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Little sisters were a menace.
“Necromancy won’t work on you. You’re a dryad.” I hummed low in my throat. “Miracle Grow might.”
“You’re not half as clever as you think.”
“Get in.” I followed my own advice, climbing behind the wheel. “You track the repo, I’ll drive.”
“Have you talked to Matty today?” She caught my phone when I tossed it. “He’s got a hot date tonight.”
“I checked in with Pedro on my way out, but he didn’t mention any plans.”
Pascal was the more likely Suarez to tattle on their host. Pedro was more respectful of his privacy.
The throaty rumble as I turned the key always brought a smile to my face.
“How does he even meet women?” She stuck out her bottom lip. “He’s asleep all day.”
“I always figured he was ducking into their dreams and planting the idea to meet him for a beer.”
Oneiros spent their days as narcoleptic voyeurs. Or at least ours did. That was why our brother loaned his body to the Suarezes. He wasn’t using it anyway. While they maintained our legitimate business, auto repair and maintenance, he drifted in and out of others’ dreams, visiting the subconsciouses of unconscious minds.
“You give him more credit than I do.” She banged her elbow cranking down her window. “Shit.”
“Watch your mouth,Mary, or the sisters will eat you.”
Not a joke. I saw it happen once. To this day, I hadn’t spoken another curse word out loud.
“Do you think the sisters at St. Mary’s expected our names to become a running joke?”
“I doubt they thought about much beyond what seasonings enhanced our natural flavors.”
The orphanage where we met, back in the forties, had been established to accommodate the children ofotherswho had no surviving family to take them in. The founders named their outreach St. Mary’s Home for Children. Not because they were catholic, but to blend in with similar charitable organizations run by humans. Their lack of humanity, and their total ignorance of the catholic faith but dogged determination to fake it, led to some confusion when naming the babies entrusted to them in a likewise similar fashion.
And birthed an entire generation of Marys.
I got stuck with Mary Frances, which wasn’t too bad. There were, however, alotof us. I went by Frankie. It was the only way to scratch out an identity for myself. Then there was Mary Josephine. Josie. My little sister. And Mary Mathew. Matty. Our older brother.
The three of us had been as thick as thieves since we were toddlers, so, yeah. Us Marys were family. The only one we hadever known. We even chose our own surname and made it legal after Josie aged out of the system. Talbot. Sounds fancy, right?
“You’re determined to ruin all our happy childhood memories, aren’t you?”
Chills swept through me, raising gooseflesh down my arms, prickling up my spine to sting the base of my skull as I tamped down thosehappymemories. “If you’re determined to act like we have any, then yes.”
“Meanie.” She oriented herself before studying the map. “So, Grimshaw.”
“Yes.” I located my preferred parking deck near River Street and turned in. “Grimshaw.”
“Huh.” She crossed her long, tan legs. “Your corpse must be watching a taffy-pulling demo.”
There were a few candy shops on River Street, two of them side by side, but I was betting Grimshaw was visiting The Sweet Hereafter, which catered to the dusk until dawn crowd. Not its delicious but mundane next-door neighbor.
From our shop on the outskirts of Thunderbolt, Georgia, it took ten minutes to reach historic downtown Savannah, Georgia. Grimshaw had spent that time shopping for treats. Unless she still had her grandkids with her, not the most ideal collection scenario, that should have been plenty. Yet she was lingering.
“Loaner.” I pinched Josie’s thigh, relishing her yelp. “Notcorpse.”
The code was critical when speaking about theotherfamily business we ran out of The Body Shop if they wanted me to stay out of Atramentous, the prison where people like me got stuck in cells and forgotten.
No one, as far as I could tell, had talents like mine, so using them wasn’t exactly illegal. Just ill-advised.
