by J. S. Bailey
Kevin allowed himself a soft chuckle. “Rescue Man, huh?”
Heat washed over Bobby’s face. “I know it sounds dumb. But I guess it’s all because if I was in trouble, I’d want someone to care about me.”
“How old are you, Bobby?”
He didn’t see how his age pertained to the conversation, but he said, “Twenty. I’ll be twenty-one in November.”
“Good Lord, you could be my kid.” Kevin’s gaze drifted back over to the dog, who had paused in the gnawing of the Nylabone to stare at Kevin with his ears perked up. “So I hear you have the gift of Prophecy.”
“That’s what they tell me.” Bobby felt a stirring inside, and he knew he had to steer the focus of the conversation back to Kevin. “I’m sorry about what happened to you. But you can heal people. I don’t think God wants you to hide from the world when there’s so many more out there you might be able to help.”
“But it’s so much easier not to care. To not have to worry about who might not make it no matter how hard you try to save them.” Kevin paused to run a finger across the skin below his eye. “I wanted to get help, but I couldn’t just waltz into a shrink’s office and tell him why I was falling to pieces. He would’ve pried into too many things and I would have ended up telling him about who I am. What I do. And then he’d think I was some sort of nutcase and have me locked away.”
“I’m really the first person you’ve told about all this?”
A nod. “I found a replacement, passed the mantle on to him, and left. I’ve been in Idaho ever since. I do farm work for a guy I know out there. It’s peaceful.”
“So Frankie called you a coward because you didn’t want to be the Servant anymore?”
“I kept having flashbacks. I could be doing the dishes and bam, I’d be back in that alley. Whenever I’d try to cleanse a victim, the demons would throw the images of it all right back into my face. And then the dreams…” Kevin shuddered. “I couldn’t handle it anymore, which probably seems crazy considering some of the things I’d dealt with before that. It’s like…it’s like I let my guard down in that alley, and the demons found an opportunity to creep into my heart. I knew I had to get out for the sake of the possessed. I was afraid I’d accidentally hurt one of them. So yeah, call me a coward, because I guess deep down that’s what I really am.”
It sounded to Bobby like Kevin was suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress. It was no wonder he’d been so agitated while he was sitting with everyone else inside the house. Being in the presence of his old comrades would have brought back too many memories of his time as one of them.
Carly’s words from earlier in the day returned to him. What will you do with your pain?
He understood then. If he didn’t let go of the hurt that Adrian inflicted upon him by leaving him in the care of a single father, it would poison him. Maybe he’d end up being a wreck like Kevin.
Bobby swallowed. Please help Kevin get over his pain. “I don’t think you’re as cowardly as you think you are,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“You came back here even though you didn’t want to, right?”
Kevin stuck out his bottom lip. “I did, didn’t I?”
“It seems like a step in the right direction.”
“I hope so.”
Bobby stood. “I’m going back inside. You’re welcome to come with me.”
“Nah, I think I’ll stay out here awhile longer. I need the fresh air.”
Bobby turned to go in and screeched to a halt five feet from the glass door.
Thane stood behind it, looking out at him.
Smiling.
FEAR ROOTED Bobby’s feet to the ground. “Uh, Kevin?”
“What?”
“Do you see anything odd behind the door?”
“No. What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure.” The devilish grin that spread across Thane’s face dispelled any thought that Bobby beheld a benevolent being. But was it the same being that had visited Bobby’s house? Again, the idea that there were two Thanes crossed his mind. It was crazy to think that a demon might masquerade as an angel just to confuse him, but Bobby had witnessed enough crazy things in the past week to know it wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities.
He closed his eyes to see if he could pick up even a whisper of an aura and came up with nothing.
“Bobby?” Kevin said, his voice full of concern. “Are you okay?”
Inside the solarium, the former Servants were deep in discussion once more. Nobody seemed aware of the auburn-haired man standing feet away from them.
“Come in,” Thane mouthed.
Bobby shivered. “Yeah,” he said to Kevin. “I’m fine.”
His pulse pounded in his ears as he freed himself from the grip of paralysis and opened the door. Thane glided off to one side, giving Bobby room to pass. “You know,” Thane said once Bobby was inside, “you won’t get very far as the Servant if you fear every single thing you don’t understand.”
Bobby pretended he didn’t hear and directed his attention to Frank the First. “And I said, Frankie, what in the world do you think you’re doing? And he said…” Frank broke off when he made note of Bobby’s gaze, and his wrinkled forehead creased even further. “What’s the matter? You act like you’ve never seen a hundred-and-one-year-old man before.”
Bobby cleared his throat. “There’s a man standing behind me.”
As one, the other four men stared at him.
Frankie, who didn’t look pleased to have been the subject of whatever story his grandfather had been telling, gave him an unimpressed stare.
Randy’s eyes grew round. “Does this have to do with something we were talking about earlier?”
Bobby nodded. Sweat beaded on his scalp. From his current position, he couldn’t see Thane. The guy could be doing anything behind him. Like getting ready to stab him with a knife no one else could see, either. To Frankie, he said, “I sort of have this problem. I keep seeing this guy, but I don’t know if I can trust him or not.”
“What Bobby’s saying,” Randy said, “is that he doesn’t know if this person is an angel or a demon.”
The color drained out of Frankie’s face. So something did scare him. “Show me exactly where he is,” Frankie said, rising from the wicker chair.
Bobby went to point and let out a mild curse when he beheld the empty space Thane had occupied moments before. “He’s gone.”
“Allison,” Phil breathed as fear flooded his face. He rushed across the room to the door leading into the kitchen and disappeared through it.
“Call Thane back here,” Frankie said.
“Are you crazy? If he’s a demon—”
“Then you’ve been granted authority over him. Listen to the Spirit. You’ll know what to say.”
“Oh, crap.”
“Just do it. Please.”
Bobby’s teeth chattered. This was insanity.
“Do you think any of us found this easy in the beginning?” Roger said, still seated in one of the chairs. The armpits of his Hawaiian shirt were soaked. “If we could do it, so can you.”
“But I’m not—”
“Ready?” Roger gave a soft chuckle. “You’ll never be ready if you don’t dive in.”
Bobby realized there was no way out of this. If he didn’t just suck it up and order Thane to show himself, Frankie would accuse him of being a coward just like Kevin.
He took a deep breath. “Thane?” he said, trying to ignore the sudden churning in his gut. “In the name of God, I command you to show yourself to us.”
Nothing.
Phil slipped back into the room and remained standing near the door. Randy folded his hands together and bowed his head. The two Frank Jovingos and Roger did the same.
Okay. Time to try again. “Evil spirit!” Bobby said in a louder voice as a blush warmed his cheeks. “In the name of God, I command you to manifest yourself to us.”
“You really think you know everythin
g, don’t you?”
Thane materialized half a dozen feet away from him, and if Bobby was to judge from everyone’s reactions, this time Bobby wasn’t the only one to see him. “What is it that I think I know?” Bobby asked, hating the tremor in his voice.
Thane held up a finger. “First of all, you think I’m a demon.”
“There’s nothing else you could be.”
“Bobby,” Frankie said, moving to Bobby’s side and placing a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t let him talk to you like this. You have to remain in control.”
“That’s cute,” Thane said. “Really cute. What is there to control? You see me because I want you to, not because some higher power forced me to.”
This time when Frankie spoke to Bobby, he bent down and whispered so softly into Bobby’s ear that he almost didn’t hear him. “You have to banish him back to the pit. And you have to believe that you can do it through the power of God and no power of your own.”
Bobby nodded, keeping his gaze fixed on the entity standing before him. Okay, he thought. You’ve got to help me do this. You’ve got to send him away and not let him bother anyone again.
He said, “Thane: In the name of the Father, and of Jesus Christ his son, and of the Holy Spirit that fills me, depart from this place and torment us no more.”
Thane let out a soft snicker. “When will anyone believe me when I say I’m not a demon? You’re such a stubborn bunch, but I guess I can’t do a thing about that.”
Bobby tried not to let the demon’s words get to him. Thane was just trying to distract him and sow doubt in his mind.
He repeated his last admonition: “In the name of the Father, and of Jesus Christ his son, and of the Holy Spirit, depart from this place and torment us no more.”
Thane’s features twisted into a scowl. “Fine. You don’t want me here? I’ll leave. But before I go, I should mention that Jack Willard has something nasty up his sleeve. And Bobby? I can’t believe you still haven’t figured out where your mother is. You must not be as smart as I thought.”
He blinked out of existence with the swiftness of someone switching off a light.
“What in the world is this all about?” Phil said, coming up to Bobby’s other side. “I never had anything like this happen.”
“I would be surprised if anyone here has,” Randy said, looking perturbed. “But each of us is affected differently. When I was the Servant mostly all they did was throw things at the windows because they knew it would drive me up a wall. They obviously know that won’t work with Bobby because when they tried it at his house, it just sent him back to me, so they upgraded to apparitions. It’s that simple.”
Bobby didn’t think it sounded simple at all. “So the rock thing only happened to you and me?”
Randy bowed his head. “We’re all different, so it’s only fair that different things will drive us over the edge.”
They were all silent while Bobby’s mind returned to the previous week, when he had been hounded by what he thought were poltergeists. He would take apparitions like Thane over invisible rock-throwers any day because at least then his adversary had a face.
“Do you think he’s right about Jack?” Bobby asked.
“Look,” Frankie said. “Whatever this thing is, it’s evil. It’s going to do everything within its power to make sure you fail as the Servant. And what was that bit about your mother?”
Like Bobby was going to talk about the whole Adrian ordeal with him. “Nothing.”
“If it was indeed nothing, he wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Okay, it was nothing important.” Bobby paused, thinking about how Jack had seemed entirely unruffled by Bobby’s arrival at the apartment last night. Could Jack really be planning some way to cause him harm?
Randy was rubbing his chest. “I don’t know. I’m concerned about what he said about Jack. That guy is bad news.”
“For all we know,” Frankie said, “he’s in Long Beach right now sipping margaritas. Forget about him and let’s move on.”
“Actually,” Bobby said, the weight of guilt pressing down on him, “he’s in Hillsdale.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Bobby swallowed a knot of fear. They were going to be upset about what he did, but there was no changing what had happened. “I sort of found where he was hanging out and followed him home. But then he made me promise not to tell anyone where he’s been staying.”
“Hold it,” Phil said. “You mean to say you found where the man who shot Randy in the leg lives and didn’t do anything about it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Like I said, he made me promise. I needed information and the only way he was going to give it to me was if I said I wouldn’t tell anyone where he is. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Phil looked like he was about to cry. “This is like last week all over again.” He looked to Frankie. “Randy promised Graham he wouldn’t tell us where he was going to confront him, and as a result he almost got himself killed.”
“The key word being ‘almost.’” Randy gave Bobby a pitying smile. “It stinks, doesn’t it? Wanting to tell so badly but refusing to compromise your principles.”
“Yeah. I guess it does.”
Frankie cleared his throat. “You’re forgetting something.”
Randy turned his attention to him. “Yes, dear Frankie? And what might that be?”
“If Jack is coming, Bobby will know. Unless I’ve been misinformed about what his ability entails.”
Randy shook his head. “You haven’t been misinformed. I’ve seen firsthand what he can do.”
A nervous tremor shook Bobby’s hands so he jammed them into his pockets. “Yeah,” he said. “If Jack’s going to hurt one of us, I’ll know.” I think.
The only problem was that his premonitions didn’t occur at a uniform length of time preceding whatever tragedy he was supposed to prevent. Sometimes he knew something bad would happen hours in advance. And sometimes, like with Randy in the church parking lot, he had only seconds to figure out what to do.
It really depended on how much work he had to do to save the person involved.
So for all he knew, Jack could be coming down the street that very moment.
“I have a question,” Bobby said as a new idea took shape in his mind.
Frankie’s dark eyebrows rose. “What’s that?”
“If you knew that someone was going to hurt someone else, is it okay to hurt them first before they can actually do it? You know, to stop them?”
“Just what is it you have in mind?”
“Nothing. Just a hypothetical idea I had.” He envisioned himself returning to Jack’s apartment with a baseball bat and slugging him in the head so he wouldn’t be able to harm a woman or child again, but Jack would just wake up and hunt down more women anyway.
“Is it okay if I talk to Randy and Phil alone for a few minutes?” Bobby said, looking from Roger to the two Frank Jovingos.
“Surely we can hear whatever you have to say,” Frankie said with a scowl.
“It’s something personal.”
Frankie seemed to weigh this before nodding. “Very well. But this meeting is not adjourned.” One by one, he, his grandfather, and Roger filed out of the room. Outside, Kevin was still gazing at what had to be his dog with the despondency of a lost soul, completely oblivious to what was going on in the solarium.
“Okay,” Randy said when the others were gone. “Spill the beans.”
Bobby looked to Phil. “Jack found my biological mother and had somebody kidnap her.”
The room filled with silence for several beats. Phil frowned. “You’re talking about the woman in the picture left on your door?”
“Yeah. It turns out Jack left it there to taunt me. He has to have been spying on me all week to know I’d moved.”
“Why didn’t you recognize your own mother?”
Now wasn’t the time to explain
every single detail about his past, so Bobby just said, “It’s a long story. But Jack said he targets people and arranges for them to be kidnapped and sold into…into slavery. He said he doesn’t have any idea where Adrian—my mother—is, because he’s not the person who takes the women to wherever it is they’re taken.”
Phil uttered a soft curse and closed his eyes. “And you promised this monster you wouldn’t tell anyone where he is.”
Desperation made Bobby’s heart race. “I didn’t know what else to do!”
“There has to be a way you can let someone know without breaking your promise.”
“It was an apartment in Hillsdale. That’s all I’m saying.”
Phil opened his eyes and gave Bobby a piercing stare. “You knew that Randy and Lupe were at different houses.”
“What?”
“Last week. You meditated on where Randy and Lupe were. Why haven’t you done the same with your mother if you’d like to find her so badly?”
Bobby clapped a hand to his forehead. “Because I’m an idiot.”
Randy and Phil exchanged glances. “Do you want to try to meditate right now?” Randy asked. “Because if that’s how you ended up saving me, I say go for it.”
“I guess I can give it a try.” Bobby shivered. Would it work a second time?
“Here,” Phil said. “Lie down on the couch.”
The solarium jutted out from the rest of the house, and at the end farthest out into the yard a faded couch sat parallel with the windows. Bobby crossed the room, sank onto a squashy cushion, and eased himself onto his back.
He tried to slow his breathing. Relax. Just relax. You’ve done this before. You can do it again.
“Do you need us to help you?” Phil asked.
“Not yet. I’m going to try this on my own.”
The sunlight coming through the windows made colors dance behind his closed eyelids. He willed his limbs to go limp.
Please help me find her, he prayed. She might have been stupid, and maybe she still is, but she doesn’t deserve to be locked away and treated like a piece of meat.