Cleaner of Bones

by Meg Kassel

  “Wait.” There’s an edge of panic in Angie’s voice. “You don’t have to.”

  Lacey and Angie exchange looks that include a full conversation. I can’t begin to interpret it. For his part, Deno appears oblivious to the subtext going on around him.

  “Sure we do.” Lacey’s dark eyes twinkle at me in open appraisal. “It’s a school night.”

  Huh. It appears Lacey thinks Angie should give me a shot. I haven’t spent much energy trying to figure out Angie’s friends. Their constant presence has been little more than an impediment to my view of the girl I’m always trying not to stare at. That might have been a misjudgment on my part, because it could go badly for me if I get on the bad sides of these two.

  At last, Lacey and Deno edge out the door. Lacey’s laughter is plenty audible even with the door shut. I swear, I will never figure girls out.

  Angie lets out a groan and splays a hand over her eyes.

  “What was that about?” I ask.

  “On Earth, we call it embarrassing.”

  She’s twitchy. So am I. Now that I’ve settled on trying to spend time around Angie while we’re here, I’m all but jumping out of my skin. It’s unnerving and exciting and feels achingly human. I could get addicted to feeling like a person again.

  “I am from Earth,” I remind her.

  “Are you sure?” She rolls higher on the balls of her feet, gaining a centimeter. “So you want me to drive you.”

  “Or we can fly. Whichever is easier,” I say lightly, hoping to get her down on flat feet and, with luck, a little more relaxed.

  “Funny,” she says, sounding the opposite of amused. “Okay, fine, since you’ve run off my friends. Get your stuff.”

  This

  No big deal. Just another ride in her car. Hopefully we’ll end this one without her thinking I’m an ass. Maybe I’ll manage to get her to agree to see me again. Maybe.

  “Right.” With fumbling movements, I turn and open the door. “I brought it. Here.”

  Her eyes go wide at the sight of my hockey gear outside. It’s not that much, I don’t think, but she’s staring at it like I’ve set up a campsite on her porch. I can’t help it. I need pads, helmet, and gloves to play hockey. Also sticks and skates. Water, protective gear for teeth and other delicate areas—okay, it’s a lot of stuff. I can carry it all just fine, but to her it must look like a mountain.

  I gather my gear and follow her through the house. Her dad nods at me as we pass through the kitchen—an expansive room with a surprisingly excellent view of my house. I can’t see Angie’s expression, but I know she’s making a face when she tells her father she’s giving me a ride. I suppress a smile at that. She’s trying terribly hard to stay mad at me.

  She ushers me into the garage, turns on the light. But I detect the energy before I see it. I drop my gear on the floor and cross to an antique Volkswagen Bus. The paint is pristine. The tires are new and all weather. The chrome is gleaming perfection, and the smell of death wraps around it as surely as the glossy lacquer coating it.

  “Oh, wow, Angie. That’s cool.” I gently lay my hands on the driver’s side door.

  Angie doesn’t reply. She stands still next to her beige sedan.

  A ripple shivers under my skin. Like putting a taste of something sweet on your tongue but not getting anything to swallow. Surprising how intense the scent is. Death energy can become trapped in places—usually homes, often in living people. Angie carries some in the unresolved issues she has with her mom. There was a fair amount of media coverage surrounding her, which must have been traumatic to a girl of twelve. She was old enough to not be oblivious and too young to represent herself. And this is the vehicle her mother passed away in. The power this inert hunk of metal and rubber and vinyl has over her is crushing. I can almost see the powerful threads binding her to this vehicle, drawing her in, even as it repels her. The result is a girl trapped in stasis, unable to separate herself from her mother’s sins. Unable to fully accept the parts of her that are from her mother. Like her music.

  Impressed? Don’t be. I’m not that insightful. But I am a harbinger of death. After a century or so, even the dimmest among us can pick up on the habits of death energy. Unlike the simpler minds of animals, death—fear of it, grief from it—has an iron hold on just about every human being. With Angie, death affects her so much she carries traces of the same scent as the VW.

  I can tell she doesn’t like the attention I’m giving the Bus. But I can’t break away from it yet. “What year?” I ask.

  “Nineteen sixty-two,” she replies coolly. “Can we go now?”

  “Does it run?”

  “As far as I know.” She takes out her phone, does something on it that produces a chime to distract herself. “Aren’t you going to be late?”

  “Can I sit inside?” I want in this thing so badly. The scent is so much stronger at the doorframe, the window. My hand curls around the handle.

  “No.”

  Her voice is final, sharp. I look at her, jerked from my death energy haze by the command. The look on her face tells me we’re done here. She’s reached the end of her tolerance with my fondling of the VW. “Okay,” I say. “No problem. I just love old cars. Is it your dad’s?” I know it isn’t. I’m just making conversation. Just trying to appear less weird than I am.

  “Mine, technically.”

  “This amazing beast is yours, and you take the bus to school?” It’s an attempt at levity, but all it does is draw a frown from her. I’m reading her all wrong tonight, misjudging everything.

  She taps impatient fingers on the roof of her car. “Do you want a ride or not?”

  “Yes,” I say, shaking off the momentary buzz I got from the VW. I walk back to the boring tan thing she drives and retrieve my hockey gear. “You’re a puzzle, you know that?”

  She opens the trunk with a snort. “I’m sorry, who is the harbinger of death here?”

  “Good point.” I put my gear in the trunk—the tiny trunk, where it barely fits—then climb into the equally tiny passenger seat. Geez, she’s tense. I should have forced myself to stay away from her mother’s car. I shouldn’t have asked her questions about it.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have come here tonight.

  “Do you know where the ice rink is?” I ask, wanting to fill the air with something other than silence.

  “I’ve lived here for five years,” she says curtly. “I know where everything is.”

  I sigh. There’s no getting around it. No point in avoiding it. “You’re angry with me.”

  “Angry is a strong word,” she says. “More like frustrated.”

  I nod. “I understand. I should never have told you those things, then taken off like that. I apologize.”

  “You can’t basically admit that you’re not human and not expect follow-up questions.”

  “I know.” I pause, looking at her, gauging the temperature. “You shouldn’t have followed me, but after what happened at The Strip Mall, I should’ve expected you’d want answers.” The Strip Mall is the music venue where she performs, and where Rafette first approached her. Had I known that one interaction would mushroom into this, I may have handled the situation differently than just rushing in there and running him off. We probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. Then again, we probably wouldn’t be having any conversations beyond the basic pleasantries. I’m not sure which would be worse.

  “You said you were cursed. That magic was involved. Magic.” She shakes her head. “How am I supposed to process that?”

  “I get it. The present world has a specific view of reality, but it wasn’t always like that. Magic used to be as ubiquitous as wifi. It was everywhere, a part of everyday life. These days, people have been well conditioned to disbelieve magic, even when they see it with their own eyes. Tell me, what do you think the beekeepers are if not magical creatures?”

  “Well, why isn’t it still around, then?”

  “It is.” I feel ridiculous trying to explain this. It
sounds like fiction to anyone who doesn’t live like I do. “There are a few remnants of magic remaining from a far earlier time. You happened to come in contact with one. Or two, if you include me.”

  “And the rest of it just…went away?”

  “It was purged, but that’s a long, complicated story for another time. Maybe.” Or never. That’s what I’m aiming for. “Maybe it will help to put a name to the beekeeper’s face or, rather, faces.” I smile again, but she’s not thawing. “So the beekeeper who approached you at The Strip Mall is named Rafette. He follows my family around. Most harbinger groups have a beekeeper attached to them. Rafette sticks close to ours. He noticed how I look at you. He was curious.”

  Her nose scrunches up. “Curious about what?”

  Blood pounds through my head. “About whether or not I’m interested in you.”

  “Hmm.” She bites her lip as a rushing noise slowly grows between my ears. “So are you…?”

  I swallow hard and stare straight ahead. Despite everything I am, all my experience living, communicating my feelings for her terrifies me. I’ve gotten so much wrong with her. I may botch this, too, and I may not get a redo. “I really can’t make it more obvious.”

  “You avoided me all week.”

  That isn’t a rejection. I don’t know what that is, but I try not to react. I try to keep the nerves out of my voice and off my face.

  “Yeah well, this is confusing to me, too.” I show her the time on my phone. I could sit here talking to her all night—preferably on a different topic—but I don’t want to miss hockey practice. I might not get a redo with the coach, either. “I don’t mean to rush, but practice starts at six, and I can’t be late tonight.”

  She presses her lips together and backs out of the garage.

  I check my texts to clear my head. To give myself a reset. To move the conversation away from feelings and back to practical matters—no less stressful—which was the reason I wanted to talk to her tonight. “I won’t let Rafette near you again,” I say. “One of my family members, Hank, keeps an eye out for him when I can’t. I just…thought you should know.”

  Her expression unexpectedly softens. She looks at me for far longer than one should while driving a car. I resist the urge to squirm under her scrutiny. Then her gaze moves back to the road, and her eyes turn distant and complicated.

  My stomach sinks. I don’t know what she’s thinking, and I have no right to ask. All my long years of living, dying—not rebirth, but coming back into being—have taught me how to read people, but not how to manage my own feelings. I’ve kept to the safety of my group, as I should. I am something so very separate from normal people. Maybe I am an alien, like Angie jokes, after all.

  We arrive at the ice rink a little early. The waiting/changing area in this rink is too small for a team of boys and about twenty little kids with their parents, so the guys wait outside while kiddie skating lessons wrap up. Angie parks but keeps the engine running. She runs a nail over her steering wheel.

  “Hey Reece—” she starts but cuts off when my head snaps toward her too fast. Too intensely.

  I open my mouth but close it. I don’t even know what I want to say. There’re too many words, and I’m afraid they either won’t make sense or they’ll frighten her.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  I run my fingers over the scars on my palm, the scars that came with the curse.

  She grabs my hand, yanking it into a patch of dim light. “What happened to your hand?” she demands.

  I close my hand, concealing the scars, but I can’t bring myself to pull my hand away from her touch. “Nothing.” My voice sounds gravelly. “Just an old scar.”

  “It’s not nothing,” she says. “These look deliberate. What happened to you?”

  “It’s a long story.” I hate how matter-of-fact she sounds. Like a school nurse. And I don’t want to talk about the scars. “And this isn’t the time or the place to tell it.”

  “Then why did you want to talk to me?”

  “To apologize. To—” My breath shudders out. Why is it so hard to keep my head together around her? “Angie, I will answer your questions. There isn’t enough time right now, but soon, I promise. I have one request.”

  “What is it?”

  “That you’ll hear me out.” I know I’m looking at her too intently. I know I shouldn’t be searching her eyes, her face, for some indication of her feelings for me. I shouldn’t care so much. It shouldn’t matter so much. “That after you hear what I have to say, you’ll try not to be afraid of me.”

  “I already am a little afraid of you, Reece,” she whispers. “In more ways than one.”

  And there it is—in her words. In her eyes. In the way her mouth moves. Despite what she knows about me—despite how shitty I am at communicating with her—there’s a glimmer of softness beneath the surface. “A harbinger of death isn’t the same thing as a beekeeper but not altogether different, either.”

  “I want to know.”

  Knowing what I have to tell makes my stomach knot. Her hands tighten on mine. Her fingers slide over my skin. Instantly, she commands my attention. I can’t move, can’t unlock my gaze from hers. The space between us seems to shrink, drag us together. I’m conscious of her lips parting. Her breath quickening. Her gaze dropping to my mouth. Then she blinks rapidly and slowly releases my hand. If she hadn’t moved when she did, I would have kissed her. It was right there, a few seconds in the future. It would have only been a slight lean forward, and our lips would have met, because there’s barely six inches of space between us. And it’s then that it occurs to me that it’s been a very long time since I’ve kissed anyone in the way I’d like to kiss Angie.

  “Hey, maybe you can come inside, hang out until practice is over?” I know she’s going to say no, but I can’t resist asking on the remote chance she’ll say yes. “It’s not long. We have only forty minutes of ice time.”

  She looks at me like I just asked her to marry me. “Oh, I don’t think—”

  But my attention is snagged by movement at the edge of the parking lot. A still, lone figure. “Damn it,” I hiss.

  “What is it?”

  I point at Rafette. Bastard just stands there, staring at us. A shiver of unease chips through my certainty that his claims are unfounded.

  “What do we do?” Angie asks breathlessly.

  “Nothing.” Unfortunately, our little date is over. “I go play hockey, and you go home.” I unbuckle my seat belt and put on my hat. It’s a relief, now that she doesn’t want to stay for practice. I’d have been distracted with her there, but with Rafette around, too? Forget it. I may as well have gone home. “Pop the trunk, okay?”

  “I’m not leaving you here with…him.” Her gaze locks on Rafette. Her lips are tight.

  I hate seeing her afraid. To know I brought this fear into her life. “Oh, Rafette can’t hurt me.” I look to the team, still waiting outside. “But he can hurt them.”

  “You’re staying?” She turns her gaze to me. The fear in her eyes when she looked at Rafette transforms to genuine concern. The impact of it knocks the air from my lungs. That she would be concerned about me…

  “If Rafette releases bees on those boys, they’re dead. I won’t let that happen.” I say it gently, more touched than I should be. Again, I lean toward her, resisting her soft lips only with great effort. This is not how our first kiss should happen. When I kiss her—and barring anything unforeseen, I’m certain I will kiss her—worry is not the emotion I hope to see in her eyes. “I want you to go straight home, okay?” I say to her. “I will make sure he doesn’t follow you, although I don’t believe that’s his intention tonight.”

  “What is his intention?”

  You don’t want to know. “I have to go, Angie.” I really do. It doesn’t look like she wants to end this conversation, but she needs to get home, where it’s safe. Where a dozen or so crows are nearby, keeping an eye on her house. I reach for her keychain and hit the trunk button mys
elf. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

  The Old One

  I get out of the car. The night air wraps around me like a cold slap, but the break from the fruit-scented ether of Angie’s car is a welcome return to reality. My head clears. I get my gear, close her trunk, and walk toward the team. When I glance to where I’d seen Rafette, he’s gone. Angie’s tires crunch out of the parking lot. I look back to wave, to do something, but she’s turning onto the road. I watch her taillights diminish as she drives home.

  Angie dominates my mind as I wait outside with the guys. I’m not falling for Angie because she reminds me of Margaret. The two of them are complete opposites. But then, I’m not the same young man I was back then.

  Unlike Margaret, Angie is a mix of beautiful complexities. She is a girl of secrets and revelations, darkness and light. But the future she’s headed toward doesn’t include chasing the next mass tragedy. I won’t ask her to stay with me. I can’t ask her, and I can’t stay in her world of the living. All I want is to be with her, for our time together to be a brief, bright spot in an otherwise dark and violent existence.

  By the time hockey practice is over, I have a spot on the team and pleasantly tired muscles. Night air cools the sweat on my skin and brings with it the strong smell of Rafette’s honey. There’s no reason for him to be still hanging around here unless he wants to talk again. With a sigh, I decline a ride home, heft all my hockey gear, and start walking in the direction the scent is strongest. What does he want now? Should I start drawing blood? Or maybe his delusional head sent him another invented visit from a Strawman.

  Next to the ice rink building, an additional parking lot connects to a convenience store. I walk between the two buildings to the brightly lit Quik Stop. A figure leans against the side wall. The whole area stinks of Rafette’s honey.

  “What now?” I ask sharply as I approach. “I swear, Rafette. You’ve never been so high maint—”

  I cut myself off. That isn’t Rafette standing there, watching me. It’s a guy around my age. About my height. He’s got suntanned cheeks and floppy blond hair and the lean muscles of a surfer. I know right away he’s a harbinger of death. I don’t know him, personally, but like recognizes like. Cursed recognizes cursed.