Dr. York finally turns off the lights, throwing us into darkness.
The video flashes an opening montage of healthcare professionals, law enforcement and school teachers before moving into the testimonies.
“Death-replacement is the greatest scientific discovery of the twenty-first century,” a doctor says. A general intellectual type, probably chosen for his sense of authority. “But not all those with NRD choose to be death-replacement agents. Most fear announcing their condition to their communities because of discrimination, possible violence…”
Must be nice to have options.
When Brinkley turned up offering me a job it was a dream come true because I was seventeen with no family or money. I’d even died before finishing high school so college wasn’t an option unless I got my GED, but considering I was homeless and starving, it wasn’t high on my to-do list. My only choice was to let Brinkley take me in. Of course, he made me get my GED anyway.
One of my favorite clips in this video is of a pretty blond schoolteacher moving with the shuffle-step most death replacement agents have before a good rub down and steam.
“I know this might be frightening,” the schoolteacher says. Her neck is twisted oddly to the side, looking pale and bloody like a zombie in the traditional sense. “But I only look this way because I saved someone’s life.”
I giggle. It gets me every time.
I don’t know why but that teacher always cracks me up. Maybe it’s the bizarre angle of her face? Her squeaky voice? I don’t know but it just tickles me.
Cindy’s blue-glow face flashes me a quizzical look, but she doesn’t say anything before turning back to the screen. Ally would’ve shot me an elbow at least.
A social worker speaks now as a child stands beside him. “Sometimes the children must be removed from the home for safety reasons or they are abandoned. And placing these children can be especially challenging. A child who can be tortured to death, and then resurrected, attracts the wrong kind of foster parent.”
The video gives a parting shot of a mother who’s discovered her six-year-old daughter, thought dead after drowning in a river had NRD. “I’m just so happy she’s alive,” she cries. “It’s a miracle.”
Maybe my mother would’ve felt that way if I hadn’t killed her husband in addition to myself.
The lights come on as the film’s credits roll on the black screen. A few people clap. I don’t because Ally isn’t here to force me.
Dr. York reclaims the room. “Before we turn it over to our guests, does anyone have any questions?”
“Is it true they’re beginning to test children for NRD? Like genetic testing?”
Dr. York gives a curt nod. “They are developing tests that can register the elevated concentration of magnetite in the cerebral cortex. This is one of the defining characteristics of NRD. But a person will not know for certain they have NRD until they die.”
“No other questions?” He pauses. “Then allow me to introduce Ms. Jesse Sullivan and Ms. Cindy St. Claire.” Dr. York gestures for us to join him at the front of the room.
“Ms. Sullivan and Ms. St. Claire are both residents here in Nashville and two of the three death-replacement agents serving the Davidson County area.”
I say the line Dr. York has taught me to say, robotic as usual. “We are here to answer any questions you might have about NRD and the death-replacement process.”
It’s hard for me to fake enthusiasm.
Cindy and I spend almost an hour covering the usual topics of death replacement: no we don’t decide who lives or dies. No we can’t save people who are terminally ill. We prevent death, we aren’t magical healers. And of course we have to explain what the hell A.M.P.s are and how they were made. Of course, no amount of explaining ever covers it.
“But how do you make a person?”
“The only way to make a person is the way your mommy and daddy made you,” I say. A couple of people laugh while I huff at the bald bulky guy in the front row, who looks like a large gorilla in that tiny plastic chair. Cop probably. “The military just tried to change them. The military was not successful in recreating NRD, but they did make something else: Analysts of necro-Magnetic Phenomenon, A.M.P.s. The acronym is supposed to reiterate the whole electrical current and magnets thing—it doesn’t matter. But basically the military isn’t allowed to make A.M.P.s anymore since it’s basically torture.”
“What is magnetite?” someone asks. A petite woman in back. Nurse, if I had to guess.
Cindy answers. “It’s a ferrimagnetic mineral that some animals have in their bodies. It helps them sense magnetic fields. Birds have it in their beaks and they use it to fly between the north and south magnetic poles in the winter.”
She is so perky. I don’t know how she does it. Every new question grates on my nerves.
“Any more questions?” Dr. York asks the class. A final tentative hand goes up, from a small red-headed girl in the back of the room. I have no idea what she could be. Nurse? Mortician? Reporter?
Dr. York motions for her to speak. “Yes?”
“Ms. Sullivan?” she bumbles. OK. Not a reporter. Way too shy.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Were…were you scared?”
“Nah, I die all the time,” I shrug.
She wets her lips. “No, I mean…I mean last year. About what happened—about what was in the news?”
Cindy and Dr. York give me apprehensive looks like they’re worried about what I’ll say. “You mean when I was trapped in a basement with a few psychos and I had to watch one stab my friends while they made me choose who I’d save?”
“Jesse,” Dr. York says.
“Or do you mean when the prostitute—”
“Sex worker,” Cindy corrects.
“—tried to cut off my head with a machete?”
The girl is blood red in the face making her hair seem even more inflamed. “I…I…both.”
My own face has gotten pretty red. The burning heat in my cheeks tells me so. “Because you know that’s the only way to kill us. So if anyone in this room wants to kill me, you’ve got to chop off my head and destroy my brains, all right?”
Cindy’s lips are pressed together so hard they’re white as she stares at the floor. Dr. York’s mouth is slightly open, gawking, as is true for most of the people in the room.
“I…I’m sorry,” the girl blurts. Oh God, she’s going to cry. Seeing her red-cheeked and bleary eyed makes me soften. I feel my bulldog response pull back, the leash relaxing around my throat.
“Yes, I was scared,” I say. Then I add something I know Dr. York would heavily approve of. “And I hope that by doing these seminars, people will be a little more compassionate towards people like me.” I look at Cindy. “Like us.”
And on cue, Dr. York beams. Of course, I ruin it by taking it one step too far.
“I only wish a freaking blood bath wasn’t necessary to foster compassion, you know?”
The girl nods. Apparently, she’s lost her capacity to speak. Dr. York seizes this momentary silence as a chance to close the session. He gives everyone, including Cindy and me, a piece of butterscotch candy. Like we are five years old.
We smile and shake hands with people as they file out of the room. I watch them go, wondering if even one of them would bother to stand up for me if Caldwell came for me again.
After the seminar Dr. York gets paged and leaves in a hurry. I grab Cindy and pull her aside before she gets a chance to run off too.
She looks startled to be seized by the arm and held back. Maybe she doesn’t want to be alone with me in the conference room.
I don’t let her wonder what’s going on for long. “When is the last time you saw Raphael?”
Cindy’s eyes double in size as she searches the room around us for eavesdroppers but it’s sterile white and empty. “Jesse! Someone could hear you!”
“I need to know,” I tell her. “When did you last see him? Or when is the last time you hallucinated at all?”<
br />
She squeezes my arm so hard I know it would leave a bruise. “Why does it matter? It’s over.”
“I know right?” I say. “I thought I was like, back to normal and shit. But now I’m not so sure.”
Her eyes widen. “No, no. We got scans. We stopped seeing the you-know-whats. We got better.”
“I’ve seen him twice,” I say and I know it sounds dumb, but if I can’t talk to Cindy about it, the only person I know who might be as crazy as I am, then I can’t talk to anyone. “And I can feel him.”
Her eyes couldn’t be more round. “It’s just PTSD or something. It’s not real.”
“Or I’m losing my shit.”
“Stop,” she says. “Sweet Jesus, just stop talking.” Her gaze snaps right at the sound of feet approaching us and someone yanks the door wide.
It’s the girl who I mistook for a reporter with the crazy red hair. She’s no older than twenty, and she’s short like me. Her hair is cut straight across, and because it’s thick, it poofs out at the sides, flaring at the ends. I want to tell her layers are the secret. Layers make thick hair manageable. But I have a strong feeling she didn’t come back to talk to me about hair.
With her arms folded over her chest, Cindy and I stare at her waiting for something to happen. But she doesn’t speak. It’s like she’s under a spell until Cindy smiles.
“Hey honey,” Cindy says, saccharin sweet. You’d have never guessed that thirty seconds ago we were discussing how on the verge of sanity we are.
“Hi.” Her smile is more of a reflexive reaction than a genuine smile. “Ms. Sullivan?”
“Just Jesse,” I say. “Ms. Sullivan is my mother and she’s dead.”
I laugh but the girl just looks horrified. OK, so I’m not as good at faking it as Cindy.
“So what’s up?” I ask her. I hope by getting to the point, we’ll get past this cup of awkward.
Cindy has a sweeter voice than I do, with that soft Texas twang and she really works it now.
“Are you okay, honey?”
Arms wrap around me. One second this girl is standing before us, clutching herself. Then she has her arms around me like a damn barnacle.
“What the—” I am about to use the strong explicative term when Cindy gives me a look, that would translate to something like it’s a hug. Deal with it.
I reach one arm up and pat her on the back. Then I realize she is talking, her voice muffled against Lane’s canvas coat.
“I can’t hear you,” I say.
She lifts her head. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Great. She probably snotted all over this jacket and there’s no way to check without making her cry more.
“Thank you,” she says. “For saving him.”
“Who?”
“My dad,” she says. “You replaced my dad last year.”
“Who’s your dad?” I ask.
She gives me a name which conjures a vague picture of a robust man and beer gut. “Construction worker?” I ask.
She nods. “If you hadn’t saved him, I…I don’t know what we’d do. We all love him to death.”
I’d caught Mr. Frank Johnson falling off a beam. His fat ass broke my spine in three places and almost bashed my brains out of my skull. Had I not been wearing the required hard hat when we went down, I probably wouldn’t have made it.
“He’d just healed up when we saw you on the TV.” She goes on. “He was like ‘Sadie, that’s the young lady that saved my life. Now someone done went and hurt her. That’s just shameful.”
She hadn’t quite imitated Frank’s robust, good ol’ boy tone, but it’s close enough.
My throat is real tight all of a sudden and my eyes burn with tears. What the hell is wrong with me? “I’m glad your dad is okay,” I say.
Then she starts to cry. Cry.
“Oh Lord,” Cindy says and wraps the girl up in her arms. “Darlin’, what’s wrong?”
“He’s missing,” she sobs. “My dad is missing.”
“Why are you telling me?” I ask. I can’t do anything. Not that you’d know by the dirty look Cindy gives me. “You should call the police or something.”
The girl steps away from Cindy’s embrace. “I’m sorry. I know that isn’t your problem. I’m sorry. Really I just wanted to say thank you and to say I was real sorry for what happened to you.”
Sadie turns and hurries away.
The second she’s out of earshot, Cindy jumps me. “What’s wrong with you? We could’ve helped her. Taken her to the police or something.”
“I don’t know,” I say because a strange feeling overtakes me as I watch Sadie disappear around the far corner of the corridor. Am I being watched?
Closer than you think.
I turn a full circle in the hospital hallway, searching for the eyes I know must be fixed on me.
But I see no one.
Ally
Cindy enters the apartment with all the air of a Duchess. Her white-blond hair doesn’t have a strand out of place and her heels click in sharp, strident steps across the brief stretch of linoleum between the front door and the living room carpet. Her lashes are ridiculously long as she blinks dramatically in surprise.
“Am I interrupting?” Cindy asks.
I know Cindy mostly through Jesse. We’ve lived in this same apartment building since I took the position as Jesse’s assistant, long before Jesse even remembered who I was, but I don’t know her very well. When I moved to Nashville and started working with Jesse, she was the one who suggested this place, having liked it herself. But she is on the 4th floor and I’m on the 3rd. She might as well live in South Dakota as I’ve never seen her here.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. Nikki tenses beside me.
“I just wanted to talk to you about Jesse,” she says. “Is your—friend—going to stay?”
“I was about to run to the store actually,” Nikki says. She gathers up the papers on the coffee table and turns the pile face down, placing her tea cup on top. “We need real food.”
“Sure,” I say and try not to sound surprised she’s leaving or disappointed that she is apparently dissatisfied with my attempts at a fancy cheese spread. “Chipotle is down the road.”
Nikki smiles. “Sure. Do you want anything—?”
“Cindy,” she says, flashing her perfectly white teeth and extending her hand toward Nikki. “Cindy St. Clair.”
Nikki must recognize the name of one of the few death replacement agents in the area but she does a good job of not reacting to the name. “Are you hungry?”
“No, thank you, darlin’,” Cindy continues. “I just ate.”
Nikki grabs her coat off the back of the chair and slips through the front door. The rush of it all makes it hard to adjust. A couple of minutes ago I was kissing Nikki and now Cindy is standing in my apartment.
“Do you want tea or something?” I try to hedge my confusion by giving myself something to do. “I believe I have coffee too.”
“I can’t stay long,” she says. She crosses to the corner and sits on the edge of the big arm chair, as if the only way to avoid being swallowed by the thick arms is to perch precariously on the edge of the seat.
“I assume this is work related.” Jesse embarrassed me in seminar today. Jesse said this. Jesse did that. Most of the time when people want to discuss Jesse, it’s to complain. “So what did she do?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s not like that.” Cindy presses her palm against her chest. “I’m just so worried about her.”
“Why? What’s happened?” I sink into the couch, and pull a pillow into my lap.
“Has she ever talked to you about—” Cindy stops and exhales. I’ve never seen her look so uncomfortable. She’s bouncing her leg in place and her back is bowed forward protectively. “I mean, you and her, you’re best friends, right? Of course she’d tell you.”
“What?” I demand. She’s killing me. “Just tell me.”
She pulls at the end of her bob then proceeds with a doubtful look. “Does sh
e ever talk to you about Gabriel?”
“Who’s Gabriel?” I ask.
Cindy’s lips pursed. “Never mind. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
Cindy stands and moves toward the door but I stop her and push her back into the chair. I’m confused and almost angry at the idea Cindy knows something about Jesse that I don’t. Jesse, who I practically wait on hand and foot, can’t possibly have secrets I don’t know about.
“No, tell me,” I demand. “You said you’re worried and I’m sure I would be too. And who else can help her?”
“I shouldn’t have come,” she says.
“Just tell me,” I say and tuck my hair behind my ears. “Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.”
She considers me for a long time and I begin to worry Nikki will come back before this conversation is over and now I’m not sure I want Nikki here at all.
Cindy nods as if agreeing with someone I can’t hear. “Okay, yeah. Of course, you probably are the best person.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Now what’s going on?”
“Just remember you asked for this, darlin’.”
“I know,” I say. “So start from the beginning.”
She exhales long and slow before speaking. “Do you remember last year, the whole church thing—and what am I saying! Of course you remember—you were there, weren’t you? Well about that time, this whole Gabriel-Raphael problem started up too.”
I don’t fixate on this new name Raphael because I want her to keep talking. “This problem began a year ago, around the time I was kidnapped and we were all attacked in the Church basement.”
“And I can’t believe they still let that place stay open!” Cindy exclaims.
“They pleaded ignorance of course and the evidence just disappeared,” I say. “But please, continue. Something about Gabriel and Raphael a year ago?”
Cindy arches her eyebrows and tilts her head. “I started seeing angels. Sweet Jesus, I’m not kidding. I can tell by your face you don’t believe me, but you’d better. I saw honest-to-God angels. Well, one angel anyway, with wings proclaiming the word of God.”
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