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The initial encounter with death is not the issue. Sadie Doyle has encountered death uptown and down, and is perfectly au fait with its difficulties and requirements. She isn't pleased that in this case, it's hers. Certainly not thrilled. But there are only so many times one can encounter imminent peril before imminent becomes actual and peril becomes perishing, and one shuffles off, and it didn't hurt very badly, so that's that.
Or it should be, except:
"Frank," Sadie says. She knocks on the table. "Frank. Frank. Fraaaank."
Frank shifts in front of the Ouija board. His eyes stay firmly closed. He's been here for forty five minutes now and the only thing that's changed about him is his expression, which she doesn't wish to think about. He hasn't even taken a drink of the martini at his right hand. He's one big mustachioed furniture item of focus.
"Frank, darling, this is downright rude," she says. "Aren't you going to say hello?"
The candles barely flicker.
Sadie takes a metaphorical breath, pulling in all of her indignation-- all of her ego-- all of her deep and considerable sense of Sadie Parker Knickerhouse Doyle, who will not be denied by this world and the next, and directs it all at the planchette.
Which does not spell out FRANKLIN EUGENE ROBERT-HOUDIN DOYLE. It doesn't even twitch.
That is the issue.
After she storms out of the apartment (embarrassing, she knows, but being a ghost cuts down quite a bit on one's sense of the appropriate) she takes it out on a downstairs suite, the nearest taxidriver, and an innocent bodega, which she's very sorry about after she proves that she can still make a whole room's fruit explode. So it isn't something wrong with her, the ghost. She is an excellent ghost. She feels full of vim and sinister vigor. She could probably possess someone fun! Of course she restrains herself; she was not raised by wolves. But the option is available.
It's just that when she floats up the elevator shaft to their apartment, she can feel a dampening aura around her, like a midwinter fog. Until when she sees Frank she's just an ordinary haint.
He's cleared off the table, drained at least one drink, and is fixing himself another.
"Pour me one to match," she says, sinking into the couch. "I'm famished."
"Sadie darling," he says, into his glass, "this is the pits."
"It is," she agrees. "And not even an olive to make it worthwhile."
He puts his feet up. "I can think of two alternatives," he says. "Either you're not here, or I can't hear you."
"I'm insulted."
"I'm sorry, love, I know perfectly well that you'd never gallivant off into the great unknown without me," he says, "with regards to option A, but it's just possible you're trapped somewhere like hell or Philadelphia, and here I am talking to an empty apartment instead of engineering a rescue."
"Frank!" Sadie protests. "I would never go to Philadelphia!"
"And if it's option B," he says, over the tail end of her syllable, "…well, frankly, Sadie, I'm insulted. We always worked better together, but I wasn't exactly a slouch without you. Sadie, are you giving me the silent treatment?"
Posthumous banter! There should really be some sort of merit badge for it. She rises from the couch, and moves over to his shoulder, stopping just short of touching him and reminding herself that she can't. He's got the warmth of an overworked radiator.
"Does dying make you noir?" she wonders, peering into his glass. "Because I'm just piling metaphor on metaphor. It's probably all this time to think."
Frank leans forward, and taps the glass against the empty one on the table. "Here's to you," he says. "One more of these, and I'll start gathering the cavalry." He frowns. "And the nuns. That's how much I love you, Sadistic. Voluntary nuns."
It is an awful lot. She's awed. She's also thinking about having to wait until Frank walks into a bullet somewhere to have a decent conversation with him, and it's putting her right back into a bodega-destroying kind of mood.
When she can't live with him, and she can't live without him, and it's after sundown, there's really only one thing to do. She goes to visit the Hendersons.
"Oh, no, don't you float at me, I am furious with you," Donna says, when Sadie peers in through the window. "Do you know how many happy years of being a vampire you could have ahead of you? We could be fluttering around, sucking the blood of the innocent this instant, but no, you had to go and die some other way! A permanent way! After you specifically promised me you wouldn't!"
"Well, Donna, I'm sorry, but it's not as if I was expecting it," Sadie says, drifting over to an armchair. "To err is human."
Donna scowls at her. "To forgive isn't vampire."
"Darling, you can yell at me all you like for my mistakes, but please let's put a pin in it until I'm feeling more the thing," Sadie says. "Being dead is simply dreadful."
Donna's fangs retract a little. "I'm sorry," she says. "The ghosts you introduced me to always seemed to be having such a great time."
"Irritatingly so. I know, dear, but I suppose it all must have been a charade," Sadie sighs. "I've never had enough sympathy. You're awake, and aware of all of the consequences of your foolish actions, and the sun is shining at you, and there's so much food everywhere, and everything seems to take the longest time, and you know it's happening for all of it!"
There's a brief pause. "Sadie," Donna says. "Are you sober?"
"Is that what this is?" Sadie demands, sitting bolt upright. "Well, I never!"
"But Sadie, you must have been sober before," Donna says. "In the distant past. The… distant, distant past."
"I was a child then," Sadie protests. "I didn't know any better."
"I guess we all have things we don't want to think about." Donna puts a sympathetic hand through her knee. "I can't believe Frank didn't think of it."
"That's the worst of it," Sadie says. She reconsiders. "The equally worse of it," she decides. "Frank can't see me. I go all insubstantial. He thinks I'm trapped in Philadelphia."
"But that doesn't make any sense," Donna says, thoughtfully. "You must be a real strong ghost for me to be able to have this whole conversation with you. Even Michelle can see you."
Michelle, in her bassinet, gurgles at this mention of her name, and Sadie smiles wanly at her. What a perfect little angel she is. Sadie appreciates the generosity of her friends in having her, so that she need not even briefly consider having one of her own. Ooh, that's one consolation: now it's impossible.
"You're probably strong enough to move objects," Donna says. "Have you been moving a lot of objects?"
"Yes," Sadie says, shamefacedly. "But not the objects I'd like."
"You know, now that I've figured it out, you really do sound like you need a drink," Donna says. "You get all wobbly."
"I know, but I can't…" Sadie says. No. Wait. She's stumbling around the edge of an idea. "Donna, could you bring yourself to kill a martini?"
"No," Donna admits. "It's not good for my digestion. But maybe if you just knocked one over?"
"Well, it's inelegant," Sadie says. "But it's worth a shot!"
Donna comes out with the deplorable Seagram's Dave keeps around for reasons passing understanding, and a low tumbler, and, inexplicably, a bottle of tonic. "Don't ruin it," Sadie objects. "Just straight in. Three fingers."
"I guess you don't have a liver any more," Donna says, and tops her up.
Sadie glares at it. It takes some effort, because she's so happy to see it, but she musters the expression. She takes a detour away from determination, and focuses instead on indignation. How dare this glass keep her from her gin just because she happens to have died? Doesn't it know who she is?
With a silent apology to the gin, she focuses on the tip of her finger and taps it against the glass, hard.
It hesitates, and then the actual tumbler loses its center of gravity, toppling over, liquor going everywhere, and the ghost of the gin detaches and sits proudly and expectantly in the middle of the table. Her fingers close on the cool glass.
"Welcome to the land of the dead," she tells it. "Let me put you out of your misery."
If there is anything like the feeling of becoming slightly foxed after a week or better of being in mint condition, she doesn't want to hear about it. She beams at Donna, and at baby Michelle, and at the table, who aided and abetted. "Oh, Donna, your mahogany!" she exclaims. "Let's clean it up so you can pour me another."
"Never change, Sadie Doyle," Donna says, with the expression of a proud mother who will nevertheless have to pay for the revarnishing of a very expensive table shortly. It's a good look on her. "I think I have some Scotch buried away…"
Frank isn't in the apartment when she finally gets back to it. This is, just barely, a precedented experience, but it isn't one she's immediately sure how to handle. Luckily, she is now filled with the lingering warmth of the last shot. Frank mentioned something about nuns. There's only one set of nuns she faintly remembers.
They don't operate out of the church anymore, ever since Donna converted them into handmaidens and one handbutler of the night. It's gone dusty with disuse, and Sadie flutters around it, thoughtfully, seeking for the sense at the corner of her ghost eye that feels like Frank. Somewhere… Somewhere behind all of these cobwebs… There! That is certainly a crypt door. Probably the last resting place of someone sacramental. It must have looked awfully impressive before they put a coatrack next to it.
A voice that is simultaneously booming and crawling emanates from the crypt. It says, "Your wife is not in hell."
Sadie ducks in the door.
The vampiric nuns don't see her. The vampiric priest doesn't see her. Frank doesn't see her. The candles, as usual, don't have the courtesy to stand up for her entrance.
Nightmares the Clown, the King of the New Jersey Hell, is standing in the center of a pentagram writ with sigils for summoning, truth, and binding. He sees her, alright. He grins.
With his huge, comical red cheeks.
Frank is in the middle of threatening, and he breaks off. "I'm not crazy about that smile," he says. "Nightmares! Are you trying to underhandedly get around my questions?"
"I don't have to," Nightmares says. He is, as usual, blistering with irritation. "She isn't in hell. I can tell you with all of the vast and terrible knowledge I have at my malevolent fingertips that she isn't in any of the hells in the Tri-State area. And you know very well that they stopped offering busing to other districts after that Detroit case."
Frank looks floored. "Well, then, where is she?"
"Doyle," Nightmares says, "this circle binds me not to lie, not to offer you wild guesses. I told you that she wasn't in my domain because I am daily thankful for her absence. But let me ask you a question. Have you considered the possibility that she is in heaven?"
"Of course I have," Frank says. "We've always talked about going to Saratoga. But she wouldn't take off and leave without me."
"Yes, that's what you two have always suggested," Nightmares says, "what with your gallivanting all over the nether realms clinking on things, but, counterpoint, I've met and tormented a lot of the recently dead, and once you cross that line, you develop different concerns."
"That is ridiculous," Frank says. "Now, I'm not saying Sadie shouldn't know better than to wait around for me, however charming I am, because she should--"
"--Overruled--" Sadie puts in, indignantly.
"--but I know the complete list of her concerns. Harp-related paradise isn't on the list."
"Yes, but…" says Old Grizzled Nun, reluctantly. Frank turns to her. To his credit, he looks severely annoyed. "I've never met this Sadie of yours, but the King of Hell is right. Life after death just isn't like life."
"Really?" Frank demands. "You know I became a professional exorcist after you were done with me, right? This is not my first time around the block."
"It's also not your most objective situation ever," Old Grizzled Nun says. "Remember Catherine?"
Frank stiffens. "I was right about Catherine."
"Wow, no, you were really, really wrong about Catherine," Pretty Young Nun says, sadly. "Killing that Calaca was the worst thing you could possibly do for her."
"Yes, but I got her loose eventually. Absolutely no thanks to you, let me add," Frank says. "And I'll do the same for Sadie."
"Except that Sadie Doyle is not trapped anywhere," Nightmares says. It's evident that he's enjoying the spectacle. Sadie spares a moment to hope that he will applaud it with huge white gloves. "You know perfectly well that there are only two options for her. Either she is in heaven, where you cannot reach her, or she is hovering around here like a list-making mosquito, directly out of your grasp."
"She's a being of pure ego now--" Pretty Young Nun begins.
"--changing nothing--" Nightmares adds, under his breath.
"--and you have your whole life ahead of you. I… I think the best thing to do would be to let her go."
"Or," Nightmares adds, brightly, "you could always kill yourself."
There's a massed intake of breath from all the Catholics in the room. Such dramatics.
"Well, think about it," Nightmares says. "If she's gone on ahead of you, it's really the only way to catch up. Your biological clock is tick, tick, ticking."
"Do not listen to the lies of the great deceiver!" Father Lancaster booms.
"Definitely don't," Pretty Young Nun says, hushed. "That's really screwed up."
Frank doesn't look as Not Listening To The Lies Of The Great Deceiver as she could hope. He looks like he's putting some serious thought into it. His hand drifts gently over his gun pocket. "No, you're right," he says, despite himself. "The very idea is ridiculous. We've talked it through. She'd do anything for love, but she won't do that."
"Certainly not," Sadie says. "Frank, put your hand down!"
"Unless she forgot them," Nightmares says. "What with all the tipsiness."
"That," Sadie exclaims to him, "is the lowest of blows, considering my recent state."
"She must be a ghost," Frank says. He sounds like he's trying to convince himself. "She's probably just on a jaunt back to Connecticut, to get back in touch with her roots. She might be waiting in my apartment right now. And that settles it." He pauses. "That settles it," he says, more carefully.
"Well…" Father Lancaster says. "There's one more thing. If she is waiting for you, and you can't hear her, think of what that does to her."
"Excuse me?" Frank and Sadie say in unison.
"My son, she will fade," the priest says, in his late seventies way. "No one's spirit is eternal. As you forget, she will disappear, from being unseen and unheard to absent. Until all she is is the echo of your memory. Is that what you want for her? Let her go."
Frank abruptly turns away.
"This is very clever of you, clown man," Sadie says. She plants her feet, rather pointlessly, next to her Frank. "If he tries to move on with his life…" She looks over at Frank, and admits, "which is extremely unlikely, well, we'll be miserable. If he kills himself, we'll be damned. Either way, torture, etcetera. But I hate to be rude and point this out when you've put so much effort in, but you've made two miscalculations." She pauses. "Oh! You're not answering because it would blow your cover. Spy clown!"
Nightmares lifts one of his blue painted eyebrows.
"Firstly," she says, "I'm only invisible to Frank. Which means that all he needs to do is speak with Donna Henderson, and it will resolve this whole kerfuffle."
Nightmares scowls at her, and, unable to resist, says, "That's ridiculous! Haunting can't possibly work that way."
"I believe it works however it is required for the thirty-minute format," Sadie says, as Frank slowly begins to turn around. "Secondly, I will not let you let Frank Doyle kill himself to be with me. What a ridiculous suggestion." She puts her hand over her mouth. "Ridiculous enough to come from a professional jokester. I love my husband far too completely to begrudge a little thing like forty years of haunting an apartment. However faintly it comes to be. We swore eternal devotion, and Sadie Doyle does not do take-backs!"
"You," Nightmares says, "are less focused on the whole clown thing than usual."
"Well, I've only had three-- four drinks since I died," she says. "It's amazing how much it affects your outlook. You should try it some time."
"What, sobriety?"
"No! Drinking," she says. "I hear a nice cold glass of beer goes well with all of the pie you are constantly being forced to stuff in your face!"
"He made three miscalculations, Sadie," Frank says. A hand passes through her elbow-- all the way through-- but it's the thought that counts. In this case, it counts for a lot. Her dead heart skips a beat. "I have an excellent memory."
Sadie presses closer to him. "No you don't, darling."
"I do for the important things," Frank says, firmly. "You. Liquor. The first one is most relevant. If you think I'll ever forget my wife, Nightmares, well--"
"Ooh, Frank, can I?"
"Of course, love."
"Then you're nothing but a bad joke!" Sadie says, and laughs so hard that she misses Nightmares vanishing in a puff of rage and brimstone. She's still laughing when Frank rests his hand against the cool space just before her cheek, and just before he leans in, very accurately, to kiss where her lips ought to be. Afterwards she's too distracted, of course.
"Sadie," he says, his hand moving as if he's going to pull her close. She turns obligingly in to face him. "I don't have a good memory, you know."
"Don't worry, Frankenstein," she says. "I'm here to remind you."
She haunts his shoulder on the taxi home, her fingers resting over his. He keeps turning to look at her, to make sure that she isn't pulling a Eurydice on him. The cab driver eventually says, "Pal, there's nothing that way but the East River."
"No tip," Sadie murmurs.
"Not a chance," Frank affirms, though of course when he pays with the usual fifty he doesn't do anything so gauche as wait for the change.
She braces herself in the elevator, half-expecting that she'll step across their threshold and lose it again, but all that happens at the threshold is that he says, "Sadie, would you do me the courtesy of pretending to let me carry you across it?"
She leaps into the general area of his arms, and they float into the apartment together.
He kills a glass of Lagavulin for her, obligingly, and she plucks its ghost out from under him.
"But I still don't quite understand," she says, gazing into its amber depths. "I suppose I see why we all three had to be reunited before any two of us could properly, but I don't understand why you couldn't hear me at all."
"I don't know, my love," Frank says, as he refills. "Maybe it was to make this victory all the sweeter. Maybe you needed to be topped off first. Or maybe it was the extra layer of wards we put down last week to protect ourselves from hungry ghosts before we headed out for our last hunt."
"That one!" Sadie says. "Ooh, I'm certain it's that one."
"Probably," Frank admits. "I should really take those down."
"No, I like it," Sadie says. "No more Christmas walk-ins."
"All right," Frank says. He lifts his glass. "To uninterrupted eternity."
"To a whole new world of ectoplasmic cocktails," Sadie says, and the glass and its twin meet.
There's a soft, but definite, clink.