Mostly Dead Girls

quid pro quo

Dorita sat at the kitchen table while Faye made herself coffee, staring at her hands and trying to figure out what to say. She really wanted to get over with the question of who exactly is your uncle, but in this bizarrely normal situation (seated in a chair, the scent of coffee penetrating even her faulty nose) the question seemed... awkward. She adjusted the towel between her and the seat and tried out a few variations in her head. So I was wondering who your uncle is. The one who killed people. No offense, but do you think your uncle might have murdered me? Actually, I am pretty pissed about it, so offense intended.

But Faye had spoken to her, was treating her like almost-normal. She didn't want to lose that.

"Look, I should probably know this," Faye said, "but can you drink anything?"

Dorita frowned. "Don't know-don't think so." T was still hard, and her words came out slurred. She seemed to be getting worse instead of better at this.

Faye cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowing, and stared at her for so long Dorita almost mustered up the words to ask her why. Then she turned abruptly away, opening a drawer, and after rummaging around came up with a handful of batteries.

"You can't take too much from the appliances, or they'll notice," she said, putting them on the table in front of Dorita, "but Greg loses batteries all the time. He keeps on coming up with new places to put them and forgetting." She went back to the drawer and returned with a flashlight. "I'm not totally solid on how batteries work," she admitted, "so if you can only take energy from them when they're working, use this."

Dorita held out her hand and Faye placed the flashlight in it. In the past, she wouldn't have even noticed the gesture-somebody handing her something-but Faye's fingers brush hers, so hot and dry they feel fevered in comparison to Dorita's, and Dorita realizes that it's the first time someone's touched her in over a month. If she still had breath, it would have caught. And Faye doesn't seem bothered by her smell and damp.

"Thank you." Dorita managed to say.

"No problem."

Great. Now she really didn't want to ask.

"So, you said you didn't come from around here?" Faye asked. She sipped her coffee, eyebrows raised in polite interest, as if this was a usual neighborly conversation.

"Yes." Dorita slotted a battery into place in the flashlight; the flicker of electricity under her fingers felt incredible. The tingle felt like the scent of chive chicken and the sensation of sparkling water against the tongue. She drew it up and into her without thinking, and her vision cleared a little. The switch on the flashlight clicked uselessly when she pushed it-dead.

"How do you even do that?"

"Don't know. Like-flexing. Swallowing. Not with muscles."

"It just kind of happens?"

"Mm." She got another battery in.

"So, where did you come from?"

Dorita blinked at the bright light beginning to seep in through the windows. The earlier clouds must have cleared away-more the pity. Overcast was easier on her, these days. "First. Where is here?"

"Dyer Brook, Maine."

Her hands froze on the flashlight handle. Her vision blurred again.

After a minute, she became aware of Faye saying, "Are you all right?" in a clear, slightly strained voice. She shook herself and looked up, blinking away some water that had dripped from her hair to her eyes.

"Maine?"

"Yeah." Faye gnawed on her lip. "You went out of it for a minute there. Just staring into space."

Dorita felt a sharp sting of embarrassment. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine. Just thought you might like to know. I'm guessing you're not from Maine?"

Dorita drank the electricity from another battery, and it gave her the energy to speak more clearly. "New Mexico. I am from there, and this house was. It was moved. The tank... cistern, thing... I was in, too."

Faye's eyebrows shot up. "Someone moved the entire house?"

Dorita shrugged. "Seems like." She coughed as the last word caught in her throat, and shook the used battery out of the flashlight's compartment. "It's a bad house."

"And somebody's trying very hard to hide that. Do you know who?" Faye leant forward a little. "And-I don't want to be rude, but how did you die? Can you remember your life before?"

Dorita clicked another battery into place and frowned at her. The thought of TV shows and sellout psychics drifted to the top of her mind again. It wasn't likely that this was some kind of secret television show, but she felt uncomfortable. The glitter in Faye's eyes was a little too excited. After a minute of silence, she decided she simply wasn't going to talk. Hunching her shoulders, she stared at the flashlight.

Faye sank back into her seat, her mouth pulling into a sheepish half-grin. "Sorry. I'm not very good with people, am I? Not even dead girls."

"I'm a girl," Dorita snapped, her voice coming out harsh but coherent. "I only died a few months ago. I'm not some kind of freak."

Faye's hands tightened on her cup. It was her turn to be silent for a minute, and when she spoke her voice was deep and measured, with an echo of an accent, as if she were repeating someone else's words.

"A woman might wear the colors of your country and still not be a friend." Her grip relaxed a little. "My uncle used to say that. I guess I just assumed, seeing that you were a dead girl, that you'd know certain things and feel certain ways. I apologize." She hesitated, then added, in a sharper voice, "I've never heard of a dead girl who would call her own kind 'freaks' before. It's not very polite."

"Sorry," Dorita muttered. She didn't really want to be sorry, but she was. She was a dead girl now, whether she liked it or not, and Faye had invited her in and given her food. The manners Sofia had taught her alone demanded that she conduct herself with grace. "The last few months have been-hard."

Faye's shoulders relaxed a little. "That goes without saying."

They sat together in slightly more comfortable silence until Faye spoke again, turning her coffee cup around in her fingers.

"You don't trust me yet. That's OK: I probably shouldn't trust you yet. But I want to. So I'm going to tell you about my past, if you agree to tell me about yours. Deal?"

Dorita nodded slowly. "When are..."

"When are Greg and Julia coming back? At least an hour more. They refused to send Justin to the closer school-it was just too much, after they couldn't find a house in Falmouth." Faye's mouth twisted a little. "Falmouth was pretty much their dream city-country clubs and golf courses and highly rated public education and a government-sanctioned supernatural police division. But Greg couldn't afford it, so they wound up here." She took a deep breath. "But enough about them. You probably want to know about my uncle, right?"

Dorita nodded again. She wanted to conserve her energy for when she told her story.

"OK. I'm not from around here, either. I lived in a little town in Louisiana for most of my life-used to be named Blue Cliff, I think, but they renamed it. Marcelina, after my mother. I don't know if they'll keep it, now that she's dead."

"They named the town after your mother?" Dorita's words were coming far more easily after the fifth battery. "Why?"

Faye stared into her coffee. "My uncle, Nicolas, forced them to."