“Look at me from this side.” She showed him her profile.
Tristan looked at her blankly.
“Boy, you didn’t have much of a life, did you, when you had a life,” she remarked.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t go out much.”
“All the time,” Tristan replied;
“Didn’t go to the movies.”
“I went all the time,” Tristan argued.
“But you never saw any of Lacey Lovitt’s films.”
“Sure I did. Everybody did, before she—You’re Lacey Lovitt?”
She rolled her eyes upward. “I hope you’re faster at figuring out your mission.”
“I guess it’s just that your hair color is different.”
“We’ve already talked about my hair,” she said, scrambling up from the grave. It was odd to see her standing against the background of trees. The willows waved ropes of leaves in the breeze, but her hair lay as still as a girl’s in a photograph.
“I remember now,” Tristan said. “Your plane went down over the ocean. They never found you.”
“Imagine how pleased I was to find myself climbing out of New York Harbor.”
“The accident was two years ago, wasn’t it?”
At that, she ducked her head. “Yeah, well …”
“I remember reading about your funeral,” Tristan said. “Lots of famous people went.”
“And lots of almost-famous. People are always looking for publicity.” There was a bitter edge to her voice. “I wish you could have seen my mother, weeping and wailing.” Lacey struck a pose like the marble figure of a woman weeping in the next row over, “You would have thought she had lost someone she loved.”
“Well, she did if you’re her daughter.”
“You are naive, aren’t you.” It was a statement rather than a question. “You could have learned something about people if you had gone to your own funeral. Maybe you still can learn. There’s a burial on the east side this morning. Let’s go,” she said.
“Go to a burial? Isn’t that kind of morbid?”
She laughed at him over her shoulder. “Nothing can be morbid, Tristan, once you’re dead. Besides, I find them highly entertaining. And when they’re not, I make them so, and you look like you could use some cheering up. Come on.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
She turned and studied him for a minute, perplexed. “All right. How about this: I saw a group of girls come in earlier, headed for the ritzy side of town. Maybe you’d enjoy that more. Good audiences, you know, are hard to come by, especially when you’re dead and most of them can’t see you.”
She began pacing around in a circle.
“Yeah, that’ll be much better.” She seemed to be talking to herself as much as him. “It will score me some points.” She glanced over at Tristan. “You see, fooling around with funeral parties doesn’t really meet with approval. But with this, I’ll be performing a service. Next time those girls will think twice about respect for the dead.”
Tristan had hoped that another person like him would clear things up a bit, but—
“Oh, cheer up, Dumps!” She started down the road.
Tristan followed slowly and tried to remember if he had ever read that Lacey Lovitt was crazy.
She led him to an older section of the cemetery where there were family plots owned by longtime, wealthier residents of Stonehill. On one side of the road, mausoleums with facades like miniature temples sank their backs into the hill. On the other side were gardenlike squares with tall, polished monuments and a variety of marble statues. Tristan had been there before. At Maggie’s request, Caroline had been buried in the Baines family plot.
“Swanky, huh?”
“I’m surprised you sublet from me,” Tristan remarked.
“Oh, I made millions in my time,” said Lacey. “Millions. But at heart I’m a simple girl from New York’s Lower East Side. I started with the soaps, remember, and then—but no need to go into all that. I’m sure, now that you recognize me, you know all about me.”
Tristan didn’t bother to correct her.
“So, what do you think those girls had in mind?” she asked, stopping to look around. There was no one in sight, just smooth stones, bright flowers, and a sea of lush grass.
“I was wondering the same thing about you,” he replied.
“Oh, I’ll just improvise. I doubt you’ll be much help. You couldn’t have any real skills yet. Probably all you can do is stand there and shimmer, like some kind of freakin’ Christmas ornament—meaning only a believer or two will see you.”
“Only a believer?”
“You mean you still haven’t figured out that?” She shook her head in disbelief.
But he had figured it out; he just didn’t want to admit it, just didn’t want it to be true. The old lady had been a believer. So was Philip. Both of them had seen him shimmering. But Ivy had not. Ivy had stopped believing.
“You can do something more than shimmer?” Tristan asked hopefully.
She looked at him as if he were utterly stupid. “What on earth do you think I’ve been doing for the last two years?”
“I have no idea,” Tristan said.
“Don’t tell me, puh-lease don’t tell me I’m going to have to explain to you about missions.”
He ignored the melodramatics. “You mentioned that before. What missions?”
“Your mission, my mission,” she replied quickly. “We each have a mission. And we have to fulfill it if we want to get on to where everyone else has gone.” She started walking again, rather quickly, and he had to hurry to catch up.
“But what is my mission?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, somebody has to tell me. How can I fulfill it if I have no idea what it is?” he said, frustrated.
“Don’t complain to me about it!” she snapped. “It’s your job to find out.” In a quieter voice she added, “It’s usually some kind of unfinished business. Sometimes it’s someone you know who needs your help.”
“So I have at least two years to—”
“Well, no, that’s not exactly how it works,” she said, making that funny ducking motion with her head that he had seen before. She moved ahead of him, then passed through a black iron fence whose curled and rusted spikes made odd designs against the walls of an old stone chapel. “Let’s find the kids.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, reaching for her arm. She was the one thing that he could grab hold of. “You’ve got to tell me. How exactly does this mission thing work?”
“Well … well, you’re supposed to find out and complete your mission as soon as possible. Some angels take a few days, some angels take a few months.”
“And you’ve been at it for two years,” he said. “How close are you to completing yours?”
She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Don’t know.”
“Great,” he said. “Great! I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’ve finally found myself a guide, only she’s taking eight times as long as everybody else.”
“Twice as long!” she said. “Once I met an angel who took a year. You see, Tristan, I get a little distracted. I’m going about my business, and I see these opportunities that are just too good to pass by. Some of them don’t really meet with approval.”
“Some of them? Like what?” Tristan asked suspiciously.
She shrugged. “Once I dropped a stage chandelier on my jerky ex-director’s head—just missing, of course. He always was a big fan of Phantom of the Opera— that’s what I mean by an opportunity just too good to pass by. And that’s how it usually goes for me. I’m two points closer, then something comes up, and I’m three points back and never quite getting to figuring out my mission.
“But don’t worry—you probably have more discipline than me. For you, it’ll be a snap.”
I’m going to wake up, Tristan thought, and this nightmare will be over. Ivy will be lying in my arms—
“How much d
o you want to bet that those girls are in the chapel?”
Tristan eyed the gray stone building. Its doors had been bound with heavy chains since he was a little boy.
“Is there a way in?”
“For us, there is always a way in. For them, a broken window in the back. Any special requests?”
“What?”
“Anything you’d like to see me do?”
Wake me up, thought Tristan. “Uh, no.”
“You know, I don’t know what’s on your mind, Trist, but you’re acting deader than dead.”
Then she slipped through the wall. Tristan followed.
The chapel was dark except for one square of luminescent green where the window was broken in the back. Dry leaves and crumbling plaster were scattered over its floor, along with broken bottles and cigarettes. Wooden benches were carved over with initials and blackened with symbols that Tristan couldn’t decipher.
The girls, whom he judged to be about eleven or twelve, were seated in a circle in the altar area and giggling with nervousness.
“Okay, who are we going to call back?” one of them asked. They glanced at one another, then over their shoulders.
“Jackie Onassis,” said a girl with a brown ponytail.
“Kurt Cobain,” another suggested.
“My grandmother.”
“My great-uncle Lennie.”
“I know!” said a tiny, freckle-faced blonde. “How about Tristan Carruthers?”
Tristan blinked.
“Too bloody,” said the leader.
“Yeah,” said the brunette, pulling her pony-tail up into two long pieces. “He’d probably have antlers coming out of the back of his head.”
“Ew, gross!”
Lacey snickered.
“My sister had the biggest crush on him,” the freckled blonde said.
Lacey batted her eyelashes at Tristan.
“One time, like, when we were fooling around at the pool, he, like, blew the whistle at us. It was cool.”
“He was a hunk!”
Lacey stuck her finger down her throat and rolled her eyes.
“Still, he might be bloody,” said a redhead. “Who else can we call for?”
“Lacey Lovitt.”
The girls looked around at each other. Which one of them had said it?
“I remember her. She was in Dark Moon Running.”
“DarkMoon Rising.”
It was Lacey’s voice, Tristan realized, sounding the same but different, the way a televised voice was the same but different than a live one. Somehow she was producing it in a way that they all could hear.
The girls looked around, a little spooked.
“Let’s join hands,” the leader said. “We’re calling back Lacey Lovitt. If you’re here, Lacey, give us a sign.”
“I never liked Lacey Lovitt.”
Tristan saw Lacey’s eyes spark.
“Shhh. The spirits are around us now.”
“I see them!” said the little blonde. “I see their light! Two of them.”
“So do I!”
“I don’t,” said the girl with the brown ponytail.
“Let’s get somebody other than Lacey Lovitt.”
“Yeah, she was obnoxious.”
It was Tristan’s turn to snicker.
“I like that new girl in Dark Moon. The one who took her place.”
“Me too,” the redhead agreed.
“She’s a much better actress. And she has better hair.”
Tristan’s laughter softened. Me glanced warily at Lacey.
“Well, she’s not dead,” said the leader. “We’re calling Lacey Lovitt. If you’re here, Lacey, give us a sign.”
It began with a slow whirling of dust. Tristan saw that Lacey herself became faint as the dust whirled upward. Then the dust drifted off and she was there again, running around the outside of the circle, pulling hair.
The girls shrieked and held their heads. She pinched two of them, then picked up their sweaters and hurled them this way and that.
By this time the girls were on their feet, still screaming, and running for the open window.
Empty bottles flew over their heads and smashed against the chapel wall.
In a moment the girls were gone, their screams trailing behind them like thin, birdlike calls.
“Well,” said Tristan when it was quiet again, “I guess everyone should be glad that there wasn’t a chandelier in here. Feeling better?”
“Little snips!”
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“I’ve seen that new actress. She stinks.”
“I’m sure,” said Tristan, “that she can’t be nearly as dramatic as you. You were pulling and throwing. How did you do that? I can’t use my hands at all.”
“Figure it out for yourself!” She was still fuming, “Better hair!” She pulled on strands of the purplish stuff. “This is my own personal style.” She glared at Tristan.
He smiled back.
“As for how I use my hands,” she said, “do you really think I’d take up my precious time to teach you?”
Tristan nodded. “Good audiences are hard to come by,” he reminded her, “especially when you’re dead and most of them can’t see you.”
Then he left her sulking in the chapel. He figured she’d know how to locate him and would when she was ready.
Out in the noonday sun again, Tristan blinked. While he did not feel changes in temperature, he did seem very sensitive to light and darkness. In the darkened chapel he had seen auras around the girls, and now, in the tree-shaded landscape, splotches of sunlight seemed dazzlingly bright.
Perhaps that was why he mistook the visitor for Gregory. The way he moved, the dark hair, and the shape of his head convinced Tristan that Gregory was walking away from the Baines family plot. Then the visitor, as if he sensed someone watching him, turned around.
He was much older than Gregory, forty or so, and his face was twisted with grief. Tristan reached out a hand to him, but the man turned away and continued on.
So did Tristan, but not before he noticed, on the fresh green belly of Caroline’s grave, a long-stemmed red rose.
P1-15
Lacey found Tristan again late that afternoon. She called his name, startling him as he walked along the edge of the ridge. He looked up to see her sitting in a tree.
“Nice view, isn’t it?” said Lacey.
Tristan nodded, and gazed again down the stony drop. The land fell away steeply there for two or three hundred feet. He remembered seeing in the early spring the silver tracks and the roof of the one-room train station in the valley below, but now they were hidden. Only small flecks of river could be seen flashing blue through the trees. “I don’t know why I’m so drawn to this place.”
Lacey cocked her head. “I’m sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that Ivy lives here,” she said sarcastically.
“How did you know about Ivy?”
The girl did a neat skin-the-cat and dropped down from the tree.
“Read about her, of course.” Lacey walked along next to him. “Read all about your accident. I make it a habit to drop by the station every morning and read the paper with the commuters. Don’t like to be out of the skinny. Besides, it helps me to keep the date straight.”
“Today’s Sunday, July tenth,” Tristan said.
“Brrrrrrt!” She made a sound like a gameshow buzzer, and snapped a twig from the tree. “Tuesday, July twelfth.”
“Couldn’t be,” Tristan said. He reached up but couldn’t pull off a leaf, much less snap a branch.
“Did you fall into the darkness in the last couple of days?”
“Last night,” he replied.
“More like three nights ago,” she told him. “That will happen, but eventually you’ll build up your strength and need less and less rest. Except, of course, when you do fancy jobs.”
“Fancy jobs. Like what?”
She waited till she had his full attention, then said, “Look at me.�
��
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Stand back a little and look harder. What am I missing?”
“Do you promise not to pull my hair?”
She scowled at him. It was a fine scowl, but it passed quickly—she was just acting.
“Look at that cat,” she said.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Ella!”
“Look at the grass next to the cat and look at the grass next to me.”
He saw it then. “You have no shadow.”
“Neither do you.”
“You’re talking out loud,” he observed. “I recognize that sound and saw Ella’s ears flick in your direction.”
“Now watch the grass behind me,” she instructed, and closed her eyes. Slowly, like dark water seeping over the lawn, her shadow grew. Just as slowly she lost her shimmering quality. Ella cautiously circled her once, twice. Then she rubbed against Lacey’s leg and didn’t fall over.
“You’re solid!” Tristan exclaimed. “Solid! Anybody could see you! Teach me how to do it. If I can make myself solid, Ivy will see me, she’ll know I’m here for her, she’ll know—”
“Whoa,” Lacey cut in. Then her projected voice began to fade. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Her shadow disappeared. Then she did—completely.
“Lacey?” Tristan spun around. “Lacey, where are you? Are you all right?”
“Just tired.” Her voice was small. Her body appeared again but was almost translucent. She lay curled in a ball on the ground. “Give me a few minutes.”
Tristan paced back and forth, eyeing her worriedly.
Suddenly she sprang up, looking like herself again. “It’s like this,” she said. “For transient angels—that’s you and me, sweetie—it takes all the energy we have and a lot of experience to materialize completely. To speak at the same time—well, only a professional can do that.”
“Meaning you,” he said.
“Usually I just materialize part of myself, such as my fingers, when I want to do something—pull hair or turn the paper to the movie reviews.”
“Teach me!” Tristan said fervently. “Will you show me how?”
“Maybe.”
They had come around to a full view of the back of the house. Tristan gazed up at the dormer window that looked out from Ivy’s music room.
Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates Page 12