Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo

Author:Cat Rambo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Meerkat Press, LLC
Published: 2019-09-18T15:59:58+00:00

***

I said, “She left me a ghost.”

His eyebrows rose, startled. “A ghost.”

“Susan Day’s ghost, to be precise.”

He rubbed the side of a finger against his chin. His kitchen was small but immaculate. It looked rarely eaten in, and when I’d tried to find milk for my coffee, the fridge only yielded old takeout cartons and a glass pitcher of water.

“She was there at the deathbed, I know,” he mused. “But I always thought she was there to protect Day’s ghost from being taken, not to take it herself. Damn, that’s cold.”

“What would she have taken it for?” I asked.

“Hmm. Let me think of how to put it.” He pinched his forehead. “Some people take them to talk to. But most, well, they’re a source of power. Think about if you were building a house. You’d need things to power systems, like a furnace for a heating system or a breaker box for the electricity? A ghost can act like one of those. It’s why most magicians try to get them. You put them inside other things.”

I gazed at him.

He looked back. “What?”

I gestured helplessly. “I expected there to be more denial, more telling me I was being paranoid or crazy.”

He shook his head then leaned forward to touch my hand in reassurance. “Most magicians know better than deny the Hidden World’s existence, once someone’s stumbled across it. Or have been brought to it, in your case.”

“As long as we’re being all open and aboveboard,” I said, “what’s this piece of war memorabilia everyone’s looking for?”

His attention sharpened. “Who else is looking for it?”

“Who isn’t?” I said. “That’s why my mother’s out here, I’m sure.”

He started to relax until I said, “And some government agents as well.”

His shoulders slumped in a sigh. “Very well. Susan Day had an automaton she’d pilfered from the Nazis.”

“Pilfered parts or in its entirety?” I asked, thinking of what I’d found so far.

“Oh, its entirety. I’ve talked to it, back in the day.”

“What? When?”

“Your grandmother had it up and running up until you were born. Something went wrong with it. I don’t know whether the problem was mechanical—I always presumed it was, though—or something else.”

I blinked. “Why would Grandmother have disassembled it?”

He squinted at me. “Your mother never said anything about it? She was obsessed with that thing.”

“What do you mean, obsessed with it?”

“She’d sit and talk to it like it was a person. Said its name was Heinrich. She spent hours with it.”

“It couldn’t talk back?”

“Sure, it could. In German. Pretty limited vocabulary, too. Your mom was a weird kid. Must be where you got it from.” He beamed at me.

I said, “Why did Grandmother hate card tricks?”

Eterno shuffled the cards in his hand. “It was a philosophical issue. Why do gamblers play cards?”

“Because they can gamble on them. They’re random.”

He shook his head and the cards in his hands flurried in reproach. “The gamblers bet on the future. Thinking they can predict it with the right system or luck charm. Because what are cards but patterns?”

He leaned forward, lip tugging in a half smile.

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