Chest of Bone (The Afterworld Chronicles Book 1)

by Vicki Stiefel

Or, as Bernadette would say, I just needed more protein?

  I pressed the pedal to the metal.

  The sky dimmed with night’s approach as I drove toward Hembrook, to Lulu. A swish of tires on asphalt, and I passed the spot of my earlier blinding panic attack.

  A dark chuckle escaped my lips, produced by an ironic sort of relief. Crazy as it sounded, that panic attack had nothing to do with my returning to the Bureau and everything to do with Dave’s murder.

  What I’d sensed had to be Dave reaching out to me, his terrible pain hindering his efforts.

  Logic said I couldn’t have saved him.

  Logic lied.

  I powered down the windows, needing the bite of cold to still my soul.

  So many years to come, ones Dave would never experience with his daughter. With me. Wrong, so very wrong.

  Dave had said I was the magic. What had he meant? His words hadn’t felt allegorical, but real. Magic, eh? So where was that rabbit when I needed one?

  My need to see Lulu, touch her, know she was safe burned hot.

  I drove up Bergen Hill, not sparing a glance for the spectacular Mt. Cranadnock. A soft left onto Fantin Road, down the country lane narrowed by tall pines and sporadic houses, across 147. Almost there. The waxing moon lit a good-sized field and the red shed, minus its battered black pickup or Dave’s Subaru, the latter probably still at the store. I parked beyond the barn, in front of the small white farmhouse, embellished with a porch and Victorian curlicues, where a giant sleeping lilac almost obscured the unshoveled front path. I walked the few yards down the road, quiet, stealthy, until I faced the side entrance tucked behind a screen of trees.

  No lights glowed from inside. Nonetheless, I walked the shoveled path toward the side door, ducked beneath a hemlock’s snow-laden branch, and knocked.

  An anticipatory stillness said the house was empty, waiting for its inhabitants. A few more heartbeats, and I left.

  I’d be back, to search, to hunt.

  Hembrook was a sleepy village I voted least likely to host a homicide. Driving down its main street, I passed quaint houses and shops, cozy with lights, dusted with snow, and gleaming with historic auras from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An eatery, a general store, an inn, a library.

  It was like a fairyland. Or maybe, Brigadoon.

  Minutes after a gossipy fact-gathering trip to the general store, I continued down Main Street. The tom-toms, swifter than the internet, had alerted everyone to Dave’s death. Lulu’s boyfriend, Ronan, a purportedly nice kid, lived up the street with his not-so-nice father. My bets were on Lulu being at their place.

  A right fork took me onto a small road with Station on the sign, and I parked on the street, across from a white farmhouse. As I walked to the door, I took a deep breath, then poked the doorbell. I wanted her at home, my home, with me, where I could keep her safe.

  I punched the doorbell again, then wove my fingers together. The door opened, revealing a bear of a young man, solid six feet, wearing jeans and a blue DeeVal Devils t-shirt. Blond-haired, a downy soul patch arrowed just below his lower lip. Sad hazel eyes peered at me from his mocha-colored face. His full lips moved, but no sound emerged. Eyes that battled tears peered down into mine, and he held out a hand.

  “Hello. I’m Clea Reese. A close friend of—”

  “Sure. I’m Ronan.” He enveloped my hand in his large paw. “Um, hi.”

  “I was hoping Lulu was here. I’d like to speak with her.”

  He nodded and drew me inside.

  We entered a hall, with a staircase on the right, before the boy led me into a living room on the left. Lulu sat on the couch, wearing jeans and a pink t-shirt, and stroked a fuzzy grey cat curled beside her. She stood.

  Tall and willowy, she beat my five-four by at least five inches. Freckles dotted her finely boned face. Bangs and long straight hair the color of copper gleamed under the muted torchiere floor lamp.

  “Hi, Clea,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”

  She had the loveliest speaking voice I’d ever heard. Soft, melodic. Nothing like Dave’s rough bass. But her eyes—they were his glorious violet. Today they were puffy and spidered with red.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I…”

  Ronan tugged her down beside him and swiftly laid a possessive arm across her shoulders. She leaned into him.

  I ached to go to her, hug her, but she was a near stranger to me. I slipped into the recliner that faced the couch and scooched forward.

  “Lulu.” I forced out words thick in my mouth. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

  Lips trembling, fingers fiddling a necklace of silver stars, she stared at me and nodded.

  I moved and knelt at her feet, needing her touch, hoping to give comfort. I grasped one of her hands, and my wrist throbbed.

  “Oh, Lulu, what can I say? What can I do?” I bent my head to hide my tears.

  A shaking hand danced over my short hair. A giggle, a sniffle. “Daddy would’ve hated those pink tips.”

  I raised my head and smiled. “Heck yeah. Why do you think I did it?”

  I hugged her fiercely, a hesitation, then she hugged me back. When we finally parted, the air had cleared, at least a little. I moved back to the recliner.

  “Your dad loved you like crazy,” I said.

  “I know. He loved you, too.”

  “Yes. I was lucky.”

  She bit her lip. “I was jealous, you know. For a long time.”

  I understood. “You were his world.”

  “I am… was.”

  “Forever.”

  “How can he be gone?”

  “It seems impossible.”

  “I never got why Daddy didn’t, y’know, bring us closer.”

  It would have felt nice, wonderful, to have a little sister. “Beats me. But your dad did everything with a purpose.”

  A quick smile. “Boy, is that ever right.”

  I leaned in. “You’re not alone, Lulu. You’ll never be alone.”

  She rested her head on Ronan’s shoulder.

  I hesitated, then, “I… your dad, I believe he wanted me to take you home. Wanted you to stay with me.”

  Her eyes widened. “How do you know that?” she snapped.

  “I was there when he died. I found him.”

  “I’m not leaving Ronan,” she said. “No!”

  “Please. You could—”

  “You heard her,” Ronan said.

  I winced. “If I could just—”

  She squared her shoulders. “Daddy taught me to be independent. I’m going to go home and live and be the person he wanted me to be.”

  My chest ached. “How about you hang here for a few days? Settle. Process things.” She had to stay safe. Had to. “Please.”

  An argument sparked in her eyes, but she nodded. “I was going to do that anyway.”

  “Okay. Good. We’ll talk again.” I got out my card and wrote my home and cell on the back. I reached to hand it to her.

  “I don’t need it,” she said, sharp, snippy. “I have that stuff from Daddy.”

  I stood. She didn’t look at me. I lay a hand on her cheek, red and swollen from tears. “Lulu,” I said softly.

  She finally met my eyes.

  “If you need anything,” I said. “Want anything. Night or day. I will be there. I will come.”

  Lulu shrugged. “Thanks, but I won’t need you.”

  y chin trembled as I walked to the truck, but I straightened my spine and did not cry. Did. Not. Cry. I got home late. Bernadette had waited supper. Absurd woman, but it warmed me.

  “Tell me,” she said. “All of it.”

  I plunged into it, every minute of my soliloquy—torture. She continued to bustle about the kitchen, her safe place, but I didn’t miss the covert swipes of her hand across her eyes.

  I rose to comfort her, hesitant. Yeah, that had gone real well with Lulu. But she hugged me back, quick, as was typical, and proceeded to tell me she’d made a delicious lamb stew.
Wouldn’t I like to try it? Not. Cauterizing her sorrow by teasing me. She was never good with grief.

  Yet, naturally, Bernadette had also concocted a savory tofu casserole, so I wouldn’t starve. In truth, everything she cooked tasted divine, except for the damned salad. Every single night. A salad.

  I was a vegetarian, not a rabbit.

  “I’m going upstairs to my room,” she said after we’d eaten, in a voice roughened by sorrow.

  I put a hand on her arm. “Wait, please. I need to talk to you.”

  She nodded. “Clean up first.” And disappeared into the living room.

  She was the cook, I was the bottle washer.

  I was putting the final casserole dish into the machine when Bernadette shouted, “Merde!”

  The dish didn’t break when I dropped it, which I thanked the gods for as I raced into the living room. “What? What?”

  Gun in hand—apparently she’d been oiling it—she pointed to the TV.

  Scenes of devastation filled the screen. I lowered myself to the chair and leaned forward. Rain pounded off buildings canted forward, some perched over a black maw in the red-rock earth that sluiced into the chasm. Humans and animals lay on the ground, many bloodied. The cries and screams and blasts of sirens hurt my ears. The scene switched, a different camera panning spires of red rock broken, crumbled, trees flattened, boulders rolling.

  “What is this?” I asked, my voice hushed with horrible awe.

  Bernadette smoothed shaking hands across her apron. “Sedona. Arizona.”

  “In the town, it looked like a sinkhole, but—”

  “Not a sinkhole. Il se passe aujourd’hui.” She snapped the remote, and the TV went blank.

  “What do you mean, it’s happening today?” Things were always dire when Bernadette spoke French. “What is it? What caused it?”

  She cast me a gimlet look. “Perhaps anger at the passing of David Cochran.”

  “That’s not funny.” She’d overindulged on the Bénédictine. Again. “What happened there? Sedona. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a thin space.” She shrugged, very Gallic. “A harmonic one.”

  “That’s what they said on the news?”

  “Non.”

  Maybe I needed some Bénédictine. This conversation was just adding to the crazy.

  I put Sedona aside and reached for the soothing vibe of my knitting, the cashmere scarf near complete. “Dave said…” I chewed my lip. “Dave said he was a guardian.”

  “He was not your guardian.” She slapped her hands on her lap, holstered her gun, and began to rise.

  “Wait. Dave also said I was the magic.”

  She harrumphed. “He found you a magical person, non? Which is just foolish.”

  I rubbed my fingers against the cashmere, feeling twitchy as hell. “No. He didn’t mean that. He meant it literally.”

  Her lids dropped to half-mast, her eyes distant. “A dying man’s pronouncement.”

  I saw where this was going, and it wasn’t to Happyland. I’d try one more gambit. “He touched my wrist, and electricity shot up my arm.”

  Her eyes sharpened, a hawk’s on the hunt. “Spit out the rest.”

  “He said he unlocked it. And to acknowledge and accept. The magic. That’s when he said I was magic. And he made me promise to do things.”

  “Such as…?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Everything in Bernadette tightened, and I saw her, not as she was now, but a vision of a young woman of preternatural beauty, with an aquiline nose, jet-black unibrow, long hair rippling with waves, and skin smoother than glass. Eyes deeper than eclipsed suns glowed as she stared at a bloodied short sword raised high in her right hand. I gasped.

  “Clea!” She bent over me, bony hands grasping my arms, surrounding me with her scent of White Shoulders.

  The vision snapped, and she again was a woman with pale, pleated skin and braids grayed by the years. “Yes.”

  “Écoutez-moi, and listen well. Forget what David Cochran asked you to do. Forget it.”

  A push, invisible, but firm. I remembered other times, other places, pushes from Bernadette, sensing them through the fog of blurred memory, where I bent to her will. I pushed back. This time was different. This time, I held her off.

  “So,” she finally said, more to herself than me. She straightened and the pressure vanished. “This is dangerous ground, cookie, and you are not ready. Cochran failed to finish, so dismiss his words, turn away from those promises, and listen to me if you wish to stay safe.”

  I grinned. “And when, Bernadette, have I ever wished for safety?”

  She didn’t spare me a glance as she walked from the room.

  I ached to review my notes and photos of Dave’s death. Not yet. Instead, I headed for the basement, followed by a gleeful Gracie.

  “Shut the door,” Bernadette barked from upstairs.

  “I always do,” I sing-songed back, swiping a towel from the linen closet.

  Grace curled on her dog bed, while I loosened up, shaking my arms, legs, rotating my head. I began my Krav Maga defensive moves. Centered, balanced, I kicked, twisted, turned, punched. Sweat coated my sides, glazed my face. I stopped, toweled off, then toed off my sneakers and slid off my socks.

  I slipped on my ballet slippers and pressed play on my iTunes Tchaikovsky mix to begin my pliés—first position, second, third, fourth, fifth—and stretches, combre forward, side, back. Plies, tendus, releve. A few more moves, and I balanced in sousous, suspended, yet grounded into the earth, connected from the turn out in my calves to my inner thighs. Did a few center splits, deep lunges stretching the psoas muscle, calf stretches, quad stretches, deep hamstring stretches, piriformis stretches. Finally the butterfly position where my feet pressed against each other sole to sole, and I bent to touch my nose to my toes. Fail! I was too impatient.

  I removed my ballet slippers and tugged on my newly broken-in, shiny pointe shoes. Tightening my core, I imagined pulling up and out of my shoes. Lower abs engaged, I flew into a waltz step.

  Then precipite, pique arabesque, balance en tournant, tombe pas de bourree to fourth, double pirouette en de hours landing in a generous, joyous lunge. A sequence of fouettés en tournant, threw my right leg toward croisé devant en l’air, swept it à la seconde, then launched into a series of pique turns, my favorite.

  I closed my eyes. Dance, dance, dance…

  “Together!” barked the voice.

  I faltered, but regained my balance just as Bernadette joined me. I laughed. “You are awful.”

  She clucked. “I am.”

  I flopped onto the chair and tugged off my shoes, while Bernadette did the same with hers, followed by her socks and holstered gun.

  “Ready?” I asked, barefoot, toes curling. Her nod had me pressing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and we were off. I couldn’t dance half, no, a quarter as well as Bernadette, who transformed into air and movement and emotion.

  Thirty minutes later, Bernadette stopped, and, okay, I staggered a little. I snared her eyes, waiting, hoping for the nod.

  It didn’t come. “Why?”

  “Your body must be stronger, more fit, a tool.”

  I wanted to snap, Goddammit, I am a frickin’ tool. Which almost made me giggle.

  She laid a bony hand on my shoulder, her voice quiet and dangerous. “Do you blame yourself for Dave?”

  “If I’d gone earlier this morning, maybe—”

  “What is, must be,” she said. “When will you learn that?”

  I moved to put away my gear.

  “Tommy,” she said.

  I froze, turned back to her.

  Hazel eyes drilled into mine. “If he hadn’t joined the Army—”

  “—following my path.”

  Her lips tightened at our familiar exchange. “He wouldn’t have learned to fly helicopters.”

  I curled my hands to fists. “He wouldn’t have died in the canyon.”

  “And that guilt, that soft
ness in you, is your terrible weakness. Quel est, doit être.”

  What is, must be. My breathing slowed.

  “You are not the choreographer of everyone’s lives,” she said.

  I plumbed the depths of those hazel eyes. “And what about their deaths?”

  She sliced a hand. “Bah! Dave always moved too slowly. I say again, you are not ready.”

  “Ready for what the frig, B?”

  Her scowl caterpillared her unibrow. “It will kill you.”

  “Then help me. Help me get ready, whatever that means.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve tried. I am not enough.”

  “Who the hell is?” Anger glazed my vision. By the time it deflated, she was gone. The woman could move like lightning or the wind, or maybe she just dematerialized.

  I laughed. This was so frickin’ absurd. I was living some Beckett play, waiting for gods-knew-what. I bent down and scratched behind Grace’s ears. “The stories you could tell, girly.”

  An hour later, I was ensconced in my comfy red leather chair, having pulled on a pair of sweats and a flannel shirt. Bernadette was nowhere in sight.

  I rubbed my wrist. Changed. I was changed. And Bernadette knew it.

  Was she right? Was I “not ready?” Could she be more ambiguous?

  If Tommy were still here… But he wasn’t.

  For all she drove me batshit, I loved that cranky old woman.

  I plucked my knitting from its bag and picked up my sticks. Knit, purl, knit, purl, knit, purl. My wrist tingled. I slipped into a place out of time.

  A man stands over me. He’s tall and slender, wearing ripped jeans and a black turtleneck. He crouches down, so we’re eye to eye.

  “Have you been avoiding your schoolwork?” he says.

  Nooooo. “Yes.”

  “How will you learn to master your talents if you don’t do your work?”

  I’m sad. My lips wobble. His kiss on my brow is gentle and kind.

  “Why do I have to study?” I say. “I don’t like it.”

  “We’ve told you over and over. You tell me.”

  I pout. That’s what Mam and Da call it.

  “Clea,” he says.

  “Because the magic and the mun… mun…”

  “Mundane.”

  “Mundane worlds are mushing together again,” I say.