by Jody Klaire
“I didn’t think she did but it sounds like something you would say,” Frei said. There was an element of truth to cover the mighty whopper she was concealing.
“Strange, Nan tells me different.”
Frei let out a ragged breath. Yes, even Icy, as Nan liked to call her, couldn’t stay poker faced at that. “You know, don’t you?”
“What do you think?”
Frei clicked her tongue. “She’s trying to help me. It does sound like a vision.”
Lilia looked out of the window, Eli was whistling as he walked down the dirt track toward the cabin. She couldn’t see him physically yet, but her mind’s eye filled with his handsome face. “That’s because it is a vision. You beat me to the call. It’s mine.”
Something clattered in the background. “You had the same one?”
Even Frei could be fazed it seemed.
“Yes, seems you have some loose ends to tie up.” Lilia played with her wedding ring. “Assemble the team, send Renee in ahead of you. It’s a risk worth taking.”
Frei held her silence but Lilia could hear her slow breaths. Trying to calm herself. It meant so much to Frei, Lilia was more than willing to help.
“It could put them in danger,” she whispered, sounding not much like a general and more like a frightened child.
“I know. I had the vision. Send them in.” Lilia cut the call as Eli came into view. She tried to keep him as far away from CIG as she could. A smile played across her lips as the girls burst from the door, throwing themselves at him. He was a wonderful father.
Lilia sighed. She looked down at her wedding ring once more. At least one of them was a good parent. She repeated her own vision to herself. Aeron had been close.
“A stringed girl and a bright star stand on a huge flat stretch. The school hangs on the edge, its walls hide truth from prying eyes. Letters make them hide and hands reach out, money thrust at them. It’s too bright, the light, they cower from greedy hands. Broken lock, noble heart, and shield understand with faith they can soar.”
She sighed. That was where Aeron’s attempt at the vision and her own differed. “Three friends cannot hold behind masks and hurt, and these three remain, faith, hope . . .”
Lilia sighed, rubbing her head. “One is left behind to face her fear.” She tried not to shudder at the flash of one of them gasping for air. She didn’t know which one but she knew it was either Aeron, Frei, or Renee. One of them was in great danger.
As a mother she would stop the mission going ahead. As a mother she would never risk it.
Once again she was placing CIG and her visions above what her heart demanded. It was Aeron’s duty as much as hers now. She believed in them. She believed in Aeron so much it made every part of her ache.
It made her a great leader. She watched the girls wrap themselves around Eli and sighed. A great leader but a terrible mother.
Chapter 12
I’D MET FATHER James McLaughlin in Serenity Hills. Back then, I’d been expecting him to treat me as everyone else had on account of my burdens but he hadn’t. To me, meeting him had felt like a turning point in my life. He’d told me all about the armor which I visualized to protect myself.
Now, he was sitting, munching on sandwiches outside the café in the CIG base and it hit me how much and how little things had changed. I weren’t inside no more. Technically I was a free woman. Only, I couldn’t leave the base without an escort and I knew Renee, Frei, or my dear mother would be hot on my heels if I tried it.
Freedom was relative.
Back in Serenity, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to him. He’d told me that he was a Jesuit priest and he’d been one of the coolest people I’d talked to.
Watching him sit there munching away, I realized that he was probably in his thirties, maybe forties. He had wavy black hair and a bit of fluff on his chin that made him look more like an artist than a priest. His entire facial hair was a rusty color in complete contrast from his head and he had twinkly green eyes.
“Hello, Aeron, you hungry?” He held out his sandwich box to which I shook my head. I weren’t much into pickles. “I had a very strange urge to come and find you. Care to explain?”
Didn’t that throw me? Some opening line. “An urge?”
He nodded, beaming at me like I was an old friend. “I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that before but where the spirit takes you . . .”
“I kinda do . . . need your help, I mean . . .” I “umm-ed” and “ah-ed,” trying to figure out how I was gonna explain it. “You know I’m kinda freaky?”
He chomped on his pickle sandwich and grinned at me.
“Thing is . . . I tried to help somebody. I healed them . . .” I sighed. He was gonna think I was crazy. “They didn’t ask me to and . . .”
He rolled up the packaging his sandwich was in and nodded. “Ah.”
“Ah?” What did that mean? Doctors made noises like that as if they enjoyed making folks tense up or cling onto the nearest surface.
“What is the result of it?” He placed his trash in the recycling and I realized he was wearing jeans. Sure, he had a dog collar on but jeans and boots and a big coat too. Why I thought priests would be different, I didn’t know but this guy looked . . . like everybody else.
“Nan said that they are taking it away until I learn to ground myself and understand what it all means.” I shrugged. “I feel like I been set free but Nan reckoned I needed you and she’s always right.”
He laughed. “She sounds like a wise lady.”
“Even more so now she’s on the . . .” How did I explain this one? “Er . . . She’s more spiritual these days. Emphasis on the spirit.” I smiled. Nan was something else. “I miss her.”
“And how does Nan think that you should be grounded?” He didn’t seem to miss a beat that I was talking about somebody who’d passed on.
“She said you can help me with meditations or somethin’, that I can build a solid foundation by doing that?” I hoped he knew what I was talking about ’cause I didn’t have a clue.
“The nineteenth annotation no doubt.” He rubbed his hands together. “It’s a retreat in daily living, but Aeron, it’s about you and God. Are you open to that?”
“I ain’t even sure what I think apart from good being better than the opposite.” Nan had faith. I guess I believed in stuff but my preconception of what religious folks were like didn’t enamor me to their cause. Still, twice now when I’d needed it, scripture had come into its own so what was the harm in trying?
“You sure about that?” There was no judgment in his voice, just simple curiosity.
“Well, the armor worked. When I was in St. Jude’s—and yeah, the name weren’t lost on me—Nan helped me out with another passage.” I bit my lip, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I guess it feels like a new discovery at the moment, you know?”
“The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart.” He smiled at me.
“Seed?” I could picture that, and there was the noble heart again. “So how do I do this?”
“I’m not just going to shove you in the deep end. Why don’t we take a walk, sit for a while, and see how you feel?” He was a spritely kinda guy and even without abilities I could feel the energy pulsing off him. A calm energy. An energy of somebody who understood a lot more about everything than I did or at least acted like it.
I SPENT THE afternoon with James as he made me call him. I hadn’t ever felt quite as relaxed and peaceful before. As I walked back to my quarters down the main drag, I was in the kind of mood that I wanted to whistle. The mood where you bounce along, seeing the world in a happy light. I was one of those folks with a happy disposition anyhow but meditating felt good. I could work with it. Yeah.
“Lorelei, I need you to come up here.”
I turned at the sound of Frei’s voice. It weren’t like her to holler from the window. “Sure thing.”
When I strutted into the reception, Miss Bitter-boots was present and scowling.<
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“Is she in?” I asked as gentle as I could. I hated the fact that the woman had lost so much. How could I help her? In a fleeting thought, I wished I could have my gifts back and at least take away some of the pain she was in.
“You got an appointment?” Bitter, hurt, and venomous.
“Does her yelling that she wanted to see me from her window count?” I curtailed my wish to flash her a smile. It had riled her up good and proper the last time.
“No.” She folded her arms and glared at me.
“You know. My great-aunt Mrs. Stein is kinda sour faced too. She walks around like she’s sucking on a lemon.” I nodded at the scowl shot my way. “You know what happened to her?”
“Do I care?” Snarky but through barrier one.
“Yup, seeming as you’re heading her way an’ all.” If that didn’t reel her in, I would need a bigger rod.
“What happened?” She was quieter now, worry wrinkled her brow.
“Nothin’. She ain’t ever moved on, ain’t ever let go, she just got more bitter.” I leaned on the desk. “Suffering, however it hits you, rips your life apart.”
“What would you know about it?” Now she was on the defensive. She’d suffered. How could I ever hurt like she had? How would I know her pain? Pain and guilt, they were nearly as bad as fear.
“Nothin’ much. I mean I spent most of my life in a mental institution for a crime I didn’t commit, lost my best buddy when he got hit by a train, saw a load of young girls killed . . . you want me to keep going?” We could do this all day.
Her eyes widened and then she sighed. “How can I smile when I feel so guilty?”
“You know, I’m working on that myself. What I figure is that guilt is like lifting weights. At some point you got to stop adding on or it’ll crush you.”
Renee would have been able to give her some coping mechanism or maybe a plan to help her let it go. I wasn’t an expert just a fellow sufferer.
“You don’t know me or nothin’ but somebody wise once told me that talking ’bout it can help. It don’t cure, but I guess it helps you get it straight in your head.”
“Talking about it doesn’t change that it happened.” She stared down at her fingernails.
“No, nothing will, but I’m willing to listen if you need to rant or anything. I’m no shrink, so I’ll just do that, listen.”
Her eyes met mine like she was gonna hurl a load of abuse at me for being a busybody but I guess she saw I meant it. “I won’t but it’s nice to know you offered.”
“It’s an ongoing one.”
“Aeron?” Renee stood in the doorway, her eyes filled with affection, her voice soft like she was trying to hug me with it. “We need you upstairs.”
I nodded to the receptionist, then turned. “I never asked your name.”
She smiled at me and went back to her computer. “And I’ve never told you.”
For some reason that made me chuckle. In a place where everybody knew everyone’s name, she weren’t playing. I liked that.
I followed Renee through the doorway. She closed it, stopped, and pulled me into a bear hug. Then she took my hand and led me up the stairs. “I’ve seen you do some amazing things, but somehow you always surprise me.”
I was still kinda stunned from the hug. What I do? “I don’t get you.”
She nudged into me. “Which is what makes it all the more wonderful.” She squeezed my hand and strode through some glass doors at the top. Inside looked like a classroom. A load of tables and chairs all facing a board. Frei perched on the edge of one, sipping her coffee. She didn’t look at all mad that I’d made her wait.
“Lilia, Aeron has just come in.” Frei raised her voice like she was calling to her across the room. I looked around, wondering if she’d gone loopy in the stifling heat. What was with the heating?
“I hear you’re doing wonderfully,” my mother said. “Congratulations on passing your test.”
What did I say to that? I knew kids in high school had been bought cars and given gifts for passing their tests. It was a big thing. A little portion . . . okay, most of me . . . felt pretty happy that my mother was pleased and proud.
“Thanks.” It came out as a grunt. The one teenagers do in the periods where speech becomes too much effort.
“And you saw something?”
I looked at Frei who had the greatest poker face, period.
Helpful.
“I just . . . It just came out.”
Renee smiled at me, nodding encouragement, but that was it. I had just said a load of stuff.
“Ursula has pinpointed some locations for you. Look at the map and see what you—”
“Caprock,” I blurted out, then frowned. Had Frei told me that? How’d I remembered that? Huh?
Frei’s lips twitched in a smile while I turned around on the spot, wondering how and where that had come from. I didn’t have burdens, they took them away. How could I have known that?
“That’s the most plausible option,” Frei said in a bored voice. “We’ll follow Lorelei.”
“Well done.” My mother sounded so proud. I didn’t know why, like she’d ever helped me with anything. “Move ahead with it. Let me know if you need me.”
Frei and Renee nodded to each other.
“Aeron,” my mother said. “Daddy and the girls send their love. Mrs. Squirrel has him bringing home nuts for her latest litter.”
That brought the biggest, dumbest smile to my face. Mrs. Squirrel. Man, I loved her feisty little butt. “Tell her to stop stealing the foam from his car seat or he’ll cotton on that it’s her.”
I rubbed my head. This was crazy. I couldn’t know that stuff. I wasn’t meant to know or see or feel nothing. Huh?
“Will do. Good luck, girls.”
My mother hung up as I stomped over to the window. Maybe Nan had got the message mixed up or something. If not, it was the shortest taste of freedom yet.
“Renee, you know what you need to do when you go in. You have the files. If you need to confer, send the message the usual way.” Frei tapped the files Renee had picked up off the desk.
“Will you be okay?” Renee squeezed my elbow as she passed. “I’ll have to act like I don’t know you at all. I don’t want you to think it’s real.”
There was the Renee I knew and loved. I smiled down at her. She was looking official in a fresh skirt suit. She looked cool. “I can’t say it’s gonna be easy. You guys will have to help me, a lot.”
“I’ll keep you so busy, you won’t even realize you miss her,” Frei said. She was in uniform too but in pants and a shirt. Both looked unfazed by the heat. I was close to shoving open the window to cool off.
I knew they were both trying to make me feel better but Frei’s comment just made me think that she’d be running me through drills the entire time. Not fun.
“Don’t pull that face,” Frei said, her lips twitching like she either wanted to smile or maybe had wind. “You’ll love it.”
I met Renee’s eyes, which twinkled, gray, clear, and full of affection. “One thing about Ursula you need to know, it’s never dull.”
She turned but I grabbed Renee. Without thinking, I pulled her into a hug. I hung on, not sure why, but I soaked up every ounce of comfort from it I could. I was soft, I knew that, but it felt like I was just getting to see her out of her shell and off we were going again. I’d missed her.
“Quit it, dimwit,” she whispered, squeezing me like she’d miss me just as much.
“Least you’ll get some peace from me, right?” I let her go, knowing Frei had probably rolled her eyes and muttered to herself.
“If you think that, you don’t know me very well.” She squeezed my hand, kissed me on the cheek, and headed to the door. She stopped and glanced a sheepish smile at Frei before looking at me. “Just don’t ride in the rain . . .” She held up her finger. “Or ice . . . or wind . . . or dusty conditions.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “And let Urs know where you are . . .” She bit her lip. “An
d make sure you eat, regularly . . .” She glanced at Frei and sighed. “I know, moving.”
“Just keep it on,” I called after her. “Please.”
She half turned, a question in her eyes.
“The necklace. It’ll protect you.”
She touched it and nodded once, pushed open the glass doors, and disappeared down the stairs.
It was hard to see her leave. A wary voice told me that she would struggle not to retreat inward, that somehow she was still waging a war to overcome her fears. I was leaving her vulnerable.
I turned back to Frei and tried to hide my worry. We were doing this for a good reason. Renee understood that. We all understood that. It was a risk we took. For the first time, I began to get what Renee had been saying all along. It was a thankless fight.
This would be my first official mission. I knew I’d be in safe hands with Frei. I half wanted to put Renee with her instead. The thought of her being alone gave me stomach ache.
“I need an hour a day to meditate,” I told Frei. “No buts. It’s a directive I got to follow.”
Frei nodded. “You can do it when I do mine.”
I walked smack into the corner of the table. “You?”
Frei rolled her eyes. She had an odd smile on her face. I mean any smile was rare but this one was . . . pensive maybe. “You’re putting yourself at risk, giving her your necklace.”
“Yes.”
Her smile warmed until I shrugged, fending off my heating cheeks. I was soft, where was the surprise?
She released me from her gaze, got off the desk, and strode toward a door left ajar. It was to her office by the look of it. “Then head this way, Lorelei. Let’s get you drilled.”
I turned to look at the staircase Renee had left by. I’d given her Nan’s St. Christopher, the one with the armor engraved on it. It had kept me safe, I knew that. I hoped that now it would take care of her.
I hoped that odd feeling had just been me getting nervous. I didn’t have burdens no more. It was just nerves. Just nerves.
“Lorelei, quit catching flies and get in here.”
I turned and followed Frei into her office, feeling a sense of being on uncertain ground. What I’d learned from Renee so far was that when a hero found herself in that situation, she held her head high and kept the faith.