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“Man, high school must be awesome.” I found myself wishing I could be part of normal drama for once. Paranormal drama didn’t have nearly as much kissing.
“You need to check in with Raquel,” Alisha prodded, her eyes still smiling.
“Fine, fine.” I adored Lish. She was my best friend. Once you got past the weirdness of her robo-voice, she had a great sense of humor for a paranormal. Of course, unlike most of them, she was grateful to be here. Her lagoon had become so polluted it was killing her. Now not only was she safe, but she had something to do. Apparently being a mermaid is dead dull. I watched The Little Mermaid with her once a few years ago—she thought it was freaking hilarious. She couldn’t stop laughing about the shell-bra thing, given that mermaids aren’t mammals. Plus, as she put it, Prince Eric was far too hairy and “peach colored” for her taste. I always thought he was pretty hot, but then again, I am a mammal.
Leaving my unit, I walked down the cold, sterile halls to Raquel’s office. We could have just done follow-up over the vid screens, but she always wants to see me in person after a job to make sure I’m okay. I kind of liked that.
I knocked once and the door slid open. The room was white—white walls, white floor, white furniture. Can you say boring? Raquel was a nice contrast. Her eyes were so brown they were nearly black, and her dark hair, pulled into a severe bun, was streaked with just enough gray to be distinguished without looking old. I sat, and she looked up from a stack of papers on her desk.
“You’re late.” Her voice had a slight Spanish accent that I loved.
“Actually, I’m early. I said I’d need four hours; it only took me two.”
“Yes, but you got back almost an hour ago.”
“I figured I’d take a little personal time as a reward for a job well done.”
Raquel sighed. She was a professional sigher—the woman conveyed more emotions with a single exhalation than most people do with their entire faces. “You know how important follow-up is.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry. My show was on.” One of her eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “You want a recap, too?” Most of the paranormals didn’t care about my shows, but Raquel was human. She’d never admit it, but I was sure—sure—that she liked television dramas as much as I did.
“No. I want you to debrief.”
“Fine. Walked through the cemetery. Froze my butt off. Saw the vampire. Vampire tried to attack me. Tased the vampire. Tagged the vampire. Read the vampire his rights. Sent the vampire along. His name was Steve, by the way.”
“Any trouble?”
“Nope. Oh, wait, yes. How many times have I asked to stop working with Reth? Do we need to go for an even hundred?”
“He was the only available faerie transport. And if we hadn’t sent him, you would have missed your show.” A small smile played at her lips.
“Fine, whatever.” She had a point, after all. “Just, could you send one of the girls next time?”
She nodded. “Thank you for reporting. You may return to your room.” She turned her attention back to the papers. I started to leave, then paused. She looked up. “Is there something else?”
I hesitated. But what did I have to lose? It’d been a couple of years. Might as well ask again. “I was wondering, you know, about maybe—I’d like to go to school. Normal school.”
Raquel sighed again. This was more of a sympathetic, I know what it’s like to be a human wrapped up in all this nonsense, but if we didn’t do it, who would? kind of a sigh. “Evie, honey, you know you can’t do that.”
“Why? It wouldn’t be too hard. You could just send for me whenever you need me. It’s not like I have to be here 24/7.” Truth was, here was kind of nowhere. The whole Center was underground. Not much of an issue when you have access to the Faerie Paths. It did, however, lend itself well to the occasional overwhelming bout of claustrophobia.
Raquel sat back in her chair. “It’s not about that. Do you remember what it was like before you came here?”
This time I was the one who sighed. I remembered. I had been bounced through the foster care system my whole life, until that fateful day when I was eight. I’d gotten tired of waiting for my newest foster mom to take me to the library, so I decided to go by myself. I was cutting through a cemetery when a nice-looking man approached me. He asked if I needed help, and it was like he was two people at once—the nice-looking man and a withered corpse, both there in the same place, the same body. I screamed bloody murder. Lucky for me, APCA (the American Paranormal Containment Agency) had been tracking him and stepped in before he could do anything. When I started babbling about what he looked like, they took me in.
Turns out my ability to see through paranormals’ glamours to what they are underneath is unique. As in, no other human on Earth can do what I do. That’s where things got really complicated. When other countries got wind of what the APCA had, they freaked out. The UK especially—you wouldn’t believe the level of paranormal activity they deal with there. They hammered out a new treaty, forming IPCA (the International Paranormal Containment Agency), the key items in the treaty being international paranormal control cooperation and, oh yeah, yours truly.
So I had to admit Raquel was probably right. My life of containment sometimes sucked, but at least I had a home. One where I was wanted.
I shrugged, pretending I didn’t care about school anyway. “Yeah, cool, whatever. I’ll talk to you later.”
I felt her eyes on me as I walked out. It’s not that I’m not grateful to IPCA. I am. They’re the only family I have, and things are better here than they had been in the foster system. But I’ve been working full-time since I was eight, and sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I get bored. And sometimes all I want, more than anything else in the world, is to go on a freaking date.
I went back to my unit. I had a pretty nice setup. A small kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and the main room with my awesome TV. The white walls in my bedroom had long since been covered. One was dedicated to posters of bands and movies I liked. Another was draped with an awesome hot pink and black leopard-spotted curtain. A third wall was my canvas. I wouldn’t call myself an artist, but I had fun painting whatever came to mind—sometimes nothing more than just splashes of color—and changing it when I got bored. The paint was probably two inches thicker now than when I moved in.
I pulled on my favorite pair of pajamas and undid my thick braid. Somehow microwaving dinner and watching a movie won out over doing homework. I must have drifted off to sleep at some point, or maybe I was half asleep, I don’t know. But I’m sure I was dreaming, because I kept hearing a strange voice, almost singing. “Eyes like streams of melting snow, cold with the things she does not know.” Over and over again, that line, in the most haunting way. It was as if the voice was pulling me, calling to me. I wanted to answer. Just as I was ready to call out, another alarm jarred me awake.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and reached over to check my vid screen for an announcement of what was going on. I pulled the screen up, but all it showed was a flashing red WARNING. Lots of help there. I pulled on my robe, grabbed Tasey, and poked my head outside. I knew alarm procedure called for me to stay in, but I wanted to figure out what was going on, and now.
I ran down the empty hallways; strobe lights were going off to warn any paranormals that couldn’t hear the alarm, although you could feel the dang thing it was so loud. Reaching Raquel’s door, I palmed it. That’s the nice thing about being me—all access, all the time. I ducked inside; she was at her desk, calmly rifling through some folders.
“Raquel,” I panted. “What’s up?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” She looked up at me and smiled. Or rather, the thing wearing Raquel’s face looked up at me and smiled. Raquel’s face shimmered over—What? I couldn’t describe it. It was somehow featureless, with eyes the color of water. If it hadn’t been wearing Raquel’s face, it would be like it wasn’t there at all.
I forced a smile to mask my terror. “Woke me up from the freakiest dream.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got some work to do. Why don’t you scoot along?” It went back to the files.
“Sure, as long as you don’t need me.” Turning toward the door, I casually walked closer to the desk. “Oh, Raquel?”
“Hmm?”
I flicked Tasey onto her highest level. “You dropped this.” The thing wearing Raquel’s face looked up as I lunged forward and jabbed it in the chest with the Taser. Its water eyes opened briefly in shock before it collapsed to the ground.
Horrified, I made my way around the desk. I had heard of things that could eat a person alive and wear her skin. The idea gave even me nightmares sometimes, and my life was populated by nightmares. “Please, not Raquel,” I whispered, trying not to throw up. Raquel melted away, leaving the strangest thing I had ever seen. Which, given my job, is saying a lot.
NOT–ME AND I (#ulink_f30caea9-1da2-500e-bd92-5d63663770c9)
My eyes couldn’t seem to focus on the creature. They kept slipping down its sides, unable to find anything to hold on to. It wasn’t invisible, exactly, but it was as close as a physical being can be. Imagine trying to walk up an eighty-degree incline covered in six inches of ice. That’s what trying to look at this guy was like.
I was pretty sure it was a guy, at least. He kinda wasn’t wearing any clothes, and I was grateful that he’d collapsed in such a way as to cover himself. I was at a loss for what to do next when the door slid open and the real Raquel rushed in, followed by two security guards.
“He didn’t eat you!” I threw my arms around her, on the verge of tears.
The guards rushed by us, and Raquel patted me stiffly on the back. “No, she didn’t eat me. She just punched me very hard in the face.”
“It’s a guy,” I said.
“What is it?” she asked. We walked over to look at him. The guards stared down, perplexed. One scratched his head. Big guy, a hulking French werewolf named Jacques. Werewolves are a bit subtler to see than vampires. If the moon isn’t full, the only thing that gives them away to me is their eyes. Whatever color they seem to be to other people, I can always see the yellow wolf eyes underneath. Most werewolves are pretty decent people. And, since they’re extra strong all the time, we take a lot of them on as security. Of course, during full moons they’re on complete lockdown.
Jacques shrugged. “I have never seen anything like it.” He, too, was struggling to focus on the inert form.
The other guard, a normal human, shook his head.
“How did he get in?” I asked Raquel.
“She—he—it was wearing Denise.”
“Denise from zombie duty?” Denise was a werewolf whose main job was zombie cleanup. I never went on zombie missions—no glamours, so anyone could do it. Plus they weren’t ever hard to pinpoint, although agents had a heck of a time covering it up with the terrified locals. Just another service of IPCA: keeping the world blissfully unaware that most of the supernatural beings of myth are, in fact, real.
“Yes. It—it as Denise—called for a pickup. The zombie was a false alarm. I saw them as they came out of the faerie door. Denise turned and knocked Fehl, the faerie, back through. I pushed my panic button and went to confront her when she punched me and grabbed my communicator.”
“How did he know where your office was?”
“She—he—ran into Jacques and pretended to be dizzy, asked for help getting here.”
Jacques shuffled his feet, embarrassed. “How should we neuter it?”
He wasn’t talking about literally neutering it. Yuck. “Neuter” is just our little term for rendering a paranormal harmless. Werewolves get tracking bracelets with massive amounts of sedatives set automatically for the full moons. Vamps get the holy water bracelets. Faeries are easy once you know their true names, since they have to obey whatever you tell them to do when you use it at the start of your command. Well, easyish, since they always seem to find little ways to work around their strict boundaries. Never underestimate faerie ingenuity for deliberately misinterpreting commands.
Raquel frowned. “I don’t know. Just use the standard volt/sedative combo. When we know more about what it is, we’ll find something with more finesse.”
Jacques pulled out an ankle tracker. He looked hesitant to touch the thing and shook his head. “I can barely see it. Where is the leg?”
Raquel and the two guards frowned as their vision slid around the figure on the floor. I sighed. “I can see his leg. I’ll do it.” I held out my hand and Jacques, relieved, gave me the tracker. Kneeling down, I paused, nervous. Would my hands go right through him, like plunging into cold water? But he had to be corporeal, otherwise Tasey wouldn’t have worked. Suppressing a shudder, I put my hand on his ankle.
He was solid. His skin was warm and as smooth as glass—but no glass had ever been this soft. “Weird,” I muttered, activating the ankle tracker with my finger, then fastening it. It took the self-adjust mechanism several tries before it sealed around his ankle. He twitched as the sensors jabbed in but didn’t wake up.
I stood, still feeling his warmth on my hand. “Well, that’s that. And I’m not carrying him to Containment, if that’s what you were gonna ask next. You’ll be able to feel him even if you can’t see him. Besides, dude’s naked—I’m not touching him again.”
I held back a laugh at the looks on the guards’ faces. They reached out like they would get burned, grabbed Water Boy, and carried him out of the room.
“I’d better find out what happened to Denise. And Fehl, too.” Raquel gave her best why is it always me that has to deal with these things sigh (one I was well familiar with at this point), then patted me on the shoulder. “Good work, Evie. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t found it.”
“Just—keep me in the loop on this one, okay? He’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I want to know what’s up.”
She smiled, a tight, noncommittal smile that I knew meant not a chance, then picked her communicator up off the desk. I walked out, seriously bugged. IPCA had a tendency not to tell me much more than where they needed me to be and what I needed to do. Screw that. I skipped my room and headed straight for Containment. If she wasn’t going to keep me informed, I’d just have to inform myself. I palmed the door and walked into the long, brilliantly lit cell-lined corridor.
My gremlin buddy from before was snarling and jumping at the electric field just inside the six inches of Plexiglas that lined its cell. Each time it hit the field, it yelped and flew backward, only to start the whole thing over again. Gremlins? Not smart.
Jacques wasn’t too far down the hall. Wrapping my arms around myself, I hurried toward him. I was always cold in the Center, but Containment was downright frigid. Jacques stood there, a disturbed look on his face as he stared into a cell. I turned and my jaw dropped in surprise. There was Jacques again, leaning casually against the wall of his cell and staring out. When he saw me, his expression changed. Agitated, this Jacques moved as close to me as the electric field allowed.
Not Jacques. I walked right up to the glass as well, my eyes narrowed in concentration. There it was—behind Jacques’s square face.
“It woke up right after I sealed the cell and has been doing that ever since,” Jacques whispered, standing next to me.
“Please,” Not-Jacques said, his voice identical. “That monster overpowered me and threw me in here! Let me out so I can help you!”
“Oh, sure,” I said, pleasantly, “because I’m stupid.”
The pleading look on Not-Jacques’s face fell, replaced by an enigmatic smile. He shrugged, putting his hands in his pants pockets.
“How do you do the clothes?” I was genuinely curious. No other glamours I’d seen were anything more than a second skin. Only a few species (like faeries) could put them on and take them off at will, but none could change what the actual glamour looked like.
“How did you know?” His transparent eyes stared intensely at me behind the image of Jacques’s.
Most of the paranormals have no idea what I can do. I like to keep it that way. “Raquel would never say ‘scoot.’”
Not-Jacques shook his head. He leaned even closer; I examined his face, trying to find his real features. The only things I had an easy time focusing on were his eyes. He stood up straight, shocked. I’ll give him this: He managed to make Jacques’s face more expressive than Jacques ever did.
“You can see me,” he whispered.
“Um, duh? You’re right in front of me. Wearing Jacques. Looks better on you than Raquel did.”
He smiled again. Then his skin rippled like water disturbed by the wind, and Jacques melted away. Now nearly imperceptible except for the ankle bracelet, he walked to the other side of the cell and, without warning, dropped flat to the ground.
I found his eyes staring right at me and realized too late that he was testing me, seeing if I could follow his movement when he was in invisimode. Color bloomed from his features and in a sudden shift of light I was looking at myself—myself exactly, right down to the bright pink fuzzy robe. “You can see me,” my voice, tinged with wonder, said from his mouth.
“Evie!” Raquel was booking it toward us in her sensible (read: ugly) black pumps, a frown etching a deep line between her eyebrows. Busted. “You should not be here.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m there, too.” I pointed at the cell. Raquel stopped short, surprise erasing her frown lines as she stared at Not-Me behind the glass.
“Remarkable,” she whispered.
“Lame.” Not-Me yawned and reached up to play with his—my—platinum hair.
“What are you?” Raquel was suddenly all business.
Not-Me gave her an impish grin. Watching myself do all this was really odd. I was getting angles of my face that I had never seen before—way different from looking in a mirror. Not-Me glanced at me again, then shook my—err, his?—head. “I can’t quite get your eye color.” He stood and walked right up to the field, staring at my face. I couldn’t help but check myself out. I was pretty. Too skinny, but I’d always been something of a beanpole. And, dang, really flat.
This was freaking me out. I frowned. “Take it off.”
He just stared at me with my face. I was focused on his real eyes when I realized that he was sorting through colors. “Not quite right,” he muttered. “Too silver. Now too dark. They’re so pale.”
It was true. My eyes were such a light gray they barely had any pigment at all.
“What color?” Not-Me mused. His eyes were flickering now, shifting colors like he was on fast-forward. “A cloud with the slightest hint of rain.”
“Streams of melting snow,” I answered without thinking.
He shot straight up and backed into the corner of his cell. I watched an expression of fear and mistrust spread across my features. “Yes, that’s it,” Not-Me whispered.
LEND ME YOUR EARS … AMONG OTHER THINGS (#ulink_601d9933-f1d7-59f3-a689-668b9539a745)
Where’s Denise?” Raquel demanded, glaring at Water Boy in his cell.
I breathed a sigh of relief as my face melted from his, replaced by Denise’s. “Right where I left her,” Not-Denise said. He kept glancing over at me.
“And where was that?”
“In the cemetery. You should be able to find her.”
“Find Denise or find her body?” Raquel’s voice was hard.
Not-Denise rolled his eyes. “She’ll have a headache. Honestly, it’s like you think I’m some sort of a monster.”His mouth twisted in an ironic smile.
“What are you?”
