Paranormalcy

“Yup. Pretty freaky when you’re standing there talking to yourself.”

A small, wheezing laugh sounded. I looked over and noticed one of the office vamps standing close by, listening. “Something funny, Dalv?” I glared at him.

He glared back. “It’s Vlad and you know it.”

“You and half the other vamps out there.” Vlad—or Dalv, as I liked to call him just to piss him off—was one of my least favorite parts of the Center. After neutering, IPCA always set the paranormals up with some mandatory job. Werewolves had the most job flexibility, depending on what they were before. Vamps usually worked in the satellite buildings or did cover-up for sightings using their persuasion skills. Vlad was pretty useless though. I guess I can’t blame him for feeling bitter. Going from being the terror of Bulgarian nights to a janitor would kinda suck. And, since I was the one who had done the bag-and-tag, he especially hated me.

He shrugged as he swept the already spotless floor. His glamour was less flashy than most; he looked like a forty-year-old man, not handsome, not ugly, just thin and slightly balding. Underneath all vamps looked the same. Ugh. “He could be a doppelgänger,” he said, a sneer of a smile creeping onto his face.

“What’s a doppelgänger?” I immediately regretted asking as his smile spread.

“Good news for the rest of us, if he took your form.” Giving another wheezy laugh, he walked out.

I turned to Lish; she was already looking it up on one of her screens. Her eyes narrowed. “What?” The look on her face was making me nervous. “What’s a doppelgänger?”

“Doppelgängers appear to people as harbingers of—” she paused “—death. The tale was that if you saw yourself, it meant you were going to die. They were also bad spirits who would take your form and destroy your life, again leading to your death.”

I frowned. Not cool. “Wait, spirits?” She nodded. “Nope, dude’s corporeal.” I had dealt with a few ghosts and poltergeists in my time. The great thing about them is they can’t touch you. Their only power is fear. And there’s a whole lot you can do with fear—make people see, hear, and even feel things that aren’t there—but if you know that going in, it’s a lot easier to see past it. “Besides, if I’m going to die, Raquel, Denise, and Jacques are all going with me.”

She blinked thoughtfully. “And why would a doppelgänger want to look through Raquel’s files?”

“Exactly. Plus, he’s only seventeen.”

Lish tilted her head. “He is not an immortal?”

“Nope. Oh, whoops, probably should have told Raquel that.” I frowned. I’d tell her when she decided to include me. “Listen, don’t say anything, okay? I want in on this one, and info’s the only leverage I have.”

Lish closed one of her transparent eyelids at me in her best imitation of a wink. “They are not giving me research clearance anyway. I have no reason to tell.”

“You’re the best, my fine fishy friend.”

Lish’s eyes smiled at me. Different as we were, we were both exactly what the other needed—a friend. As was my custom, started when I first met Lish as a ten-year-old, I smashed my face against the glass and blew my cheeks out at her.

DEAD MEAT IN ANY LANGUAGE (#ulink_c9f5d353-2a77-5b3a-a461-7ed8b410299c)

I had finally fallen asleep later that morning when the alarm went off. I jumped out of bed, confused, thinking there was yet another break-in or emergency. Then I realized it wasn’t the Center’s alarms, it was my personal alarm. The alarm that meant my tutor, Charlotte, would be here in exactly ten minutes.

“Oh, bleep.” I hadn’t done any of my homework.

The last few years I’d tried to convince Raquel that I really didn’t need to study math, English, science, world history, and four—yes, four—foreign languages. It wasn’t like I was going to go to college or anything. Sure, I wanted to attend real high school, but that had more to do with being around actual teenagers than learning stuff. Besides, I doubted IPCA cared whether or not I had my GED. As long as I could keep seeing through glamours, I had a job for life. But every time I brought it up, Raquel looked at me with those almost-black eyes and heaved her patented I know you think it’s not important to know these things but one day you’ll appreciate that I’ve made you into a well-rounded adult sigh.

I pulled out my Spanish book, pretty sure that’s what I had this morning. Hastily filling in my irregular verb chart for morir, I wrote out example sentences. Tú eres muerta carne. Scratched that—adjective after the noun. Tú eres carne muerta. Oh, who was I kidding, I wasn’t even using morir in the verb form anyway. Yo soy carne muerta. Translation: I am dead meat.

Right on time my unit door beeped and I let Charlotte in. She was a pretty woman, looked to be in her late twenties. A couple inches shorter than me with shiny brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail and these adorable rectangular glasses over her blue eyes, which were over her bright yellow wolf eyes.

Charlotte always smiled so sweetly. Teaching had been her life’s passion until she was infected. After she realized what she was and what she had done—attacked a family member—she tried to kill herself. Fortunately we found her before she could figure out the few things that can bring down a werewolf. I could never tell if it was my lack of motivation as a student or her pain and regret about the past that made her look sad even when she was smiling.

We sat down on the couch and pulled up a table. She glanced over my worksheet and suppressed a smile. “You are dead meat?”

I gave my best don’t get mad, aren’t I cute? grin and shrugged.

“That’s an American expression—the meaning doesn’t translate. And you didn’t finish your verb charts or the short story you were assigned.” She looked up at me with those sad, sad eyes. Those eyes killed me.

“I’m sorry.” I hung my head. “Yesterday was crazy. First I had a vamp job, and then there was the break-in, and then Reth paid me a late-night visit, and then I couldn’t sleep.”

“It sounds like you had a rough day. But you’ve had this assignment for a week. Perhaps next time if you didn’t leave it to the night before?”

“Hey, now, let’s not start talking crazy, Char.” That, at least, got me a less-sad smile.

We spent the rest of the morning conjugating (a word that sounds dirty but is, in fact, boring) and conversing in good old español. She stayed and ate lunch with me, and then it was time for my afternoon training session.

Bud, my self-defense and combat skills teacher, was still trying to get me to learn knife fighting. “Silver knives! Painful and sometimes deadly to nearly all paranormals!”

“Tasey!” I countered. “Hot pink and sparkly!”

“You can’t always count on technology.” Bud was human, but you’d think he’d grown up in the Middle Ages. In case you were wondering if he was cute, well, maybe thirty years ago. Now, not so much. “And, since we’ve had this argument before, I made you something.”

I perked up. “A present?”

He nodded, an annoyed look on his face. Pulling out a cloth-wrapped bundle, he revealed a slender dagger with a bright pink, pearlescent handle. “No way!” I yelled, taking it from him.

“I can’t believe I made a pink knife.”

“It’s so cute! I love it. Finally, a companion worthy of Tasey.” I gave him a quick hug. Hugs always freaked poor Bud out, but he was relieved I’d finally agreed to take a knife. “Oh, gosh, what should I name her?”

“Whatever it is, please don’t tell me. Just keep it sheathed and on your belt.”

I took the sheath—which was black. “Can you make me one in brown, too? And pink?” You’d think Bud was a werewolf by the way he growled as he shooed me out of the training room.

The rest of my afternoon free, I banked on the hope that Raquel would be in meetings. She was pretty high up in IPCA. I used to think she was only assigned to me, but it turned out she ran the entire Center and was in charge of all bag-and-tag missions. I guess I was just her favorite. That, or the most useful.

I had been thinking about Lend on and off all day. He was the most interesting person/thing in here right now, so I went to Containment. I stopped in front of Lend’s cell, then did a double take. He wasn’t there. And not in an almost-invisible way, in an actually-not-in-the-cell-anymore way. Not cool.

Jacques was at the very end of the long corridor. “Jacques!”

He walked down. “You are not supposed to be here, Evie.”

“Yeah, yeah. Where’s Lend?” What if they had let him go? Not likely, once I thought about it. He’d broken into the Center. I couldn’t remember that happening—ever. But what if he was in more trouble than I thought, and they were hurting him? That idea bothered me. Then the rational part of me wondered if maybe he was dangerous and they’d taken him to a higher-risk placement area.

Jacques shrugged. “Raquel wanted him moved.”

“Why?”

“We are not equipped for long-term holding here. No beds, no bathrooms.”

“Oh.” Made sense. “Where is he?”

The werewolf shook his head. “Sorry. You are not cleared to know.” Today his normally cute French accent was seriously bugging me.