“And you stopped them. Both. Which proves my point.”
I scoffed breathily and turned my back to him, placing a hand on the cool brick wall to steady my shaking legs. “And Reyes? What is he? A malevolent god like the others?”
“Rey’azikeen is a general. Trained in combat. Able to kill both physically and mentally, he is a master soldier and manipulator. He has proven what he is capable of countless times. It must end, Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia.”
An army. Of angels. Cutting into him. Stabbing him. Bringing my husband to his knees. Stealing his last breath.
“Is this your Boss talking?”
“It is my Father’s will, yes.”
I leaned my head against a brick. Either Reyes learned to behave and play nice with the other kids on the playground or his Brother would send an army to strike him down. And I thought my family was dysfunctional.
Remembering I was not above begging, I whirled around to face him. “Give me more time, Michael. I can … I can bring Reyes back.”
“Rey’azikeen is feral.”
“I can rein him in.” I glared at the celestial being towering over me. “I can tame him.” Surely, somewhere inside him, a part of Reyes was still … Reyes. Surely I could tame the beast. “Give me three more days.”
He bowed his head and closed his eyes as though communicating with heaven directly, then he opened them just as quickly. “You have one.”
And he was gone.
He vanished before my eyes. Traffic restarted. The joggers continued their journey. The bird landed with one elegant swoop. And sound rushed at me from all sides.
One day. I dug out my phone and checked the time. Twenty-four hours to trap my husband and knock some sense into him.
8
Why is it so hard to find an exercise bike with a nice little basket
where I can put my vodka and nachos?
—MEME
I texted Garrett and informed him of our new deadline, then took the stairs two at a time.
Sister Mary Elizabeth stood in the middle of Cookie’s office, hesitant to greet me.
I strode over and pulled her into a hug.
“Are you okay?” she asked, concern lining her pretty face.
“Yes. Michael is just a little prickly sometimes.”
“Michael? The Michael?”
Sister Mary Elizabeth could hear the angels in the heavens. The news. The gossip. The turmoil. But she couldn’t see them. I could understand her fascination. Their immense power almost bowled me over every time I met one.
“What’s up, buttercup?” I asked, peeling off my jacket.
“It’s the angels.”
“It usually is.” I offered her a cup, then poured one for myself.
“They’re in an uproar.”
“They usually are.”
“What did Michael say?” Cookie asked.
“Pretty much that in a nutshell. They’re upset another volatile—not malevolent, per se—god is loose on this plane, and they’ve given me a day to rein him in. Is that what you’re hearing?” I asked the sister.
She nodded and sat in the chair across from Cookie. “I am a little surprised, however.”
“By?”
“The fact that they gave you another day.”
“Well, I did ask politely.”
“But they never do that. They never waver.”
“Gosh, I feel all special and gooey inside.”
“Charley,” Cookie said, sensing my agitation, “what happens if you can’t get to him?”
I closed my lids to stop the wetness from forming behind them. They stung, but my chest stung more. Despite everything we’d done, to give us this kind of ultimatum seemed wholly unfair.
When I opened my eyes, Cookie’s expression had shifted from worry to fear.
“They send an army,” I said, my voice edged with resentment. “They cut him down.”
A hand flew over her mouth, and Sister Mary Elizabeth hugged herself, worry lining her bright face.
“Sister, I’d be very open to some prayers if you and the other sisters would be willing.”
“Absolutely. I know they will be. But I also have a message from the mother superior.”
“Oh?” I took a long draft, daring the scalding coffee to burn my throat.
“She wanted you to know—on the down low, mind you—that, well, we suspect the Vatican has allowed Quentin to stay at the convent for ulterior motives.”
“As motives so often are. What do you mean?”
“They’re asking questions. About…” She cleared her throat and started again. “About your daughter.”
And the hits just kept coming. I froze in place as a rancid kind of anger washed over me. It was one thing to go after me. It was another to go after mine.
“What do they know?”
“I have no idea. They’re not very sharing. They’ve just been asking questions. The mother superior wanted me to tell you they’re trying to be subtle about it, which has raised her suspicions even more.”
“What does Quentin have to do with it?”
“We believe they’re using him as an excuse to come into the complex and talk to the nuns. And they’ve questioned him, too. But I have to be honest. I think he knows what they’re doing. His answers are always … vague.”
That’s my boy.
“Who are they, exactly?”
“A bishop from Santa Fe and another man. An investigator of some kind. And if I’m not mistaken, he comes straight from the Vatican.”
I nodded. What the hell were they up to?
“I can let you know when they come back. If they come back. In the meantime, we’ll pray for your success, Charley.”
We stood, and she crushed me into a hug. She was strong for such a tiny thing.
“Thank you for bringing this to me, and thank the mother superior for me.”
Sister Mary Elizabeth nodded, then hurried out the door.
“You’ve had quite the day,” Cookie said.
“I can’t help but wonder if everything we’re working on is tied together somehow.”
“I agree. Robert called. He said the first victim, Indigo Russell, had been in therapy for something that happened to her about a year ago. He’s working on getting a court order to find out more.”
“Good deal. I’m waiting on a call from Garrett. He’s working a skip today. Something he couldn’t get out of. A woman up on distribution charges decided she had better things to do than go to court. But he’s promised to get back to me the minute he’s tracked down the supplies we need. Any news on a mobile blood collection unit?”
“There’s one operating at an event tonight, some kind of charity fair.”
“Perfect.”
“I thought we decided you were not going to steal blood.”
“I’m not. I’m going to borrow some. Speaking of which, what are you doing tonight?”
“I’m not robbing a mobile blood collection van.”
“Excellent. Neither am I.”
“Then why—?”
“We aren’t robbing the van. We’re stealing it.”
“Oh. In that case, I’m in.”
* * *
I decided to hunt my old friend Rocket down. He could have some information on Reyes—namely, information concerning Reyes’s human side. Is it still there? Is it something that can be saved? Or is he 100 percent deity? Is my husband truly gone?
Rocket, who died in the fifties, lived in an abandoned mental asylum. The same asylum in which he’d endured terrible things. The same asylum in which he’d died. I couldn’t be entirely positive, but I suspected he’d had electroshock therapy. His mind, part of it at least, had been erased. He was a child trapped in a man’s body.
But Rocket was a savant, especially when it came to the departed. He knew the name of every human in history who’d died. Would my husband be on that list?
I was so deep in thought, I didn’t realize I’d turned down the wrong street. I pulled a U-turn
and tried again, then realized I was on the right street. But it was different.
I pulled up to the locked security gate that led to the asylum. It was the right gate. I was at the right place, but the building, the asylum, had been destroyed.
Practically falling out of Misery, I stumbled to the entrance and scanned the area. Debris from the building lay in massive heaps. Thick slabs of crumbling concrete sat scarred with thin scorch marks. The entire property had been leveled.
Reyes. It had to be Reyes.
I pressed my hands over my mouth to keep from yelling Rocket’s name. Had Reyes hurt him? Could he?
Without a clue as to how long I’d been standing there, I finally snapped to my senses and pressed shaking fingers to the keypad that opened the security gate. A couple of kids on bikes rode up. I listened as they spoke.
“I told you it was gone, pendejo. It was there yesterday, and today it’s gone.”
“Wow,” the other one said.
“Right? My mom called the cops. She thought we were having an earthquake last night.”
I whirled around. “Last night? This happened last night?”
The smallest one nodded. “My mom freaked. There was a loud crash. The building was there, then it wasn’t.”
“That creepy building has been there since I was a kid,” said the ten-year-old. Eleven at the most.
“It was here for decades,” I said, a pain throbbing in my heart. “I can’t believe it’s gone.”
“Hey,” the small one said, “you know the code? You know who owns this building?”
“Yes.” I opened the gate and stepped inside the chain-link fence. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I said, “I do.”
“Oh, man. Do you know what happened?”
“I don’t.” I looked at the rubble that used to be Rocket’s home. “But I’m going to find out.”
I walked around the massive pile, careful where I stepped. Once the kids had pedaled out of sight, I started calling for Rocket.
“Rocket, are you here?” I tried to find a way into the middle. The walls where Rocket had written name after name in preparation for Beep’s army were nothing more than debris, fragments of an incredible mind. “Rocket?”
I could’ve summoned him, but he had to be scared and disoriented as it was. Despite my best effort, tears slipped down my cheeks.
“Strawberry?”
Strawberry Shortcake, or Rebecca Taft, her real name, lived with Rocket and his little sister, Blue. I could only hope she hadn’t been here when this happened. I couldn’t believe Reyes would do something like this, but who else? He knew how to hurt me. He knew where to insert the knife to do the most damage, and he’d started with my beloved Rocket’s home.
Then I heard him.
“Miss Charlotte?”
I spun around, trying to localize the sound.
“Miss Charlotte?” Rocket repeated. “I didn’t say anything, Miss Charlotte.”
I grew more frantic with each heartbeat. “Rocket, where are you?”
“Down here.”
I stumbled up a mound of debris. A small opening between slabs of concrete showed a route to the basement, and the part I stood on looked like it could collapse at any second.
“Rocket? Are you down there?”
His face appeared in the opening at last, round and bright.
“Rocket.” I put my hand through the opening.
He reached up and took hold of it. “I can’t find Blue. I have to find her. She’ll be so scared, Miss Charlotte. You have to come help me.”
He tugged on my arm. Rocket, completely oblivious to his own strength, could pull it completely off if he were scared enough. Or suck me down into the debris.
“Rocket, I can’t get down there.”
“I’ll help.” He tugged again, and the debris shifted beneath my weight, lowering at least a couple of inches.
I had to wrench my hand from his grasp, peeling my fingers out of his meaty fist, or be pulled under.
“I can’t go down there, Rocket. It’s too dangerous.”
“But I can’t find her, Miss Charlotte.”
I lay my forehead on a slab of concrete in frustration. I could summon the departed, but only if I had a name to summon. Everyone called his little sister Blue, but that wasn’t her real name. I couldn’t call her.
Or could I?
I may not have been able to summon the little doll, who’d died of dust pneumonia at the age of five, but I could certainly call her.
“I’ll be right back, Rocket.”
With each move carefully calculated, I eased off the pile of rubble, slipping once and almost falling to my death—or to the rest of my horribly maimed life. After regaining my footing, I noticed the kids were back, only they’d brought reinforcements. There was now a veritable hoard of bicycle-laden street urchins, watching my every move from beyond the chain link.
My next moves would probably seem a little silly, but that was my middle name.
“Blue!” I called out her name, which seemed a little old-school, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. “Blue, sweetheart, where are you?”
Rocket appeared at my side. “Is she here, Miss Charlotte?”
I threw myself into his arms. “Rocket, honey, are you okay?”
Putting him at arm’s length, I pressed my palms to his face to check him over.
“I’m okay, Miss Charlotte. I didn’t say nothing. I promise.”
“What?”
“I didn’t tell him. Not nothing. He was so mad.”
Gooseflesh erupted over every part of my body. “Who are you talking about, hon?”
“I didn’t tell him, Miss Charlotte. I would never. That’s breaking rules. No breaking rules. But now I can’t find Blue.”
“Rocket, sweetheart.” I tried to bring him back to me. “Was it Reyes? Did Reyes do this?”
His impaired gaze landed on me in confusion. “No, ma’am. Not him.”
Relief flooded every cell I possessed. But then who? “Do you know who did it?”
“It only looked like him. He was so mad, Miss Charlotte.”
My lungs seized when I realized what he meant. It only looked like Reyes but wasn’t him. This was not happening. “It looked like Reyes?”
“Reyes Alexander Farrow,” he said with a nod. “Only not. Not anymore.”
I sank onto a concrete slab, the edges jagged but also burned. Parts of the surface had been charred. Narrow black strips lined parts of the crumbled walls with tiny burst patterns. Almost as though the building had been struck by lightning over and over.
Reyes had been covered in live electrical currents when he came out of the god glass. Could he use it as a weapon? Is that what did this?
Rocket spun in circles, calling out his sister’s name to no avail. I stopped him with my hands on his shoulders. “Rocket, I need to know, is Reyes in there anywhere? Is there still a part of him inside?”
Rocket’s expression turned grave. “I didn’t see him, but I wasn’t looking neither. He’s not dead. Reyes Alexander Farrow. He’s not dead and gone. Not yet.”
“Not yet?” I asked, elated. “Is … is his time coming?”
He bowed his head and went to work. When Rocket searched his data banks, he sometimes blinked in rapid succession. He was doing that now, and I realized I was holding my breath in anticipation.
“His time is moving. It won’t stop.”
Okay, no idea what that meant, but I was going to take it as a good sign.
“Blue!” he called out again.
I followed suit, calling out his sister’s name. The kids looked on with both curiosity and apprehension, not sure what to think of my conversation with Rocket, an entity they could not see.
Most of them, anyway.
I noticed one of the bicyclists’ coloring was a little off. He was one of the younger ones, his bike, a dark maroon, now only a faded version of that once vibrant color. The boy looked alarmingly similar to the smaller kid I’d sp
oken to earlier.
When my gaze landed on him, he raised an arm, extended an index finger, and pointed to a copse of trees on the north side of the property.
I turned and saw a slight discoloration behind a row of bushes.
“Blue?” I said, stepping closer.
Rocket followed, hope burning in his eyes.
“Blue?” I asked as I got closer.
Suddenly and without hesitation, the little girl whirled around and ran into my arms. My arms. I knelt down and caught her, wrapping said arms tight around her tiny body. She sobbed onto my shoulder as Rocket ran toward us.
“Blue?” He stumbled beside me and wrapped us both in his cool embrace.
In all the years I’d known Rocket, Blue had never let me get within ten feet of her. She either hid behind her brother or stayed away altogether. But now, today, she was letting me hug her. Letting me comfort her.
I stroked her hair, a short, dark bob, and rocked her while Rocket cried against us. And a vengeful kind of fury sparked inside me, kindled by my love for these two.
A few kids took out their cell phones and began filming. Kids these days. I could only imagine what this looked like. Sadly, I could not have cared less.
I glanced at the departed boy and silently thanked him. He didn’t react, just watched. Even after the other kids left to show their friends the video of the crazy lady, the young entity stayed behind.
After Blue had spent all her tears, she leaned back, looked at her big brother, and patted his face a microsecond before jumping into his arms.
“I’m so sorry this happened, Blue.”
She’d buried her face in Rocket’s shirt, but she nodded, acknowledging my comment. Also a first.
“She didn’t tell him neither, Miss Charlotte.”
“What?” I asked, alarmed. “Rocket, tell me what happened.”
“He came here. He was so mad. He wasn’t him anymore, but he came here, anyway. That’s breaking the rules, Miss Charlotte.”
I patted his back and rubbed Blue’s. “I know, hon. But what did he want? What didn’t you tell him?”
“Where it was.”
Confusion swept through me. “He was looking for something?”
He nodded. “We didn’t tell him, though. Neither of us. We would never.”
“Rocket, honey, what was he looking for?”
The Trouble With Twelfth Grave Page 8