Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (17 page)

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.”

“Don’t say that.” Nikki stops shuffling papers in the bag and looks up at me from where she crouches on the floor. She stands suddenly and takes both my hands in hers. It’s an incredibly sweet and incredibly commanding gesture. My body warms to her touch. I only look away to her mouth once her lips start to move. “Listen to me. You are a good person. You are a good person now and you’ll be a good person when this is over.”

When this is over—
I used to spend a lot of time thinking about
when this is over.
I mostly picture me and Jesse happy and free of all the horrible things that haunt us. But since she met Lane my
when this is over
picture has been blurry.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” Nikki asks. She hasn’t released my hands and I’m very aware of how close our mouths are.

“When this is over,” I say. “What does it look like to you?”

Nikki smiles. “It looks pretty good.”

She grins again. I don’t know what I did, if it was my body language or if Nikki really just doesn’t have any self-control, but she kisses me. She slides in and plants one on my lips.

“Doesn’t your future look good?” she asks, breaking the kiss.

My future. I want a future with Jesse in it. I want a future
with
Jesse. But what if that never happens?

What if we survive but we are horrible people? Or what if we survive and we’ve seen each other do so many terrible things that we can’t bear to look at each other anymore? What if Jesse loses her mind completely with all this? What if she is too far gone to even recognize me, let alone love me? As it stands half the time, I don’t even know if Jesse is human.

“Hey are you okay?” Nikki says. She has me by the shoulders.

“Can I just lie down in my bed?” I ask. My knees feel weak and the room is spinning.

Nikki leads me to my bedroom and tucks me into the big fluffy covers. She is careful to stay out of the bed, only kneeling down beside it and taking my hand like I’m dying of something serious, like cholera rather than just having an emotional crisis.

“Are you coming down with something? Everyone and their mother has the flu,” she says.

“No,” I say. “I’m just tired and stressed.”

“Then you should rest. I shouldn’t have come without calling. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re running out of time. But I’m just so tired of it all.”

“Can I get you anything?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “Just give me a minute to clear my head.”

“I’ll take off,” she says and stands. “We can meet up tomorrow after you’ve slept. I don’t have to be at work until 4, so we have all day.”

“No,” I grab her hand as she turns to go. I don’t want to be alone. I’m so tired of fighting all on my own. I need someone to stand by me for once.

She looks down at my hand holding hers. “I can stay.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

She smiles, slips off her shoes and climbs into the bed beside me.

Jesse

G
abriel, Gabriel—what the hell to do about Gabriel?

Even after I make it home, I don’t have an answer. I am so exhausted either from the usual energy dip of an afternoon or from the emotional rollercoaster of the day. As I tumble into my bed sheets, my elbow connects with something hard.

“Ow!” Yelping and cradling my funny bone, I peel back the covers to find a book.
A Tale of Two Cites,
the hardback edition. “Gee-
zus
. What the hell is this?”

It’s not my book. As if I could bear to read something so thick or so depressing. I saw that little Oliver boy on TV. I know how Dickens rolls. No thank you. So what the hell is this doing in my bed?