following your dreams is a fuckwad. Steal from them to pay your tuition all you want, but don't listen to them. Boys are stupid."

"... he's going to leave with me. He is."

I sighed. "Lily, I'm sorry. So, truly, sorry, for what happened to you. Especially for my, ugh, ugly behavior the other night. You didn't deserve this. Any of it. I thought I was helping... but... I think I may have just made things worse for you."

A pressure that had been winding around my spine for days seemed to loosen. I reached up and wiped a tear from Lily's cheek with my sleeve. I meant it. She didn't deserve a unicorn's ass hair of any of this mess. Not what Dmitri put her through. Or Julian and Sloane. Or Kyle. Or me.

But sitting here crying about in an all-night café wasn't going to make it right.

"Please, Lily, can you tell me how," I gestured to her general ghostly form, "this happened. How'd you get back here since the other night? Who undid your spell?"

Ghost girl blinked, eyes watery. "I—I—he didn't mean it."

"Who?" He? Dmitri?

I held my breath.

"He didn't mean it. It's only a scratch. He was just mad," Lily's lip quivered. "So mad that I—I wanted to stop."

She looked down and gasped again, as if noticing the hole in her side for the first time. Blood pooled on her sweater. No puddle formed beneath her from the steady drip, but the stain shrank and expanded in an endless cycle on pink wool. The injury was as bloody and ragged as the night we met. Tentatively, Lily gave it a pat. Her hand peeled away drenched in ghostly blood. Strings of flesh and gore stuck to her palm and stretched out from the wound.

It suddenly seemed too absurdly large to be a bite wound. At least a bite from a human-ish mouth. Not even the creature Dmitri transformed into left that messy of a tear in Julian's flesh (no sense wasting so much blood). But Kyle's nails? Even at mid-month, those yellowed claws were dangerous.

Her gaze seemed to drift again. Grip on my hand becoming slack. I ground my teeth and curled my fists tightly through our interlocked fingers. "Stop what, Lily?"

The sob that escaped her was wet and broken.

"I didn't want to trick Dmitri anymore. I wanted it to be over! We had enough money to run. To getaway and start over. I just needed to know first. For sure," to my surprise, Lily's eyes brightened, and she pulsed her hand firmly around mine. "But Kyle didn't want me to ask you, Madame. ¡Por favor! Tell me, Madame Margarita, the spirit—Am—Am I—are we the same?"

Kyle Cabroni was an asshole. Yeah, not new information, obviously, if you'd been paying any attention this thus far. But the certainty that the, now dead, werewolf was Lily's murderer on top of everything else drove that rusty hook deeper into my gut. Lodged itself in my spine. Twisted and ached and screamed Kyle was a super asshole in the back of my skull.

But...

"Yeah, that's what happened before," I whispered, lowering my voice hastily as Mason greeted a customer. A small line was already forming at the ordering counter. A distracting line. It kept drawing Lily's attention and triggering my caffeine addiction. My coffee had faded to a much milder temperature on my next sip. "What happened, you know, after? Since I saw you at the Cabroni house."

The espresso machine whirred.

Lily, brows knitted together, shook her head. "No entiendo."

"Who killed you the second time," I hissed.

Not so low-key as I had intended though. My lonesome chattering earned several dirty looks from a handful of patrons waiting for their drinks by the pick-up counter.

Lily tried yanking her hand out of my mine. I held firm. Couldn't let her mind go wandering again.

"No. No," she said, eyes darting around the cafe. "I came here. I've been here. I've been trying to talk to you. The—the coffees! Nightly. Todas las noches, cada noche."

All the blood in my body, just for second, stopped flowing. Swear it.

Lily had made me a coffee tonight. Your girl already got me, I told Mason. But this wasn't by any means, the first night I'd been offered a free drink. There was a piping hot red eye waiting for me when Greg and I had returned to the café the other night (the last night we were together). When had it started? Sometime after I met Greg, yeah? Sometime after Lily kicked it in my apartment.

A nagging, annoyingly Greg like voice rattled my brain: She died upstairs, darling. Seems the gal's wayward spirit didn't wind up back in her bone bag after all. Been lingering in the building, in the café at which she worked, place she was so familiar with, so attached to, slinging you free coffees this whole time. Talk about a hellish afterlife.

No... that... I wasn't that rusty in my resurrection spells.

But, oh, mother of fucks. If Lily's ghost has been haunting this joint, keeping me good and caffeinated, for the last week, then who was steering her body?

Bet Greg could take one entirely correct guess.

The spirits that night had been restless. Rosemond, in particular, was causing a fuss. To put it mildly (my window was still broken, thanks). But maybe I had been distracted for, like, a second. I remember now. Took my hands off Lily's still warm chest only for a moment, and only because the ghoulies and ghosties from the other side of the veil had dragged me away. It was Grumpkin – such a good boy – who fought the invisible pests off me.

Was that enough time for Rosemond to make the swap? To slip in there as Lily's spirit faded away in a wail and with the aroma of burnt coffee beans?

And if my fuzzy memory and imaginary Greg's guess was correct, it meant a certain vampire's certainly murderous ex-wife was flaunting about town in a borrowed husk st—oh balls—stealing dark magic grimoires and trying to perform way out of her league necromancy spells... And for what?

My phone chimed in my pocket. Loud. Drawing the attention of a few corporate looking dudes and woman with a guitar strapped to her back. Made me jump too. I dug it out my robe – oh, yeah, guess my wardrobe wasn't exactly inconspicuous – and unlocked the screen.

Oh.

It was from Greg.

"Are you," Lily's voice was quieter. Distant. Fading. "For real?"

Clutched my phone. Oh troll nards. I'd let go of her hand.

Her form flickered.

"Lily! Wait!"

I lunged across the table. Snagged my robe on the chair. Knocked my drink over as I did. Hot coffee dribbled down my leg. Somewhere in the distance Mason swore at me. His other customers, normal people just trying to live, live, their normal lives judged me in cranky whispers.

But I was too late. Always, always, always a moment too late.

Lily vanished.

Poof! That's all folks. The ghost was gone. Or, at least, out of sight. She could just as easily rematerialize behind the counter, I supposed. Carry on with her normal routine. That broken record. Rinse. Repeat. Endlessly.

...yikes.

I sighed, let the coffee warm me, and checked Greg's message.

Oh.

My throat constricted. Like a pair of hands had groped around my neck and squeezed hard. I choked.

It wasn't a text, but a photo. Of him. Unconscious. No, not unconscious, dead. The pic only featured his bust, but he was slumped against a wall or furniture or some kind of blackish, brown backdrop, head lolled to one side, mouth hung open awkwardly, tongue hanging out. His skin was paler than usual. The light, brighter than I was used to seeing him in, made the scars on his neck really pop.

Crouched above him was none other than Lily fanging Perez. Wool sweater. Messy hair. Winking at the camera. She had one arm clearly extended to take the photo. Her other hand held a sharpened stake pressed against Greg's chest, forming a little divot in his shirt.

My hands shook as I called him back. This was a joke, right? A dumb prank? A fun ha ha look darling I figured it out before you did, petty, revenge text? Heckin' better be. Even if Greg didn't strike me as the petty type. But boy was I going to ream that bloodsucker's butt hole without so much as an ounce of butter so bad if this was his idea of a joke—

"Oh, good, you called," answered Lily's voice, a new, and bored, sounding English accent thick on her tongue. "This texting thing is such a nuisance."

Betsy Ross's pierced nipples.

"R-rosemond?"

"Mmm," she hummed. "Looky you, figured it out, bloody finally. You're not very bright."

My hands shook. "Where's Greg?"

"Napping. You've got, oh," she paused, still humming, "I don't know, perhaps a few hours before the weather stops and the sun hits him? Best get here quick."

"Here? What? What do you want?"

"You, you uneducated twat," she harrumphed, "Come to the house. Now. Ta-ta!"

Bitch hung up on me.

Oh. It's on.

Twat.