The Resurrection Game

by Michelle Belanger

  “You really need to get to your point.” At the harshness in my tone, her brows ticked up and, for a minute, I thought she was going to yell back at me. With a visible effort, she reclaimed at least a superficial calm.

  “You’ve got really strange energy,” she said tightly. “I can tell you’ve been through a lot recently, but there’s more to it than that. There’s… well, there’s a weight resting on your back—it’s why all the muscles there are so tight. I can—”

  Before she could say another word, I threw my head back and started cackling. I couldn’t help it—and I couldn’t stop. Sunny dashed from the table, and Kabuki was so startled, she launched herself in a hail of claws from her resting spot on my lap. I barely felt the stinging impact. It was all too much. Laughter stole my breath and tears streamed from my eyes.

  Lil stared blankly, completely at a loss.

  Shareen, however, bristled with undisguised offense.

  “If you don’t believe in energy work, that’s fine,” she said sharply. “But you don’t have to be so rude.”

  “No, that’s not it,” I gasped, sniffling and wiping at my eyes. “That’s not it at all.” Even so, Shareen planted her fists on her hips and glared from me to Lil.

  “He’s your friend,” she said. “You explain it to him. I thought you would have, bringing him here.”

  “Shareen, normally I wouldn’t forgive him for anything,” Lil said, “but just this once, give the guy a pass. He’s really not trying to be an asshole. It’s just his factory default.”

  “I’m not laughing at the energy work,” I insisted—choking hard on the irony. “Reiki. I get it. It’s just… what I’ve got on my back.” Another peal of laughter wracked me like a seizure. Once it had passed, I hunched, struggling to catch my breath. Through a film of tears, I faced the annoyance in Shareen’s dark eyes. “You’re not going to fix it, lady, but you can give it your best shot.”

  22

  One hour and an extensive deep tissue massage later—well beyond the deadline for the oath—Shareen led me back to the lobby where her counterpart Ivy stood chatting with the Lady of Beasts. On the counter between them sat a grizzled old tom with a lopped ear, black as a panther and built along similar proportions. He perched like a monarch enshrined on his throne, and Ivy rested one hand lightly against his glossy flank.

  As she talked, the gray-haired woman swayed from hip to hip, keeping time to some internal music that was hers alone. No part of her remained still save the hand on the cat, as if that connection was her only anchor to the world the rest of us inhabited.

  I could have used that kind of anchor in the wake of Shareen’s massage. Her work left me feeling so profoundly relaxed, I was in danger of floating away. Stumbling after her like a sleepwalker, I moved on legs all gone to jelly. Lil would never get me to admit it, but this hour-long respite had been everything I’d needed.

  At least, it was a start.

  Shareen swept past me as we moved toward the counter, making a beeline for the massive beast seated beside the guest book. As if conscious of her attention, he drew himself up stiffly, puffing his chest and giving his chin a lift.

  “Kingsley,” she said, her tone caught somewhere between affection and admonishment. “How did you get in here?” She held out the fingers of one hand, which the cat sniffed lightly, as if bestowing his approval.

  Ivy chuckled. “You know Kingsley. He goes where he wants, when he wants, and to hell with doors,” she said. “I’ve given up fighting with him.”

  “I can see that much,” Shareen said, and she laughed.

  “Kingsley is a special guy,” Lil chimed in. “You’re both lucky he chose this place for his home.” As Shareen had done before her, she extended a hand to the cat, not to pet him, but to invite him to respond on his own terms. After intense consideration, he bumped his head into her open palm, then rose and sauntered to the edge of the counter. Settling down again, he turned golden eyes on me and stared with a focused intensity that would have been unnerving in a human.

  “Do I smell funny, cat?” I asked. I tugged at the collar of my T-shirt where it hadn’t settled right when I pulled it back on. My fingers came away slick from a smear of massage oil. “Pretty sure it’s just sandalwood.”

  The cat blinked once, a slow lowering and raising of fringed velvet lids. Other than that, he held statue-still. Not even a whisker twitched. Lil strode over to join him in his soul-piercing scrutiny.

  “What do you think, Kingsley?” she asked, tilting her head in my direction. “He ready yet?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. They made quite the pair.

  “I need approval from a cat now?”

  “Not from a cat,” Lil replied. Her face remained placid, but I could hear the smirk in her tone. There was a joke I wasn’t getting, but if she wanted me to play guessing games, she should have tried at least an hour earlier. After Shareen’s thorough pounding, all I wanted was my bed.

  I yawned to drive the point home.

  “Kingsley doesn’t bother to come out for just anyone,” Ivy observed. Untethered from the solid presence of the feline, she floated behind the counter like dandelion fluff, skirts rustling as she tidied stacks of papers and rearranged random items on the shelves.

  “Oh, he’s not just anyone,” Shareen murmured. Lil shot her friend an appraising glance, then speared me with a similarly inquiring expression. I kept my mouth shut. That was a conversation best left for the car.

  Shareen was no psychic, but she had pretty good instincts for energy. She’d framed all her perceptions in flighty light-worker talk—star-seed this and indigo child that—so I didn’t feel in the least bit threatened. But while she was doing her Reiki, she’d picked up some genuine impressions. The fact that she’d picked up anything at all was… interesting. All that energy work had helped passively replenish some of my spent power, too—which no doubt Lil had intended from the start.

  “I’m sure Mr. Kingsley is a very nice cat,” I said, “but I only agreed to be here for an hour, and it’s well past that.” Pointedly, I glared at the Lady of Beasts. “I’ve got an investigation that needs my attention. The bad guys never wait, especially not for spa days.”

  Upon hearing this, Kingsley huffed as if he fully understood the nature of the dismissal. Rolling his eyes in an almost human fashion, the cat stood, stretched, then jumped down from the counter to disappear among the shelves at Ivy’s feet.

  “Guess you didn’t pass his test, flyboy,” Lil sighed. She sounded genuinely aggrieved.

  “I’m crushed,” I said, walking to the door. “Let’s go.”

  Lil shook her head, then thanked her friends, hugging them both before joining me. Despite the humming calm that lingered post-massage, I found all her effusive affection unnerving. Like her work with the Windy City Vixens burlesque troupe, this was a side of Lil I had trouble integrating with the stone-cold killer I had come to know and occasionally appreciate.

  She unlocked the car so I could finally get at all my things, which she’d neatly hidden under the front seat. Heedless of any observers in this sleepy suburban neighborhood, I strapped the blades to my wrists, eager for their rigid comfort. The jacket came next, zippered and buckled into place, with the weight of my firearm heavy against my ribs. Opposite the SIG, I checked for the slender box of the Stylus. Its presence was less of a comfort and more of a weighty necessity. When I didn’t feel it, I started to panic. Wordlessly, Lil produced it from her handbag, handing its runed puzzle box over to me.

  “You didn’t think I’d just leave that thing lying around out here, did you?”

  Fighting back a scowl, I took it, tucking it back into the deepest inner pocket of my jacket where it settled in a hard line. For the first time in more than an hour, I didn’t feel utterly naked.

  Lil minced over to the driver’s side. Tauntingly, she dangled the keys.

  “No argument?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I’d fall asleep and put us in a ditch.”

&n
bsp; “I should kidnap you more often,” she smirked. “You’re being reasonable for once.”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  Laughing, she ducked inside the Hellcat. I followed shortly after, settling languidly in the seat. She stabbed a painted fingernail toward the radio and I lightly batted her away.

  “Not right now,” I said. “Just let me enjoy the quiet while it lasts. Everything is shot to hell, but for the moment I feel all right.”

  For once, she complied with neither snark nor argument, keying the ignition and peeling away from the curb. Lil’s breakneck driving was typically hair-raising, but I felt too mellow to really care. I just strapped on the seatbelt and tipped my head back on the neck rest, closing my eyes.

  Sleep overtook me immediately, deep and dreamless.

  * * *

  Lil firmly shook my shoulder. We sat in the lot outside of my apartment.

  “This is your stop, Anakim,” she said.

  My response was confused and nonverbal. Clumsily, I swiped at her hand. She shook a little harder.

  “Come on,” she insisted. “I’m not carrying you up two flights of stairs.”

  * * *

  She must have anyway—I had the barest recollection of making the transit from car to front door. Half in a dream, I took down my wards. Lil kept her arm around my waist, making sure I didn’t stumble.

  “Oh, the things I could do to you,” she murmured. Her head tilted against my chest. I could smell her hair—not spice and vanilla, for once. Plain old shampoo. Something vaguely fruity.

  “But you won’t,” I said. It was a struggle to enunciate. Sleep had thickened my tongue. “Mean Lil’s a front. I know you. You’re a really good friend.”

  With a snort, she pushed me into my apartment, then lingered in the door frame. Hands perched on her hips, she watched as I staggered toward the couch. Going around took too much effort, so I rolled right over the back. In an unceremonious heap, I tumbled onto the cushions, still in boots and jacket.

  “You’re so sleepy, it’s like you’re drunk,” she observed. The smile in her voice made a color in my head, red as the lipstick she wore. Not a bad red, like Nephilim or anger or blood.

  Lil red. Foxy.

  “Booze doesn’t help,” I babbled. Clumsily, I gestured to dismiss her suggestion. The arm ended draped over my eyes. “Tried that. Pills, too. Nothin’.”

  “Sucks to be immortal, doesn’t it?” she said gently.

  “I’m not immortal till I die and come back,” I objected. “But then I won’t be me. Can’t let that happen. Not-me’s kind of a monster.”

  Deep in her throat, Lil made a speculative sound. “We’re all monsters, Zack. It’s just a matter of degrees.” There was no judgment in her words, just a kind of sympathetic reassurance. I grunted a non-comment, too sleepy to debate the point. Turning, she started for the hall. I called her back, waving madly from the will-sucking cushions of the couch.

  “Lil, hey!” I cried, as if she stood ten yards and not ten feet away. I didn’t try to get up. Most of my body was pretty sure it was asleep already. The brain just hadn’t caught up. Not quite.

  “What now?” she sighed.

  “You were right,” I said.

  She snorted. “Of course I’m right. What am I right about now?”

  “I’m serious,” I responded. My tongue felt loose in my mouth, as if its hinge had come undone. If I wasn’t careful, it would slip right out and wiggle away.

  The image had me cackling for a solid minute.

  “Sleep it off, flyboy,” Lil urged gently. “I’m going to lock up behind me. Hope you can set the wards from over there.”

  “Of course I can,” I protested. “I’m a wizard.” As proof, I wiggled my fingers in imitation of a grandiose spell.

  “You’re ridiculous, is what you are,” she chuckled. The door closed and locks started throwing themselves, even though she stood on the other side. Blearily, I squinted from under the shield of my arm. I didn’t know she could do that.

  “Why do you keep lock picks? You’re a wizard, too,” I observed. I yelled so she could hear me.

  “Not a deaf one, as it turns out,” she said from the hall. “Go back to sleep, Zaquiel. I’ll keep an eye on things as long as I can.”

  She did that a lot, and I knew it. I didn’t always know why.

  “Thank you,” I called earnestly with my last shred of coherence. My whole body felt heavy as sleep dragged me back down. There was no answer, though, just the soft step of her boots as she descended the stairs. The sound followed me into dreams—of cats and foxes, spectral lions, and one old woman made young again, hiking to meet a lover in a mountain range draped with pristine snow.

  In a moment of brief lucidity, as I flew above live, wooden horses endlessly riding around a haunted carousel, I remembered to mutter the words that re-sealed the wards.

  23

  Sleep claimed me so completely, I didn’t even shift position until a loud, persistent rhythm dragged me unwillingly from the depths. Blearily, I fumbled for my phone, too muzzy-headed to realize that the sound wasn’t an alarm. Uselessly, I stabbed at the screen anyway.

  The rhythmic sound continued. Someone was at my door.

  “Go away,” I shouted finally. My tongue felt like a crusty piece of driftwood had found its way into my mouth. Tasted like it, too. Maybe it had escaped after all to slither across the floor.

  “Zack,” a stentorian voice called from beyond the door. “It’s Father Frank. Saturday. Three o’clock. Did you forget?”

  Sleep-thick and struggling through thoughts like cold molasses, my weary brain groped for any significance behind the particular date and time. I just wanted to go back to sleep. My neck itched and every conceivable muscle from my shoulders downward ached from last night’s exertions—not to mention Shareen’s relentless massage. Finally, limping awareness blundered through the haze of discomfort and exhaustion.

  Halley’s lesson.

  “Shit,” I hissed, scrambling from the couch. My legs didn’t work as fast as the rest of me, so mostly I just tumbled to the hardwood, whacking a shoulder against the edge of the coffee table. The impact knocked a stack of books to the floor. The small avalanche of sound carried into the hall.

  “Hey, you OK in there?”

  “Gimme a minute,” I called back, heaving myself to my feet. The world wobbled, and my head felt three sizes too big. “Fucking timing,” I grumbled, then staggered to the door. Grabbing the knob, I flipped the lock and then the dead bolt, vaguely recalling that I hadn’t been the one to lock them. Lil’s telekinetic display—or whatever it had been—niggled uncomfortably in the back of my brain. She’d even gotten the chain lock. That thing was a bitch to work with flesh-and-blood hands.

  That woman was dangerous, no doubt. I had no idea why she hadn’t killed me yet.

  The chain swung like a pendulum as I whispered down the wards and pulled open the door. In the hallway, a tall, lean man with a high, craggy brow stood in a position strikingly similar to mine. His black shirt with the white tab at the collar proclaimed his clerical vocation, although he still held himself with the rigid readiness of the Marine he once had been. I knew from long association that a Desert Eagle settled somewhere under his jacket, as much a part of his identity as the collar. As the wards unspooled, the gust of power rustled the iron-gray hair at his temples. Blinking bright-penny eyes, he took in the whole of my appearance—wild hair, bandaged neck, rumpled shirt, and jeans stained with mud, blood, cat hair, and nastier substances.

  “Rough night?” he asked sardonically.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  His mouth quirked in a paternal expression that seamlessly blended sympathy with disapproval and concern. Maybe because the severing of Marjory was so fresh and sharp, I could feel the steadying thrum of his connection. The lean, rangy priest was another anchor—one upon whom I drew with great regularity. The deep pulse of banked power that he carried struck a persistent bassline in my chest, telegrap
hing his emotions.

  “What time did you go to bed?”

  “Ten-thirty this morning.” I scraped a palm across stubble that was verging on a beard, and found another clinging cat hair. “I think. Might’ve been later. I wasn’t awake enough to check.”

  “No wonder you didn’t hear me knocking,” he chuckled. With well-earned familiarity, he moved to come inside. I shifted to block his entry. “What?” he demanded, more bemused than piqued. “You’re not going to let us in?”

  “Look, Padre,” I hedged. “Today’s not so good for a—”

  Everything else I had planned to say fled my lips the instant a waifish girl with enormous brown eyes peeked out from behind him. Her tangle of dark hair had been swept back from her face and tamed into twin braids that hung heavily past her shoulders. She’d been so quiet and held her cowl so tight as she huddled in the rangy man’s shadow, I’d completely missed her presence.

  “Wingy!” she cried, delighted.

  The nickname was ridiculous, but at its sound I melted. Smiling despite everything, I shuffled back from the door. Almost instantly, Halley collided with me. In an uncharacteristic show of affection, she clasped my side, then ducked away to arrow for my couch. With single-minded focus, she clambered onto the rumpled cushions, taking up her usual position pressed against one of the arms. Kicking off her shoes, she drew her knees up to her thin chest, hugging them as she stared fixedly at her toes. She wore no socks, the nails painted brightly.

  “Hello, Halley,” I said with undisguised affection.

  “Lesson time, Wingy,” the girl announced, mumbling the words into her jeans. Her gaze never wavered from her feet, but that was to be expected. Halley rarely made eye contact with anyone, even her closest friends. It was just part of her wiring. Among the girl’s many challenges, Halley was autistic.

  “I’m glad you were actually home,” Father Frank said, kicking off his boots. As soon as he was through the door, I re-sealed the wards. “She’s been looking forward to this all week, especially after we had to cancel when they switched up her appointment for the MRI. I swear, they’ve run so many tests on that poor kid, she should glow in the dark.”