My mouth slides open. I could feel my mind hollowing out, opening up from the unexpected turn.
Cindy goes on, gesturing as if this is her point. “I saw Raphael and Jesse saw Gabriel.”
“Last year?” I ask. “She saw an angel last year? And she just found you and told you about it?”
But not me. Why not me? Oh god, if she’s hallucinating—if she’s sick—
“No, no—okay. Let me back up. I saw angels. I might have been a little upset about it and I went to Gloria because that woman sees the strangest things, bless her heart. I thought she’d be able to help me get a handle on this, you know? Instead, she takes me to Jesse, gets us to admit to each other that we’ve been talking to imaginary men. Gorgeous men, mind you, at least Raphael is—was—but invisible nonetheless. And we go to get brain scans and find out there is nothing physically wrong with us, but yet here we are, talking to them anyway.”
“Gabriel?” I ask. “And Raphael.”
“Exactly,” Cindy looks relieved.
“Wait, back up,” I say. “Why did Gloria bring you to Jesse?”
Cindy shrugs. “She must’ve known that Jesse was hallucinating.”
My head is swimming with this information. How could Jesse be having hallucinations and not tell me? Why wouldn’t she tell me? “Go back to the part about why you’re worried now, if this was a year ago.”
“I think she’s still having hallucinations,” Cindy says.
“But you aren’t?” I ask.
“No,” Cindy says. “It all just went away. Now I can use the toilet just fine and I haven’t seen a single thing in months and months.”
“Were you afraid to use the bathroom with Raphael watching?” I ask. I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what is important in this conversation and what I should focus on. One problem is simply Cindy talks too fast.
“Oh goodness, no, but that would be terrible. No, my problem was toilets would sort of explode,” she whispers as if someone can hear us. “I wouldn’t even have to be in the bathroom. But if I did need to use the restroom, I had to be sure I was nice and calm first.”
Too much information. “So why do you think Jesse is still hallucinating?”
“She asked me some questions at the seminar today and she was—” she says. “I don’t know, it was just an impression I got. She seems on edge, you know? I’m not saying we need to commit her. I’m just saying someone needs to help her. If she lets it go too far, well, you know.”
I do know. If someone were to find out Jesse was hallucinating, then only one thing will happen. She would be given a one-way ticket to the asylum, just like her mentor Rachel. I don’t blame Jesse for keeping this quiet and I’m really glad she didn’t bring it up in front of Nikki.
But why wouldn’t she tell me? Doesn’t she know she can tell me anything?
The buzzer on the building sounds and I know it’s Nikki needing to be let back in. Cindy stands as if a fire has been lit under her ass and rushes toward the door. I push the button on the intercom unlocking the front entrance.
“I better get going anyway,” Cindy says. “I’m meeting Momma for dinner. She’s staying with me ‘til Tuesday.”
“Thank you,” I say. Even though you told us you just ate. “For coming to me with this. You could have gone to Gloria again.”
“I tried but she wasn’t home,” Cindy says. Or she didn’t come to the door for you, I thought.
Cindy proceeds down the hallway toward the stairwell. She passes Nikki, laden with a food bag. She flashes a grin as she passes. “Nice to meet you, honey. See you around.”
“Good night,” Nikki says to the passing whirlwind of glamour and shine.
“Everything okay?” Nikki asks. She’s watching me, clearly curious.
I force a smile despite the pounding in my ears. “I hope so.”
Jesse
Part of my FBRD-certification requires that I be psychiatrically evaluated every few deaths because of the high risk of going totally batshit crazy.
“How are you today, Jesse?’ Herwin, my therapist asks. He invites me into his office, moving stacks of paper out of a desk chair so I can take a seat.
“Stiff,” I reply, coming into the dimly lit room. “Do you have time to do my eval?”
Herwin is wearing his usual brown tweed suit. I think it’s his work uniform or something. Maybe someone should tell him to mix it up every once in a while. After all, all this brown tweed—his outfit and the 70s era furniture—packed between four white cinder block walls is just too oppressive.
I stretch myself long on the couch, but it is lumpy and I can feel the springs through scratchy upholstery. Once I settle in, Herwin moves his chair closer and pulls out the pointer light. The lights in the warm room soften, making the pointer light look like a searchlight pouring into my skull.
“Just try to relax and listen to the sound of my voice. Okay?”
I grumble some kind of agreement.
The longer I stare at the light the more relaxed I become. I drift off and before I know it, Herwin is out of his chair, exchanging the pointer light for the soft glow of the lamps. He offers me a tissue and I have to sit up to wipe the water out of my eyes.
“How do you feel now?” he asks.
“Still tired. Still sore.” I pinch my eyes shut beneath the tissue. “What’s the prognosis?”
“So far so good,” he says, taking just a moment to adjust his bowtie.
As I toss the damp tissue in the direction of the wastebasket and miss, the temperature changes.
I know this feeling—
The way a room warms suddenly, the feel of a person standing near me.
I’m terrified to look up, to turn my eyes in the direction of the large white wall with a hint of shadow on it. Whatever Herwin was saying has been completely obliterated by the pounding of my heart in my ears.
Finally I dare to sneak a glance.
Gabriel stands on the very same spot where I first saw him a year ago, a black smudge against the white cinderblock wall. That time he’d been casual, almost bored, with his black wings folded over each dark sleeve of his suit jacket. His impossibly green eyes merely curious and watchful. Now he reaches toward me in panic, stretching his arm out as if to catch me from falling. His black wings wide and glorious cast menacing shadows on the wall behind him, before he fades into the darkness entirely.
“Oh shit.”
“Excuse me?” Herwin asks and looks up from his legal pad.
“Uhhhh,” I start, scrambling for something normal to say. “Want me to put a quarter in a jar or something?”
Herwin laces his fingers. “That is not necessary. You’re an adult and can express your feelings in whatever language you feel is most appropriate. However, I must ask, what has garnered such a strong reaction?”
Eyes still fixed on the wall behind him, I try to think of how to tell the truth without giving myself away. “I think some things are just coming up again. From last year, I mean.”
“You were kidnapped. Your loved ones were physically assaulted in front of you and you yourself were attacked,” Herwin says with a sympathetic and grave face. “It is only natural that those experiences should resurface and upset you from time to time.”
“But I was doing so well.”
“Try not to think of it as a competition, Jesse,” he says, steepling his fingers. “There is no prize for most well-adjusted person.”
There is when you do what I do for a living. The prize is staying out of the nuthouse.
“I find the best way to deal with traumatic events such as these is to face them head on,” he says. “Look at them without turning away and recognize how strong you are for surviving such a horrible ordeal. By acknowledging your own strength, it’s easier to remove the fear.”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll try that.” But I don’t mean it. And I can tell by the totally bummed look on Herwin’s face he knows I’m just telling him what he wants to hear. But what are my options?
There’s no freaking way I’m just going to embrace Gabriel. How the hell will that remove the fear? Because I’ll be too crazy to fear anything, I guess.
When Gabriel came last time my whole life fell apart. There’s no way in hell I’m just going to invite that back in. I need a clear head. I need to be ready for whatever Caldwell will throw at me next.
Ally
Gloria’s house is dark when I pull up. Her yard looks dreadful. I’m surprised she hasn’t had the city called on her for codes, what with the overgrown grass and random collectibles in the yard. A tire here. A barrel drum there. God knows where it came from.
I pull up the short gravel drive and park in the back. The single wood step, bent and warped with time threatens to snap altogether as I climb up to the door and open the back screen. I knock once but no one answers. When no one comes I use my spare key to let myself in.
“Gloria?” I call out.
No answer.
I squeeze into the tiny space between the door and the wall and shut it behind me. The house smells like dust and dank water. I move through the dark across fading tiles into the kitchen. This room is brighter with the front facing window. I always marvel at the grotesque décor of the kitchen, everything a hideous yellow color from the 70s.
Because the bedrooms are all dark, there is only one place left to check.
I slip down the basement stairs carefully and sure enough there she is, scribbling away at her desk. She has several pictures of a girl taped to the wall in a circular pattern.
There are three pictures in the middle that aren’t pictures at all. Only dark angry black holes have been scrawled onto the page, as if in a fit of rage Gloria has wasted all her lead just to carve out these hungry mouths.
When she stops long enough I put my hand gently on top of hers to let her know I’m here. Tactile perception is best to break the spell. And it’s better than all that damn caffeine she drinks.
I keep my voice low and gentle. “You’ve been working overtime. You know what will happen if you don’t take good care of yourself.” I point at the black scribbles. “What are these?”
“I can’t see it yet,” she says.
I don’t ask her to explain more. “Are you working a missing person case? She looks young.”
“I can’t decide if she is missing or doesn’t want to be found.”
She turns to face me more fully in the overhead light. It looks like I’m about to interrogate her and for just a second I think of Jeremiah’s captive. But without doubt, Gloria is a good woman. And I wish she’d take better care of herself. She deserves it, all that she does for everyone else.
I lean against her work table as if bracing myself for the worst. “I came to ask about Gabriel.”
“Jesse didn’t tell you about him.” It isn’t a question.
“No,” I say. “Should I be worried? Hallucinations are a sign that the brain has been too damaged.”
“There is nothing wrong with Jesse,” Gloria says.
“With all respect, you aren’t a medical professional.”
“They went to Dr. York and received cerebral scans. They’re fine.”
“Seeing something that isn’t there isn’t okay,” I say.
Gloria’s eyes narrow.
“I didn’t mean you,” I add. “Jesse isn’t supposed to be seeing anything.”
“But she does.” And I don’t like the way she says it. Her voice implies she sees more than angels.
“This is about everything else. The electrical problems, the shocky thing she did to the bad guys last year—” That strange purple shimmer comes to mind, the one I saw enveloping her and Julia during the replacement, protecting them from the tree.
“The angels aren’t hallucinations,” Gloria says. “Her mind is trying to comprehend something she is experiencing but has no word for.”
“I didn’t think you believed in God,” I say.
“I don’t,” she says. “I’m not saying it’s God. I’m saying her mind is trying to process something. And her mind has given her a face and an idea to help her understand it.”
I don’t bother to hide my confusion. One of the benefits of our friendship, Gloria and I are past all that.
Gloria points at the three black pictures on the wall. “I didn’t actually see black spots. But my mind senses something and gave me a shape to try to understand what I was looking at—a void, confusion, interference. They aren’t angels. Jesse is experiencing something and her mind gives her the image of an angel in order understand what she is looking at. Divinity, power, protection—or whatever it means to her. It is a message.”
“It,” I repeat. “You think it is communicating with her.”
“I don’t know if it’s conscious. Energy isn’t conscious,” Gloria says. She looks to her sketches and casts a long dark shadow across the page. “I see my visions but they aren’t conscious. They aren’t speaking to me.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She knows how you’ll react,” Gloria says.
I cross my arms. “Is that why you’re not telling me why Jesse is in this picture?”
Gloria doesn’t want to answer. I can tell by her pinched brow. “Brinkley wants us to retrieve this girl and bring her back.”
“Why the rush to find the girl?” I ask. I’m thinking of Nikki’s list and Jeremiah’s search and rescue.
“Caldwell is looking for her too.” Gloria looks truly pained. “We have to find her before he does.”
Anger tears through my body. Afraid of what I may say to Gloria, I turn and leave. She lets me go without a single question.
On the way home I try desperately to let all my questions go. Why Jesse? Why does everyone insist on bringing her into this? What do they expect her to do? Confront Caldwell? Kill him? Do they realize how insane that sounds? How incredibly and stupidly unfair it is to ask her for anything after all she’s been through?
I fall into my bed exhausted. It isn’t physical exhaustion, not like running a few miles or an afternoon of errands. It is purely mental. The pillow sinks around my face and the cool sheets are like a mother’s comforting hand. I curl into the softness and pull the comforter close.
I’m so tired of worrying about Jesse. For every one thing I do to protect her, to keep her out of harm’s way, three more threats crop up.
I became her assistant so I could keep an eye on her, keep her close. I make the situation as comfortable and as low risk as possible, but then the threats start, both at her house and now Kirk’s mortuary. Add that to her bumbling boyfriend’s incompetence and we’ve got complications galore.
I joined up with Jeremiah, hoping to protect her. I thought it would keep us informed, active, and connected but all it has done is bring Jesse to his attention. The way he talks about her I can tell he is assessing her usefulness. He wants her in the fight, which is the exact opposite of what I want.
And Brinkley. Don’t get me started on Brinkley.
The point is, I keep trying to put more and more obstacles between Jesse and danger and yet no matter what I do it finds her again.
My fingers slip under my shirt and trace the ragged scar where I was stabbed, the point of entry where my skin grew back dimpled. It cost me my spleen but at least it had bought Jesse time. For once I was actually where I was supposed to be—between her and the danger.
Jesse tried to tell me what her stepdad Eddie was doing. She tried to get me to save her then and I didn’t—I was too afraid to give up my own life and face the situation. I’m still afraid. Some nights when I wake up from nightmaring about the barn in a cold sweat, I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. Not of her dying. Her job has rid me of that fear. I’m terrified of becoming that empty shelled person again, that ghostly wraith of a woman who wandered for years believing Jesse was dead.
It might be selfish of me—to look at it this way. But I’m being honest. I can’t bear that level of pain, not again. But God knows how we’re going to come out of this
alive when Caldwell’s marked us all for death.
A rock hits my bedroom window and I jolt upright. My heart jumps like a monkey screaming and rattling its cage and my fingernails bite into the scar. When the rock comes again, I slowly ease toward the window. My big bed is placed firmly against the wall, so I have enough room to get in and out of my closet. The mattress sinks under my knees, as I peer out the window to the parking lot below.
Nikki smiles when she sees me. Her hair is a fluorescent halo around her head in the orange streetlight. She stands in the center beneath it so I can see her clearly, the pavement black beyond the orange ring. I slide my window open and call down. It isn’t that long after dusk, so no one will call the cops on me.
“A rose by any other name,” I say, laughing. “What are you doing down there?”
“Yeah, I was going for romantic. Can I come in?” she asks.
I look out the window to either side. “How did you know this was my window?”
She points to the right of me at my balcony. “That’s your fern and your bistro table.”
“What if someone else has a fern and a bistro table?” I ask.
“They don’t. I checked.”
“Creeper,” I say. And I wave her toward the entrance.
I hold the buzzer long after I hear her clamoring up the stairs. Then I unlock the door and let her in. She has a small blue bag slung over one shoulder and a few droplets of rain on her face.
“Was it raining?” I ask surprised. I hadn’t noticed even hanging out the window.
“It’s starting to,” she says.
“I should give you back your coat,” I say. I point to the back of my kitchen chair where her coat hangs to dry. “There. Take it with you when you leave.”
“That’s not what I’m here for. I brought more work. I thought we could finish up our theory before presenting our plan to Jeremiah. Parish says he’s getting restless.”
“Our plan?” I ask closing the door behind her.
“I don’t want the woman to be tortured either,” she says. “I don’t think we should be like them.”
“No,” I agree but my chest tightens. “But maybe I’m an idiot for thinking we can come out of this any other way.”
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