Kissed by an Angel

by Элизабет Чандлер

  "I remember her. She was in Dark Moon Running."

  "Dark Moon Rising."

  It was Lacey's voice, Tristan realized, sounding the same but different, the way a televised voice was the same but different than a live one. Somehow she was producing it in a way that they all could hear.

  The girls looked around, a little spooked.

  "Let's join hands," the leader said. "We're calling back Lacey Lovitt. If you're here, Lacey, give us a sign."

  "I never liked Lacey Lovitt."

  Tristan saw Lacey's eyes spark.

  "Shhh. The spirits are around us now."

  "I see them!" said the little blonde. "I see their light! Two of them."

  "So do I!"

  "I don't," said the girl with the brown pony-tail.

  "Let's get somebody other than Lacey Lovitt."

  "Yeah, she was obnoxious."

  It was Tristan's turn to snicker.

  "I like that new girl in Dart Moon. The one who took her place."

  "Me too," the redhead agreed.

  "She's a much better actress. And she has better hair."

  Tristan's laughter softened. He glanced warily at Lacey.

  "Well, she's not dead," said the leader. "We're calling Lacey Lovitt. If you're here, Lacey, give us a sign."

  It began with a slow whirling of dust. Tristan saw that Lacey herself became faint as the dust whirled upward. Then the dust drifted off and she was there again, running around the outside of the circle, pulling hair.

  The girls shrieked and held their heads. She pinched two of them, then picked up their sweaters and hurled them this way and that.

  By this time the girls were on their feet, still screaming, and running for the open window.

  Empty bottles flew over their heads and smashed against the chapel wall.

  In a moment the girls were gone, their screams trailing behind them like thin, birdlike calls.

  "Well," said Tristan when it was quiet again, "I guess everyone should be glad that there wasn't a chandelier in here. Feeling better?"

  "Little snips!"

  "How did you do that?" he asked.

  "I've seen that new actress. She stinks."

  "I'm sure," said Tristan, "that she can't be nearly as dramatic as you. You were pulling and throwing. How did you do that? I can't use my hands at all."

  "Figure it out for yourself!" She was still fuming. "Better hair!" She pulled on strands of the purplish stuff. "This is my own personal style." She glared at Tristan.

  He smiled back.

  "As for how I use my hands," she said, "do you really think I'd take up my precious time to teach you?"

  Tristan nodded. "Good audiences are hard to come by," he reminded her, "especially when you're dead and most of them can't see you."

  Then he left her sulking in the chapel. He figured she'd know how to locate him and would when she was ready.

  Out in the noonday sun again, Tristan blinked. While he did not feel changes in temperature, he did seem very sensitive to light and darkness. In the darkened chapel he had seen auras around the girls, and now, in the tree-shaded landscape, splotches of sunlight seemed dazzlingly bright.

  Perhaps that was why he mistook the visitor for Gregory. The way he moved, the dark hair, and the shape of his head convinced Tristan that Gregory was walking away from the Baines family plot. Then the visitor, as if he sensed someone watching him, turned around.

  He was much older than Gregory, forty or so, and his face was twisted with grief. Tristan reached out a hand to him, but the man turned away and continued on.

  So did Tristan, but not before he noticed, on the fresh green belly of Caroline's grave, a long-stemmed red rose.

  Chapter 15

  Lacey found Tristan again late that afternoon. She called his name, startling him as he walked along the edge of the ridge. He looked up to see her sitting in a tree.

  "Nice view, isn't it?" said Lacey.

  Tristan nodded, and gazed again down the stony drop. The land fell away steeply there for two or three hundred feet. He remembered seeing in the early spring the silver tracks and the roof of the one-room train station in the valley below, but now they were hidden. Only small flecks of river could be seen flashing blue through the trees. "I don't know why I'm so drawn to this place."

  Lacey cocked her head. "I'm sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that Ivy lives here," she said sarcastically.

  "How did you know about Ivy?"

  The girl did a neat skin-the-cat and dropped down from the tree.

  "Read about her, of course." Lacey walked along next to him. "Read all about your accident. I make it a habit to drop by the station every morning and read the paper with the commuters.

  Don't like to be out of the skinny. Besides, it helps me to keep the date straight."

  "Today's Sunday, July tenth," Tristan said.

  "Brrrrrrt!" She made a sound like a game-show buzzer, and snapped a twig from the tree.

  "Tuesday, July twelfth."

  "Couldn't be," Tristan said. He reached up but couldn't pull off a leaf, much less snap a branch.

  "Did you fall into the darkness in the last couple of days?"

  "Last night," he replied.

  "More like three nights ago," she told him. "That will happen, but eventually you'll build up your strength and need less and less rest. Except, of course, when you do fancy jobs."

  "Fancy jobs. Like what?"

  She waited till she had his full attention, then said, "Look at me."

  "What do you think I'm doing?"

  "Stand back a little and look harder. What am I missing?"

  "Do you promise not to pull my hair?"

  She scowled at him. It was a fine scowl, but it passed quickly-she was just acting.

  "Look at that cat," she said.

  He glanced over his shoulder. "Ella!"

  "Look at the grass next to the cat and look at the grass next to me."

  He saw it then. "You have no shadow."

  "Neither do you."

  "You're talking out loud," he observed. "I recognize that sound and saw Ella's ears flick in your direction."

  "Now watch the grass behind me," she instructed, and closed her eyes. Slowly, like dark water seeping over the lawn, her shadow grew. Just as slowly she lost her shimmering quality. Ella cautiously circled her once, twice. Then she rubbed against Lacey's leg and didn't fall over.

  "You're solid!" Tristan exclaimed. "Solid! Anybody could see you! Teach me how to do it. If I can make myself solid, Ivy will see me, she'll know I'm here for her, she'll know-" "Whoa," Lacey cut in. Then her projected voice began to fade. "I'll be with you in a minute."

  Her shadow disappeared. Then she did- completely.

  "Lacey?" Tristan spun around. "Lacey, where are you? Are you all right?"

  "Just tired." Her voice was small. Her body appeared again but was almost translucent. She lay curled in a ball on the ground. "Give me a few minutes."

  Tristan paced back and forth, eyeing her worriedly.

  Suddenly she sprang up, looking like herself again. "It's like this," she said. "For transient angels-that's you and me, sweetie-it takes all the energy we have and a lot of experience to materialize completely. To speak at the same time-well, only a professional can do that."

  "Meaning you," he said.

  "Usually I just materialize part of myself, such as my fingers, when I want to do something-pull hair or turn the paper to the movie reviews."

  "Teach me!" Tristan said fervently. "Will you show me how?"

  "Maybe."

  They had come around to a full view of the back of the house. Tristan gazed up at the dormer window that looked out from Ivy's music room.

  "So this is where the chick lives," Lacey said. "I suppose I should think it refreshing that a guy would let himself be such a fool over a girl" He saw Lacey's lips curl back in distaste.

  "I don't see why you should think anything. It's got nothing to do with you," Tristan replied. "Are you
going to teach me?"

  "Oh, why not? I have time to kill."

  They searched out a hidden nook in the trees and sat down, Ella following slowly behind them.

  Lacey began to pet the cat, and Ella rewarded her with a small, polite purr. When Tristan looked closely, he could see that the tips of her fingers did not glow. They were quite solid.

  "All it requires is concentration," said Lacey. "Intense concentration. Look at your fingertips, stare at them as a way of maintaining your focus. You almost will them into being."

  Tristan extended his hand toward Ella. He forced everything else out of his mind, focusing on his fingertips. He felt a slight tingling sensation, the kind of pins-and-needles feeling he used to get when his arm fell asleep. The sensation grew stronger and stronger in his fingers. Then another kind of tingling began in his head, a feeling he did not like. He started to grow faint. His whole self, except for his fingers, felt like it was melting away. He pulled back.

  Lacey clucked at him. "Lost your nerve."

  "I'll try again."

  "Better rest for a sec."

  "I don't need rest!"

  It was humiliating, after being strong and smart all his life-the swimming teacher, the math tutor-to accept lessons from this know-it-all girl on something as simple as petting a cat.

  "Looks like I'm not the only one around here with a big ego," Lacey observed with satisfaction.

  Tristan ignored the comment. "What was happening to me?" he asked.

  "All your energy was being rerouted to your fingertips," she said, "which made the rest of you feel faint, or like you were dissolving or something."

  He nodded.

  "As you build up your strength that won't be a problem," she added. "If you ever get to the point of materializing your whole self and projecting your voice-though, frankly, I doubt you will-you'll have to learn to draw energy from your surroundings. I just suck it right out of there."

  "You sound like an alien in a sci-fi horror movie."

  She nodded. "Lips of Planet Indigo. You know, I came this close to winning an Oscar for that."

  Funny, Tristan remembered it as a box-office bomb.

  "Want to try again now?"

  Tristan extended his hand. In a way, it was like finding his pulse, like lying on a bed and hearing his own heart: he suddenly became aware of the way energy traveled through him, and he directed it, this time coolly and calmly, to his fingertips. They lost their shimmer.

  Then he felt her. Soft, silky, deep fur. Ella began to purr loudly as he traced out all her favorite places to be petted. She rolled on her back. Tristan laughed. When he scratched her belly, her "motor" seemed as loud as a small prop plane's.

  Then he lost the touch. The sunlit day went gray. Ella stopped purring. All he could do was hold still and wait, sucking on the air around him like someone trying to catch his breath, though he had none.

  "Excellent!" said Lacey. "I had no idea I was such a good teacher."

  Color returned to the grass and trees. The sky burned blue again. Only Ella, scrambling to her feet and sniffing the air, showed signs that something wasn't quite right.

  Tristan turned to Lacey, exhausted. "I won't be able to reach her. If that is as much as I can do, I won't be able to reach her."

  "Are we talking about the chick again?"

  "You know her name."

  "Ivy. Symbol of faithfulness and remembering. Is there some message you're trying to send her?"

  "I have to convince her that I love her."

  "That's it?" Lacey made a face. "That's it?"

  "I think it's probably my mission," Tristan said.

  "Oh, puh-lease."

  "You know, I'm getting pretty tired of your sarcasm," Tristan told her.

  "I don't much enjoy your silliness," she replied. "Tristan, you are naive if you think the Number One Director would go to all the trouble of making you an angel so you could convince some chick that you love her. Missions are never that simple, never that easy."

  He wanted to fight with her, but her melodramatic hand-waving had ceased. She was serious.

  "I still don't get it," he said. "How am I supposed to discover my mission?"

  "You watch. You listen. You stay close to the people you know or the people you feel yourself drawn to-they're probably the people you've been sent back to help."

  Tristan began to wonder who in his life might need special help.

  "It's sort of like being a detective," Lacey said, "The hitch is, it's not just a whodunit. It's a who-done-what. Often you don't know what the problem is that you've been sent to solve.

  Sometimes the problem hasn't happened yet- you have to save the person from some disaster that is going to occur in the future."

  "You're right," said Tristan. "It's not simple."

  They had walked their way past the tennis court and around to the front of the house. Ella, who had been following them, scurried ahead and up the front steps.

  "Even if it is something that will happen in the future," Lacey went on, "the key is often hidden in your own past. Fortunately, time travel is not that hard."

  Tristan raised his eyebrows. "Time travel?"

  Lacey hopped up on Gregory's car, which had been left in the driveway in front of the house.

  "Traveling backward in your mind, I mean. There are a lot of things we forget if we remember only in the present. There may be clues that we didn't pick up in the past, but they're still there and can be found again by traveling backward in our minds."

  As Lacey spoke she stretched out on the hood of the BMW. She looked to Tristan like Morticia Addams doing a car ad.

  "Maybe," she baited him, "I'll teach you how to travel through time, too. Of course, traveling backward in someone else's mind, that's not something for an amateur like you to fool around with. There is some danger in all of this," she added. "Oh, cheer up, Dumps."

  "I'm not down. I'm thinking."

  "Then look up," she said.

  Tristan glanced toward the front door. Ivy stood there, looking out toward the driveway, as if waiting for someone.

  "'It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were!'" said Lacey.

  Tristan kept his eyes on Ivy. "What?"

  "Romeo and Juliet. Act two, scene two. I auditioned for it, you know, for Shakespeare in the Park. The casting director wanted me."

  "Good," Tristan said vaguely. He wished she'd leave him alone now. All he wanted was to be alone, to revel in the sight of Ivy, Ivy stepping out onto the porch, Ivy with her hair blowing gold as she gracefully moved to the top of the steps and picked up Ella.

  "The director said my kind of talent was to die for."

  "Great," said Tristan. If only cats could talk, he thought. Tell her, Ella, tell her what you know.

  "The producer, a major artsy-fartsy, said he wanted someone who had a 'more classic' face, someone with a voice that wouldn't lapse into New Yorkese."

  Ivy was still standing on the porch, cuddling Ella and looking toward him. Maybe she did believe, Tristan thought. Maybe she had a faint sense of his presence.

  "That producer is in New York for a couple of weeks, getting a road show ready. I thought I'd pay him a visit."

  "Great," Tristan repeated. He turned his head when Ivy did, hearing the whine of a small car climbing to the top of the hill.

  "I thought I'd murder him," Lacey added, "cause a traffic accident that would kill him on the spot."

  "Terrific."

  "You're pathetic!" she said. "You're really pathetic! Were you this gaga in life? I can only imagine you when you still had hormones pumping through you."

  He turned to her angrily. "Look," he said, "you're no better than I am. I'm in love with Ivy, you're in love with you. We're both obsessed, so back off."

  For a moment Lacey didn't say anything. Her eyes changed ever so slightly. A camera would not have caught the flicker of hurt feelings. But Tristan did, and knowing that this time she wasn't acting, he regretted his words.

  "
I'm sorry."

  Lacey had turned away from him. He figured she'd be off anytime now, leaving him to fumble his way through his mission.

  "Lacey, I'm sorry."

  "Well, well, well," she said.

  "It's just that-" "Who is this?" she interrupted him. "Tweedledee and Tweedledum come to mourn with your lady?"

  He turned to watch Beth and Suzanne get out of the car. As it happened, they were both wearing black, but Suzanne had always liked black, especially scanty black, which was what she was wearing-a cool halter-top dress. Beth, on the other hand, was wearing clothes typical of Beth: a loose shift, black with small white flowers on it, whose ruffled hem blew a couple of inches above her red plastic sandals.

  "They're her friends, Beth and Suzanne."

  "That one is definitely a radio," said Lacey.

  "A radio?"

  "The one who looks like she's wearing a shower curtain."

  "Beth," he said. "She's a writer."

  "What'd I tell you? A born radio."

  Tristan watched Ivy greet her friends and lead them into the house.

  "Let's go," Lacey said, springing forward. "This is going to be fun."

  He hung back. He had seen her kind of fun earlier.

  "Do you want to tell her you love her, or don't you? This will be good training for you, Tristan.

  You've got it made, the girl's an absolute radio. Good radios don't even have to believe," she added. "They are receptive to all kinds of things, one of those things being angels. You can speak through her-at least, you can write through her. You know what automatic writing is, don't you?"

  He had heard of it. Mediums did it, their hands supposedly writing at the will of someone else, relaying messages from the dead.

  "You mean Beth is like a medium?"

  "An untrained one. A natural radio. She'll broadcast you-if not today, then tomorrow. We've just got to establish the link and slip into her mind."

  "Slip into her mind?" he asked.

  "It's pretty simple," Lacey said. "All you need to do is think exactly like her, see the world the way Beth sees it, feel as Beth feels, love whomever she loves, desire her deepest desires."