My hopes fall. “Yeah, I guess we’ll have all the time in the world to chat when I’m dead. What’s that like? Being dead?”
Brinkley gives me a sad smile.
“Is it boring? I bet it’s boring. So is this heaven?”
“For you maybe,” he says. “But not in the way you mean. It’s more like a place between heaven and earth. Closer to earth than heaven actually.”
“Why would you need a place between? And why does Gabriel keep bringing me here?”
“Too many questions kid, and you should be doing the listening. Me the talking.”
“Right, sorry.”
Brinkley smiles. He’s got more patience now, but maybe being dead will do that to you. After all, what pressing appointment could he possibly have now?
“Rachel needs you.”
My brow furrows. “Oh god, no. You’re not going to start talking about how she’s betraying me too are you?”
“She doesn’t see it as betrayal. She’s doing what she believes is right. I gave her a mission and I asked too much. Forgive her. Forgive me.” Brinkley says.
“Forgive you?” I’m shocked. “That’s the message?”
“That’s it for now,” Brinkley says, breaking into another brilliant smile. “I’ll see you around, kid.”
“Wait, what?” I shout at his back as he turns to go. “That’s it? That’s really it? Brinkley, wait!”
Brinkley stoops down to pick up his can of beer before turning back to face me.
“If Rachel’s losing it again, I can’t save her. I don’t know how!”
Brinkley gives me a lopsided grin. “You’re capable of so much more than you think you are. I knew it when I first met you, and I believe it now more than ever.”
A crushing sense of grief washes over me. Tears choke my eyes, my throat constricts and I’m running across the beach at full speed.
I slam into Brinkley and throw my arms around him. He’s real. Completely, blessedly real. God, I don’t know what I would do if he turned out to be immaterial.
I squeeze him harder. “God, don’t go. I can’t do this shit by myself. I need you to tell me what to do. Every second of every day I feel like I’m fucking it up. I feel like—”
“You won’t, as they say, screw the pooch.”
His praise hurts me more than a slap across the face or a punch in the gut.
“I’m sorry. Brinkley, I’m so sorry. I should’ve—if I’d killed Caldwell, you might’ve—”
Brinkley yanks me out of his arms then, roughly. But he’s still smiling.
“I used to think it was my fault for bringing you into this, but I see it differently now. We aren’t as in control as we think we are, kid. I didn’t put you in danger any more than you got me killed. You’ll see that someday.”
“But how am I supposed to help Rachel?”
“Remember what I did for her last time. You’ve forgotten, but you’ll remember.”
He clasps a hand on my shoulder as the wind kicks up. He tosses his head back to finish off his beer.
Gabriel places a hand on my back. “We’re out of time.”
The smell of rain overtakes the beach. I look up to see dark clouds forming on the horizon.
I want to say goodbye to Brinkley one more time. One more apology for being such an ungrateful little dick when he was alive. But Brinkley isn’t on the porch anymore. He’s farther down the beach at the edge where the shore meets a copse of trees. He stands at the mouth of the path and waves.
His voice comes one more time. Remember how I brought her back.
Then he ducks beneath a branch and is gone.
A fat rain droplet hits my cheek.
Furious lightning shatters the sky in the distance. The wind blowing in off the water pushes me back into Gabriel’s arms.
With his hands around my waist, he takes off. His two black wings thrust us up into the darkening sky.
Chapter 19
Rachel
I use my mind to blow back the colossal wooden doors of the church. Though tremendously large, the panels swing and hit the stone interior with enough force that they crack.
I step onto the burgundy runner that leads me through the vestibule and narthex into the sanctuary. Overhead, a martyr with her barbed heart holds a hand out in blessing. Candles burn in their candelabras on both sides of the room as polished pews stretch from one end to the altar ahead.
A priest in white and gold robes of the Unified Church rushes down the aisle toward me. He’s walking faster than those grannies in the mall with their fanny packs and visors, yet too dignified to break into a run.
“Miss.” His voice strains against its own volume. He wants to yell at me, I’m sure, but holds himself back. “Miss, the church is closed. You must leave.”
“No.” I slip off the mink coat and lay it over the back of a pew. I don’t want it to get dirty. Then I lift all the prayer books from their little holders behind the seats. They rise, floating in place about a foot above the polished pews.
He stops in the center aisle, his hands coming up in front of him.
I throw one book after another at him. They pelt his body and he gives out a little cry. I can’t help but laugh at his cowering form. Once the books have been thrown and none hang in the air, I make the suspended candelabras swing furiously.
It all feels so so good. Is this what it’s like every time we power up? I should’ve been knocking off those partis sooner.
“It’s pathetic how blindly you follow him,” I say, twirling. The priest stumbles back out of the pile of prayer books surrounding him. “He isn’t a god. He has no real power. He uses and abuses every one of you.”
I see Chaplain in head-to-toe black, speaking his false promises to lure stupid girls into a trap.
“He is the one true Lord,” the priest cries out. He begins chanting furiously and I start to laugh. I can’t help myself. I don’t speak Latin, but I know the word daemon well enough.
I lift the priest off his feet. I shove him across the room and skip after him as he sails toward the vestibule.
I pin him to the man-sized cross, white and gleaming in the center of the room. I stretch his arms out to a T, while the man cries to himself, continuing his useless prayers.
“Wh-what are you going to do?” he asks at last.
“Play telephone.” I grin up from my place at his feet. “And you’re the telephone.”
“I don’t—”
“Understand? I know. Do as I tell you and you won’t die. Today. Well, I guess I can’t promise that, can I? You could step off those steps outside and break your neck or get hit by a bus. I should know how easy it is to die. I’ve done it over 200 times!”
“What do you want?”
“Right,” I say stretching my arms overhead. “I want you to make a call to Caldwell. You know who Timothy Caldwell is right?”
“Yes, b—”
“Good. Call him. Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Oh, silly, you don’t need one. Call him up here.” I tap the side of my head. “Think pitiful thoughts about how I’m tormenting you. About where we are. Show him my face. Picture my face.”
I stare up at the slack-jawed priest, this ancient balding man trembling on the cross.
“Are you calling him, Telephone?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips.
“He is doing as you say,” Uriel says beside me.
“Good, good!” I say and clap my hands.
The priest looks down at me.
“I’m not talking to you! Keep praying as if your life depends on it.”
His eyes go unfocused again, sweat forming on the top of his fat upper lip.
“How long do you think it’ll take for Caldwell to get the message?” I ask Uriel, succumbing to the sudden urge to do a cartwheel. The priest makes a disgusted cluck with his tongue and pinches his eyes closed until I pull my dress back down over my head.
“Oh, relax
Father,” I say with a giggle. “They’re just black panties. You see them in commercials all the time, don’t you? Victoria’s Secret ads.”
“Ms. Wright,” a sultry voice calls from the end of the walkway. At least two dozen rows of pews stand between us, but I’d recognize that voice and face anywhere. “Causing trouble are we?”
I hang onto one end of the pew and lean over, stretching out into the aisle. “Don’t act like you don’t enjoy causing trouble yourself, Eric.”
His steady approach up the walkway halts and his face twists with irritation. “Don’t call me that.”
“Eric?” I ask. “That’s your name, isn’t it? It’s the name your mother gave you.”
“I don’t have a mother.” He clasps his hands behind his back and regains his composure before proceeding up the aisle.
With me in such a gorgeous dress and his slow processional, it’s like we’re getting married in some bizarre backwards wedding where the bride waits for the groom.
“So a god then? Parentless? Maybe you even hatched from an egg?”
“I had a spiritual rebirth.” Caldwell’s gaze is set on mine. His intense stare is so very much like Chaplain’s, the dark orbs holding the candelabras’ flame. “Like many great men of our time. And when I was reborn I took a new name.”
I ignore his declarations. “Was it you who took Gideon away? Eric?” I grin viciously at his mounting irritation.
Now it’s his turn to smile. “I didn’t hurt him. In fact, once we reached an agreement, I let him go. He’s on his way to your friends now.”
“My friends?” I taunt, grabbing the hem of my dress and pulling it up a little. I can’t get over how good the fabric feels on my skin, how good everything feels. I want to roll around on the red carpet and stare up at the pretty stained glass above. The influx of power I get from absorbing a partis’ gift is better than a dose of ecstasy.
Caldwell’s eyes slip down, sliding over my breasts, my thighs, and I laugh.
“So you are a man under all of that?” I ask, willing him to come a little closer. I want him within my reach.
“I could have told you that,” a voice says. The woman with the sleek hair pulled into a severe bun steps from behind a column on my right. She’s closer to me than she is to Caldwell, who’s stopped just out of my arms’ length.
Black-smoke extends from her torso, shooting toward me like a viper. I throw up my hands as if to shield myself, and she flies up and back away from me, slamming into a stone column. She deserves it. She and Caldwell threw me around much like this on our last encounter.
Georgia cries out twice. Once when she hits the column and again when she falls to the ground with a crack.
“Oh, I hope that was the sound of her brains spilling all over the stones!”
Caldwell lunges for me, but I’m expecting it. I reach into his chest with my mind and latch onto that fragile organ, thrashing wildly in its bone casing. I squeeze.
Caldwell’s eyes go wide and he falls to his knees, mouth coming open in surprise.
“Oh, now we’re getting somewhere,” I say, in a low tone. I’m practically purring, relishing this moment. “Finally.”
Caldwell comes to his hands and knees.
“Oh, can’t teleport with your heart in my hands? How interesting.”
His eyes widen.
Something strikes me hard on the back of the neck, making the world reel. I stumble forward, on top of Caldwell.
“Oww!” I cry from my hands and knees. I reach back and touch a wet spot on the back of my head. My fingers come away bloody.
On all fours, I crane my neck to see the priest. I’d forgotten all about him and in doing so, I’ve released him from the cross where he’d been pinned. Now he holds a foot-long statue of Mary like a weapon, raising it up to strike me with it again.
I break his neck without even getting up. He crumples to the ground. His robes billow out around his body, revealing a length of pale calf before the fabric settles again.
“The dangers of ADD,” I grumble as I sit back on my heels and then push myself to standing.
“Now.” I turn back to Caldwell, ready to finish what I started. “Where were we?”
Only Caldwell isn’t in the center aisle clutching his chest anymore. He’s gone.
I run to the other side of the pews, to the place where Georgia fell, but she’s gone too. Damn. My opportunity is lost by a jerk wielding a virgin.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Chapter 20
Jesse
The house is shaking. The brass bed frame trembles against the wall. An earthquake? I don’t know why this is my first thought as I peel my eyes open. Nope. No earthquake or partis come to pull the world down around me. Someone is shaking me.
“Thank god,” Ally says, with visible relief. She stops shaking me but leaves one hand on my shoulder. “You were crying for Brinkley. Did you have a bad dream?”
I push myself up on my elbows and stare around the small room crowding in on me. The off color wall paper, the cardboard boxes stacked in one corner. And a desk with several books piled one on top of the other. I search Ally’s face for its familiarity. I’ve never liked waking up in strange places.
“It wasn’t a dream,” I say, as the room comes into focus around me.
I can still smell the rain on Gabriel’s wings and the soft brush of his feathers on my face. I see Brinkley’s smile clearly as he stands at the edge of the shore before ducking into the dense trees.
But what I see most clearly is the storm. The large black clouds rolling toward me over the water, the darkness illuminated by sudden violent bursts of lightning, each strike closer than the last. In the distance, sure, but coming. Coming fast. And with it a horrible sense of foreboding.
Brinkley’s words are still clear. I asked too much. Forgive her. Forgive me.
“Rachel’s in trouble.” I let go of my last hold on the dream.
“How do you know that?”
“Brinkley told me.”
“In Gloria’s picture—”
“I don’t care if she’s cutting someone’s head off in Gloria’s picture. Brinkley wants me to look out for her.” Hadn’t Brinkley told Rachel to come help me when he died? To protect me? I always thought that was strange, that he should throw her in front of me so callously. But this idea that I was supposed to protect her in turn, that we were meant to take care of each other—that was the Brinkley I knew. Maybe he didn’t have a chance to give me those final orders when he was alive.
“You’re right. Innocent until proven guilty.” Ally smiles sympathetically.
“What are you doing in here? I thought I locked the door.”
“It doesn’t work,” Ally says. “Sorry. I knocked first, but you didn’t answer so I came in. I thought you were having an episode like Maisie.”
“What are you talking about? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine,” Ally says. “She says she felt her mother die.”
“What?”
“We don’t know what it means,” Ally says. “Or at least Gloria isn’t telling me anything. She’s with Maisie too.”
“Do we need to act?” I ask. What the hell did an episode mean anyway?
“She’s fine,” Ally assures me. “I’m more concerned about you. You were dreaming about Rachel?”
“She’s not evil.”
I know she doesn’t believe me. How could she? Not with Nikki filling her head with anti-Rachel sentiment and not in the face of Gloria’s ambiguous drawings. But in my heart, I know Rachel is good. I have a thousand memories to prove it.
One night, not long after Brinkley had recruited me and took me to Saint Louis to apprentice under Rachel, I’d woken up screaming.
One minute, I was sleeping peacefully. The next, someone was climbing into bed with me. A hand was on the back of my head, on my arm, and then I was thrashing, screaming.
Rachel had to turn on all the lights and move several feet away from me before I’d calm down.
At long last, chest heaving, I apologized, but I didn’t stop squeezing the life out of my pillow.
“What are you sorry for?” Rachel asked.
“For screaming. And I think I slapped you. I’m sorry. I have—nightmares.”
“Memories,” she corrected. She dared to sit on the end of the bed, keeping a good deal of distance between us. “You have memories. Don’t ever degrade your experience.”
I could only nod. I’d known her for weeks, maybe a month. I wasn’t going to detail my horrible stepfather’s visits.
“I have memories too,” she said at last, her back straightening. “Sometimes they get me at night. Sometimes in broad daylight.”
I wanted to ask her then what had happened to her, but she hadn’t volunteered the information and I hadn’t wanted to share mine. So I let my curiosity lie.
“I guess it’ll get easier with time,” I said, my breath returning to normal.
“No,” Rachel says. She placed her hands on her knees. “Not really. You’ll think you’re fine and then one day when you least expect it, all the pain, all the anger will rise up out of nowhere.”
I snorted. “This is one hell of a pep talk. Aren’t you supposed to make me feel better?”
Light cut across her cheek, her freckles visible even in the dimness. Rachel was the first person I ever met with freckles like me. “It isn’t about forgetting what happened. And it sure as hell isn’t about convincing yourself that it didn’t happen.”
I understood why she’d forced me to acknowledge my memories were more than mere bad dreams. You can’t overcome something if you tell yourself it isn’t real. “I don’t want to be that person who always plays the victim. Oh woe is me. Something shitty happened. My life was so bad.”
Rachel smiled. “That’s good. Because you will never be happy if you do.”
“But sometimes it’s—” so real I’d wanted to say. Sometimes the terror is so real that it doesn’t feel like the past at all.
“—hard,” Rachel said. “It is hard but you’re strong Jessup. If anyone can get over it, it’s you.”
I’d started crying then. Uncontrollably, ridiculously sobbing in a way that is pretty embarrassing to think about now. Rachel had held me.
Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) Page 12