Black Halo (Grace Series)

by S. L. Naeole

  “Do you hear my heart now?” I asked, breathless.

  His eyes dilated and his lids lowered and I knew that he did. He could hear the hiccup of my racing heart as it skipped with each jolt to my nerves that his touch—even the memory of his touch—instigated.

  “I might have found Lem attractive, Robert,” I said to him in a breath that was barely a whisper. “But only you’ve ever made me feel this way. My heart beats this way because of you.”

  I grabbed his hand and brought it to my chest, wanting him to feel just how much he affected me, not just hear it. His hand hesitated mere millimeters above the fabric of my shirt before it finally rested against me with conviction. The normally cool hand was like a red hot poker against my skin, the thin t-shirt doing nothing to prevent the sparks that ignited between us.

  To my dismay, he removed his hand far too soon, though only from touching me—he held above my heart, hovering as though frozen in place. But I still felt it there, pressed against me, and I closed my eyes, biting my lip at the memory of the unexpected feeling from what I had thought was an innocent attempt to prove to him how I felt.

  “I think we should get going, Grace,” he said with a shudder as his fingers flexed, floating over my shirt like a searching shadow.

  I groaned in acknowledgement. We were treading in dangerous waters with each touch, and it was growing more and more difficult to remember what it was that we were fighting against when we both tamped down the desire that was threatening to overwhelm the both of us.

  “What time is it anyway?”

  “Nearly three. Stacy’s parents will be calling the house soon to speak to Lark. She’ll inform them that you’re with her and that the two of you will hurry to the hospital so that you can be there before they say their goodbyes to Stacy.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “I told you that some of us have the ability to foresee the future. It just so happens that my grandmère’s ability is just that.”

  “So your grandmother told you.”

  “You don’t have to make it sound so cheesy.”

  A snort escaped me as I rolled my eyes at him. “I can’t believe you just said the word ‘cheesy’.”

  He stopped moving and looked at me with pleased grin on his face. “I can’t either.”

  Robert got up and held his hand out to help me to stand, the snaps and pops that came as I stretched the stiffness out of my joints only more noticeable since there had been no such sound when he stood. “Getting old there, aren’t you?”

  I gasped in mock indignation, exaggerating the effect with over-wide eyes and a low-hung jaw. “How. Dare. You!”

  I tried to hold my expression for as long as I could, but Robert’s immediately contrite face destroyed my will power and I began to giggle. “Oh, Robert. You should know by now that the last thing I’m concerned about is my age.”

  With a smile that hinted at some form of retaliation to go along with relief, he pressed a quick kiss to my forehead before scooping me up into his arms and setting off through the trees, his footsteps disappearing behind him as something disturbed the leaves, covering them up. Before the bright shock of sunlight blocked my view, I saw the green face of Bala peek from around a tree, a hopeful smile on her face.

  She closed one jet eye in an oddly slow wink, only to be lost by the sharp sting of the sun’s rays. I closed my eyes before tucking my head into Robert’s shoulder.

  “Okay, get in,” I heard him command when we stopped moving. He lowered my feet to the ground and I stared at the black car that sat in front of me.

  “How did it get here?”

  “Linda, the woman you met at the house—she drove it here before returning.”

  Linda was also the one who had somehow been able to keep from me the truth about what she was. She was neither human nor angel, so what was she? She wasn’t a vampire, that was for sure, and I knew for a fact that she wasn’t a nymph or an Erlking.

  “Don’t even think about asking,” Robert said as he held the door open for me.

  “Why?” I climbed in, pulling my legs in just before he shut the door on me.

  I waited until he reached the driver’s side door, and then pressed the lock button.

  He lifted the handle and I nearly choked when I saw it tear off in his hand.

  “Oh!”

  Quickly, I reached over and pressed the lock button on his side. Hearing the familiar click, I saw his hand reach into where the handle had been and saw him pull once more, this time taking the door out instead.

  “Oh, dear bananas!”

  He bent his head down and glared at me. Is this how you plan on getting me to tell you what Linda is? By making me destroy my car piece by piece?

  “I’m sorry!”

  He shook his head at me, and I hung my own down in embarrassment and shame. How could I have been so stupid? Didn’t I know he would do something like that if the door didn’t unlock? Of course I did.

  But I didn’t really care.

  I raised my head to look at him and nearly fell over at the bemused expression that radiated nothing but humor and enjoyment at my sudden guilt.

  You’re cute when you’re wallowing.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  He flung the door behind him and offered his hand to me, grinning like a madman as he replied. “We fly.”

  ***

  “I don’t understand why you couldn’t just fix the stupid thing,” Lark grumbled.

  “With what tools? I’m an angel, Lark, not a mechanic.”

  “Oh sure. You’d think that with all of those books you’ve read over the past, oh, I don’t know, thousand years or so, you’d have at least read one book on car repair.”

  Robert turned around and shot his sister a venomous look. “Why would I need to know how to repair a vehicle when the only time I’ve ever owned one was when we moved back here?”

  “Because you’re the one who wanted to blend in. Guys know how to fix cars.”

  “Yeah, guys who can’t fly.”

  Lark harrumphed and slunk into her seat. The seat that I had spent many a bored afternoon sitting in, staring out the window and eating nothing but junk food.

  “So how’d you get this hunk of junk working anyway?”

  Robert patted the dash of Graham’s Buick and grinned. “We had a talk.”

  “Wh-what?” I sputtered, my body jerking around in surprise, nearly strangling my midsection with the seatbelt in the process.

  “No, seriously. How?”

  Lark’s head popped back from between the seats, completely cutting off any view from where I sat of her brother. She stared at Robert, her long hair acting like a screen and shielding both of their expressions as she repeated my question.

  Robert didn’t hold back the guffaw that came out, low and deep in his throat at his sister’s demand. The sound of it made me smile—there had been far too little of either smiling or laughing these past few days, and I had to appreciate them whenever I could.

  “I was having it repaired and restored. It’s sort of like a gift to Graham for being brave—or crazy—enough to agree to spend forever with you. Fortunately for me, the mechanical repairs were completed when I showed up. They hadn’t shipped it off for the interior and exterior work yet, hence the current condition of the seats.”

  I pushed Lark’s hair out of the way and marveled at Robert’s thoughtfulness. “You knew just what he wanted; this car is probably the only thing of real significance that his father’s ever given him. He’s going to love it when it’s done, Robert. Thank you.”

  “I certainly hope he does. With the amount of work that’s gone into repairing the engine alone, it would have been cheaper to have just purchased a brand new car for him.”

  “Like you’ve ever cared about saving money,” Lark quipped, suddenly showing far more appreciation towards her brother than she had when, through my eyes, she first caught sight of the car as it had pulled up to the front door of their hom
e.

  Robert had dropped me off before picking the car up, insisting that I needed to be there when the Kims called. He had been right, but that didn’t alter how I felt about being left behind. When he pulled up in Graham’s car, I knew that Lark’s heart felt the exact same burn as mine did at simply seeing the dented passenger-side door, and the rust patches all over the side and hood. It served as a reminder that Graham’s life was still hanging precariously on the edge of a deranged angel’s whim.

  THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  Let me tell you something. The way a hospital smells, the way it permeates with the odor of floral-laced sick, with a dab of bandages and bland food is wrong. Especially when you’re in a room filled with people who are in different stages of mourning, the acrid scent of tears and body heat making for an even more unpleasant and uncomfortable situation.

  Stacy’s parents, grief stricken at the impending death of their only daughter, had barely acknowledged our arrival. Robert, Lark, and I found room in an unoccupied corner and I tried my hardest to not let my nervousness overcome the faux face of sadness I had somehow managed to attach to myself.

  The five Kim sons hovered around the foot of the bed, each one with their heads bowed in solemn obedience as their parents prayed beside her, one on each side, their hands gently yet possessively cradling hers. It was a scene that immediately erased the false grief within me and replaced it with genuine pain because I knew that whatever happened, whether we were successful or not, the reality was that they were losing a daughter and a sister today. Nothing we did would prevent that from happening.

  The door to the room opened and a doctor walked in, a purposeful line digging across his forehead running parallel to the one that made up his mouth. He was followed by a nurse who held in her hands a clipboard with several forms needing to be signed, a pen clutched between her fingers as she took in the amount of people that filled the room.

  Mr. Kim stood up, a brave face masking the hurt that I had just witnessed seconds earlier, and quickly marked the signature lines with a swipe of the proffered pen. The grim task of signing away his daughter’s life caused this once strong man’s knees to buckle, and without the aid of his sons he would have fallen to the ground, succumbing to the woe that spread through the room like a rabid infection.

  Lark’s eyes pooled with liquid crystal, while Robert pressed determined fingers into the lids of his eyes to hold back what the emotions of the room were causing to build behind them. Empathic though they might be, these were their emotions as well, and they were very difficult to suppress. My hand, firmly clasped in Robert’s strong grip, squeezed his reassuringly. His fingers lifted from his shadowed eyes and he graced me with a tender smile.

  “Thank you,” he mouthed to me before turning his attention towards Lark, who blinked once before her eyes became flat, anticipation and focus erasing the dour look that she had adopted upon entering the room.

  And then it was time.

  Mrs. Kim’s sobbing, soft and contained within her petite self, now burst forth from her in pitiful wails as, with a simple, curt nod by the doctor, the machines that kept Stacy’s body artificially alive were turned off, one by one.

  I watched as the pupils in Lark’s eyes shrank, turning to pinpoints lost in the pale mercury irises that stared out, sightless and yet with far greater vision than anyone could ever imagine. Robert’s eyes also began to lose their darkness and he gave me a short nod before squeezing my hand. I let down the defenses that blocked his thoughts from reaching my own and instantly, as though I had fallen into a forest filled with bells, my mind was filled with a thousand different voices.

  Before I could be overwhelmed by the chaos of the noise, one by one, they dropped away, and I closed my eyes to focus on the one that mattered, the one that I needed to find before it was too late.

  This way, Grace.

  Robert’s voice in my head acted like a beacon that pulled me through the different waves of thought, passing by voices that were strange, and others that were gravely familiar. As the seconds disappeared forever, my sense of urgency grew, and I felt my mind rush by voices that I knew did not matter—none of them mattered.

  Hundreds of voices, thousands of them, droned on and on in my head, memories that weren’t mine flashing by in bursts of light and emotion—it was difficult to keep focused on what it was that I needed to do. I didn’t know what I was looking for. No one did. Each voice was like a doorway that led to someone else’s mind, someone else’s secrets, and I had to be the mind reader now.

  I could hear the dour thoughts of Stacy’s eldest brother, the angry regrets of her twin, Sean. I passed these voices by as I listened more intently now, hearing the macabre thoughts of nurses passing by, and the sympathetic notions of someone in another room who had learned of a young girl’s parents’ decision to end her suffering rather than prolong it.

  Each individual thought was like another stone added to a cobblestone street that kept going, no end in sight. I was beginning to feel wearied, my mind filled with far more than it could handle, and though my eyes were shut, I could see the black and white speckled dots that always preceded me blacking out start to dance behind my lids.

  And then from some corner of the dark, I heard it. Her voice was singing to me, each note slowly drowning out the cacophony of words and images that had flooded my mind. I followed the sound wordlessly, eager steps drawing me forward as the musical pull grew louder and stronger. The song, which had started out merely as a melody, now had words, words that spoke of the unknown and its wondrous splendor upon discovery.

  I held on to each note, using them to guide my way to the doorway that would lead me into her sheltered mind. I didn’t know what I needed to do once I got there, only that I had little time left to do it, and so I ran. In my mind, I raced through my thoughts, through my fears and doubts and flew towards the darkening window of opportunity before it shut on me, for as soon as I knew what it was I was looking for, the music, the melodious sound that was Stacy’s singing was beginning to fade away.

  Stacy!

  My mind reached out to her, a mental hand to the song that had led me to her.

  Stacy, don’t go. Don’t leave us yet!

  My head began to throb, the ache an almost unbearable and unyielding threat to what I needed to do. The dark spots were beginning to overtake the white one behind my lids and I could see the red glow of light behind them as I began to lose my hold on the world of thought and memory that Robert had opened up for me, Stacy’s life slowly fading away and leaving me behind.

  No!

  ***

  I opened my eyes, and found myself standing in a long hallway, a series of five doors running alongside me at both ends. The walls themselves bowed outwards in some areas, as though there were large bubbles just urging to burst open behind them. Its surface was painted in a mish-mash of colors, no discernable pattern being created as each one blended into the other, never quite going together and yet, never really separate from each other, like a rainbow that had been hit by a tornado of color.

  The doors, however, were something else entirely. Each one was not content to be an ordinary rectangle set in an oddly shaped and painted wall. No, these doors all appeared to have been cut into the walls themselves, their shapes seemingly random, with equally random images and patterns painted on them, contrasting greatly with the variegated walls that surrounded them.

  Even their handles varied, from the mundane round knobs that usually graced the most ordinary of doors, to what looked like upside down teapots, their spouts and handles looking like mismatched ears on an equally lopsided head. There seemed to be no real method to the pairings of handles to doors, the shapes of each never matching up, no matter what the twisted little architect of this whimsical hallway intended.

  Directly behind me stood a lotus shaped door, its handle missing, a red ribbon hanging in the opening it left behind. Ahead of me I could make out the shape of a large, circular door at the end of the hall, tho
ugh I couldn’t quite make out the color save for a smaller darker circle that sat directly in its center. It was the only spot of color that didn’t seem to belong there amongst the sea of paint that surrounded it. Despite the loud colors that screamed at me from the walls, the hall itself was eerily silent.

  “Hello?” I called out, hearing my voice return to me in an echo that had somehow aged it, a perverse hint of what I’d never sound like. “Hell-oh,” I shouted this time, exaggerating each syllable and waiting for them to bounce back to me in that same foreign voice.

  “Grace?” Stacy called out.

  This wasn’t what I had expected.

  “Stacy? Stacy, is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me! Where are you, Grace?”

  Her voice sounded strained and muffled behind the solid wooden core of one of the numerous doors.

  “I’m coming, Stacy. Just keep talking so that I can find you!” I awaited her reply and upon hearing it, I opened a leaf-shaped door immediately to my left, biting back a scream at what I found lying behind it.

  It was a windowless room, dull and institutional with flat gray walls that contrasted dramatically from the vivid world that lay just beyond the doorway. I had to cover my mouth and remind myself to breathe, albeit far more slowly than possible at the scene that stood before me. A steel slab table—one that was remarkably similar to those that the school had in the cafeteria’s kitchen—stood in the middle of the room like a grisly display case, showcasing countless sets of white wings that had been torn from their owners, splayed out like plumed, ornate tiles against the cold metal surface.

  Bloodied feathers were scattered all over the concrete floor like macabre confetti, while tufts of down floated in the overheated room that exaggerated the smell of blood and permeated air with its noxious odor, causing me to gag. The bloody scene of decay and death was laid out before me like a work of grotesque art on a canvas that encased everything in the room.