Speed of Light (9 page)

I bit back frustration. I heard activity around us: cars in the parking lot, voices. We were running out of time before the police and the coroner arrived and we had to leave. I didn’t want to abandon this soul here. Not after all he’d been through. With all of my heart, I pleaded,
Auntie, please come. We need you!

“Will you go first?” he asked.

“I can’t go with you yet.” I thought fast. “Not if I need to look for your friends. Right?”

I felt light hit my face, warm like a sun ray. I smelled apple blossoms and roses. I glanced back at the window and saw hands reaching for his. As he passed into the plain, they grabbed him and gently tugged him through. I recognized Juliet’s Kirian. Roshana. Others I couldn’t name. More with disfigurements, scars, and wounds, in apparel that would be tagged vintage in a flea market.
More DG victims?

Auntie waited in the distance, nodding at me, her expression fiercely serious and filled with overwhelming compassion.
Is this how she experienced the war? Souls whose bodies were so wounded it affected their insides? This deep, abiding grief and helplessness to stop evil in its tracks?

After he swung his legs over and slid through, he turned back to me. “I know my name now! I’m Howie.
What is this place? It’s warm here.” He smiled, as if the fear was left behind on this side and he had nothing to worry about beyond.

“It’s home,” I whispered as the voices of his greeting committee started chirping like a flock of sparrows.

“Aileen? Uriah?” He sank against friendly hands.

Kirian regarded me and shook his head. Worry seemed to pour from that side of the window into this one.

I blinked as the window faded and I fell back into my body, drained. Tens held me up, braced against his body.

The top of a skull and several other bones below us glowed.
Who is making them glow? Me? Something other? Howie?

“I’m okay.”

Somewhere Custos whined, urgently.

“His name is Howie. About late seventies?” I said to Nelli, hoping she’d recognize his name or the era.

Nelli nodded agreement but glanced at Bales, who was holding a list he’d dug out of his pocket. “On the list. She’s probably right. Dates work.” Bales shrugged. “Medium?”

I waited for him to freak out, but he didn’t seem to even blink.
If you only knew
.

“Something like that,” Tens answered for me. “You okay with it?” His tone was hard, as if he expected to defend my honor.

“Sure, had a bit of good luck with the help. Take anything I can get to crack a cold case.” Bales shrugged him off. We heard clomping footsteps and calling voices. The police drew closer. “We need to scram. Through here.”
Bales led us out a back crawl space. He asked me gently, “They need to look for any more?”

“A boy and girl maybe,” I answered. I didn’t think Uriah or Aileen were accounted for yet.

Without looking at me but pointing at the crumbling smoke stack, Nelli added, “Seems like a good place to dump and run.”

“There’s rubble in the stack but it’s got a door. I’ll tell ’em.” Bales kissed her forehead and headed around toward the front of the building.

“Are you okay?” Nelli asked me, her eyes filled with apprehension. “Was this too much?”

“I’m okay. He knew Roshana when she was a kid—maybe seven. He mentioned a boy connected to her named Argy. I’ll write down everything Howie said. He was hurt like Roshana.”

Nelli’s phone rang. “It’s my boss.” She moved away to take the phone call.

“Can we head back now?” Tens didn’t loosen his grip.

He’s worried
. It had been a while since I was this shaky with a soul.

“You need to rest. That one took a lot out of you.”

I needed to figure out why Howie didn’t call his own window and how I managed to do it for him. That was a new development and not one I was entirely comfortable with. “I promised Juliet a trip to the chichi grocery store. She hasn’t been there yet and it might cheer her up.”

Tens opened his mouth to argue.

I stopped him with a hand on his chest. “She’s finally
agreed to go—that’s huge. We need time together. There’s a great big something eating her.”

Nelli fluttered back to us. “I missed a meeting. I don’t know how I forgot about it. My boss is furious. Do you mind if I drop you off and run? We can talk after work?”

“That’s perfect.”

We piled back into her car. Custos continually sniffed me like I’d rolled around in bacon. Tens kept handing me peanut buttery cookies from Helios and telling me to drink more milk. He equated appetite with strength.

By the time we got back to the cottage, Juliet was waiting for us on the stoop, looking fiercely aggressive like she was waiting to battle a dragon.
This is gonna be fun
.

“Are you really up for this?” Tens asked me under his breath.

I nodded.

“I’ll get the keys.”

Juliet wandered bug-eyed through the aisles and among the racks of the high-end artisanal grocery store. She wore the look of a thirsty nomad sighting a verdant oasis. She twisted like a top and ran from ingredient to ingredient. Touching packages, lifting them to test the weight and hear the shake, rattles, or sloshes. She held everything to her nose, inhaling like an addict trying to get a fix.

The breads she poked and squeezed, watching them rerise. The samples of cookies and Danishes disappeared
into her mouth by the twos, leaving the platters empty. She opened all the doors of the frozen food cases, exclaiming with delight over all the exotic flavors of ice creams.

In the canned goods, she puzzled over foreign words on labels that neither of us could pronounce. “You’re sure you can’t read that either?” she asked repeatedly.

“I’m sure. It’s French. It’s Japanese. It’s squiggly something,” I assured her each time. I tried to spark conversations, but she turned her back or interrupted me with questions about products and what dishes an ingredient might be used for. I mostly shrugged my shoulders, unable to answer, and wished I’d paid more attention when my mother turned the channel to the Food Network.

Juliet’s experience at DG was sheltered to the point of prison. The headmistress received food deliveries weekly, generic packages of industrial calories. Juliet never visited a supermarket, a mall, or a movie theater. She was slowly letting us expose her to these.
One down, two million to go
. Then Nicole appeared at DG and mysteriously produced the ingredients Juliet needed to cook off the soul dust. When we got to the fresh fruits, I paled when her fondling became so enthusiastic we drew the attention of a clerk. He eyed us like we were going to shoplift the cherries and melons.

At the mangoes, I had to stop her from simply taking a bite. I wasn’t sure how we’d be charged by the pound when they’d disappeared into her stomach.

I gave her room to explore and added a few more exotic
greens to the cart to appease the weary stocker. When the radio station stopped playing light jazz and broke in with a special news bulletin, it drew my attention.

“Excuse me. Excuse me?”

It took a minute for me to realize the woman was speaking to me. “Yes?”

Juliet froze. She seemed ready to run out of the store.

The stranger continued. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I don’t normally talk to teenagers in stores, but this is so odd—I can see your light. Both of you. Like I’m dying again. Why can I see it?” Her voice quivered and her intense grip on the shopping cart was noticeable.

“Huh? What?” I tried to evade, buying time.
Can she really see Light through us?

Juliet ducked behind an aisle header and I lost sight of her.
Thanks for the backup
.

The woman continued pressing. “The light of Heaven. I can see it through you. Why?”

We drew interested, eavesdropping glances.

Middle-aged with a rich espresso complexion and a short cropped Afro, there was nothing sinister about this woman. Her question was polite, if baffled. She began to get louder as she spoke.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her over toward the relative privacy of the cheese section.

“Could you lower your voice, please?”

She nodded. “Did you die too?” she whispered with wide eyes.

“Excuse me?” I tried to motion Juliet over, but she completely evaded my gaze and kept half hiding, half staring at the food around her. It was as if the allure of the tastes overrode her fear. I glanced around for Tens, who’d gone off to grab coffee to give us space.
Too much space
.

“I thought maybe you’d understand …” The lady frowned. “Maybe I’m wrong. I’m sorry. Never mind.”

“Wait.”
Crap, can I trust her? Is she Nocti? Is this a trap?
“Do you have time for coffee?” I asked, looking deeply into her eyes and seeing no void, no darkness.
Not Nocti
. “I’m Meridian.”

“Delia.” She relaxed. “Please. Coffee would be great.”

We shook hands. I saw Tens heading toward me, frowning.

“I’ll meet you at the coffee bar. Just let me pass off my groceries, okay?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I pushed the cart over to Juliet and Tens. “She can see me. You.” I waved toward Juliet. “I think I need to talk to her.”

“I don’t want to talk to her.” Juliet pouted.

“I’m not asking you to. Buy anything you want.” I shoved a wad of cash at her. “I’ll talk to her, then come find you in line or at the van, okay?” I asked Tens.

“What if she takes you before I can get to you?” Tens shook his head.

“I’ll risk it.”

“But … are you sure you should talk to—” Juliet argued, on the verge of shaking.

“Of course not, but I have to investigate why she thinks she can see us—me. Maybe she’s dying like Faye, or maybe having a near-death experience changes everything. I don’t know. But I need to find out. This will help us with your mom.” I finally said the magic word. Anything to do with Juliet’s mother seemed to be the right thing. We didn’t understand why Roshana was wounded and aging at the window. Her wounds kept her from speaking, so at best I got moments of pantomimed motion when I helped a soul through.

She nodded. “Fine.”

“Stay within my sight,” Tens commanded.

“Sure.”

“Don’t give anything away. She might be fishing,” he warned.

I found Delia sipping on an iced latte when I sat down.

“Thanks for waiting.” I didn’t know where to start with small talk, so I dove straight in. “What did you mean about dying and light?”

Delia hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I don’t talk about this very much. People don’t understand. They think I lost my mind on April second, 2006.”

“What happened that day?”

“I was giving birth to my second child and I hemorrhaged. I don’t remember much, a few minutes, maybe seconds after that, I watched it unfold below me.”

“Out of body? Like in the movies?”
I should take notes
.

“You think I’m nuts too.” She lowered her gaze with chagrin.

“No, not at all. I promise. I’m only trying to understand. Please keep going.”

She shrugged. “I died. They brought me back. But while I was dead, I went somewhere. There are no words—the best I can say is that my world became the most amazing light, brilliant but not blinding. Warm. Relaxed. Peaceful. I didn’t want to come back. Only the thought of my children without a mother overcame my desire to stay there. It changed my life completely. I was a maternity nurse for years, but a few months ago I switched to hospice. I’m in my third month at the inpatient center.”

“That’s a huge shift. From babies to death?”
What
does this mean for us? What are the ramifications? Can all near-death patients see us?

She smiled. “It’s not as big as you might imagine. Both include labor and new beginnings. Everyone deserves a good death, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do. What do you see when you look at me?”

“Briefly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that same dazzling, incredible light. Focusing on you, I can see your face, but if I don’t really try, I don’t know … I’m sorry. It’s so hard to explain. I’m shaking. I’m sure I scared you. I don’t normally accost strangers.”

“I’m not scared of you.” I shook my head.

“Did you also have a dying experience? Is that why there’s light around you?” Delia asked.

“Of a sort. Why don’t you tell me more about where you work?” I thought of Faye’s upcoming battle.

She nodded. “Deal.” And she settled into her story.