I neatly step on the inside of the line myself. No sense taking chances.
Next Nachiel pulls out the ground ash. He takes a pinch and then smudges a line across Lisa’s forehead with his thumb. Her nose twitches, but otherwise there’s no sign of consciousness. He flips through The Book of Seraphs, chooses a page, and leaves the book open to it. Then, somewhat more gingerly, he picks up the Fiend pages and places them neatly on the table next to the flickering candle.
“God, I hate even touching these,” he says quietly.
Carefully he turns the delicate pages over until he finds the one he’s looking for. He gently places it on the table as well, moving a small electric clock over it to act as a paperweight.
“Okay,” says Nachiel, wiping a hand across his forehead, which is lightly beaded with sweat. “You’re going to have to pull the electrodes off carefully and put them on your chest; otherwise, we’ll have a bunch of nurses running in with a crash cart. Her heart rate is going to spike when you inject her.”
“Right,” I say.
Nachiel looks at me expectantly.
“Right,” I say with a sigh. I glance over my shoulder; the old woman is mumbling something unintelligible in her sleep, and the teenage girl is safely in her vegetative coma. I suddenly recognize her—I saw her at the crosswalk on Ocean and Main, looking cold and alone. But that has to be random. A coincidence.
“Dimitri?”
“Right,” I say again. More pressing business to take care of.
I pull off the top of my scrub and take a deep breath. I slip my hand down the front of Lisa’s hospital gown—God, her skin is soft (Don’t think about it; not the time or place to get distracted)—and just as her heart pauses between beats, I quickly rip an electrode off her chest and place it on mine without setting off a single alarm. One down, three more to go.
I take another deep breath and quickly remove the rest of the electrodes from Lisa’s chest. There’s one small blip on the last one, but not enough to create an alarm. For a moment I watch the electric signature of my own even heartbeat.
“Not bad,” says Nachiel. He reaches into his duffel bag and pulls out the needle. It’s gotten longer since the last time I saw it. I swallow hard.
“Just jab hard with one hand, like this,” he says, making a stabbing motion, “and then press the epinephrine in.”
I ridiculously practice a few times, like I’m a baseball player out on the field swinging the bat at warm-up. Although maybe that’s not the best analogy, because I never was good at baseball. Whenever I actually hit the damn thing, it would shoot straight up over my head and then land somewhere behind me with a sad plop.
“There is no way in hell this can possibly work,” I say desperately.
“Keep your hand firm; don’t use the wrist. You just want to jab, but if you twist, you’ll rip—”
“No talking about ripping, please.” A droplet of sweat trickles down my back. “I’m nervous enough as it is. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I whisper. Feeling as prepared as someone without any medical training, not even a basic CPR course, can, I gently tug at the top of Lisa’s hospital gown, lowering it enough to get a direct hit into her upper chest without revealing anything rated R. I try to recall my basic anatomy course, looking for which side the heart is on. Little to the right? Left?
“Here,” says Nachiel, gently touching Lisa’s skin just to the left of her breastbone where a mole I’m fond of marks her.
“Hey! Hands off my girl.”
“I’m just trying to show you—”
“Well consider me shown,” I say irritably.
“Okay. Now you want one smooth motion.”
“One smooth motion.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
I inhale deeply. There’s a silence then, like the moment right before a symphony starts to play, an ethereal hush. I put one hand down on the rails of the gurney to brace myself and lean over. I exhale deeply. Inhale deeply. Raise my hand…
“And is there a reason I’m doing this and you’re not?”
“Dimitri, I swear to God, if you say one more word I’m going to jam that thing in your head. Now do it.”
Fuck it. My arm swings wildly, and I plunge the needle into Lisa’s chest—there’s not as much resistance as I would have imagined—and I press the epinephrine in, hoping I’m not injecting into a lung. As soon as it’s empty I slowly pull the needle back out. There’s a small bead of blood where the needle entered.
Nothing happens.
But just as I’m about to turn to Nachiel, ask him what’s wrong, Lisa bolts upright in the bed, nearly knocking me backward. It sounds like she’s choking—her chest heaves with gasping breaths, her eyes bulge, and one hand frantically pulls at the bed sheet, like it’s operating with a will of its own. Oh fuck, I did hit her lung.
Nachiel stares at her with a fierce intensity.
“Is she okay? Nachiel, is she okay?”
My heart starts to race, skipping the occasional beat, and Lisa’s fair skin starts to turn pale. But still Nachiel says nothing, as if none of this is happening; as if he’s somewhere else entirely, another planet perhaps. Lisa’s hand jerks uncontrollably—it reaches out to me and almost pulls off an electrode.
“Lisa?” I ask faintly.
“Where,” Lisa says in a hoarse voice, “am I?” The throaty accent is unmistakably, freakishly Russian, and my heart sinks like a stone—Christ, what I’ve done to Lisa is far, far worse than any demon could dream up.
Now, though, Nachiel springs into action—he pulls the rolling table toward him so fast that the candle’s flame shears sideways. He gives me a hard look, shakes his head somberly, and my heart starts to throb when I see him pulling the paperweight off the page from The Book of Fiends.
Meanwhile Poe seems to have finally mastered Lisa’s renegade hand. She holds it directly in front of her face with an expression of pure delight, like a child with a new toy.
“A body,” she says in wonder. “I have a body again.”
“Poe,” I say firmly, “that wasn’t the deal. You have to let go. You can’t stay in Lisa’s body.”
“I have flesh,” says Poe in a hushed voice. She raises the hand to her cheek, closes her eye like she’s savoring the feel of it. “It’s beautiful. So beautiful.”
“Poe. I really appreciate you stepping in and keeping Lisa’s body alive, but it’s time—”
Poe’s eyes suddenly grow wide, and they dart from my face to Nachiel’s. I can see her registering the candle and the pages. “What is that smell?” she says, wrinkling her nose. A finger hesitantly reaches up to her forehead, touches the smeared ash.
Nachiel catches my eye in a meaningful way and says, “Just repeat after me.” He begins to intone. “I exorcise thee, O creature of hell.”
Reluctantly, I say the words too. “I exorcise thee, O creature of hell.” Instantly a migraine starts, pressing in and making me feel slightly nauseous.
Nachiel continues: “O tormented and lost soul who has turned to the side of the Dark Night.”
“O tormented and lost soul who has turned to the side of the Dark Night.”
“No,” whispers Poe. She clutches my arm, the same icy, viselike grip I’m familiar with. Her eyes plead with mine for mercy. “He is wrong. I am not evil.”
“I dispel thee. I send thee back into the hellfires.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I dispel thee, I send thee back into the hellfires.”
Poe’s bottom lip trembles, and I can’t help but think of what we’re sending her back to; I can almost hear the growls that erupted from behind the red curtain of light, almost feel the razor-sharp claw that reached out for her.
“The same,” she breathes miserably. “You’re all the same. You use me.”
“I dispel thee, I invoke the power of the light.”
“I dispel thee, I invoke the power of the light.”
Lisa’s body suddenly starts to seize�
�her back arcs wildly, and I try to hold her down without losing my connection to the heart monitor, which is now spiking from my own racing pulse. White foam beads the edge of her mouth; my 10 percent chance of getting Lisa back is dropping down to zero with each passing second.
“No,” she moans.
Nachiel, though, is untouched, unmoved. “By the power of the light…”
The light gets so bright it hurts my eyes, and the floor seems to tilt. This feels wrong. It all feels so wrong.
Lisa’s eyes roll in the back of her head, and her mouth hangs slack as Nachiel picks up the candle.
“Wait!” I shout.
“There is no waiting,” says Nachiel. “Either we do this or—”
“We don’t,” I finish for him. “I get that. But Poe helped me.”
“She helped herself. She hasn’t changed—she has no intention of voluntarily leaving Lisa’s body.”
“If she has free will, then she can make her own decisions. Right?”
Nachiel inhales deeply. “There isn’t time.”
Poe’s eyes flutter and then open, darting fearfully from me to Nachiel, then back to me.
“I propose a trade.”
“What kind of trade?” spits Poe. “I have traded everything there is for a woman to trade, and it has never done me any good.”
“I’m not talking about that kind of trade. I can offer you a life—if you swear to use that life to undo some of the harm you’ve done.”
Poe regards me suspiciously. “You are trying to trick me again.”
I shrug. “No, it’s not a trick. But you can’t have Lisa’s body. That’s taken.”
Poe slants her eyes at me. “Then whose?”
“I’m wondering that myself,” says Nachiel.
I nod behind me at the teenage girl in the coma who’s hooked up to a ventilator and heart monitor. I’m officially retiring the word “random” from my personal lexicon. “The nurses say she’s a Jane Doe. Runaway, no ID. She’s brain-dead, and they’re going to remove her from the ventilator tomorrow morning. One of the doctors asked me if I’d write up a small obituary with just her physical description for the newspaper. See if anyone would claim the body.”
Nachiel glances over at the girl, scanning her. “Her spirit has been gone for some time, but that doesn’t mean this is a good idea.”
Poe cranes her head to take a look, considering. “I would find her acceptable,” she finally says.
“But Poe,” I say, reaching for her hand. Tentatively, she lets me hold it. “If you ever give me a reason to regret this…”
“I will not. You are the first man I have ever known to give me so much for so little.” She seems to choke slightly at the last word, “little,” but then recovers quickly and glares at Nachiel. “Plus I will enjoy proving this one wrong. He seems a little—how you say?—up stuck.”
“Stuck up,” I correct, “although somehow the way you put it seems just as appropriate.”
“Kid’s got jokes,” grumbles Nachiel. “For the record, I’m completely against this.”
“Noted,” I say.
He sighs and blows out the candle. Gently he puts the page back from The Book of Fiends and picks up The Book of Seraphs instead. “Let’s see what page transferring bodies is on.”
I notice, although I pretend not to, that Poe keeps hold of my hand, like a tether.
Much to my great disappointment, Lisa doesn’t regain consciousness immediately once Poe’s spirit has left her body, although much to my great relief, she doesn’t die either. Just after Nachiel finished his chant, Lisa’s eyes briefly fluttered, then gently closed, and there was only the slightest exhalation of breath, a soft ah, as a haze of blue mist rose from her body. It passed right through me, like a shivery wave of cool water, and then floated over to the girl in the coma, gently drifting down until it settled on her skin like morning dew, then disappeared.
But that was five eternally long minutes ago, and neither has moved since. Did it work?
“Lisa,” I say, smoothing her forehead. No response. Her skin feels colder, and I notice that she’s lost some of the color from her cheeks. I turn to Nachiel, worried.
“Give her some time. Her body’s been through a lot,” says Nachiel.
“How much time?”
“As much as she needs. You’d better get those electrodes back, though, in case a nurse comes.”
I sigh but do as he says, making sure that not a single beat is missed. Then I gently lift her hospital gown back into place, which I notice features gamboling teddy bears. Something I plan to tease her mercilessly about as soon as she comes to.
“You might want to put your shirt back on too,” says Nachiel.
“Good point,” I say, grabbing the top of my scrubs from the floor. I brush off some of the salt and pull it over my head while Nachiel packs away the books and the candle. The needle he tosses into a red bin marked BIOHAZARD, and I briefly wonder how the hell can anyone get well in a hospital when all the signs read like they’re equally applicable to a nuclear facility.
Nachiel slides the bag over his shoulder.
“You’re not going, are you?”
“Someone’s got to start thinking about what comes next,” he says, looking pointedly at Poe’s new body, still safely hooked up to the ventilator and heart monitor.
My chest seizes. “I can’t leave before Lisa wakes up.”
Nachiel grins and pointedly ignores me. “I’ll be back later. Try not to do anything too stupid while I’m gone, okay?”
“Poe’s right. You are up stuck.”
“Don’t even start,” says Nachiel. He pauses for moment, gives me a serious look, and then reaches into his bag. “There’s something else you should have.”
I back up a few steps. “No more books. I need a little vacay from the whole conjuring/exorcism thing.”
He gives me a half smile. “Nothing like that.” He pulls out a large, fairly crumpled photograph, its edges yellowed with age, and holds it out to me.
Quietly I take it from him.
It’s a familiar arrangement, the same photo of Aspinwall I found in the Eagle archives. I see the neat rows of servants lined up in their starched aprons and severe expressions. But this is obviously the original, because my mother’s face isn’t rubbed out. I can see her delicate features clearly. She’s smiling and her eyes are warm, friendly.
“And there,” Nachiel says softly.
I almost can’t take my eyes off my mother’s face, but I do and look to where his finger is pointing. It’s the figure that was cut off in the newspaper image; I can now follow the arm holding the trowel to the tall, thin man holding it. His dark wool pants are stained with dirt, and I discover the gaunt, ragged face of the Russian gardener. The gaunt, ragged face of my father.
I swallow.
“It took me years to track down all the photos they appeared in and destroy them. There couldn’t be any trace, you understand. But I kept this one for you.”
I nod, temporarily unable to speak. “Thanks,” I finally manage.
Nachiel puts an arm on my shoulder and then starts for the door.
But before he opens it, I casually ask, “Hey, Nachiel. Where did my father go during the day all those years?”
He smiles at me. “You mean when he wasn’t traveling the world to exorcise some demon, save the world, that kind of thing?”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to sound like it’s just an offhand question, no big deal.
“Your father was the gardener for the Wharton Nursery. In the next town over, ten minutes from your house.”
Not the response I was expecting. “Well, why didn’t he tell me that?”
Nachiel shakes his head. “He wasn’t proud of it. He worked with his hands, in the dirt. In a way he was like any other immigrant; all he wanted was for his son to have a better life than he did.”
I swallow hard and fidget with the edge of Lisa’s sheet. And I quietly pocket that idea to think about later.
“See you soon,” says Nachiel, giving me a wave before slipping out the door.
I pull up a chair and settle myself in, keeping hold of Lisa’s hand. There’s the soft hiss of the ventilator, the blip, blip, blip of the heart monitor, and the gentle hum of the air conditioning. Warm sunlight streams through the window, not a cloud in the sky.
And just as my own eyes droop, just as I start to feel the deep pull of sleep, Lisa’s hand moves ever so slightly in mine. Instantly I’m alert, and I watch breathlessly as her eyes quietly open.
“Lisa?”
She pulls her hand from mine, turns her head, and smiles beatifically at me, reaching out as if to gently stroke my cheek—before swiftly balling her hand into a fist and punching me in the arm, hard.
“Ow! For Christ’s sake, Lisa, what the hell was that for?”
She can barely speak but somehow mutters in a raspy voice. “You lied to me.”
Holy shit, who’s possessing her now? “When did I lie?”
“You promised me. You said if I told you to run, you’d run. And you didn’t.”
“I thought we were speaking figuratively, not literally,” I say, rubbing my arm, which will soon sport a bruise—for someone who just had a blood transfusion, she’s got an amazing right hook. “Besides, I think I should get a little cred for saving your life.”
She glares at me and punches me again.
“Okay, I lied! I’m sorry I lied. I’m an evil, lying man unworthy of you. Just stop hitting me, please. You wouldn’t be so abusive if you knew what you just put me through.”
“I’m the one who’s plugged into a heart monitor.”
“Hey, that’s my line, you can’t—I distinctly remember saying that when I came to in the hospital. Plagiarism is not attractive.”
“Neither is lying.”
I groan and lean my forehead against one of the railings of the gurney. “I said I was sorry,” I mutter in the general direction of the floor.
“Well, that sounds a little more sincere.” I feel her fingers brush through my hair. “Just next time…”
“There can’t be a next time,” I say, lifting my head. “I couldn’t take going through something like this again.”
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