The Heat Stealer: Alternate Susan, #3

By Kater Cheek

Without the roommate they lose the house. With her they may lose their lives.

 

When they lose a renter and then the air conditioner, Susan's forced to cast an unpredictable spell to keep from losing her beloved home. Their new roommate's metaphysical disability magically keeps the house cooler, seemingly solving all their problems. And then everyone stops sleeping.

 

Susan discovers the new roomie has a dark trail of suicides in her past; those who live with her go insane or die. But even after the house residents suffer horrible accidents, no one believes Susan's theory that the cool tenant's heat-sucking ability is causing their hallucinations. Attempting to demagick their chilly companion corrodes Susan's friendships, but failing to do so will cost their lives.

Can Susan keep their cursed lodger from killing them all?

 

The Heat Stealer is the third book in the unique Alternate Susan series. If you like tense urban fantasy drama, then you'll love Kater Cheek's psychological thriller.

 

Buy The Heat Stealer to save Susan's home today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kater Cheek
• Release date: Jan 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386058694

Book preview

Chapter One

Susan’s hair was brassy blond, thick, and unruly. Her natural hair color (brown) came from her father, whom she had met only once. She was hoping she would have auburn tresses (naturally conditioned, the box promised) by the time Zoë finished applying the smelly goo.

I don’t know, Susan, this doesn’t look like it’s coloring your hair, Zoë said. Are you sure this is going to work?

I did it when I was a kid and my hair turned a nice rich red.

Zoë picked up the box and read it. Do not use on hair that has been bleached or colored with metallic dyes. Didn’t you bleach your hair?

Yeah, but that was over a week ago, Susan said.

Don’t touch that, it stains, Zoë said to Darius, who was walking in the room.

Hello Darius, Susan waved her hand in lieu of turning around, as Zoë had gone back to spreading the henna goo on the left side of her head. What’s up?

Darius was seventeen years old, and just finishing up his junior year in high school. He’d grown four inches taller in the year she had known him, and had that lanky puppy look of a boy who hadn’t filled in his frame yet. His most striking feature was his white hair, which he wore in a fluffy afro like a cloud around his head. His hair color was inherited from his mother, who came from the Elsewhere.

My mom hit bottom. She’s finally going to rehab.

That’s good, right? Susan turned to see as much of his face as she could without pulling her locks out of Zoë’s grip. I mean, aren’t you glad that she can get help?

She needs to go back to the Elsewhere, Darius said. Dad’s getting the paperwork done for the permit. I told him you’d do the portal spell.

You need some specialist mages. I don’t know that much about it, but I know you need, like, four or five at least, and one of them has to be certified to open inter-dimensional portals. I’ve never gotten the certification."

That’s okay. Dad just needs a couple more mages to draw in power. Darius dipped his finger in the paste and drew a smiley on the mirror.

Zoë upended the rest of the bowl of henna glop onto Susan’s head and started rubbing it in.

So, you want me to talk my mom into it too? She wrinkled her nose. The henna paste looked like baby poo, if the baby ate nothing but spinach. Come to think of it, it smelled not dissimilar.

She’ll do it for you, Susan.

I haven’t agreed yet, she said. I don’t even know when and where.

They’re hoping to do it as soon as I get out of school. They rented a place in Sedona. Gonna make a long weekend of it. Darius frowned. But we were counting on you and Maggie. If you can’t do it ...

Okay, okay. I’ll do it too. Don’t use the pout on me. And if you pay for Mom’s room and board I’m sure she’ll do it to. She’s a sucker for a free vacation.

I’ll tell him. Darius washed his hands and started scratching the persimmon-colored splotches on his palms Hey, this isn’t coming off.

Yeah, it’s semi-permanent on skin, Zoë said.

Why didn’t you tell me that?

I thought you knew. Didn’t you ever see henna tattoo artists at the mall or something?

I didn’t realize it was the same thing.

I don’t know if this is going to work anyway. Susan really damaged her hair with that box kit. They aren’t intended to lighten it that many shades at once.

We having a party in here? Griff asked, standing outside the door of the crowded bathroom. Ew, what’s that smell?

Baby poo, Darius said, and tried to smear some on Griff’s face. Griff backed up. He was wearing his work clothes, worn jeans splattered with paint. Even though he was only in his early twenties, Griff had a weather-worn ruddy appearance.

Did Darius tell you his news? Zoë asked.

What news? Griff asked.

I’m moving out, Darius said.

What! When? Why didn’t you tell me? Susan said.

Aw, that sucks, man, Griff said. Where are you moving to?

Back in with my dad, Darius said.

That sucks, Darius, but it might be good for you guys, work out a new relationship without your mom’s substance abuse getting in the way, Zoë said.

Yeah, it’s good for you, Griff said. You’ll be able to spend your senior year just studying and hanging out with your friends. A teenager shouldn’t have to work to support himself.

I did, Susan said.

And you still resent it, Zoë said.

Zoë, you want me to do a spell to get a new roommate? Susan asked.

I don’t think it will come to that. I don’t want to impose on you anyway.

Psh. Impose. You’re practically family, Zoë.

I’ll put an ad out and ask my friends if they know anyone. We’re close to ASU, maybe we’ll get a student, Zoë wrapped Susan’s hair up in a plastic bag.

You guys want to go in on a pizza with me? Griff asked.

Dude, if I had money for pizza, I would have money to get my hair fixed by a professional, no offense Zoë.

You can’t afford Little Caesar’s? Griff asked.

Oh, I thought you meant real pizza, Susan said.

Darius protested with an offended shout. That’s the best pizza!

Nello’s is the best pizza, Zoë said.

Ugh, Nello’s, Griff put his hand on his stomach. Only if you get antacids as a topping.

I’m with Griff on that one, Susan said. Their sauce is tasty, but it tears me up inside. Spinelli’s is the best pizza.

For the prices they charge, they ought to have dollar-bill stuffed crust.

Aw yeah, Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza, that’s the bomb, Darius said.

Everyone else moaned and rolled their eyes.

Okay, everyone has to get out now so I can finish up in here, Susan said. Susan shut the door of the bathroom so she could finish the rest of her home-makeover, the next stage of which involved wax strips and a lot of screaming. Twenty minutes later she washed the henna out of her hair and used the plunger on the drain, because the clumps of hair and henna paste were clogging it. Someday, she swore, she would live in a new house, where everything still worked.

In the end, they got Little Caesar’s because it was the cheapest and the closest. By the time Susan was dressed again and came down stairs (and Zoë was right, henna was the wrong thing to use on bleached hair) everyone was piled in the living room bickering about what movie to watch. Susan grabbed a slice of cheese pizza and sat on the couch next to Zoë. Sphinx jumped on Zoë’s lap and curled up as if she was settling in for a purring contest.

They let Darius choose, and he picked a superhero movie, some spinoff with the lesser characters, with a plot she barely followed and plenty of delightful special effects. She couldn’t remember the name of the movie, but remembered Darius trying to explain how the characters were related.

Shh! Griff said, Stop talking during the movie. I swear, you guys are barbarians.

Nah, see they introduced this guy in the first movie, Darius said, grabbing the last slice of pepperoni. then he had his own spinoff after that."

How are there four of these movies? Susan asked. I don’t even know if I saw the first one.

Seriously, guys, there’s a special place in hell for people who talk during movies, Griff said, tossing a pizza crust at Susan’s head.

Zoë?

Zoë had gotten up off the couch, over Sphinx’s meow of protest. I heard something.

They all stopped talking, and Darius paused the movie.

You hear that? Zoë asked.

Yeah, Griff said. That’s not good.

What? What am I supposed to be hearing? Darius asked. Susan met his eye and shrugged.

Sounds like the compressor’s gone, Zoë said. It’s been on its last legs for a while.

Let’s go check it out, Griff said, and the two of them went outside.

Darius and Susan sat with the movie paused mid-explosion. After a few minutes they heard walking around on the roof, then some banging.

Susan fanned herself. Is it getting hot in here?

Later, when she looked back, she pinpointed that moment as the point where everything started to fall apart.

Zoë came back inside, looking forlorn, as if her pet just got a cancer diagnosis. She was their roommate, friend, and landlord. She was a tattoo artist for a living, but her passion was renovation. She’d bought the house the year earlier and had already painted the inside, redone the landscaping, and was currently debating with Griff about the feasibility of putting inlaid wood on the stair risers. Considering it was a boxy sixties tract home, Susan thought that putting in inlay would be like polishing a turd, but you couldn’t tell Zoë that.

What’s the bad news? Susan asked.

AC has just about had it, Griff said. We got it kick started, but who knows how long it’s going to last?

Zoë frowned, playing with one of the rings in her lower lip. Zoë healed quickly and liked pain. Coupled with the fact that she worked in a tattoo and piercing parlor, this meant that she constantly had a new crop of piercings. She had tattoos too, twin dragons along her back from ankle to neck, a piece of work that had cost more than all the cars Susan had ever owned.

The mood was a bit more somber when Darius started the movie again. It was only April, but they’d been using the air conditioner on and off for a few weeks since it had gotten over a hundred in March that year. What did a new air conditioner cost, anyway? Susan wasn’t exactly flush these days. She’d been temping on and off for most of a year, more off than on, to be honest.

Zoë must have had the same worry because after the guys had gone to bed, Zoë was still sitting on the couch, petting her cat and staring at the blank screen of the television.

It’s going to be hard to get a new roommate at the beginning of summer, Zoë said. I can’t afford the mortgage if that room isn’t occupied.

You want me to do a spell? Susan asked.

No. Zoë said firmly. I’ll put an ad on Craigslist. We’ll be fine.

Oh. Susan felt a little disappointed. She really liked doing spells, but as a rule, she didn’t perform them on her own behalf. The karmic payback wasn’t worth it. The last time she’d done a spell for herself she ended up getting kidnapped and held while on trial for something that wasn’t her fault, and when she came home, she’d lost her job because her boss didn’t know where she was or why she’d been absent for six weeks without telling anyone.

Susan went into her room and shut the door. Her room, unlike the other bedrooms, didn’t have a real closet door. She’d hung a black batik cloth with kangaroos on it as a curtain. Not that she didn’t want them to see the clutter (because it wasn’t that bad, and anyway, who cared if her closet was messy?) but because of the mirror.

The mirror was almost seven feet tall and over three feet wide, with a heavy dark wood frame. The inside of the frame was large enough that you could step through it. That is, you could step through it if her portal spell had worked properly. She had meant to make a portal to the alternate world she’d been born in, the one where her brother and sister were still alive.

At least she could still see through it. She missed Jess and Christopher with an ache that would not go away, and the only thing that eased it was catching sight of them again, happy and alive, as they should be.

She pulled the curtain back and looked into the mirror, then sat on the end of the bed to watch. Susie (the alternate Susan) was in the mirror. Susie was straightening the room, wiping dust off the dresser and picking dirty clothes off the floor. Was her boyfriend coming over? Did she have a boyfriend? Was he anything like Paul?

She thought about the normal universe having someone like Paul in it. No, impossible. If the other Susan had a boyfriend, he wasn’t Paul. Paul’s strange Sunward magic was so intrinsic to who he was that she couldn’t picture him without it.

In the mirror, Susie stopped, lifted her head, and looked around, like a rabbit that scented something. She spoke, but sound didn’t come through the mirror, and she was turned the other way so Susan couldn’t read her lips. Then she took a piece of paper and a pencil out of her desk and wrote on it. She held the paper up and rotated, as though showing it to a studio audience.

Quit spying on me. The paper read.

I will if I want to, Susan told the image.

Susie made a fending gesture against the evil eye.

Don’t you fend me, bitch, Susan told her alter ego. "You stole my body, a much nicer body than this one, I might add, and I still haven’t managed to lose that last fifteen pounds." True, Paul said he liked her curves, but she really wanted to be a size ten again. Okay, she’d settle for a size twelve.

Susie went to the closet and looked up, as though she had a huge mirror in there too. She put her hands on either side of the frame, until all Susan could see was Susie’s chest pressed against the glass. She couldn’t budge it; the mirror and frame weighed far too much. She frowned in thought, then reached up and pulled down an identical black batik cloth.

No! Don’t do that! Susan shouted.

But the other Susie couldn’t hear her (and probably wouldn’t listen anyway.) She reached up, and with a little hop, tossed the cloth edge over the mirror frame.

Suddenly Susan’s portal to the alternate universe became a portal to the backside of a tablecloth.

Chapter Two

They got to the cabin late at night, following printed out directions that had phrases like turn at the broken signpost and go past the dirt road on the right until you get to the dead-end sign. The cabin was a sprawling old house with wooden floors that had obviously grown organically from a one-room dwelling. The walls were stone and wood, the furniture looked like the showroom of the Salvation Army, and the blinds on the windows wouldn’t stay up. She had been too tired to grumble at the lumpy mattress and the lack of toilet paper, but Susan’s first impression was that this was going to be an awful weekend.

Until the sun came up, and Susan came out onto the balcony/patio in front of the cabin that Darius’ family had rented for their magical workings. She looked up and saw Cathedral Rock, the iconic red monumental butte towering over Sedona. She also realized that what she thought was the sound of a fan was actually the trickle of Oak Creek only a few hundred feet away. They must be right near one of the vortex sites, places of spiritual and metaphysical power, which were one of the main tourist attractions in Sedona.

Darius yawned and got off the couch where he’d spent the night, the other rooms presumably still full of the rest of the crew they’d hired to open a portal to the Elsewhere. He was wearing boxers and a tee shirt that said Kiss me, I’m Irish.

Yo, Susan. Any breakfast?

Susan waved absently toward the kitchen of the Forest Service cabin, where she’d seen crates of Costco muffins and stacks of paper plates on the way in. As Darius went to feed his insatiable teenage appetite, Susan unwrapped the towel off her head and finger combed her hair. Even after washing, it still looked orange. Persimmon. And really tangled. And splotchy.

Yeah, still looks like a pumpkin vomited on you, Maggie said, shuffling out in her pajamas, a joint on her lips. What the hell did you do to it?

Henna, Susan said.

You can’t use that over metallic dyes.

Thanks, Susan told her mom dryly. I think I figured that out. She pulled a strand down far enough to look at it in the light. Definitely an unhappy shade of orange.

You sure that’s henna? Looks more like you put paint thinner on it.

Susan realized that the seat she’d been perched on was a cooler, so she lifted the lid and took out a Diet Coke. What exactly are we going to be doing today? I’ve never done a portal before. At least, not one to send someone to the Elsewhere.

I dunno. I guess we’ll just play it by ear. Maggie offered Susan a toke of her spliff. Susan shook her head, and Maggie put it back between her own lips with a suit yourself kind of shrug.

I’m kinda sad about this whole thing. Darius is really going to miss his mom.

Shit. I hear ya, Maggie said. But maybe the faerie rehab will straighten her out. Worked for Rory.

Rory? Susan asked. Rory Clifford?

Maggie nodded, sucking in smoke. She held it a second, and as she exhaled, she glanced at the joint appraisingly. This is so much better than the crap we used to smoke in high school.

What about Rory?

What? Oh. I was saying he went to rehab a bunch of times. One time he stayed clean for like eight years. I mean, it still got him anyway, but that was cause of something else ...

He’s dead?

Maggie looked at her blandly. Yeah, if you weren’t so uptight, you could have come to the funeral.

When? When was the funeral?

It was at Burning Man. Maggie tilted her head. Well, it wasn’t really a funeral, more like a prayer session.

Rory Clifford.

Susan had met him once, five years earlier. She’d looked him up out of curiosity when she saw his name on her birth certificate. Rory was living in a halfway house. He’d finally kicked heroin, but then picked up meth. After he hit bottom with that, he quit hard drugs for good and went back to killing himself the old-fashioned way, with Kroger-brand vodka and jugs of Gallo wine.

Susan knew Maggie would have told her not to bother, so she went to see Rory without letting her mom know.

Rory was sharing a crappy room in a house that had twelve patients and one overworked and underpaid supervisor. She’d remembered the supervisor most of all. She’d chatted him up, as he’d been pretty cute. He was an idealist fresh out of school who was supposed to run enrichment programs, and he had all kinds of ideas about getting the patients to improve themselves through meditation and yoga, but when he got there he found that he was actually a babysitter for drugged out homeless guys. All that for less than he’d make serving lattes, he’d said, rather defensively, as though Susan were an inspector from the state rather than the daughter of one of the residents. She wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t able to keep the residents from drinking.

He knew their names, at least, and was able to point out Rory Clifford to her, which was more than Rory could have done himself. Rory was totally spaced out, as though he’d long since burned out his conscious mind and didn’t even miss it.

Do you remember Maggie Stillwater? she asked.

Oh, oh yeah. Her. Yeah, he said, though it was clear he didn’t.

Maggie had a baby, Susan said. Eighteen years ago.

Man. That was a long time ago, he said. He looked at her with red, watery eyes. How’s Maggie?

She’s fine, Susan said.

She had no idea how many years it had been since his birth, but she knew even then that he wasn’t that many years from his death. His skin was yellow and unnaturally tanned, like vinyl that had stained with cigarette smoke. His hair was thin and greasy, and he barely moved except to scratch one of his elbows. She couldn’t think of what she might say to him. Whatever kind of closure or epiphany she expected wasn’t going to manifest. In the end, she had kissed him on the cheek (a gesture which had baffled and pleased him) and given him all the money she had in her wallet. He had immediately taken off his shoe and put the cash under his sock, which meant that he wasn’t as mentally gone as he seemed.

I’ll see you later, she had told him.

But then she never did.

I guess it wasn’t much of a prayer session, Maggie said. But man, that was some good shit they were passing around. Rory would have loved it.

I never had a chance to say goodbye, Susan said.

What are you talking about? Maggie said.

Rory Clifford.

Why do you care? Maggie blinked, and then she laughed. Oh, you think ... oh, because of what I wrote on the—Oh, baby, he wasn’t your father.

His name was on my birth certificate, Susan said.

Maggie shook her head. No, baby, I put his name on it ‘cause I was dating him. Shit, you’ve been thinking he was your dad this whole time?

Maggie shook her head again, as if mocking Susan’s stupidity, which did nothing to ease Susan’s anger. She felt close to tears, as she often did when furious. She took a deep breath, trying to let the beauty of the warm sun and the clear air and the frankly drop-dead gorgeous view calm her.

"Who was my

Reviews for The Heat Stealer

[lauren · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This trilogy is so unique and fresh and readable. I totally am going to miss Susan now that the Saga is complete. Please, Kater, write more about the desert mages. The world-building is wonderful! I think you're fantastic.