MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca Rose Vassy

  All rights reserved. With the exception of brief excerpts quoted in media reviews in print or online, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher.

  Published in the United States by DivaNations Story Studio, an imprint of DivaNations Productions.

  https://divanations.com

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  Printed in the United States

  Cover illustration: Zephyr Schott

  Cover design: Rebecca Proch

  Cover art photograph: Karen Fletcher

  Interior design: Rebecca Proch

  First Edition

  Trade paper ISBN: 9798708114136

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was after midnight and there was a strange woman in the living room with me. I was curled up on the window seat, reading a novel and listening to an Alabama 3 CD that had the irritating habit of skipping on my favorite track, when my attention wandered and my gaze drifted across the room and I saw her. She was simply there, sitting at the battered little gate leg table as if she’d been there all night, with too-black hair pinned in a messy way and a dress as faded as her face. I jumped and dropped my book.

  The eyes that watched me were bright and quick, and met mine without the slightest embarrassment for having materialized out of nowhere. “Mariposa Valdes. You really gotta go now.” Her hard-living voice was accented in that blue collar way that New Orleans unexpectedly shares with Brooklyn. “Right now.”

  “Go where?” Now that I wasn’t startled, I was getting annoyed.

  She shrugged. One chapped hand toyed with the clean ashtray, tracing its smooth glass edges. “You got a smoke?”

  “No.”

  A sigh, exasperated. “Some rum? Bourbon?”

  “Tell me why I need to go. Or where. Give me something, here.” The CD was skipping. I got up and pushed the track forward button.

  “It ain’t okay for you to be here no more,” she said. “Time to move on.” I waited for more, but she was looking off into space like she’d forgotten I was there, fingers tapping the ashtray in time with the music.

  I know enough to know when spirits are done with me. I threw up my hands and went into the kitchen, where I thought I remembered there was still half a bottle of spiced rum in one of the cabinets. I poured a couple of fingers into a jelly jar and went back to the living room. She was gone. From the speakers, Larry Love growled some spoken word in time to the beat.

  My stomach prickled. I went back to the window seat, where I’d opened the sash to the city smells and the cool humid night air, and pushed the window open farther. I climbed out onto the fire escape, where there was an old upended crate with some symbols and Voudon vèvès drawn on in Sharpie, and a cracked porcelain bowl and a struggling tobacco plant on it. I set the jelly jar beside them as an offering, thanking the spirit for her message. It was something my friend Daisy had taught me as a matter of basic ancestor etiquette when I’d told her about these occasional visits. The dead, it seems, miss their food and booze and appreciate a little gift when they help you out. I turned to look out down the alley and into the street. It was quiet, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease I had now. Other women know what I’m talking about--those moments when you think, Oh yeah, I’m a woman and I’m alone in a place where no one around knows who the hell I am.

  I went back inside and searched the kitchen cabinets again. Sure enough, there was a bottle of Florida water with a little left. It was a cheap cologne you could find in the “ethnic” section of most groceries, but also wildly popular with spirits, according to Daisy and her experiences with Voudon lwa. I sprinkled the gate leg table and chair, and then the little shrine on the fire escape. I felt better for a moment, but then the sense of urgency came back, pushing at me from the inside. I locked the window and went to the bedroom, put my long dark hair into a ponytail to get it out of my face, and started gathering my things.

  There wasn’t much. I’ve learned to travel light, to stick to warm places so I don’t need anything heavy. Still, I’d been here in this apartment for the better part of a month and in New Orleans for about two, since early March. It meant I had started to accumulate odds and ends of things--more than would fit in my pack. I thought about it for a minute, then pulled out the laundry sack that I never use for laundry since I wash everything in the bathroom sink, and started sorting out the things I didn’t really need. A jacket that’d be a little too heavy for summer, a few books, the scratched CD, a salvaged purse I thought was cute, a ukulele I’d been gifted that I hadn’t gotten around to learning to play. You know, stuff. It’s like wire hangers or coffee mugs--eventually you just have them, more than you can ever use, and you never remember how you acquired them.

  When I’d scoured the place and picked out my things from among what had already been there, I set my sack and backpack down in the living room and sat on the couch, looking at them and thinking about what to do next. The flurry of activity had burned off some of that feeling of dread and shaken me alert from the drowsy-warm state I’d been in while reading, and I felt a little ridiculous for panicking. It was one in the morning in one of the city’s sketchier parishes. Where did I think I was going to go?

  I let myself topple over onto the pillows wadded up against the armrest and closed my eyes. I’d been on my feet all evening washing dishes at a late-night spoon in exchange for some under-the-table cash and a doggie bag of other people’s leftovers. I was tired and my back was sore. It wasn’t that I doubted my unexpected visitor; when they go to the trouble to actually be visible rather than a dream flash or an oracle read in some bathroom graffiti, it’s a bad idea not to listen. It was just that there didn’t seem to be any reason not to heed her message a little later. Like after sunrise, and a good sound sleep.

  The phone rang, loud and harsh and less than a foot from my head.

  “Goddammit,” I said, and ignored it.

  The caller hung up one ring shy of the voicemail kicking in. I felt that prickle in my gut again. There were a few moments of silence in which the last vibrations of the ringing seemed to shimmer, and then it rang again. My stomach pulled in tight and I opened my eyes, waiting it out. Once again, it stopped just short of the voicemail.

  The third time it started to ring, foreboding and curiosity kicked my ass into gear and I picked up. I barely got out a hello before the voice came at me like a blast of hot wind out of a vent in summer. “Jesus fucking Christ, Mari, how many times do I have to call to get you to pick up?”

  “Three,” I said. “It’s dramatically sound.”

  “Funny,” snapped Amie.

  “It’s one in the morning,” I said by way of protest. “Ish.”

  “You need to get the hell out of the apartment.” She let it hang there in all its ominous glory.

  I was beginning to regret the cold fried pickles I’d eaten. I wrapped an arm around my middle and pulled my knees up. “Why, Amie? Why do I need to get out?”

  The pause wasn’t ominous, I realized after a moment. It was teeming with discomfort. “Because,” she said, in a much tinier voice. “Because, um, Nicky’s on his way back there. Like, now. I just read his status updates on his social media. And he’s pissed off ‘cause he got fired from his gig and shipped home on a red eye.”

  It’s worth mentioning that I had never in fact met Nicky, although I felt like I
knew him just from having been surrounded by his things for the past few weeks. Nicky, however, did not know me from Adam, except in a vague sense as a friend of a friend who was borrowing his digs while he was out of town. That was, at least, the According to Amie Story. I found myself thinking about Amie-real versus real-real and having a sudden drowning sensation. “Amie...does Nicky know I’m staying here?”

  “Kind of...not.”

  “But you are apartment-sitting for him.”

  “...no.”

  My mouth felt sticky. “Please tell me that he at least knows you.”

  “Of course!”

  “Why do you have keys to his place, Amie?”

  I could picture her struggling to come up with some tale that cast her in a blameless light, and then she gave up. “He forgot I had them when we broke up last fall. I just never gave them back. I was going to do something to get even with him, but I couldn’t think of anything, and then I just decided to be the bigger person and move on. But when you said you were looking for a place to crash, and I knew from his page that he was going to be on the road, I thought I could help you out, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything, like I’d just get you out long before he got back.”

  Oh my freakin’ gods. “Holy shit, woman, are you psychotic?”

  “I’m on meds!”

  Oh holy shit. Oh holy shit. I choked a little and then, what the hell. I asked the question. “Why, exactly, did you two break up...?”

  Again, the whitewashing silence; again, the surrender of truth in her voice. “He was a mean drunk,” she admitted. “We were fighting all the time. I kind of got scared of him.”

  “There is one way I’m forgiving you for this,” I said, trying to take deep even breaths. “I’m going around the corner to the bus stop as soon as I get out of here. You’re going to get in your piece of shit car and pick me up in exactly one half hour, got that? I’m going to crash on your couch and get some sleep, and then you’re going to make me breakfast and help me figure out what to do next. One half hour, you got it?”

  She got about three mewling syllables into a protest and then heaved a put-upon, resigned sigh. “Fine. Half hour. I’ll be there. Just, get out of there fast, okay? His plane’s already landed.”

  I might have called her a twatburger before I slammed the receiver down; I like to think I did. But those few minutes were a blackout drunk of sheer panic as I pinballed around the place trying to remember how it’d been when I got there. Flip the pillows, smooth the sheets, pull up the covers. Put the dry dishes away. In the back of my mind, the mysterious figure of Nicky got bigger and uglier and ever more like a fairy-tale troll who would show up with a hobo bindle, a spiked club, and an anger-fueled appetite for the flesh of thirtysomething vagabonds who had made poor life choices. And because I didn’t feel crappy enough, I ran through the mental litany of all the ways my life used to be normal and stable and responsible before the accident.

  In record time, I’d finished shutting everything off and had crept out into the hall with my pack strapped to my back, carrying my laundry sack, paranoid now that one of the neighbors would come out and see me and think I was a burglar. I started down the narrow steps.

  And heard the faint sound of the building’s front door opening and closing.

  It might not be Nicky, but then, who else would it be? I scurried back up to the landing, heart banging on my ribs, and looked around as if I’d find a secret door to lead me out of this mess. Heavy footfalls trudged up the steps. I could take the chance that it wasn’t him, but if it was, could I play it off casual enough for him not to be suspicious? Did he know his neighbors? I had no idea. What if he got inside and could tell someone had been there? With my stuff, I wouldn’t get far before he called the cops or just came after me.

  Only a couple of floors separated us. No--there was no way I could act natural. I glanced up. Nicky’s place was on the top floor of the walk-up, but there was one more flight of steps that coiled up to the door to the roof, and the upper half of the flight was unlit and deeply shadowed. I tiptoed up the steps and set down my pack and my bag. I sat on the top step, pressed back against the wall. If someone looked up from Nicky’s door, they would be looking in my direction, but probably wouldn’t make anything out.

  Several unbearable, endless moments later, a man came into view and went to Nicky’s door. I thought that it was him, from the couple of fuzzy photos around the apartment, although he was wearing a hat and I could only see him from behind. He had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and he looked rumpled. There were patches sewn to his denim jacket--probably band-related, I thought, remembering that he was a roadie. He fumbled with the doorknob, but paused before opening the door, and straightened up as if aware of something. I pressed back harder into the wall, my toes digging into the step. Then he opened the door and looked around inside. I bit my lip. He entered and shut the door behind him. I heard the tumblers clicking as he locked it.

  I waited a couple minutes, just to be sure he stayed in there; he did. My clenched lungs relaxed a little. I gathered up my things and crept back down the stairs, stealthing until I was down a floor below his place. Only then I let myself pick up some speed, still trying to sneak. The street outside was dark, narrow, still. An hour ago it would’ve seemed menacing; now I held my face up to the slight breeze and rolled my shoulders and enjoyed the flood of relief as I quick-stepped down to the corner and around it, to the bus shelter where any time now Amie would come to whisk me away from this goddamn nightmare.

  Except she didn’t.

  I perked up with dog-like conditioning the few times a vehicle passed, but none of them slowed to the curb in front of me. A taxi rounded the corner onto the street I’d just left, a boat-sized beater of a sedan lurched unevenly past as the drunk girls in it shrieked with laughter, and an old Camaro seemed to float by, hovering on the purple neon light installed in the undercarriage. The half-hour mark was long gone; my patience struggled past the hour line and limped on toward ninety minutes.

  Now I was fighting to stay awake, and I tried to think what to do. I cursed Amie under my breath and wished she’d just show up already, please, just be here. I was too tired to have to figure out a new plan. But it was obvious she wasn’t coming, and I saved some curses for myself for believing her.

  I could call her--collect, since I didn’t have any change--but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where there was still a public phone, and I didn’t feel like wandering the dark streets carrying all my shit. I didn’t have enough money for a hotel room and I wasn’t sure who else I knew that’d be up and within walking distance.

  That left me with one imperfect but better-than-nothing option. Resigned, I got to my aching feet and forced myself into motion as my tired body protested. I headed back to the building I’d just snuck out of, let myself in, and climbed the steps as quietly as possible. I passed Nicky’s door and went up to the door to the roof. The lock clanked when I turned it, and I winced.

  The air seemed cooler up here, the breeze stronger. There was a clothesline strung diagonally across the corner to my right, with some towels and a couple pieces of clothing pinned to it; the white shirt waved its arms at me in a spectral greeting. Along the ledge on the opposite corner was a container garden of herbs in old kitty litter buckets. One of them looked like weed. There was a big vent duct in the middle of the roof and I circled it, putting it between me and the door. This seemed like the best spot.

  Before I hit the road and left my old life behind for good, I’d invested some of the last of my cash in a couple of things that had proven to be life-savers: an easy-up pup tent, and a featherlight all-weather sleeping bag. They were strapped to the outside of my pack, and even though they were a little bulky, they were worth it. You’d be surprised how many places you can hide out and get some sleep when you don’t have to worry about dying of exposure.

  I couldn’t get the t
ent up fast enough. When I finally crawled inside and zipped in and settled into my bag with my pack under my head, it was better than sex, almost. I knew it was superstitious, but I felt safe at last, as though being inside my tent rendered me invisible. I guess in a way it did. Not long after I got to New Orleans, before I was in the apartment, I bought a bottle of home protection water from a mambo in a little Voudon shop and sprinkled it all over my tent inside and out. She’d also drawn me a few symbols to copy into the corners of its floor in Sharpie that she said would keep away anyone who wished me harm. True or not, I always slept better for it, and I had never been bothered while in here.

  Sleep dragged me down into its tidal pull and I surrendered.

  “Hey. Hey, wake up.” Someone was shaking my arm. I swatted it away and rolled over.

  More insistent shaking. “Mari! Wake up.”

  The voice was young and familiar and that’s what made me roll back over and look. The girl who crouched beside me was maybe sixteen, all limbs and angles and electric-shock curly hair. She was tall like me, her eyes green like mine, and I remembered The Green-Eyed Monsters 4evah written on the brown grocery-bag cover of a math book in glitter pen bubble letters.

  I sat up. “Suze?”

  How many years now, since we’d cut school together to go buy candy and fashion magazines and hide out in our secret place in the park? How many years since the day I’d gotten bold and kissed my best friend Matt, only for him to pull back and tell me, after so long, that he--that she--wanted me to call her Suzanne now? That she liked kissing me, but only if I was okay with the truth.

  I’d kissed her again. It was worth it for the look in her eyes and the way she smiled, even if in the end we decided to be friends and not girlfriends.

  Suzanne pulled on my hand. “I need to show you something, Mari. It’s really important.”

  I got up and let her lead me. I wasn’t in my tent, now; wherever I was, the shadows were deep and seemed to watch us as we passed. We reached a door. I recognized it. She turned the knob and my stomach lurched. “No, let’s not go in here, Suze. We don’t have to.”