Tempt the Stars

breath warm on my skin, a gentle, reassuring caress.
    Until it suddenly stopped.
    I grabbed and shook him, which didn’t make much of a difference because I didn’t have much strength. And then, about the time the room was starting to collapse in on me, and the light was graying out and I was contemplating a heart attack to go with my stroke, he gave a loud snort. Followed by what, even charitably, could only be called a snore.
    I sat down abruptly, trying to decide between bursting into tears and passing out. But neither sounded all that great. So I finally settled for just listening to him breathe for a while.
    And the man upstairs knock about angrily.
    “I don’t think he’s happy to see me,” I told Pritkin, who failed to have an opinion on the matter.
    But somebody else did.
    “Oh no, it’s not like—” someone said, and then cut off with a little “eep.”
    I frowned. I was exhausted and freaked out and possibly edging up on crazy, but I wasn’t quite there yet. And I was pretty sure that had come from the robot thing. And since it didn’t have a mouth, that was . . 
    Well, that was interesting.
    I got up again.
    The poking had suspiciously stopped, with the creature’s hands lying demurely in its lap. A lap that I only just noticed was covered by a frilly half apron. It was green, too, with white gingham checks and an eyelet ruffle.
    Nothing like color coordination, I thought, and edged closer.
    The creature didn’t move.
    I stopped in front of it.
    It just sat there.
    I bent over and reached out a hand, which I admit was trembling a little. But that was probably a result of the evening’s entertainment. Because whether due to the apron or the eyelashes or the fact that I was high as hell, I wasn’t . . . actually . . 
    “Oh, thank you!” someone said brightly as the eyelash slid back into place, and I snatched my hand back.
    Someone else cursed, “Damn it, woman!”
    “Well, what was I supposed to do?” the first voice asked. It was female, and she sounded peevish. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She can obviously hear us.”
    “Yes, of course she can!” the man said. “That’s the point!”
    “Well, I wasn’t going to be rude, what with her hurt and scared and nobody even getting the dear any dry clothes. . . . She could catch her death.”
    “Then she’d fit in here just fine,” the male voice grumbled.
    And okay. I might not be the world’s greatest warrior. Or, you know, anywhere on the list. But there was one thing I did know. One thing I knew very . . . damned . . . well . . 
    I bent closer. And in the shiny white surface of the bucket I saw the reflection of the light over the table, a blurry impression of an old pie safe, and the long rectangle serving as the stairwell. And a pair of big blue eyes, beaming back at me—from inside the plastic.
    “Caught me,” the woman said cheerily. “Look at you!”
    I stood up, swaying a little, but managed to point a finger. “You. You’re not a homun—humunk—whatever,” I said accusingly. “You’re a ghost.”
    A pleasant, lined face with a mop of gray hair popped up over top of the bucket, letting off a bit of green steam into the dark room. “Right in one,” she said, apparently thrilled.
    “No, she isn’t!” the other voice crabbed. And an old gent in a blue uniform with swaying gold epaulettes poked partway out of the clock. “We’re both. And the word is homunculus,” he told me, officiously.
    “It means ‘little man’ in Latin,” the woman added. “Although I always thought that was awfully sexist. After all, I’m better at it than him.” And she jerked a metal thumb at the male ghost.
    “You are not!” His great gray sideburns quivered indignantly.
    “Am, too,” she said complaisantly. “That’s why I get the good hands.” She flexed one ostentatiously. And smiled at me. “He can’t handle them.”
    “You can’t even get an eyelash back on, woman!”
    “I can so. I was trying to be subtle.”
    “Subtle? You’re five hundred pounds and built like a tank!”
    She rolled her eyes. “I bet you used to get all the girls.”
    I sat down again.
    “What are you?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “If you’re ghosts, why are you in . . . 
that
?” I gestured at her metal hulk of a body.
    She looked down. “It’s not very pretty, is it?”
    “It gets the job done,” the old man told her severely.
    “Well, yes, but . . ” She