Of Fire and Storm

by D. G. Swank

  She looked up in shock, then lifted a finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh, I just got her to sleep.”

  My heart sunk. It was a baby. Had they died together? It was hard to tell what era they were from based on her white nightgown, but the style of her shoulder-length hair indicated she could be from the forties.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, moving closer. “What’s her name?”

  “Debbie.” Then the woman began to cough. Her eyes flew open and she started to cry. “I just got her to sleep.” But she couldn’t stop coughing.

  I moved forward and held out my arms. “May I hold her for you?”

  The woman looked uncertain, but when the baby began to cry, she held her out to me.

  Scooping the baby up in my arms, I held her close and instinctively started to rock her.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Marilyn,” she said as her coughing got worse. She held up a white handkerchief to her mouth, and I saw splatters of blood when she lowered it.

  “Can I get you a glass of water, Marilyn?” I asked while bouncing the baby.

  She nodded, her face turning red as she was overcome with another coughing fit. She motioned to the baby and grunted, “Bottle.”

  Abel stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “How will you get her a glass of water?”

  Funny, after my experiences with Tommy and Edna, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I couldn’t. It occurred to me that even though I was holding a ghost baby, I couldn’t see Marilyn’s world in the way I’d experienced Tommy’s and Edna’s. Why?

  I leaned forward, holding the baby close with my left arm, and put my right hand on Marilyn’s shoulder. “I’m going to help you, Marilyn. I won’t leave you.”

  She started to cry again, which made her cough harder, and her world finally burst into view. We were in the baby’s nursery. The curtains were pulled, but I could see that it was nighttime. This was different from my experiences with Tommy. Marilyn’s world wasn’t superimposed over mine—it had completely overtaken it.

  I squatted in front of her and put my hand on her knees. “Don’t cry. You’re not alone. I’ll help you.”

  She nodded. “God bless you. She’s so sick, but so am—” She started coughing again, more blood splattering her handkerchief.

  Spotting a stack of cloth diapers on top of a dresser, next to a full baby’s bottle, I grabbed one off the top and placed it on Marilyn’s lap as a replacement for her handkerchief. Then I headed for the bedroom door. Abel was gone, but I heard him calling my name across the divide between Marilyn’s world and our present reality.

  “Piper!” I was surprised at the worry in his voice. I couldn’t see him, but I wasn’t in his plane anymore. Part of me panicked. What if I couldn’t get back?

  I pushed the worry aside. I’d figure out how to blend the two worlds after I got Marilyn’s water.

  “I’m okay, Abel,” I said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  The baby started to cry as I hurried to the bathroom. I found a glass on the counter and filled it with water, then took it back to the bedroom and handed it to Marilyn.

  “Piper!” Abel sounded more worried this time.

  I picked up the baby’s bottle and started to feed her. “Talk to me,” I said. “I need to hear your voice.”

  “You’ve crossed dimensions,” he said. “When did this ability begin?”

  I focused on his words, willing my eyes to blend the two worlds. I released the breath I’d been holding when I saw him shimmering in the doorway—literally shimmering—as Marilyn’s world superimposed over mine.

  “What are you?” I whispered as his gaze locked with mine.

  “I could ask the same, Waboose.”

  I felt a little nauseated from the juxtaposition of the two planes, but thankfully the feeling seemed to settle. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Here,” he said from behind Abel. He brushed past him and reached for my shoulder, his eyes widening when he saw the baby in my arms. “Where did you go?”

  “I’ll explain it later, but right now I need to find out about a woman named Marilyn and her baby, Debbie. I think Marilyn might have TB. Maybe the baby does too. Did they die together? Let’s find out, because there’s no way she’s leaving here without the baby.”

  The baby started to fuss, so I handed the bottle to Abel, who looked at it like I’d handed him a live grenade. “Take it,” I growled.

  He reluctantly took it, holding it between his thumb and forefinger as though he feared he’d catch something. I put the baby on my shoulder and patted her back.

  Jack was still touching my arm, staring at me in horror.

  “Why do you look so scared?” I asked.

  “It’s a baby.”

  “A ghost baby, and I need to send her and her mother on their way. Go find out what you can.”

  Jack pulled out his phone and started to tap, then frowned. “The Wi-Fi’s not working. Let me try the living room.” He left the room.

  The baby burped on my shoulder, and I cradled her in my arms again before I took the bottle. “What can you see?” I asked Abel as I put the bottle nipple in the baby’s mouth.

  “Her world. Ours.”

  “But you couldn’t see me when I was gone?”

  “No. I take it you were fully in her world?”

  I nodded, and he didn’t look happy.

  “How long were you gone?”

  “I don’t know. Five minutes?”

  “You were gone a half hour.” He frowned. “You were in a pocket dimension. You’re a dimension walker.”

  Something I’d learned after creating Tommy’s playroom. “I take it that’s a bad thing…”

  “It’s unexpected.” He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “If the demons find out—if Okeus finds out…” The fear in his eyes caught me off guard.

  “This really freaks you out.”

  “Piper, I don’t know if you realize how serious this is. You can’t tell anyone.” His eyes widened. “Who have you told?”

  “Jack knows, of course. Or at least he knows some of it.”

  He scowled. “Who else?”

  “Rhys. Well, she knows I can see both planes, but not that I can move between them.”

  “She currently hates you,” he said. “Will she betray you?”

  He’d only said something I already knew, but his words were like a dagger to my heart. Would she ever forgive me? Did I deserve to be forgiven? “No, she would never hand me over to the demons.”

  I wanted to believe it, but there was a small seed of doubt inside me. If Deidre was right, if someone I trusted was destined to betray me, it could be Rhys. Only I didn’t want to reveal that to Abel.

  “Anyone else?”

  “What are you doing with this list of people, Abel?”

  “I’ll have them watched.”

  “We both know demons aren’t seen unless they want to be. If something like Caelius approaches them, your guys will never know.”

  “Caelius.” He started to pace in the hall. “Caelius cannot find out, Kewasa.” He stopped and held my gaze. “Ever.”

  “I agree, Abel. No one can know.”

  The baby began to cry again. I handed the nearly empty bottle back to Abel and positioned her on my shoulder to burp her.

  “How do you know how to do that?” he asked, gesturing to the baby. “You didn’t have any siblings.”

  “A neighbor of my grandparents. I babysat one summer when I was fifteen. My grandmother didn’t approve, but my grandfather intervened and let me do it.” The baby burped and then started to cough, so I continued patting her back. “I take it you’ve never had children, or if you did, it was back in the days when women did all the work.”

  He grinned. “I’m not the caveman you seem to think I am. And no, I’ve never had children. I’m sterile.”

  Most men I knew would have been embarrassed to make a statement like that, but Abel acted like he’d commented on the weather. “I’m
sorry.”

  “I’m not.” He grinned. “It’s made things infinitely easier.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned away from him as Jack came walking back down the hall.

  “I found something,” Jack said as he entered the room. “Marilyn died from tuberculosis in 1936.”

  “And Debbie?” I asked.

  “Died ten years ago.”

  Well, shit. “What am I gonna do?” I whispered. I glanced over my shoulder. Marilyn was rocking in her chair with her head leaned back and her eyes closed. “If Debbie didn’t die, then how am I holding her?”

  Abel glanced over at the woman. “The baby is so firmly part of her memory. Something happened this night, something she can’t let go of. She keeps reliving it.”

  “So I have to let it play out and help her make peace,” I said. “Then she’ll move on.”

  “That could take hours, Waboose.”

  “Good thing I have hours.”

  Jack frowned. “I’m not sure Joel’s going to be happy about us staying here for hours. He’s already freaking out that you disappeared for a half hour.”

  “I won’t let you stay for hours,” Abel said. “You need to wrap this up and be done.”

  I stood my ground while lightly bouncing the baby on my shoulder. “This woman has been reliving a haunting memory for eighty years, Abel. I’m not going to walk away from her.”

  “You don’t even know her,” he protested. “Why would you inconvenience yourself like this?”

  I shot him a scowl. “Wow. So much compassion. That must mean you’re not an angel.”

  “Angels are assholes,” he grunted. “The whole ‘nice’ reputation is a fairy tale.”

  Jack’s eyes became saucers, and I could see he had plenty of questions of his own. How could he not? He opened his mouth, but his eyes shot to the baby again and he sobered. “I still assert that Joel’s never going to let us stay.”

  “Then I’ll show him Marilyn and the baby, and I guarantee he’ll let us stay to clear his house.”

  “Just smudge the ghost,” Abel said. “It’s the fastest way.”

  I shook my head adamantly. “Ghosts hate being smudged. Marilyn is suffering enough. I won’t do that to her. And besides, I don’t have my smudge kit. I left it at the O’Keefe house.”

  Jack nodded. “I’ll talk to Joel, and you can allow him to see her—”

  “No,” Abel barked. “No one else can know about your ability.”

  “Abel,” I said. “I’ve been letting homeowners see their ghosts for the past two weeks. That genie’s out of the bottle. It’s not goin’ back in.” I put a hand on Jack’s arm. “Bring Joel back here.”

  Chapter 24

  As I predicted, once Joel and Elise saw Marilyn, they told us to take as long as we needed, then promptly ran out the front door.

  Marilyn was still in the chair, rocking with the baby back in her arms, and both were coughing.

  “I could try to bring you into her world,” I said, “but time moves differently there. Ten minutes there is an hour in real time.”

  “Is this the first time you’ve gone fully into a ghost’s world?” Jack asked.

  “It’s happened a time or two before,” I said. “But right now we need to focus. We’re better off keeping things as they are because time moves at the same speed when the worlds are superimposed. She doesn’t seem to notice me unless I get her attention, so I think we can just watch her memory unfold from here.”

  “And wait for who knows how long,” Abel said dryly.

  Jack grinned. I could tell he was loving Abel’s impatience.

  “I’m hungry,” I said, then glanced up at Abel. “Since waiting is so distasteful to you, why don’t you go get some food?”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said, gesturing toward the room. “Especially now that I know about this.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Then go out and have one of your people bring something. That way you can still watch over me.”

  He stared at me for several seconds and then stomped down the hall, leaving me and Jack alone.

  “Why is he here, Piper?”

  “I already told you—he wanted to see what I can do. And now he thinks I’m in danger because I can cross dimensions.”

  “When did it first happen?” he asked, more insistently this time.

  I pushed out a sigh. He was very much a part of this. He had a right to know. “When I put Tommy in my attic, I knew he couldn’t stay there. He needed his own place.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I told him about the playroom my mother had described to me, and how I’d recreated it for Tommy. “And it wasn’t the hazy, superimposed world I usually see,” I said. “I was firmly in his world with him.”

  “Piper…that’s…” He shook his head. “Extraordinary.”

  “Abel’s worried about my abilities,” I said, lowering my voice. “He doesn’t want the demons to find out.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. The demons could use it to their advantage.”

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye—Marilyn had gotten out of her chair. The baby had been quiet for the last few minutes, and I was pretty sure she was asleep. Marilyn walked over to the crib and was about to set the baby down when she started coughing again. She tripped over her feet, and the baby tumbled from her arms onto the floor. For one long second there was utter silence. Then the baby began to scream.

  I took a step forward to get the baby before my thoughts caught up to my instincts. This must be what haunted Marilyn. I had to let it play out.

  The three of us stood in the doorway, watching Marilyn flail on the floor.

  “Why isn’t she getting up?” I asked, choking on tears.

  “She’s sick,” Abel said. “Maybe she’s too weak.”

  Mother and baby cried for a couple more minutes before Jack said, “You can’t do anything, can you?”

  “No,” I forced past the lump in throat. “We need to see the whole memory. If I help her, I could screw it up.”

  But it wasn’t easy to watch without intervening. Jack had to walk away several times, but Abel stood by my side, silent and unmoving, as the baby cried and Marilyn coughed and pleaded with someone to help her.

  The nightmare had continued for over fifteen minutes when Debbie’s screams became louder and Marilyn’s coughing and crying started to weaken. Surely it had gone on for long enough because my heart couldn’t take another minute of their suffering.

  I took a step forward to intervene—enough was enough—but Abel stopped me with a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Not yet, Kewasa.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Concentrate,” he said softly. “Use your power. There’s a ripple of energy in the room, the start of a tear between these two dimensions and the afterlife, but it’s not ready to break open yet.”

  I focused on the power in my hand and pushed it outward until I felt the hint of a tear.

  The baby continued to scream, and Marilyn let out the most pathetic cries, apologizing to her baby for not helping her.

  “She’s not coughing anymore,” I said quietly.

  Jack leaned into my ear and whispered, “Rhys texted. She found an old newspaper article that said the doctors thought Marilyn had ruptured a blood vessel in her lung. She died from blood loss.”

  I twisted to look at him over my shoulder. “Rhys? She helped you?”

  “No. She helped you.”

  The information he’d shared sunk in before I could process that.

  “We’re waiting for her to die, aren’t we?” Jack asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I suspect we are.”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. Marilyn was dying—miserable and alone—and I was just standing here and watching. This was barbaric. I knew I couldn’t save her, but it didn’t make what we were doing right.

  Jack turned around and left the room, his eyes wet with tears. Part of me longed to follow him, but I couldn’t.


  Abel reached for my hand and squeezed. “It’s getting close, Kewasa. Do you feel it?”

  Kewasa. Deliverer. I had to be strong enough to be Marilyn’s Kewasa too. I concentrated on the energy in the room and felt the tear grow larger. It wasn’t big enough to see, but I knew it was coming. “Yes.”

  “Have you figured out how to convince her to go?”

  Oh crap. “No.”

  Suddenly the tear ripped wide open and a vortex with a white light appeared.

  I nearly collapsed with relief that the white light had come for her. There was no way I could have sent her to hell.

  Abel released my hand. It was time for me to do my job.

  “Marilyn,” I said, moving closer. “Do you remember me?”

  The baby continued to wail as Marilyn looked up at me.

  “Help my baby,” she whispered. “Please.”

  I knelt next to her and took her hand. There was a pool of blood under her face I hadn’t noticed from behind. “I’ll take care of her, I promise, but it’s time for you to go.”

  She stared up at me in horror. “I can’t leave my baby! Matty won’t be home until after seven.”

  I shot a panicked glance at Abel, but his expression stayed completely blank.

  I squeezed her hand. “Marilyn, I’ll stay with your baby, but you have to go. Let’s sit you up.”

  I was grateful when she pushed herself to an upright position. She reached for her baby and her hand swept right through her.

  “Why can’t I pick up my baby?” she shrieked.

  I gently grabbed her face and forced her to look me in the eyes. “Marilyn, honey, you did the best you could, but your fight is done. You need to go to the light.”

  “I can’t leave her.”

  “You must.”

  “Do you have children?” she asked through her tears.

  “No.”

  “One day you’ll have them and you’ll know you can’t just leave your child. I’ll die to protect her. I’m not leaving her.”

  And that was why Marilyn was caught in this endless loop.

  I stared at the crying baby. I would send the baby with Marilyn if I could, but Abel had said little Debbie was only a memory. She had lived for years beyond this moment.