“Bussin’ today?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
Together, without speaking, they lined up in front of the bus, then boarded. There were no empty benches left, only single seats, and disappointment tugged at Em’s lips. But much to her surprise, Carlos silently gathered up her hand in his, stopped beside a bench housing a lone boy, and held up their entwined hands for the kid to see.
“Mind?”
The boy shook his head and scurried for another seat.
Em wasn’t sure if the result was due to Carlos’s naturally intimidating style or just kindness on the boy’s part. To be honest, she didn’t give it much thought. She was lost in the sensation of his lean, sweat-free hand wrapped around hers and the tingly feel of his shoulder and thigh brushing against her clothes as they sat.
Okay, not totally lost.
A part of her beamed with the knowledge that the other girls on the bus had witnessed his very public claim of her hand. He’d proved the backstabbing bitches wrong with one simple act—she wasn’t a lesbo or a troll.
The whole event made her light-headed—so light-headed, in fact, that the short trip to her stop passed in a blur, and in no time at all the bus was squeaking to a halt in front of her apartment complex.
Carlos released her hand. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Head down, with her long, streaked hair masking her expression, Em strode to the front of the bus and began to descend the steps. But as determined as she was not to act stupid and starry-eyed, she was unable to resist a quick glance back at Carlos before she exited.
He was watching her, just as she expected.
But this time, as their eyes met, the corner of his mouth lifted in the teensiest of smiles, and her heart did a little flip.
OMG.
He really liked her.
* * *
Searching the Net didn’t lift Rachel’s spirits one bit. According to Wikipedia, there was something called delusional disorder that fit Lachlan’s symptoms to a T. Well, except for the sexual dysfunction, and the tendency to be hypersensitive and argumentative. Okay, so it didn’t really describe him at all. She still wasn’t able to accept the other option—that he was dead.
So, she typed Drusus in the Google search bar instead.
She waded through a ton of useless pages before she found an entry for the son of a Roman general, one S. Cornelius Drusus Magnus, who died of an apparent poisoning at the tender age of twenty-two. The description fit: slim build, blond curly hair, and green eyes. The interesting bit was that he rated as an up-and-coming political star of the time, a brilliant strategist, and a gifted orator.
That explained the glib tongue, but not how he ended up in hell. She tried searching for Drusus demon.
Unfortunately, Nigel walked by at that precise moment, caught a glimpse of her computer screen, and practically tripped over the tassels of his Gucci loafers.
“What are you doing?”
Although Rachel alt-tabbed back to her CorelDRAW screen and blended two objects together as though she’d been busy on her graphic all along, lying didn’t seem profitable. “Just looking up some info on the Net for a friend of mine.”
“Rachel …”
She flushed. “It’s after five.”
Sighing heavily, he backed up two steps and leaned over her cubby wall, his mauve silk shirt a perfect match to his designer eyeglass frames. “Have you reviewed Matt’s illustrations yet?”
“Yes.”
“And have you met with him to discuss how to improve them?”
“Yes.”
“Will he be able to deliver?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. He’s got plenty of enthusiasm but not a lot of originality. His designs are …”
“Crap?”
Rachel flushed. “Well—”
“You know you’re going to end up doing them all yourself, don’t you? Why do you think Celia assigned him to your team? She knew you were the only one who could redo all his stuff in the short time we have left.” Nigel clucked sympathetically. “You haven’t got time to surf the Net, sweetie. You barely have time to pee. If I were you, I’d get my ass in gear.”
To prove her willingness to follow his advice, she tabbed back to the Internet screen and shut down the browser. “I’m on it.”
“Good girl.” He straightened. “Drop the completed files on my desk before you leave.”
Then he was gone, mincing his way down the hall, leaving Rachel with a bad case of itchy fingers. She desperately wanted to keep reading about Drusus, but the clock was ticking and she had a lot of illustrating to do.
Research would have to wait until she got home.
Lachlan closed his e-mail and sighed.
A gather was the last thing he wanted to do right now. With Rachel nervously unsure of him and Drusus preparing to pounce, he should be watching Emily around the clock, not driving across town to tend the dying. But Gatherers could not decline assignments.
He stood, mentally reviewing the details.
A sharp rap at the door interrupted his thoughts.
Crossing the room, he peered through the peephole, then opened the door. A young Asian man stood before him, wearing the green cap and uniform of a local dry cleaner.
“I’m here for a pickup.”
Lachlan studied the skinny, five-foot-nothing lad for a moment, then walked to the hall closet and retrieved a zippered suit bag looped with a white plastic tote. This might well be the worst decision of his entire existence. But it felt right. He handed off his three sets of clerical garb. “Make sure you do a good job. They have sentimental value.”
“Sure, sure. They get the gold treatment. No problem.”
The dry cleaner flung the clothes over his shoulder, skipped down the hall, and disappeared down the stairs. Trying not to read too much into the careless handling of his possessions, Lachlan exited the apartment, locking the door behind him.
The drive to Anselm Brucker’s home in Los Altos took only twenty-five minutes. Since he was early, Lachlan parked down the street and studied the large two-story house for a few minutes, deciding on the best entry. Garage roof to the back bedroom window, from the look of things.
If there was an alarm system, it wasn’t currently set. No dog, either. All good news. None of those hurdles would have deterred him, but simpler was always better.
Lachlan crossed the tree-lined street with a relaxed gait and strode toward the front door. It never paid to look as if you didn’t belong. At the porch steps, he leapt silently from the walkway to the garage roof, crouching low on the tile to minimize his aspect. Four slinking steps along the pink-washed facade and he was around the corner, out of sight. When he reached the window at the back, he found it wide-open, curtains fluttering in the mild breeze.
In the large, masculine bedroom, next to the window, a frail, gray-haired man sat in a wheelchair, his legs draped with a wool blanket.
He smiled as Lachlan ducked inside. “You’re early.”
Lachlan shrugged off his long black overcoat and tossed it on the bed. It always amazed him that dying people knew immediately what he was. He took the old man’s thin hand, which felt thin and cool, like fine porcelain. “Your request for a few moments to discuss the transition was granted. Am I intruding on your private time?”
“No, no, I’m ready to go.”
Lachlan studied the wrinkled face and faded blue eyes, and asked, “Are you?”
“More than you know. I’ve had a good life, full of amazing and wonderful things. And my wife, Marta, passed away last year, at Christmastime.”
“You wish to follow her.”
“Oh yes. I told her I wouldn’t be long.” He bent forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “She’d never been anywhere on her own before and I didn’t want her to worry.”
“No doubt your assurances made her passage easier.”
Anselm smiled. “She’s waiting for me up there.”
&
nbsp; A feather of disquiet brushed the back of Lachlan’s neck. “I’m afraid I can’t guarantee—”
“Oh,” the old man said with a chuckle, “don’t worry about that. I’m going to heaven. God told me so himself.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, in September, when I had the stroke that put me in this crazy chair. Death almost took me then, you know, but I asked the Lord if I could wait until my great-granddaughter was born. He agreed. Not too many people get to see their great-grandchildren come into this world.”
“True.”
Anselm frowned. “You don’t believe me.”
“It’s not tha—”
“What’s your name, young man?”
Lachlan held back a grin. Could four hundred thirty-nine really be considered young? “Lachlan.”
“Do you pray, Lachlan?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you think he listens?”
Good question. A lot of his prayers over the years had gone unanswered. “Sometimes.”
The elder man dug beneath his blanket and pulled out a dog-eared, leather-bound book. His hands shook as he opened it to the first page. “In my darkest hour, my grandfather gifted me this Bible. When he handed it to me he said, Faith isn’t about finding God, Anselm. We know where he is. Faith is about finding yourself.”
He looked at Lachlan. “He’s always listening.”
“You sound very sure. How do you know?”
“Because he answers me.” Anselm coughed twice, held a trembling tissue to his lips, and then sat back, weary. “I don’t always agree with his response, mind you. Sometimes his choice is to leave me hanging, or to make me walk through fire. But I’m a better man for everything that’s ever happened to me. Whenever God’s tested me, it’s been for a good cause.”
Lachlan recalled the deaths of his family and silently disagreed.
“Take the death of my Marta, for example,” Anselm added. “Cancer. And not one of those quick, relatively painless passings. Oh no, Marta had colon cancer and it ate her up from the inside out. You might wonder how I can still believe in God when I had to watch her go that way.”
Lachlan said nothing. But he did wonder.
“I mean, why make us suffer like that? Especially at the end, when we can’t possibly learn anything from it?”
Yes, why?
“I’ll tell you why. Because the end of our lives on Earth is not the ultimate end. We go on to a whole other existence once we leave here. We keep growing; we keep learning. But it’s a very different existence. He wants us to understand that no matter how hard life is, how painful, how short, this time we get on Earth is a blessing. Here, we touch, we smell, we feel. Up there, not so much.”
“You’re saying he wants us to rejoice in pain?”
“I didn’t say that,” Anselm said, wagging a knobby finger at him. “I actually said just the opposite. He shows us pain so we can rejoice in the other stuff. Even the boring and the mundane. Tell me honestly, do you not relish the good moments you had far more now that tragedy has touched you? Are your memories not that much keener?”
God, yes. Sometimes horribly so. “The pain might be valuable to me,” he said, “but how could it possibly benefit a wee bairn, an innocent child?”
Anselm’s rheumy eyes met his. “I was a doctor before my fingers became too gnarled to work properly, and I can tell you I met many a child whose wisdom exceeded that of adults. Suffering makes us all stronger, even children. And you must trust God not to leave a child, or an adult for that matter, with more painful memories than he or she can handle.”
“Your faith in him amazes me,” Lachlan confessed. “But I don’t share it.”
“Perhaps not. But when the time comes, place yourself in his hands. You might be surprised.”
Staring intently into the old man’s eyes, Lachlan saw the first stroke hit him, saw the tide of blackness crash over him and then recede. He reached for Anselm’s hand and squeezed it.
The old man slumped in his chair, his head rolling back, his gray hair askew. He smiled weakly, a lopsided grin. Only one half of his face showed any emotion, but it was a shining reflection of both hope and fear. The spiral on his left cheek glowed ever so faintly.
“I knew the end was near,” he said, his words garbled. “And I prayed for you to be the one to come.”
Lachlan frowned. “You don’t know me.”
“Oh, but I do,” he whispered. “You are me. Sixty-four years ago, right after the war. Right after the car accident that claimed my first wife and my twin boys.”
Lachlan leaned closer.
Anselm’s next words were barely audible. “I was driving.”
Lachlan had to force himself to maintain eye contact. Old feelings of guilt churned in his belly.
“My youngest boy lingered for two days, and I sat at his bedside night and day, praying tirelessly. Hoping against hope. When he died, my faith died with him. I went to church, just as I always had, but in my heart, I no longer believed in a caring God. I see that same emptiness in your eyes, Lachlan.” Anselm sucked in a shaky breath. Speaking seemed to sap his strength, what little there was left, and he slumped further. “I see me.”
A tear rose in Lachlan’s eye and he blinked, letting it fall. “How did you rediscover your faith?”
“This Bible. My grandfather left details of his life and his own sins in the margins. I knew him as an honorable man with a generous heart, but he was not always that man. His notations helped me … to accept my actions … and to understand God’s plan. This Bible taught me how to forgive myself.” For a moment, the only sound in the room was Anselm’s raspy breathing. Then he pushed the book toward Lachlan. “I want you to take it.”
“No.”
“Take it.”
“I can’t.”
With some effort, Anselm lifted a hand and squeezed Lachlan’s arm. “Please.”
There wasn’t enough time left to argue. “All right. Because you insist, I will. Now rest. You’ve done enough. It’s my turn to look after you.”
Anselm’s hand dropped to his blanket-covered lap.
“Read it.” The old man smiled crookedly. “Find yourself. More importantly … learn to … forgive … yourself.”
Anselm’s eyes widened, and the last word came out as a thin sigh from a slack mouth. The final stroke was sudden and catastrophic, and his brain succumbed immediately, his eyes dulling. Moments later his heartbeat ceased, too, leaving behind only a gaunt shell of the man who’d used his last moments on Earth vainly trying to restore Lachlan’s faith.
But it wasn’t an empty shell. Not yet.
He put his hand on the loose skin at Anselm’s throat. His nose itched fiercely and he was forced to blink repeatedly as the tickle of soul transfer feathered up his arm and a balmy warmth wrapped around his heart.
Sixty-four years ago, this man had experienced a similar break in faith, blaming himself for the loss of his family, seeing life at its bleakest, a source of only darkness, death, and destruction. Yet, somehow, he’d learned to forgive himself. He’d come back from the brink, and in the process, become a man more committed to God than ever before, more determined to prove himself worthy of a place in heaven.
An admirable man, despite the sins of his past.
One deserving of an honorable end.
Lachlan stood. No filthy demon horde could be allowed to rob Anselm of his eternal joy, no matter how many of the bastards crawled from the bowels of the earth to attack him. Satan would gain an unwelcome surge of power from a soul so pure. It wasn’t quite the prize of a corrupted soul, but valuable nonetheless. He strode to the window.
Then he paused and looked over his shoulder. Retracing his steps, he bent and picked up the tattered Bible.
A promise was a promise.
14
Lying on her stomach, swinging her foot to an old David Bowie tune, Em never heard her phone ring. She just saw it light up and start dancing on the black cotton bedcovers. Tugging her ear
buds out, she glanced at the number, verified that it wasn’t her mother, and picked it up.
“Hi, Drew,” she said softly.
“How’s my Bella this afternoon?”
She grinned and turned her vampire romance facedown. “Just fine. How’d you know I was reading?”
“I know everything about you, sweet. How did it go yesterday, with your mom and the priest?”
“He’s a phony. No cuts, no bruises, nada.”
“I told you.”
“I know,” she responded, recalling his pleading eyes and squirming with genuine regret. Why hadn’t she believed him? “She just sounded so convincing.”
“I wish I knew why she dislikes me so much. I’m not that bad, am I?”
“No,” she laughed. A seed of thought sprouted in her mind and, picking up her pen, she began to doodle absently on the closest notebook. Sixes. “I still say it’s the motorcycle.”
“Maybe. Speaking of motorcycles, I came by the school today to pick you up.”
Em flushed. Wow. Apparently, she had been so focused on Carlos, the loud rumble of a motorcycle hadn’t made any impact. “Sorry, I must have missed you. I got on the bus.”
“I saw.”
“You saw?” Her swinging foot froze in midair. What exactly did he see?
“You got on the bus with a tall, dark-haired guy.”
Enough, obviously. “He’s a new kid, just started on Monday. I was being nice.”
“Of course you were. Does the new kid have a name?”
Em bit her fingernail. Drew’s tone was almost too calm, too offhand. Was he testing her? “Carlos Rodriguez.”
“And is he, by chance, showing an interest?”
“In me?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“Yes, sweet, in you.”
“I suppose,” she hedged. “A little.”
“Can’t say that I blame him; you’re the most beautiful girl in the school. Still, he’ll turn out to be just like the others, Em. You know it. Eventually, he’ll say what’s really on his mind, just like that Daria girl. And that redheaded boy who called you a lesbian in front of the whole cafeteria. Don’t get sucked in.”
“I don’t think he’s like that. He seems more like us.”
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