The morning sun was shining on Broof and Lilith as they arrived at Joe’s bar at three minutes past eight. Broof had been pushing her to get ready since he’d woken up at five, but Lilith hadn’t been quite as keen to face the day. She would’ve stayed behind and let Broof venture into the forest with his pregnant pal alone, but not only did that run the risk of her never seeing him again – should a certain behatted twat be prowling around – but she didn’t like the idea of them snooping around her house while she wasn’t there.
The place had been shielded for a reason, and that reason lay six feet underground with a plasma tree growing out of it, apparently.
Now she was fully regretting her decision to tag along. If Jessica was able to speak to Rose, would the ghost girl be able to identify her? Would she out Lilith as a vampire?
And if she did, how would Jessica react?
As if it had been conditioned into her, as Lilith approached the tavern, she began to salivate at the thought of a drink. The place felt like a well-worn old jumper; comfortable, familiar and slightly musty. She wondered if Joe still stocked absinthe now that no one bought it, whether the centre barstool was still moulded to the shape of her posterior, whether old Fred was still a regular.
As the pair approached the door, Broof’s phone pinged.
“It’s Jessica,” he said grimly. “She’s running a bit late. Honestly, does it hurt to be punctual?”
“Give her a break, Broof. She probably got sidetracked by another ghost or had morning sickness or something. Come on, let’s go inside and get a drink.”
“Lilith, it’s,” he checked his watch. “Five minutes past eight.”
“I didn’t say an alcoholic drink. Joe does mocktails and zero beer, too.”
“Still feels a bit early for either of those,” Broof muttered as he followed Lilith into the bar.
Oh, that smell. Granted, the place was now gaudily-decorated thanks to becoming a hotspot for the GliTS and other weirdos, but there were none of them in at this hour. It was still like coming home. There was Fred, cradling his lager. There was Joe, fiddling with something under the bar. Lilith strolled in boldly and took her usual stool. It fit her perfectly.
“One absinthe, please.”
She could hear Broof rolling his eyes, as Joe slowly rose. “I know that voice – Doc! Good to see you!”
“Lilith?” Fred slurred, craning his head to look at her. “Well, blow me down – it is you!” He looked up to Broof, who had perched himself awkwardly on an available stool. “And who’s this? Lily – have you finally found a man?”
Broof huffed and turned to the barkeeper. “Fruit juice, please.”
“One absinthe and a fruit juice, coming right up!” Joe was beaming from ear to ear as he poured the drinks. “Hey, did you hear the news about Will and Paul?”
Lilith nodded and reached out to take her drink. “Good riddance,” she muttered. “To Will anyway, Paul was alright, that’s a bit of a shame.”
“Definitely,” Joe agreed. “Not least because those two, and Dale, were my best customers – after you and Fred, of course.”
“I come ‘ere every day. Don’t have a telly at home, you see. Or anyone at home, not now my cat disappeared,” he seemed to be explaining to Broof. “But ol’ Joe here’s a good friend of mine now. And I don’t mind all those wackos that pop up in here – even with their gizmos and whatchamacallits.”
“Although,” Joe cut in. “Business dried up somewhat with the conspiracy theorists too, when nothing exciting happened in this neck of the woods for a while. We still get the odd one coming through looking for Bigfoot, but we can go days without seeing anyone else, hey Fred?”
Fred mumbled something unintelligible and held his glass out for a refill.
“So, what have you been up to?” Joe asked, refilling Fred’s glass. “Not seen you or your brother for months! Thought you’d moved away, but we didn’t know where you lived in the first place, so we couldn’t check. And, according to Dale, you’d shut up your practice. He was going to ask you to reset his jaw. Caleb really did a number on him when they got into that fist fight; the poor guy can barely chew now.”
“I had to go away for a while; family emergency,” Lilith said, trying not to think of Caleb and how he’d been blown to pieces by Wyatt.
Lilith had seen many people come and go over her unlifetime, but Caleb had been the one constant, the one person she always thought would be there, screwing things up and screwing her over.
His death still hurt.
“Ah, I see. So,” Joe said without a smile. He gave a sideways nod. “Who’s your boyfriend?”
“Broof,” Broof responded, eyeing his slightly water-stained glass. “And we’re just friends.”
Well…
“Men and women can never be ‘just friends’,” Fred said sagely.
Broof muttered something about a loose term of friendship, but it was Joe who spoke, “They can be friends, Fred. Look at you and Doctor Lilith.”
“I suppose.” Fred laughed into his beer and rolled his head up to leer at her. “But if I were forty years younger…”
You’d be three centuries younger than me, Lilith thought with a wry smile. She took a big swig of her drink, letting it burn and evaporate against her tongue.
“Okay, I’m switching you to half strength beer,” Joe threatened. He turned to Lilith, once again wearing his warm smile. “Well, it’s good to have you back, Doc.”
Lilith didn’t want to say that she wouldn’t be staying. Now she was back in her regular haunt, she realised just how much she missed it. The tired wallpaper, the even more tired bartender, Fred the relic. Even just walking up the path to the bar had made her a bit choked up. The familiar trees that she’d mapped out over the years she’d been there leading their way into the depths of the forest and the place she’d called home for so long.
She didn’t have time to yearn for long though. The door burst open and a quartet of badly-dressed women in a tinfoil hats burst through.
“Oh, here, they’re early today, Joe!” Fred snorted. “My eyes! My eyes!”
Ignoring the resident drunkard, Jessica stepped forward. “Broof, Lilith, I’d like to introduce you to a few of my fellow GliTS: Yibbo, Pixie and Morag. I hope it’s okay that they tag along.”
“We’re still gathering evidence, you see,” Pixie added.
“We’ve brought equipment this time!” Morag gushed. “We can gather some hard evidence of ghosts – temperature fluctuations, disruptions to magnetic fields, anomalies to plumbobs… all sorts!”
Broof was staring, open-mouthed and behind her, Fred and Joe were chuckling.
Lilith had encountered the GliTS and their bobblygraphs before and had nearly been outed as something supernatural. She shivered to think that they had even more equipment now. Between Rose recognising her and her no doubt causing their equipment to go haywire, Lilith knew it was a matter of time before they knew what she was. She was prepared for that – to lie and deny and, if that didn’t work, to put the frighteners on them and demand their silence.
Hm. Maybe she should stay put at the bar? Let Broof go visit with his daughter in (relative) peace? Have a few more drinks? Catch up with the guys?
But as she watched one of the GliTS wave about a buzzing, clicking device, something dawned on her.
Lilith looked at the back of Broof’s head willing him to turn around, but he stubbornly refused. She could see his hands glow and could hear that he was thinking the same thing.
He might be found out, too.
April wanted to cover her eyes, but that involved taking a hand off the controller and she was refusing to give in, even as she was being pummelled into the ground.
“Eek! No! Stop! I give in! I surrender!”
Melinda laughed and hit the attack button one final time, sending April’s character into the dust.
April huffed. “How come you always beat me at this?” she asked, pressing the button to restart. “It’s like every attack I make on your guy only has half the effect that yours has on mine!”
“I’ve told you; it’s the character you choose,” Melinda explained, also pressing to restart. “Pinky Posy Polly Daydream just doesn’t have the battle stats that Gym Jim Jiminy Jimbo has.”
“But she’s so pretty,” April gushed. “It’s not fair – why can’t pretty girl characters be as strong as the ugly men ones?”
Melinda shrugged. “Because these games are made by men?”
“Stupid games,” April muttered as she geared up to take down the patriarchy with her bubble-gum pink-haired avatar.
“Oh, Mel! I didn’t even know you could do that move!” she cried. “KO’d in one round. Pinky, you have let me down. You’ve let all of us girly girls down.”
“Shall we play something else? You do better as Princess Guava in Bario Kart.”
“No, I think I’m bored of these games. Hey, I have an idea!” she turned to Melinda, eyes shining. “Let’s take some more of the illusion potion and go to the arcade! See if we can finally get the high score on Alien Smash: Return of Bob.”
“That does sound like fun – we haven’t been there in ages! But, I don’t know, April. I still feel a bit dizzy from the last time we took the potion; maybe it’s not a good idea to take loads of it.”
“Maybe we should ask Wyatt if it’s safe to take more.”
“Maybe you should ask Wyatt if it’s safe to take more of what?” Wyatt asked, walking in and plonking himself on the armchair. “If you’re asking about hard drugs again…” he teased.
April cringed. “No not those! We want to know if it’s safe to take more of the illusion potion so soon.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Probably.”
“Probably?” Melinda asked with hesitation. “You’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure,” Wyatt admitted. “You’ve gotta remember that I’ve never tried these potions on vampires before. I dunno how they’ll affect you. But,” he continued at Melinda’s panic-stricken face, “it would be safe for a witch to take again – heck, some witches take it daily so they can lead relatively normal lives.”
“Oh,” Melinda said quietly. “I guess then we’d be okay to try some more.”
“Yay!” April squealed and pressed the button to idle the console. “Come on, Mel – I mean, Maude – let’s get ready to go to the arcade! Wy, you should come with us!”
“Uh, to the arcade? Um, you probably don’t want your old man there, cramping your style, right?”
“I want you there!” April gushed. “Having three people will give us better odds of completing Alien Smash: Return of Bob!”
“Mel? You okay if I tag along?”
“Sure,” Melinda said with a small smile. “I guess you could do with a break from toiling over a cauldron for hours.”
“Yeah. Yeah, all right,” Wyatt laughed uneasily. “I’ll go find some shoes and meet you two at the front door in five.”
As he disappeared, April turned to her girlfriend. “Do you not want him to come with us?”
“It’s not that it’s just that… well we can’t be seen on cameras, but he can.”
“So?”
“The CCTV will pick up that he’s there with invisible people.”
April waved her hand. “They’ll just think he’s a bit strange, talking to himself. If anything, it’ll look less suspicious having him there. Imagine being a security guard watching the CCTV and seeing a machine playing a game all by itself!”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Melinda replied, brightening a little. “Okay, let’s go take our potions.”
–
Shit. Why had he agreed to go? He had a whole six simoleons in his bank account and two rusty pennies and a broken button in his jeans pocket. He couldn’t go to the arcade totally cashless and depend on Melinda’s pocket money.
What was he doing with his life?
He needed cash fast.
He pinged open the register and took a wad of notes from inside. He wouldn’t spend it all and then he’d put the rest back and no one would be any the wiser. He’d just have to open up the shop properly sooner than he’d planned.
They’d manage. Somehow.
It had taken the best part of an hour to negotiate the tricky paths of the Forgotten Hollow forest. Broof had walked at the back of the group, just ahead of Lilith who had been doing a stellar job of pretending that she didn’t know exactly where they were going. Broof didn’t have to pretend, at least – he’d only been that way once and it had been dark.
After getting lost a few times, backtracking and getting lost again, the group finally approached an area where the trees began to thin and a huge, looming, unmissable gothic house appeared in view.
“Aha, it’s here!” Pixie announced, turning to Broof and Lilith. “Now – there’s a house here in the clearing – I know that hard to believe! But focus – focus – and you might be able to see it.”
Broof looked up at the clearly visible house before him and tried to soften his focus to look through it. He saw Lilith doing the same. And then, after a minute, he blinked with mock surprise, trying to make his shock sound sincere. “Oh! Here it comes! I think I can see it!”
“Oh, yes, so can I!” Lilith agreed. “Well, fancy there being a house here, what a surprise…”
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Almost Eternal 