Forbidden Fruit by Ann Aguirre Read Free Book Online Page A

mind’s eye. Only I don’t remember coming here per se; it’s more like a dream.
    An elderly woman sits behind the counter. She watches me with still, dead eyes, and she doesn’t smile. Customarily, a greeting might be in order or an offer to help the customer find what she’s looking for. This clerk tracks my movements with her eyes, which seem impossibly dark and deep, too much for her grandmotherly demeanor. For God’s sake, she has knitting on the counter. I feel weird thinking she’s pure evil, like I might be guilty of ageism, but I have the same feeling now as I did the other night at the mall.
    I hardly dare to breathe as I move through the shop, pretending to look at the arcane accoutrements. I suspect this might’ve been a mistake. Why didn’t I tell Jesse where I was going? I’m wondering if they can track my phone. He’ll try that, right, when I turn up missing? Then I remember that’s for contract phones and mine’s pay-as-you-go. Dammit.
    “Are you looking for anything in particular?” She speaks at last, and her voice has an awful quality, like a dead thing scrabbling up from the bottom of a well.
    “I’m just browsing.” What the hell. Since I came all this way, I might as well ask what’s on my mind. “This might be an odd question, but…have I ever been in here before?”
    And that’s when the old woman vaults the counter like a stick bug and tries to kill me.

Seven

    I stumble back a few steps and topple a display between us. The shattering glass slows her down long enough for me to pop open my backpack. Dodging between display racks, I weave away from her. Madness and malevolence radiate from her in smothering waves, and she’s eerily silent, just the rough gasps of a body unused to such physical exertion.
    “Maybe we could talk things through,” I offer. “Get some counseling? I’m sure whatever it is I did to you, which I apparently don’t remember, I can make amends. How do you feel about macramé rugs?”
    Her bony fist smashes through some stained-glass shelving, and her blood spatters me as I dive away. It smells faintly of rotten eggs.
    “So that’s a no on arts and crafts?”
    When she sweeps her arm across a shelf, crystal shards rain down, tangling in my hair. At her next attack, some kind of dust explodes all over us, making me choke, but it hampers the crazy demonic assassin as well. Close up, I can see the uneven patches on her skin. Her eyes roll in her head, spinning like no human could manage, and that creeps me out enough that I almost drop my radio.
    Almost.
    I tug at the dials with cold, shaking fingers. I’ve never tried to summon whatever spirits might be listening, but I need help. So I spin at random and call out, “Restless dead, I summon you to this place, I call you to my aid.”
    At first it seems like I’ve chosen a bad channel and nothing’s within the sound of my voice. Worried, I duck the heavy urn she hurls at me. If she keeps this up, she’ll destroy the store’s whole inventory. Also, she’ll open my head like a melon. Of the two, I’m more concerned about the latter.
    I jiggle the dial and mutter the call again, and this time, I feel them coming. The temperature in the room drops by ten degrees, sending a chill down my spine. Tingles radiate outward from where my fingers are touching the radio, my energy fueling their hunger, but it’s not sated. I could never give enough to make them feel warm or whole. This is like tossing a few scraps to a starving predator. Though it’s dusk outside, that purple plum of a sunset, it’s darker still in the store, as if some pagan god dropped a black bag over the sun.
    “Drain her,” I command.
    Darkness swarms around the old woman. I stop running then, watching in horrified fascination as her body pulls taut, held by unseen hands. Her feet come up, nearly off the floor, and she quakes from head to toe. At first, she lashes out, snarling in incoherent rage, but her skin grows paler and paler,