Mind Sweeper (39 page)

“He’ll be okay now,” I whispered and closed my eyes. A delicate hand rested on my cheek for a moment. The doorbell rang and I opened my eyes as Dalton’s grandmother faded away with the steam in the bathroom.

I walked out to the living room and peeked through the peephole. Tony stood on the other side. Opening the door, I shook my head and backed away from it.

“I’m not hungry, Tony.”

“I know, dear. Food will not make this better.” And he held his arms out to me, wrapping me in his embrace.

My throat tightened and the tears began—endless, wracking sobs. Standing in the doorway in my bathrobe, holding on for dear life to the restaurant guy from down the street, I sobbed until my chest hurt and I had no moisture left in my body.

When I finally stopped crying, he settled me on the couch, covering me with a blanket. Sitting down in the chair next to me, he sang Italian lullabies until I fell asleep.

Chapter 44

I finally got up from the couch the following day at dawn. I had two things on my list for the day. First I called Father Brown. I wasn’t surprised he was an early riser, and he agreed to meet me in the chapel on campus. I arrived at the JCU campus early, hoping to avoid the summer students.

He was kneeling in prayer when I arrived, so I bowed my head and waited for him to finish. He stood and motioned me to join him in the front row. I sat down next to him and handed him Father Cowell’s letters.

“My name is Kyle McKinley.”

“I saw the newspaper this morning. Lieutenant Dalton is a hero.”

“Yes he is.”

“Are you here to tell me the truth, Kyle?”

I clasped my hands and started at the beginning. He said very little, letting me weave the story as I saw fit. When I finished, I waited for him to call me crazy. But he didn’t.

“I’m sorry to think David must have felt I had abandoned him in the end.”

“You have to admit, the whole thing does sound insane.”

“Is David’s killer really dead?”

“Yes.”

He stared at me for a moment. “What has changed to make you trust me now to keep your secret?”

I took a deep breath. No more lying. “I promised I would tell you the truth. But I can’t let you remember it. For your own safety, I’m going to make you forget what happened. You will not remember me, you’ll only remember meeting with Dalton about the serial killer case.”

“Before you erase my memory, I have another part of the translation for you. The first few sentences in the second stanza.”

“What is it?”

He pulled a paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, reading the newest excerpt aloud.

“‘
The war will be long

And fraught with treachery

The path will be riddled with fallen

And the key will change hands
’”

He refolded the paper and handed it to me, clasping my hands. “I’m sorry you feel you have to go through this alone.”

I nodded and smiled, tears blurring my vision. I concentrated and created new memories that I pushed toward him. The warmth cascaded over my senses and my energy flowed silkily around his brain waves.

After a couple of minutes I stood and he touched my wrist to stop me. “I thought you were going to erase my memories?”

I stared at him in disbelief and plunked back down in the seat. After two more tries, I realized it was useless. I couldn’t make him forget. I had only encountered a couple of humans over the years whose memories I couldn’t change, and apparently the Fates had decided Father Brown would be another.
Crap.
Maybe the angels were messing with me. I told him what his story needed to be and he promised to follow it to the letter.

He also promised to continue to work on the translation for me. But we could not be seen together in public, since he was not supposed to remember me. He pushed a small volume into my hand.

“Take this, you may find it of some comfort. God has given you your gift for a reason, Kyle, don’t forget that.”

He left me alone in the chapel, and I sat for a while. I wasn’t sure what I should do with my life. I hadn’t decided yet if I could ever work for Nicholas again.

I ran my thumb over the textured cover of the small book I still clutched in my hand, then opened the cover and paged through what turned out to be the Psalms. I continued to flip the pages until I came to an excerpt in Latin. I stared at it for a moment and the words changed before my eyes.

I could read them.

I dropped the book on the chair with a hard smack which echoed through the chapel. How could I understand Latin? I vacillated between running like a scared rabbit and picking up the book again. Maybe I was hallucinating? I opened the book again before I could chicken out, flipping through some more pages. I found a Latin verse and stared at it like it was a Rorschach test. After a couple of seconds, I breathed a sigh of relief. I could not read the passage. My imagination must have been in overdrive.

I took one more tentative look at the page and gasped when the words shifted to English so I could read them. And it hit me like a bulldozer. Dalton had been spouting Latin at the time Sebastian was beheaded. Had I absorbed his memories the way I had Trina’s? But if I’d just absorbed his memories, why could I read the passage in front of me?

Knowledge.
If Dalton was the key of knowledge, had I absorbed the same knowledge? Was I the new keeper that Father Brown’s translation referred to? I shook my head. No jumping to conclusions. This would have to wait. I had another promise to keep today. I stuffed the book into my bag and walked out onto the quad, dodging the students who were just beginning their days.

Two hours later, after a trip to the drug store and a ruined T-shirt speckled with dye, my jet-black hair was no more. I stood on the Connors’ front porch ringing the bell. Stephanie opened the door, her eyes widening before she smiled.

“Hello, Kyle.”

“Stephanie. Is Trina home?”

“She’s in the back yard in the tree house. She’ll be excited to see the new you.”

I opened the back door and walked across the yard. Unlike the last time, gangly legs were not dangling down from the tree house ledge, so I hollered up to her.

“Trina, it’s Kyle. Can I come up?”

“Yeah.”

I climbed up the ladder and Trina came out the door and dove into my arms.

“You did it. Purple. It’s awesome!”

I smiled at her, running a hand through my hair. “Thanks. I wanted to show you first.”

“It looks like Purple Passion.”

I held up my hands and waved my ratty fingernails. “My nails could use a touch-up. Are you game?”

“Sure. Let’s go into the house.”

“Before we go, I found something of yours in the yard.” I pulled the heart bracelet out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Here.”

Her eyes widened and I held my breath praying I had made the right decision. “Wow! Thanks, I didn’t know where I had lost it. I can’t wait to tell Mom. Come on, let’s go in the house. Are you hungry?”

And I found I was hungry, for the first time in two days. “Do you think your mom can make some of her famous cinnamon toast?”

Chapter 45

It was exactly eleven days, five hours and twenty-three minutes since I had erased Dalton’s memory. And in the next thirty seconds, I was going to bludgeon an annoying customer to death with a menu. Not the lunch menu, which was too flimsy to cause any real damage, but the dinner menu, which had enough heft to achieve my goal.

Every August, Little Italy celebrated the Feast of the Assumption. Throngs of people invaded the small neighborhood, eating, shopping and generally celebrating the end of summer.

Normally, I avoided the Feast like the mall on Black Friday. Too hot, too many people, too much aggravation. But this year it beat being alone, something I had grown anxious to avoid.

It didn’t help that I had taken a leave of absence from work. Actually, I had quit, but Nicholas had insisted it was a leave and I had insisted he could go to hell. We were at a bit of an impasse. So I had volunteered to help Tony at his restaurant for the week. It was the least I could do for him. Although why he thought I could be hostess material was beyond me.

“How much longer are we going to have to wait?” a voice whined.

I looked up into the face of a tall man whose lips were pressed into a thin line. The petite woman next to him wore a short dress designed for a woman half her age. Tony
so
owed me for this.

When I didn’t answer him, he spoke in a louder voice. “Why is this taking so long?”

I took a deep breath, counting to ten in my head. “Sir, there are thousands of people in town today for the Feast, so nothing is going to move quickly.”

The woman with him had the nerve to roll her eyes at me. I looked beneath the podium for my weapon. The dinner menus were made out of a heavy cardboard and covered in a thick vinyl which was sure to sting. Perfect.

Just in time, Tony came bustling up to the hostess stand carrying a tray of meatballs and sporting a huge grin. “Thank you all for your patience. While you wait, I thought you might like to try some appetizers.”

Tony then relieved me of my hostess duties, and tucked me away in the corner making cappuccinos. It was the best place for me. I didn’t have to deal directly with customers and it allowed me to work with my first love—java.

Tony walked up and I held up the iced cappuccino he had requested. “What table gets this one?”

“It’s for you. Take a break.” He motioned to a small table. “You’ve earned a couple minutes off your feet.”

I looked up into Tony’s sweaty, red face. “I’ll take a break if you do.”

He dismissed my comment with a wave of his hand. “Everything’s good.” But he sat down next to me anyway. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I answered automatically.

“Right,” he answered, but since he was reading my emotions, we both knew I was lying. He stared hard at me for a second. “Well, I’m on the lookout for you.”

Little alarm bells sounded in my head. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve decided to expand my horizons. Besides matching people with their favorite foods, I’m going to do a little actual people-matching on the side.”

I shook my head a bit too emphatically. “No, thanks. Besides, I can’t imagine there are too many people out there who would take to my ‘forceful’ personality.”

“Oh, you’ll be a challenge, for sure. But I’m tenacious.” He stood and pushed in the chair. “I’ve already got some ideas.”

Before I could protest some more, he ambled away. Good Lord, that’s all I needed. Knowing Tony, he would have men serenading me outside my apartment window. The neighborhood already thought me strange; this would tip it over the top.

Plus, I definitely was not ready. No jumping right back up on the horse for me. I was just fine with brooding. I was an expert at it, as a matter of fact. I took a large swallow of the coffee and turned to watch as the crowd outside surged and ebbed along the sidewalk.

After a couple of minutes, I stared down at the dregs of iced cappuccino puddled in the bottom of my glass and closed my eyes. I had not been sleeping well. My dreams were peppered with Dalton’s memories. Fearful I would relive his suffering at the hands of Sebastian, I fought REM sleep at every opportunity.

“Where have you been all my life?” a voice asked softly.

I was going to kill Tony. He had to have set a land speed record setting me up with someone. “Are you kidding…?” I lost my power of speech when I looked up into a set of luminous turquoise eyes. Only one person had those eyes. My stomach twisted. I had to be imagining him. I blinked back the moisture threatening to erupt as he sat down across from me.

It was official. I had lost it. Now I had graduated to having visions of Dalton when I was awake.

He leaned in close. “Did you think erasing my memory would get rid of me so easily?”

“You’re not real.” I pushed the chair back and stood. He reached his hand out and I sucked in a breath when his warm, callused fingers circled my wrist.

“It’s me, Kyle. I’m real.”

“I don’t understand,” I mumbled, sinking back down. “How…”

“I’ve been having nightmares for days now, images of people and events which didn’t make any sense. When I would wake up, my head felt like it was going to split open. The doctors chalked it up to the trauma. But I couldn’t let it go, not after I saw you in my dreams. I couldn’t let
you
go.”

I took a deep breath. “What about the pain?”

He grinned. “My grandmother started talking to me in my dreams. I thought I was really losing it then. When I finally spoke back to her, she asked me what I wanted, and I told her I had to know the truth about you. She must have called in her marker with the angels, because the next thing I knew, I had a divine visitor who helped me fill in what happened and the pain simply went away.”

I gaped at him. “Those damn angels are getting pretty loose with the whole not interfering thing.”

“Are you really going to complain?”