The Shapeshifter Chronicles Read online

  “How do you get by?”

  “Dead people don’t need money,” I said. “They usually have a few thousand saved. The women I become own their apartments. Before the next Change, I sell their apartments, take the money, save it.”

  Claire nodded. “I don’t understand, if you can choose who you want to be, how could this have been ‘out of your control’ as you put it?”

  “It’s like my soul wanted it. That sounds stupid. When you touched me, I felt your warmth, your love. The Change wanted that, and it took over. Once it begins, I can’t stop it.”

  Claire’s phone buzzed; she looked at it, then put it back in her purse.

  “He must be worried about you,” I said. “Heath.”

  She frowned. “You heard me on the phone.”

  “Yes. And… when I shifted, I got a few of your memories. He was in one.”

  “That’s incredible.” She checked her phone, then huffed with frustration. “I have to go now, but I’d like to come back tomorrow if that’s okay?”

  I couldn’t keep the shock off my face. “Okay.”

  Claire got to her feet and slung her purse over her shoulder. She reached into her handbag and handed me a business card that said, Claire Khan: Artist. “Call me anytime.”

  “I’ll be here.” I saw her to the door.

  “Bye,” she said.

  “Bye.”

  I knew I’d never see her again…no one ever took it that well. Once she was over the shock, she’d talk herself out of coming back. Any sane person would. I locked the door and leaned against it, grateful for the small gift of finally getting to talk frankly with someone. Openly. In three months’ time, I’d file this moment in my drawer of disappointments. Life would go on. No one ever had, or ever would, care about me.

  * * *

  The next morning, a knock on the door startled me. Through the peep hole, I saw Claire, her hair styled, in fresh jeans and a turtleneck.

  “You’re still me,” she said, entering with a paper bag. “Muffins.”

  “And you’re still not crazy,” I retorted.

  She laughed.

  “Did you sleep okay?” she asked.

  “Did you?”

  She faked an I’m okay but not okay smile. “Not a wink.”

  It was difficult to know what to say to someone who was dying, so I smiled and said, “Coffee?”

  “Please,” she said, heading for my tiny kitchen table where she sat and watched me flit about.

  The kettle button clicked off. “How do you take it?”

  “White, two sugars. So, I have a question.”

  “Just one?” I said.

  She grinned. “Would you…well, I know you don’t have a family. Would you like to come stay at my place? You’d be safe there.”

  I leaned against the countertop. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “We own two adjacent plots; the back one has my studio. It’s self-contained, with a basement, so you can hide if you need to.”

  “Hide?”

  “Well, I can’t be in two places at once.”

  “Right.”

  “In fact, I’ve been thinking. I have an idea.”

  I brought the coffee to the table and sat across from her.

  “We look exactly alike,” she continued.

  “Not for long.”

  She considered that. “I know. I just want time. On my bad days, you could—”

  “Be you.”

  “You’ve considered it? I guess that makes sense; you take identities for a living.”

  “Not while they’re still living their lives. Not when they have family that rely on them.”

  She sighed. “People change around death. I want them to keep treating me normally. When I’m tired, you could take over. It’s just for a week or so. You don’t have anyone to talk to, and it’d be nice to have you around, someone who isn’t crying over me. I…I just want normal.”

  Didn’t we both? How could I say no to a dying person? Yet trying to immerse myself into the family dynamic seemed impossible. Playing the old, lonely woman was easy. “Will you tell them—?”

  “Give me five days,” she said. “Then we’ll talk death plans, okay?” Anger flickered in her tone. “This would mean everything to me, and I’ll reward you. I have a villa in Italy. You could go live there…you could lead a better life. Let me help.”

  Great, pity from a dying person.

  “In the meantime, my home sits on the river, with gardens that separate the main house from my studio. You’ll have your own place.” She took a sip of her coffee.

  Fear of the future sat as sweat on my hands.

  “Okay,” I said. “Five days. Then we talk about…the end.”

  She smiled. “Deal.”

  Our conversation turned to practicalities. Her husband managed his parents’ construction company—he worked Monday to Saturday, took Sundays off. Her son was at school most days and went to his friend’s place on Saturdays. Since it was Friday, we decided to leave soon so I could settle in before everyone got home.

  After helping me pack an overnight bag, Claire produced a big, floppy hat. “You should probably use this to hide yourself a bit.”

  We were soon travelling on the freeway, but made a stop at a shopping mall. “Stay here, I’ve got to get a few things. Won’t be long.”

  Claire left her keys in the ignition, making sure I could see them, to demonstrate her trust. She got out, closed the door, and waved. A minute later, a buzzing startled me. In the center console, Claire’s phone displayed a call from Heath.

  I stared at the phone, knowing I’d have to talk to him sooner or later, so I decided to embrace my fear. I answered it. “Hello?”

  “You know it’s me,” he said.

  “I’m busy.” Okay, way too cold.

  “I know.” He sounded hurt. “I miss you. When are you back?”

  I didn’t want him to know, so I changed the subject. “Where’s William?”

  “He’s with Larissa, remember? Did you call her?”

  “Yes. Sorry, I’m tired.”

  “The doctor told you to rest, remember?”

  Doctor? Claire had said Heath didn’t know about her prognosis. “I’m okay.”

  “I’m not convinced. Have you had lunch yet?”

  “I have to go—”

  “You’re being strange.” You have no idea. “I can come down there if you want.”

  Wow, this guy really valued Claire. “I’ll be home tonight.”

  “Which plane are you going to catch?”

  Plane. Where had Claire told him she was, exactly? “I’ll text you.”

  As I replaced the phone, my hands were shaking. Heath had spoken to me in a more intimate way than I was used to. The rawness of his concern made my heart ache with longing.

  Claire returned, hands clutching shopping bags. I popped the trunk. She smiled as she swung into the driver’s seat. “You’re going to love what I got you.”

  “Heath called,” I said.

  She picked up her phone and stared at me. “You answered it?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought it might be important.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I said you’d be coming home tonight. He was concerned about your health. That was it.”

  She leaned back and inhaled deeply, then allowed her exhale to drag on. “Please don’t touch my phone again.”

  “Okay.” I hadn’t meant to offend her. When you’re hiding out, avoiding getting to close to anyone, you forget all the rules that come with living like a normal person.

  Her phone beeped. She showed it to me.

  Heath: You didn’t say I love you. Are you upset with me?

  “You see why now?” she snapped, and tapped a reply.

  I kept silent, affronted by the irritation in her tone.

  She slumped against her seat. “I need to get used to sharing my life with you, I guess. I actually bought you your own cell phone so we can stay i
n touch.” She threw a thumb in the direction of the back seat.

  “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I? Should I go?” Trust, once broken, wasn’t easily fixed. I put my hand on the door handle.

  “You’re just giving up? Did you expect this to be easy?”

  Her words were maddening, a good example of why I’d stayed away from people. “I don’t know.”

  Claire’s face went white, and she rubbed her temples. “Bad headache, comes and goes.” She reached into her purse and drank some water. “I think I’d feel better if you told me more about your past.”

  “So what, now you don’t trust me?” I was trying hard not to lose my cool. The past wasn’t my favorite topic either.

  “No…I mean, I just want to know you better. Did you go to college?”

  She really had no idea. “No.”

  “Can you drive a car?”

  “I’m out of practice.”

  The tension went out of her brow. “Right. Well, did you finish high school?”

  Literally no fucking clue. “When I was ten, I shifted into my eighteen-year-old babysitter. That was when I left home.” I let that sink in.

  “Oh my god.”

  “And before that, you don’t want to know.” Only fragments remained of the time before age 10. “When I turned into my babysitter, I stole a car, taught myself to drive, and took up drinking. A ten-year-old doesn’t know how to care for themselves. Men took interest in me, and I stole from them.”

  Claire’s mouth dropped open. “Jay?”

  “Yes?”

  “How old are you?”

  I clenched my teeth. “Twenty-five. I’ve been through some bad shit. An old woman named Amy found me lying in my own vomit. She rescued me. Gave me food. A bed.” God, how I missed her. Even now, I fought back the tears thinking about her, encouraging me to fight for a better life. “A month after she took me in, she died and left everything to me. In the next Change, I couldn’t let her go, so I became her.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought if I could be her, then I’d be happy. It sort of worked. Ironically, being old slowed me down. People hardly noticed me.”

  “How old—?”

  “I was fifteen.”

  “And Amy?”

  I inhaled. “Eighty-one.”

  “Oh…” Claire held her arms out. “Can I hug you?”

  I nodded.

  She leaned over and we hugged. “I’m sorry about before. It sounds like Amy trusted you. I will too.”

  My heart was singing. Claire knew the real me, and she wanted to accept it. Hell, I wanted to accept it.

  “It would honor me”—she placed a hand over her heart—“to spend my last days with you.”

  The toxic sludge that was my past surfaced and oozed out of me, leaving behind the best parts of myself. The desire to love and be loved had never been so strong.

  “Let’s go, shall we?” she said, smiling.

  The car roared to life. Rain pattered against the roof, pounding down on the car, and I felt the past being washed away.

  * * *

  At 1:00 p.m., Claire pointed out her two-level log home overlooking Puget Sound.

  A second-floor balcony with wooden fencing wrapped around the side of the house. Icy breezes rushing up from the water made the pine trees brush the roofing. “It’s beautiful,” I remarked.

  “Architecture is Heath’s department. I like wilderness and gardens.”

  We went past the main entrance and turned down a dead-end drive that ran the length of the plots and ended with a leafy reserve. Iron fencing fortified dense hedges, and a brick driveway allowed parallel parking to side gateway access. Outside the car, I was struck by the size of the alders and pines beyond the hedges.

  Claire and I slung shopping bags and luggage onto our shoulders. She struggled, so I took some from her and locked the car. At the gate, Claire flipped up the lid on a fake boulder to reveal a digital keypad.

  “Six nine five five,” she called out.

  The gate clicked open. She nudged it the rest of the way with her shoulder. Pink and white blossoms came into sight as we entered; baby’s breath crept onto the stone pathway, and nectar hung in the air. Marigolds and sundrops bloomed, birds splashed away in shallow baths, and pagoda trees, willows, and ferns added a blanketing of green. A white-bricked building resembling a cottage peeked between constricting creepers.

  “This is it,” Claire said, and unlocked the back door.

  Floor-to-ceiling shelving, paint-covered towels and plastic sheets, and hundreds of canvases, including one on an easel, occupied the open spaces.

  “What do you think?” She pointed at several gloomy landscapes displaying storms and forest fires. “The others are unfinished, and the rest are stored.”

  Claire crossed the room, and at the back selected a canvas facing outwards. She held it up for me to see. A woman clutching a mast was being tossed about in an ocean storm, the clouds reaching down to claim her life. “I painted this when I found out.”

  The boat’s bow had plowed into rocks, and the waves had snatched planks from the hull. An overdone metaphor, but executed with her personal touch.

  “Now that I have you here, I don’t feel this way.” She put it back down. “Follow me, I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

  The basement, which smelled of turpentine and solvent, contained three small rooms. One was a bathroom, the next a bedroom containing a queen bed, wooden furniture, and a wardrobe, and the last a storage room. Insulated by walls and ceilings and with little ventilation, not even light could escape.

  Claire unpacked my new cell phone—in which she entered her contact details—and a tablet for surfing the internet. Lastly came makeup and other bits she’d thought would be important. She pointed out the bar fridge, fully stocked with drinks and snacks.

  At 3:00 p.m., she left to pick up William from school, which provided an opportunity to reorganize the bedroom and move the art supplies upstairs so the vapors wouldn’t suffocate me. I lit a vanilla-scented candle and then sat back to relax with a book.

  My phone chimed, making me jump.

  Claire: I’ll be busy with William all afternoon. I’m going to leave a plate of food for you at 5:30 p.m.

  Crickets chirped as night fell. A creak sounded from above, and I crept to the stairs to listen. When silence fell, I took my phone and used the built-in flashlight to light my way. There sat a generous helping of pasta and a note.

  Internet password: 55KF3B#

  After eating, I received another text:

  See you in the morning. We’re spending the day together. Time to plan.

  Claire’s idea of me standing in for her on her off days made my stomach churn, and soon the thoughts killed my appetite. I loaded the tablet and Googled ‘mimicking other people.’

  After watching videos on acting and imitation, I went to a mirror, but was soon admiring my soft skin, wide eyes, and silky hair. I thought of Claire’s gentle movements and composed assertiveness. I practiced speaking.

  “Hello, how are you today?”

  Claire’s figure made her posture seem automatically square, yet when I straightened my back, I looked awkward. My mouth was pinched and my eyes strained with the frustration of being like her. I gave up and decided to research her career instead, and I soon found a detailed biography. This woman had already lived three lifetimes; she was cultured, graceful, and confident in presenting her work. This was a person I could never be, and I found myself regretting having agreed to her plan.

  * * *

  In the morning, I took a shower, pulled tags off new clothes, and applied makeup in a similar style to Claire’s.

  A ringing phone upstairs sent my heart racing. Who takes a call at 5:00 a.m.? I went up to the phone and watched it ring. When the chiming stopped, a button saying Line One flashed red.

  I carefully picked up the receiver and heard a man’s voice. “Yes. Coughing up blood. I think it’s pneumonia.”

  “Any oth
er symptoms, Mr. Khan?”

  “Low mood, general weakness…she struggled to lift our son.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  I put the phone down, flew down the stairs, and launched myself onto the bed, scrambling for my charging phone.

  Me: A doctor is coming to the house now.

  Claire: How do you know?

  Me: I listened on the home line.

  When she didn’t text me back, I felt guilty for listening to the private phone call, but I knew Claire didn’t want Heath to know about her sickness; perhaps she wouldn’t mind.

  “Jay!” Claire called out. She appeared at the top of the stairs in panties and a tank top.

  “What are you doing?” I said, unable to avoid looking at her bruising.

  “He’s in the shower. Put these on.” She threw her clothes at me. “I need you to go back inside and take my place.”

  “What? No! I’m not ready.”

  “Please. It’s only until Heath goes to work. Just go back to my bed, it’s on the second floor. Just pretend to be tired.”

  I groaned in protest but started dressing in her clothes.

  “Quickly.”

  I followed her upstairs, where she handed me slippers and put my hair in a ponytail. Then she pushed me toward the door.

  “Follow the path to the house, go through the back door, straight, you’ll see the stairs. There’s only one hallway on the second floor. First door to the left. William will be asleep for another couple of hours.”

  “You owe me,” I said, stepping out into the frosty autumn air and gloomy gray dawn.

  “Psst, pretend to have a cough,” Claire said, and shut the door.

  Water droplets smeared against my skin as I pushed through the overgrown shrubs. Claire’s rattling cough echoed behind me. The house soon appeared, and I hoped no one was watching out the back windows.

  As I entered Claire’s house for the first time, my heartbeat deafened me. Deliberate breaths kept me sane as I passed a laundry room, a four-car garage, and a memorabilia room. The hallway, decorated with Claire’s work, opened up to a sunken lounge surrounded by a bar that faced paneled windows with green drapes. A crystal chandelier seemed lonely suspended in the air.