Luminous (19 page)

“No,” Sissy said. “He warded the two of us dozens of times . . . so we could talk together.” She wiped her face with her hands and the wad of Kleenex. “It's the only way he would speak with me
unchaperoned.
” Something about the way she said the word brought fresh tears to her worn eyes, capillary pink against the blue. Consuela wondered why there'd been no wards between her and the Yad that one time at the O'Sheas'. As Bones, was she no longer considered female? Or human? Or alive?

He'd called her an Angel of God.

“Wish,” Sissy whispered urgently. “Did V find Wish? Did you tell Abacus?”

“No,” she confessed. She'd found Tender instead.
Was Abacus even alive?
“I left a message.”

“We have to find them,” Sissy hissed, trying to get up. “We have to get Maddy . . .”

“Wait.” Consuela got her own feet beneath her and tried to push-pull Sissy up. It wasn't easy, even with her weighing a good forty pounds more than her friend.

“Come on,” Consuela urged. “Let's get you cleaned up first.”

She took Sissy under the shoulder and threaded their hands together, brown and white fingers tangled like stripes. Consuela pushed through the door, ignoring the stink of fear and puke, and stepped purposefully through the blur of the Flow. One, two, three, four. The last step swirled into her bedroom, welcoming them with its clean-cotton smell. She turned a sharp right as they stumbled against the carpet.

Pulling her friend into the cloudy warmth of lavender steam, Consuela lowered her onto the shower floor—clothes and all—and cranked the water on.

Sissy sprawled on the tile, limp and surrendering, mewing weak protest behind a lengthening curtain of wet hair. Consuela watched her gentle curls turn into a sheet of tarnished gold, the steam obscuring her tragic face. This strange, melted person looked nothing like the Watcher. Grief shrank Sissy like a deflated balloon.

Consuela grabbed a couple of ibuprofen and a glass of cool water, glaring once at the mirror above the sink, filmed in mourning gray. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, thinking, until Sissy showed signs of being uncomfortable in wet clothes.

Shutting off the water, she wrapped Sissy in a thick bath sheet, tight as a hug.

“Take these,” Consuela instructed. Sissy did as she was told, swallowing both pills and draining the glass in long sips. “Now, up.” Consuela yanked her to standing and brought her over to the bed. Shivering and silent, Sissy flumped hard. Springs creaked. Consuela grabbed Sissy's ankles and swung her legs sideways, feeling a sickening pliancy as her supernatural joints gave way, almost leaving her delicate, white feet on the floor. Consuela switched her grip as she tucked Sissy into bed, towels and all. For a moment, she wanted to huddle on the floor and be a loyal friend; but that would be hiding from the monsters outside her bed. Consuela wasn't going to hide.

She pushed wet hair out of Sissy's face. There was a dark patch like raccoon shadows over her eyes.

“You stay here and rest. I'll go,” Consuela said. “I'll tell the others. I'll be back soon.”

Sissy's eyes moved a tick to the left and focused. “Be careful,” she said.

“Don't worry.”

It was a nothing sort of thing to say, but there was nothing more to say. Nikki was dead. Yehudah was dead. Abacus might be dead. And death in the Flow was real.

Consuela left her room, plowing through the Flow, reaching out to find V. It was like stretching her arm outward, far beyond her body, and grabbing him by the shirt collar, the rest of her body following.

She found him in a pink room full of ruffles and white furniture. Most of it looked pristine, but the edges were curled black. There were blackened holes on the blanket and in the carpet, like pockmarks on the floor. The curtains ended in shriveled, crusty squiggles and the teddy bear's fur was singed in curly, tight nubs. Small piles of ashes and smears on the desk whispered of things that once were or might have been. The burns tainted things, like the sound of a slowly-turned jack-in-the-box, making everything dark and tinny and wrong.

V turned when she came upon him in a rush. He was relieved and embarrassed when he saw that it was her.

“You found me,” he said.

She hit him with the flat of her hands, hard against the solid slab of his chest.

“You!” she accused. “You suspected! You
knew
! And you didn't say anything!” she shouted, surprising them both.

“What . . . ?” he said, half blocking her blows.

“You didn't say
anything
and now they're
dead
!” Consuela screamed. “They're dead, V! Dead!”

“What?!” V shouted, his voice bigger than hers. “Who's dead? Tender?”

The name enraged her.
Now
he could say it? When it was far too late? “You're as bad as him!” she screamed.
“YOU'RE AS BAD AS HIM!”

Shaking his head, V ignored the assault. “Who was it?”

“The Yad,” Consuela said, her arms flopping down. “Yehudah is dead.”

V staggered, looking wild. She punched him again. The symphonic echo died.

“I can still
hear you
!” Consuela cried, hitting herself in the chest with rigid fingers. “Right here! Right HERE! Heart to heart—soul to soul—‘Know thyself,' V! I can hear you!” She was crying, the words coming in stabs. “I can't stop hearing you!”

“Bones,” he started, then switched. “Consuela . . .”

“I
trusted
you,” she hissed. “I trusted you with everything! I trusted you to get me home. I trusted you to keep us safe. I thought that you . . .” She shook her head, the tears unhindered and unheeded. Consuela shuddered, mortified to admit what she'd felt on the closet floor.

She'd been V's
assignment
! That was it. Nothing more than his embarrassing failure. He wasn't her angel any more than she'd been that drunken woman's dream. Consuela didn't want that to be all it was, but it was.

That was all there was.

The weak, vulnerable feeling warped into a tight ball of fury. V didn't care about
her
—not like that. He had just been compelled to help keep her alive. Get her back. Anything he did could be part of his compulsion, creating the maximum chance of successful completion by whatever was pulling their strings in the Flow. He was a tool. A puppet. A player. A fraud. And she, the idiot dreamer, had believed him.

She was inhumanly glad that she didn't have a violin-voice speaking her thoughts aloud.

“Don't,” he whispered.

Anger mixed with embarrassment and curdled. She drew her hands into fists.

“You don't get to tell me what to do anymore!” she said.

“STOP IT!” Consuela shrieked, flailing her arms. V grabbed her wrists and held on, restraining her pull, her push, her want to tear everything down. She yanked her shoulders and screamed through her teeth. Her hair stuck to her face in salty patches. V held her safely at a distance as frustration and fear somersaulted in her head.

Her anger finally slaked, she fell against him, sobbing—butting his chest with the top of her head, weak and weary and worn. His arms settled around her shoulders.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Stop being sorry,” she murmured.

They stood together in the burnt-rose room. The crisped teddy bear watched them with flat button eyes.

“Tender showed me the way home,” Consuela said. “He said I could go. But I didn't.”

V stiffened. “Tender can't . . .” The words bumped against each other, as if struggling to be first. “I'm sorry. I don't know what he said, but he can't take you home.”

“I know,” Consuela said sadly. Remembering her family portrait, she ran the topaz cross along its chain, feeling its tug at her neck. “But he wanted me to think that he could,” she said; a part of her still wondered—
hoped?—
that someone would help her get home. That it could be as easy as walking through her bedroom door.

“He wants something,” she added.

“He wants out,” V answered. “Like you.”

She shook her head. “That isn't it. When I asked why didn't he use the door himself, he said that he didn't ever want to go back. It might not have been a real way out, but I heard it in his voice.” Tender didn't want his old life. He was after something else. “He said none of you wanted to go back to an ugly life.”

V said nothing, hiding while holding her.

“For some of us, that's true,” V said.

She shook her head against wondering what kind of life she'd find, what kind of body she might return to.
It didn't matter—it would be real. It would be home. Mom. Dad. It would be better than here.

“Did Tender kill Yehudah?” she whispered urgently. “Did he kill Nikki, too?”

V's arms tightened around her, like a knot.
// I don't know what I know . . . //

“I've suspected Tender was up to something, but I couldn't tell the Watcher,” he said carefully. “I had no proof. I still don't. And we can't go around pointing fingers.” A twitch cascaded down V's back; Consuela could feel it jumping and jerking under her palms. He cracked his neck. “It's no secret none of us like him much. He's tough to be around because of who he is and what he does. But it's not that.” Consuela wasn't sure if she imagined V's arms growing tighter as he talked or how good it felt to be there. She closed her eyes and listened to his voice under her ear. “In here, we only have the things that cross over; we're all we've got. We can't afford to turn on one another.”

Consuela pulled back, needing some distance from his intoxicating skin.

“What proof do you need?” she asked.

“Anything. Evidence. Whatever he's doing, he's been planning it for a while.
// I feel it //,
” V said, raising his eyes. “Have you noticed that we all leave a trail, like a feeling or a smell? It's how we find one another.
// How I found you/ How you found me. //
It marks where we've gone, where we've been. His is everywhere when something's gone wrong.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Like a warning you can feel.” V massaged the place where she'd hit him, an echo of pain like the tears drying on her face.

// Tender //,
the violins sang unheard in the room.

Consuela thought back to the last time she'd seen the Yad, and that feeling of forgetting something, left unfinished.

“What is it?” V asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking . . . of the compulsion.”

She was still raw inside as her mind whirred, the ripple effects of logic boosting her nerves. Consuela stepped up to V, nearly into his chest. “Do you think we can be called to help one another?” she confided. “Does that ever happen in the Flow?”

He stayed within a breath of her, gazing down into her eyes. “I don't know.” He hesitated. “But I've felt it . . .”

“For me.” She finished the sentence for him.

“For you,” V said, and glanced away. He sighed. “I told you that I saw you see me in the mirror,” he confessed. “But I never expected . . .
// You would be you. // Here. // // Now. // Bones. //”
The violins sang softly, and faded.

“I don't know what I can do for you here in the Flow,” he confessed. His hand moved as if he meant to touch her hair, but he dropped it, rebuffed by an unasked question.

“I was your assignment,” Consuela said. “Maybe I'm still your assignment. Maybe what you feel is . . .” She faltered, trying to speak around the tightness in her throat. She met his eyes.”

V's face softened. “No,” he said.
// No. //
His music held no doubt. “Consuela, I know the difference,” he added quietly. “I know what's real.”
// I know myself. // Consuela. // Bones. //

Shyly, she nodded. One fear down. “Well, then maybe I'm here for a different reason,” she murmured. “Because I think I felt something when I last saw Yehudah. When we were at Killian O'Shea's. I thought it was the ward, but maybe it was something else.”

V looked intrigued, impressed . . . and maybe a little, what? Disappointed? Jealous? Then memory hit like a slap.

“You think we should go there?” V asked under the sad lilting of electric strings. Consuela nodded. V took a deep breath. “Fine. When you get there—”

“When
I
get there?” she interrupted.

“I don't know the way,” he said. “Crossing through mirrors isn't the same as going through the Flow. So when you get there, open this.” He dug in his back pocket and handed her a shiny silver compact of blush. “It was Sissy's,” he said with a tight grin. “She said she didn't need it as much as I did.”

“I assume she meant the mirror.” Consuela tried to laugh, but it stuck in her throat.

V watched as she opened the shiny bit of plastic and ran a finger along the pressed powder's edge. “When we cross over, the image stays,” he said softly. “Like a photograph. Everything we last see there comes over here, too—down to the last speck of dust and lost ballpoint pen.” He smoothed the mirror closed, pressing the backs of her fingers. It was a gentle gesture, but his eyes were intense.

“Everything here is precious because we can't go back and touch it again. What we bring over is all that we've got, all that we have, including each other,” V said. “If we question it, it can undo everything.” He squeezed their fingers together, like a promise or a pact. “Are you willing to do this?”