Can't or Won't

The smoke didn't solidify directly above the board. And in a way, it was just as well. It would have been crowded and exceptionally awkward to have the spirit right there. Instead the smoke trailed to a position a few feet away, where arose, like a genie out of the lamp, a man out of the dark smoke.

It was easily the oldest man the four had ever seen. The features of his face were sunken into a mass of wrinkles, and his pupils were occluded by a thick film. The only hair on his head was not only wispy white but only found about his ears. The jaw was toothless and receded in the deep folds of the skin.

In spite of that, the man looked pleased to be standing there, and stretched his fingers and hands, little more than crumpled lumps of skin misshapen by wrinkles forming veritable chasms into the flesh.

Sarah was the only one who noticed, but the old man was dressed in a black jacket and jeans too large for his shrunken figure; it was far from what she expected from a man that age. She looked at him closely. She knew him . . . but couldn't place him.

As for Ethan, after a brief glimpse, he let out a growl before he could stop himself. Benny looked confusedly for a moment, but his pupil-less eyes figuratively popped behind his dark glasses. It took a bit longer for Rory to catch on; but it was astonishing to see how the colour drained from his face when he did.

Sarah thought that if this old spirit had arrived to tell them something, she may as well be friendly in spite of its obnoxiousness. She gave an encouraging smile.

The spirit looking through its filmy eyes, recognized Sarah. It gave, with its toothless gums, a self-satisfied smirk.

"It's you!" said Sarah shocked, dropping her forced grin.

The ghost looked about at itself and frowned as much as it could. It closed its eyes and burst into another burst of black smoke.

When the smoke subsided, the spirit patted down its slightly transparent arms and coat, letting off small bits of vapour. The spirit was now a young man, but dressed as in the style of centuries ago. His black hair was in a tight ponytail under a three-corned hat. He wore a long coat, short pants and long boots and socks. At his side, he carried a type of large leather pouch and a wooden stake in a loop in his belt.

"There's a rule" said the ghost, coldly, as he looked about himself distastefully. "I can only appear as I was when I was human. So it's either as a two-hundred and seventy-five year old man, or this. Like this I can talk above a whisper."

There was no mistaking the ghost's identity now. Jesse Black ne Reverend Horace Black, and older than even his nineteenth century cult-leading self.

"We asked for, you know, a friendly ghost!" Benny protested.

"Whom did you expect? Casper to come and make a new friend?" Jesse retorted sardonically.

"That's the lamest joke ever" Benny grumbled.

"I didn't need that board to find you out" Jesse said, with a sneer. "You never were the sharpest spellmaster, were you? If you manage to remove the vampire's curse from someone's soul, the soul's again exposed to the light. You wouldn't believe how much light they reflect, Sarah's especially, even the idiot's soul, when a curse like that's removed. Beacons you were talking about? Ha. Those two could pass for lighthouses."

Sarah smiled in spite of herself.

"We were allied with Jesse against Stern when the lucifractor exploded" said Ethan, who had by now fought down his urge to growl. He had, in fact, been looking curiously, at the stake. "I mean, I suppose we should . . . ."

"Cut the crap, Ethan" Jesse interrupted, who had followed Ethan's eyes. "The last thing I need is a loser's sympathy. And a were-whelp at that.

You know what I was planning when Stern so stupidly destroyed the lucifractor? Planning to leave you Ethan, and you Benny, buried in the rubble of our building. I would have comforted you Sarah, and had you . . . body and soul . . . until I was tired of you."

Ethan again growled, while Jesse crossed his arms and looked amused.

"Six months dead, and you're still full of yourself, Jesse" Sarah retorted.

Benny had suppressed a snicker at the line "body and soul", but otherwise stared at Jesse with a look of pure hatred.

As for Rory, he hadn't said a thing yet and his face was now more nauseous than afraid.

"But you know how my plan worked" Jesse continued casually. "I underestimated the lucifractor's power, the dark energy drain, and how much trouble I was in for being responsible for leaving at least two good vampires running around. One the Dusk-loving girl with quite a brain and even more unusually for her type . . . a great body. Another for an accident that I had left running around when I should have killed him."

"A-accident?" said Rory.

It was the first time Rory had spoken directly to Jesse since the night of vampire party, or heard from him since the deadly Dusk premier.

"You think I meant to have a loser like you turned?" said Jesse, who looked at Rory and a gave an odd, hollow, echoing, laugh. "You were picked for Sarah's first meal. The most pathetic newb we could find. Girls like the small morsels . . . like you were back then. You do know that I only turn adults and teens that can pass as adults? So when I replaced Sarah with Erica, I had Gord give you to Erica on a silver platter. Only she didn't take enough of your blood to kill you, she idiotically infected you and left you just enough blood to get turned."

"Rory fainted right over when he was bitten" Benny remembered. "Ethan went into those super-fast cramps."

"Rory had about half his blood drained from him" Jesse shrugged. "But with your distraction, by the time I got back to Rory he had turned into a fledgeling. Go figure. And it's a bad look to go killing another vampire in front of your flock, er, followers. Even with a fledgeling like Rory. So a few words with the idiot, and I had him and his soul completely blacked out."

"Temporarily" Rory blurted. "Dude, temporarily!"

"I didn't know you'd turn traitor" said Jesse, with a angry glance at Rory. "But you didn't have the right attitude, and I should have known that you'd go on talking to your friends. But I had bet that they would have killed you for me. That's the traditional idea. Put you out of your misery. Try to save your soul. I didn't realize you and especially Sarah would go about fighting evil with your curse until the curse itself had to be blotted out somehow. And me punished for it."

Ethan clapped Rory on the shoulder, and smiled at Sarah.

Benny was a little more talkative. How could he help being so? Even dead Jesse was amused at all the evil he had brought down upon them.

"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy" said Benny, with a forceful laugh at Jesse's expense.

Suddenly, Jesse's arrogance failed him and he looked as worn or as miserable as the four teens could ever imagine. Or hope. Jesse's ghostly eyes went out of focus and glanced off far into the distance.

"Vampires aren't exactly approved of" said Jesse tiredly. "It turns out that murder on a large scale doesn't make for a particularly good afterlife. Trying to create your own bloodsucker's religion even less so. And corrupting youths doesn't help much either. The only thing to look forward to, is sooner or later, every vampire I created and had been killed will be in the same place as me."

"That vampire limbo you told me about?" asked Sarah.

"Vampires don't stay there forever" said Jesse. "They'll soon be with Anastasia and me."

"Where?" asked Ethan.

"I don't have to spell it out" Jesse replied in a monotone. "And, really, I can't tell you anything about it."

"Can't or won't?" asked Sarah.

"Can't" said Jesse. "Even if I had been sent in the other direction, it's not for the living to know. But then, you wouldn't really have been able to summon me."

Sarah too, now eyed the stake in Jesse's scabbard. Jesse met her glance, and that particular memory being good for his ego, he recovered himself with a faint smile.

"You want to hear about the stake?" said Jesse.

"You were bitten by a vampire when trying to kill it?" asked Ethan.

Jesse shook his head.

"You can ease your mind on that" Jesse said cooly, lifting out the ghostly stake and toying with it. "I was never a vampire-hunting geek. You want my life story, I'll give it to you. In life . . . in human life . . . like Benny I inherited spell-master powers. From my father in my case. He was a prominent physician and also a spell-master. As the cliche went, Ethan, seers are gifted, spell-masters are bequeathed. I also give credit to dear old dad, wherever he is, for my brains. My mother was a heiress, a beauty, but completely brainless. I give her credit for my looks, but that's about all she gave me."

"Even alive you were a jerk" Benny observed.

"So were you" Jesse replied, as his dead eyes stared behind Benny's glasses "just not as smart or able as me. Well, being a spell-master wasn't all it is now. When I was alive we were less than fifty years since the last witch hanging . . . ."

"Spell masters aren't witches" Benny interrupted.

"Try explaining that to an angry mob" said Jesse, and with a look of fatigue. "Try explaining anything to an angry mob. But at twenty-one I knew enough that I wasn't going to waste my time sending lost spirits on their way, removing curses, or destroying the rare monster. And I especially wasn't going to do the whole getting-old thing. It left me a few choices. Go as a witch, which is not something I'm into."

"Why not?" asked Sarah. "It's not as if you have anything against stealing people's souls."

"I was my own man, not an agent" said Jesse cryptically. "The solution was to be a vampire. I couldn't really care less about my reflection, and cameras weren't invented yet. It was far more protection against an angry mob . . . you notice I was never caught until near the end."

"Are we awesome or what" said Rory, a bit too timidly to be truly awesome.

Jesse again turned to him.

"Sarah I can believe doing me in" he said. "Many men have been outdone by their mistresses . . . stop that growling, whelp, she never actually made mistress . . . but an excitable adolescent nerd spilling my schemes to his friends . . . ."

Jesse shrugged, having cowered Rory once more.

"For the rest of his life, he'll be confused and regretful whenever he thinks back" Jesse said reflectively, mostly addressing Sarah as he was most disposed to think of her as an equal. "That is, thinks back about what happened at the party, why he joined me and why he went to the Westdale. That's his punishment for his stupidity. It's something, at least. But Sarah, you get off free. Admiring an idiot bit of vampire fiction isn't the same as wanting to actually be a real vampire."

"Punishment?" asked Sarah.

"What do you mean by his punishment?" asked Ethan.

"The punishment fits the crime" said Jesse. "That's the crime, that's his punishment. For being confused enough to go along with me . . . but being mostly . . . what's it called . . . yes, a victim of circumstance."

"Can you . . . say more?" asked Sarah.

"No" said Jesse.

"Can't or won't?" asked Benny.

Jesse hesitated.

"Can't" said Jesse. "Just can't."

Jesse smirk failed and he gave a weary sigh.

"Unlike Sarah or Rory, I sought and found death Ethan. I didn't go looking for a vampire to be killed, but to be turned. I found her. One I could convince into having a new paramour."

"Anastasia?" asked Sarah.

Jesse cheered himself up with a bit of hollow laughter.

"No, one Katriana" said Jesse, as he looked over the stake. "I used all my charm, and as she bit me I staked her."

"Why?" asked Ethan.

"I only had a second before the convulsions started" Jesse explained.

"No, why did you stake her?" Ethan asked.

"Do you think I wanted to be her flunkey?" Jesse laughed. "If you're bitten by a vampire you're . . . well, let's just say you're psychologically doomed to admire that vampire. We call it being sired . . . ."

Sarah rolled her eyes, having heard the phrase and not liking it. And it really wasn't worth arguing about . . . .

"You mean like being fathered?" interrupted Rory, who strongly objected to this idea. "You mean Erica was my Vampire Dad? I have a real Dad. And you know, Erica being my Dad is gross. I had a crush on Erica and . . . .

"Shut up, dude" said Benny impatiently. "Drop it! We all get it."

"Look at Sarah" Jesse continued, with another deadly glance at Rory. "She had an opportunity to kill me once . . . but she couldn't. Even with her being blameless in having been turned. And you know how this idiot couldn't resist Erica. So I wasn't going to stand at Katriana's side, or walk three steps behind her. There was another reason. See the tip of this stake?"

"It's green" said Ethan.

"It was treated with a potion" said Jesse. "I used it to absorb Katriana's powers when I staked her. How else do you think I was able to glamour from the very start? Of course I lost my natural magic powers, but it was a good trade. And you know I never lost the ability to work magic. I just needed tools."

Jesse so looked unbearably proud of himself, the four couldn't stand it.

"Which is why you are where you are now" said Sarah icily.

Jesse flinched, and deflated.

"What about Stern?" said Ethan. "That's why we called you."

"Or somebody we were hoping wasn't you" Benny quipped.

"It's a weird thing about the guy" Jesse observed. "Killing vampires isn't exactly considered a sin. Terrorizing you four is. So is using black magic to take over Whitechapel."

"So is it Stern?" asked Sarah.

"No, he's dead and I don't know where he went" said Jesse.

"He tried to kill us" Benny objected.

"After Stern magically had you recite everything on your mind, he didn't" said Jesse, irritably. "Stern just put you out of the way. He didn't choose to kill you. That's probably what made the difference. Stern didn't kill Sarah. By luck or by design, Stern didn't even kill Rory."

"He was power-hungry" said Benny.

"Power-hungry, but partly in a good cause. Too extreme in a good cause" spat Jesse. "But Stern didn't murder any innocent people and that probably made all the difference. He'll probably be ironed out before he's let in . . . I'm not allowed to go on any more."

"Can't or won't?" asked Benny, again repeating that question.

"Both."

"So it's not him?" asked Rory.

"He's dead and gone" said Jesse irritably. "It's not him. But . . . ."

Jesse hesitated.

"Can you tell us anything more?" asked Ethan.

"No" said Jesse.

"Can't or won't?" asked Sarah.

"Can't."

"That's bogus" Rory said. "All this time and he just now blurted out that Stern wasn't in on it. And he can't give us anything more."

"Wait!" volunteered the ghost of Jesse hurriedly. "If I were you four . . . well, I'd look for your invisible . . . person."

"Why?" asked Benny.

"Because they're going have an unpleasant . . . surprise soon" Jesse said.

"What surprise?" asked Ethan.

"That's all I can say" said Jesse.

"Can't or won't?" asked Sarah.

"Both!"

Ethan observed Jesse carefully. Jesse seemed worried now.

"You want to be here as long as you can" Ethan observed. "You don't want to go back. That's why you've been going on about how you became a vampire. You wouldn't have so easily volunteered the story if you weren't stalling for time."

Jesse narrowed his eyes, and with a supreme effort put up again his calm, smirking front.

"I wanted to see Benny as a zombie" said Jesse, looking right through Benny's sunglasses. "As a fellow ex-spell-master, Benny . . . and I'm being very generous in comparing you to me . . . you can say I have an interest. Benny's curse suffers from being forged, but I guess that's the only way to make him really suffer through it."

Benny wasn't going to let that pass.

"I'm perfectly cool with being a zombie" Benny lied.

"Yes, you really enjoy the eating brain sausage" sneered Jesse. "And those non-eyes of yours. But I really wanted to get a good look at you, Ethan" he continued in his most insolent tone. "You know why you were cursed on the Third of November? That was the new moon, and it's the best time to place the curse."

"Wouldn't the full moon be the best time?" asked Sarah, "I mean, reasonably."

"The curse builds as the moon waxes" Jesse said smugly. "If it's a curse you're doing, curse on the new moon. It's not even the first quarter. You'll have a whelp for a boyfriend, until you dump him. You really should have stayed with me."

"Thanks, but you'll be freezing before that happens" Sarah replied. "Ethan befriended me when you turned me into a bloodsucker, and stayed friends with me the whole time. What kind of person would I be to turn on him now?"

"Like Jesse" said Rory simply.

Ethan put his arm around Sarah, not that easy to do when you're seated on two sides of a half-destroyed game-board. But Jesse wasn't going to leave them at that. After expressing a look of annoyance, again he forced a smirk into his face.

"I understand perfectly" Jesse said in a tone Ethan or Sarah would never forget. "It's true love. I guess Ethan wants to see you his wife. And the mother of his pups."

"If you weren't dead . . . you'd be dead" said Benny, rolling up the sleeve on his free arm.

"You couldn't slug me even if we were both human" Jesse said cooly.

Rory for his part, just looked stunned at the remark.

Sarah was as angry as she ever had been before; it was plain in her face. She was going to say something, but had restrained herself from actually doing anything. A cursed spirit wasn't someone you could exactly attack.

Ethan didn't restrain himself, nor could he. With a brutal growl Ethan left the board behind and went for Jesse's throat. It wasn't much good as Ethan went right through Jesse and landed in a heap against the wall.

"Ah, the were-whelp wants to bite me" laughed Jesse.

"Ethan, you can't leave the board" said Rory, leaving the board to restrain Ethan who was still growling and about to make another lunge despite being on his hands and knees.

Rory tackled Ethan, while Jesse laughed all the more.

Benny tried saying a spell he had learned, "Spiritus mitto vos" and also made a hand gesture . . . which unfortunately involved both hands.

Absolutely nothing happened. Benny, in a panic, tried to put his finger again on the Spirit Speaker, but received a shock.

Thrown back, Benny made a decidedly non-magical hand gesture at Jesse.

"Hurts to know you can never work magic again, doesn't it?" Jesse jeered. "The un-dead have no inherent magical powers. Now it's just me and Sarah."

"I'm not letting go" Sarah replied.

Too late Ethan recovered, and he also tried to go back to the board. But he was thrown off by a bad shock and whimpered in pain.

"Now what will I do now?" gloated Jesse.

"You promised to go back from where you came" said Sarah, protruding calm but privately nervous about the turn of events. "Now go! You brought your fate on yourself . . . even now I can't help but feel a little sorry, even for you . . . ."

Again, and for the last time, Jesse's smug look faded into a pained, tired expression. And without warning, he dissolved into a thick black smoke and was pulled into the ruins of the Spirit Speaker.

The Spirit Speaker itself, or what was left of it, burst into red flames and soon crumpled into dust. The flames would have burnt the coffee table to, but Ethan put out the fire with a fire extinguisher.


If it wasn't Stern, if it wasn't Stephanie, then who? And what next?

"How do you find an invisible person?" thought Ethan as he went to bed.

Ethan had a difficult time falling asleep. He couldn't and wouldn't forget how much like a wolf he had acted at the end. Ethan didn't like to humiliate himself in front of Sarah, even acting like a wolf in front of Benny and Rory was embarrassing enough.

Finally, Ethan also considered that, in the end, he given one last small victory to Jesse. But for Jesse's aid in the lucifractor matter, Ethan reflected, Jesse might as well take that back with him to the place from "where he came."

"Whence just sounds lame" Ethan muttered, and he finally dozed off.