When the rest of the chamber had finally taken their seats, the old angel said, “I think we have heard enough from Zoë Kathryn Pendergraft, unless anyone has any questions for her?” He squinted around the hall, but no one spoke. “Thomas?”
Thomas looked up at Alexander, then down at Zoë and he sighed. “No, I require no further testimony from Zoë. If the committee will allow me, I will return her to her home, and then we can proceed.”
“Agreed,” the old angel said, his expression probing. “It has been interesting meeting you.”
“Likewise,” she replied, but only because politeness dictated she say something. “Interesting” wasn’t the word she would have chosen.
Alexander released Zoë, and she turned to face him, staring into that strangely beautiful beaked face with large black eyes. “You can’t take me home?” she asked, not caring who heard or what they thought.
“No,” he said. “I am sorry, little Zoë.” He leaned over and nuzzled her. “Goodbye,” he said and bowed to her before stepping back to allow Thomas to take her arm.
She wanted to hold on to him, to beg, cry or just scream, but instead she stepped close to Thomas, and nodded when he asked if he could transport her home.
Chapter 15
“The word ‘disaster’ comes to mind,” Zoë said.
Thomas still wore the long robe, not having bothered to change since he’d transported directly into her living room. He didn’t answer her assessment, but his expression was grim.
Looking at him made Zoë’s stomach twist. “What now?”
“Now I return to the hearing, and they call their next witness.”
“Who?”
“Briony, I believe.”
“My Guardian? Why are they interested in me? I thought this was about Alexander. Am I on trial too?”
Thomas shook his head. “Isn’t it obvious? I told you his relationship with you wouldn’t reflect well, and them knowing you’re a Stalker makes it worse. It makes Alexander look as though he was either duped or irresponsible.”
“I am not a Stalker,” Zoë said glumly. “How many times do I have to say that? How can someone who has never killed another living soul be considered an assassin? Thomas, don’t you understand? I see death every day. Every freaking day. Henry. My Gran. A stranger here or there, sometimes one at a time, and sometimes by the hundred. If anyone knows death doesn’t get rid of people, it’s me. Why would I kill someone who could make me more miserable in the afterlife than before?”
Thomas looked at her curiously. “Zoë, have you ever seen an angel’s spirit?”
She could tell it wasn’t a question. “Angels don’t have souls?”
“Of course we have souls, but we don’t leave them behind when we die. Zoë, think about it. All Stalkers are seers. You can’t kill what you cannot see.” He scratched his chin, obviously missing his usual stubble. “You do raise an interesting point though. Your ability to see human spirits is unusual. I don’t know that it has anything to do with the other, or if the two abilities are unrelated.”
“Unrelated? How can that be? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I don’t know, Zoë, but I will try to help you if I can. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you stayed on our side.”
Zoë gave a weak smile. “It’s not all the same, but I’d rather be on your side too, Thomas.” She plopped down onto her sofa, tossing her bag to the floor. “What a crappy day.”
“Goodbye, Zoë. I will see you when the committee has ruled.”
“Thanks, Thomas,” she said, and before she could even raise a weary arm to wave in his general direction, he’d pulled his arms in close to his body and popped out of the house.
After a few long moments of staring at the ceiling, Zoë forced herself to get up and make a sandwich. She flipped on the television and watched as a variety of barely-talented singers humiliated themselves and then listened as a panel of celebrity judges picked over their fame-seeking carcasses. Usually she enjoyed the spectacle, but tonight she had far too much empathy for those hapless folks in the spotlight. She pressed the power button before the announcement of the final results, and headed upstairs.
That stupid knife. And it happened because she’d saved Jackson Burly. She wasn’t sorry she’d done it. No matter the unintended consequences that had piled on since then, she would save him again if she had the chance. Zoë couldn’t think of anything more wretched than spending who knew how long having someone as repulsive as Ren Jones leech her soul. She didn’t have the experience to guess what would have become of Jackson, had she not interfered. Zoë tried to spend her life worrying about the now, and not the here-ever-after. She’d seen enough spirits to know fretting about the afterlife was a pretty big waste of time, just like living about the past.
Without a plan in mind, Zoë retrieved the knife from her dressing table. She felt its cool weight in her hand. Someone had given it to her for a purpose, and she wasn’t convinced she’d ever fully understand it. She pulled the knife from its sheath and examined the strange metal that seemed to glow from within. You’d think a bequest like this would come with a manual, she thought, if not an actual sit-down chat explaining the wheres and hows and whys of it all.
Absently twirling the knife in her hand, Zoë considered the options. She could try to call the person who’d dropped it at her feet, the same way she hoped to call Henry. The knife could act as a focal point, assuming it had meant anything to the mysterious spirit. On the other hand, Thomas had warned her about handling the knife too much.
With that in mind, Zoë looked at her hands in time to see her fingers spinning the blade as though doing a strange dance with it. She hadn’t even noticed what she was doing. She made an odd strangled peep and stared. Even if she’d wanted to, she wouldn’t attempt a maneuver like that with a sharp instrument. That was a sure way to lose perfectly good fingers. In her shock and confusion, Zoë froze, and she expected the knife to clatter to the floor. Instead, it hung at the end of her fingertips, as though held in place by sheer attraction.
“Oh crap,” Zoë said to no one. She slipped her hand down and closed her fingers around the handle. This, no doubt, would qualify as one of those aforementioned super-human abilities, even though she had no idea what it meant. Having said abilities was not, upon reflection, desirable. Evolution should take millennia, not days. She didn’t know what the end result would look like.
Just as Zoë moved to put the knife on the dressing table, she heard loud grating sound, like stone scraping against stone. Since she hadn’t turned on the overhead light, her bedroom was dim, and shadows clung in the corners.
One of those shadows expanded, straightened, flattened, and became a solid black archway. Through the archway she could see more darkness. Zoë backed away.
She wildly cast out with her senses in hopes Gran might be nearby, but felt nothing. Neither could she sense Alexander, Thomas, or any other within range of her abilities. She listened hard, but no sounds came from the archway. Her vision couldn’t penetrate the darkness, and she didn’t dare touch it.
Indecision kept her rooted in place, staring at it. If she went through into nothingness, she would jump in blind. She had no experience to tell her what this might be, and not even an insubstantial instinct. This particular unknown terrified her.
On the other hand, if she didn’t go, she would always wonder what might be on the other side.
But back on the first hand, she had a lot to lose. Her life for one. Smart women, she thought, don’t jump into other-worldly archways that come from nowhere. That would be like going into the basement with a dodgy flashlight when there was a serial killer on the loose, or being the character in the monster movie who says, “Let’s split up,” when investigating a scary noise.
Back on the other hand, she didn’t know how to make it go away, and she didn’t relish the idea of sleeping with a big gaping hole in reality next to her bed. Thoughts jumbled back and forth, pushing her in every direct
ion. Finally, a thought hit her. The archway appeared when she’d picked up the knife.
Cautiously, she put the blade in its sheath and laid it on the bed. As soon as it left her hand, the archway vanished. Zoë walked to the far side of her room and waved her hand where it had been. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Eager to make a second test, she stepped back and picked up the knife again.
With it in her hand, she focused, but nothing happened. She turned the knife over without any luck. She unsheathed it, flicked the blade around, letting it flow in her fingers, and again nothing changed.
Zoë blew out a loud sigh. At least now she wouldn’t have to decide anything. She wondered briefly if Alexander’s trial had started up, or if Thomas was waiting. As her thoughts turned to the strange vast plain of nothingness where they had first arrived and imagined Thomas sitting there, the portal creaked into existence again.
“Okay, that’s weird,” she said and moved toward it. When she got close enough to step through, she peered into the darkness. An odd sensation came over her, and the light shifted, bringing a new view into focus. “That’s really weird,” she said. Inside the archway she saw a gray floor extending as far as she could see, and a plain stone bench. It had to be the same one she and Thomas had sat on when waiting for the committee to call her.
But remembering the difficult time she’d had transporting into the celestial realm, she didn’t want to risk getting caught in that cold, airless place. This time she wouldn’t have Thomas to save her. At least now she knew why those precautions existed. It would be possible for a human to travel to their realm. She couldn’t help but stare for a moment, wondering if she would make it, and if she did, whether she could find her way out again. She looked around the room for a moment, and found an elastic hair band. Tossing it toward the archway, she instinctively stood back, but it didn’t explode or bounce off. Instead, the hair band landed a few feet shy of the bench and skittered on the smooth floor. That didn’t mean she could survive the trip, but still, it gave her something to think about. It also made her wonder if someone on the other side could have seen her, or even walked into her bedroom. Not a nice thought, actually.
None of the possibilities filled her with confidence. On top of that, she didn’t think getting caught spying on angels with the aid of a chaos blade would help anyone believe she wasn’t a Stalker.
With deliberate effort, Zoë turned her mind away from Thomas and the trial, and tried to make the archway disappear. No matter what she did, it stayed. She did the only thing she could think of and put the knife down. Just as before, it vanished, and Zoë exhaled a loud breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in.
She took the knife, wrapped it in a t-shirt and stuck it in her sock drawer. Behold the magical shielding power of cotton, she said to herself, rolling her eyes.
This thing definitely should have come with an instruction manual. Grappling her way in the dark didn’t seem promising, and sooner or later she would do something colossally stupid she couldn’t undo.
Unable to figure out what to do next, Zoë did the only thing that made sense: she brushed her teeth and put her pajamas on.
***
In the light of day, Zoë could pretend none of yesterday’s strange events had actually happened. It worked for a full fifteen minutes while she lounged in bed and ignored the nagging alarm clock.
In the end, she moved because she had to. Activity was the only antidote to the awful thoughts that played over and over in her head and asked questions like, “What if you are a Stalker?” She’d decided she loved Alexander, and she believed he loved her too, but asking him to hang out with an angel assassin? What did Stalkers do anyway? Was there some kind of criteria or club? Or did these Stalkers just go around, well, stalking. Zoë didn’t even like to kill moths, but beyond that, it seemed a horribly hazardous line of work. She simply didn’t have the physical strength or the temperament for it. She’d seen La Femme Nikita. She didn’t have romantic ideas about a future as an international woman of spiritual intrigue.
So Wednesday morning Zoë put on her business clothes, scrunched her untamable hair with styling cream, put on some lipstick and went to work. The best thing Fiskers had going for it right now was pure normality. The drive to San Mateo calmed her, and she spent the morning attacking meaningless paperwork with grim ferocity as though her sanity hung on the quarterly throughput finalization management something-or-other.
Around midday, she got an email that sent her mind moving in a completely different direction: a lead on Henry’s descendants from Simone’s Uncle Shel. He’d found her a name. Robert Benson. According to Shel’s email, Robert Benson was something of a history buff himself and the one who’d posted much of the family tree on a popular genealogy website.
Rose’s baby, Louise Wilson, had lived. Henry’s name hadn’t appeared on the birth certificate. Strange, Zoë thought, but possibly Rose hadn’t told anyone. She’d sure told Zoë willingly enough, but death did change people, and spirits would tell secrets they’d held close in life after they died.
It took Zoë a couple hours to work up the courage to call Robert Benson, another to figure out what to say, and less than that to find a phone number for him. She thanked her lucky stars Robert Benson was listed.
When she got his voice mail, she left a number and a message saying she worked for the Lament Historical Foundation. The angels were right, she mused. Humans were a bunch of liars, with her on top of the big, fat liar list. Zoë sketched out a brief but plausible request for information, family records, or any other data of interest to the ghost town. She found herself getting into the role. She’d enjoyed her trip to Lament, and thought that if she wasn’t wrapped up with inter-species strangeness, she would have had fun working for the Lament Historical Foundation.
Zoë needed to find out if Robert Benson had anything that might have once belonged to Henry. A long shot, but her only hope. She needed an object Henry had touched while living. Of course she’d considered telling Robert Benson the truth, but she couldn’t risk him dismissing her call as a crank before she even got her foot in the door. She’d learned somewhere around second grade that sharing her extra insights invariably led to confusion, doubt, and trips to the shrink.
Robert Benson returned her call as she was leaving work for the night. He readily agreed for her to come to his home in St. Francis Wood that evening, confirming his obsession with his family history. He seemed more than willing to talk about his early California ancestors. Before leaving the office, Zoë printed out Rose’s family tree, planning to memorize what she could before she met with Benson at eight o’clock.
The nervous flutter in her stomach stayed with her until 7:58 PM, when she parked her car on Santa Anna Avenue. The inside of the house was lit up, and she stood outside for a moment, looking in. This was such a long way from the gold mines of Lament, California. What would Henry and Rose say now, to see their sixth generation grandson living in a place like this? The immaculate lawn spread up from the street to a row of perfect hedges surrounding the bay windows. Even in the moonlight, complimented only by the lighted path, she could see the muted and understated colors of the house. Robert Benson had good taste, and he obviously lived in comfort.
Zoë followed the herringbone path to a series of circular bricked steps at the looming double doors. Her hands trembled as she reached for the doorbell. Footfalls sounded on hardwood flooring, approaching fast. She took a deep breath and pasted a smile on her face as the door opened, and light flooded the green front lawn.
Robert Benson’s dark face split into a friendly smile. “Miss Pendergraft,” he said, extending his huge hand. His rich baritone voice and friendly manner helped her relax. She searched his face for a moment as he stepped back to allow her into the house, hoping, she supposed, to see something of Henry in him. His head was shaved, and the short, sculpted beard around his mouth had nearly as many white hairs as black.
“Can I offer you some coffee? Tea, perhap
s?” he asked, showing her through a beveled inner door. She had seen the bookshelves from the street, but still marveled at his library, now that she stood inside it. From floor to ceiling, books lined three of the room’s four walls. And these weren’t books picked for their covers either, because the stacks of papers and cozy atmosphere told her he often used this room. She couldn’t make out the books’ titles without staring, but they certainly weren’t the cheap paperbacks she had littered around her place. No, Robert Benson’s books were thick, expensive and scholarly.
“Thanks, but no. I just had some and it’ll keep me up all night,” she said, her nerves indeed jangling, but for another reason completely. She hated lying to Robert Benson, but how could she tell him the truth? He’d never believe it. “I appreciate you seeing me, Mr. Benson.”
“Doctor,” he corrected. “But please. Call me Robert.”
Zoë sat on the deep burgundy camel-backed couch he indicated with a gesture. “Thank you, Robert,” she said, running her fingers over the velvety surface. “You have a lovely home.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you’d like to know?” He sat opposite her, resting his hands on his chair’s curved wooden arms. He scrutinized her face as she spoke, narrowing his eyes, which were so dark the brown was nearly indistinguishable from the pupil.
“Have you ever visited Lament?” she asked, forcing herself to smile. “It’s a wonderful little town, and the Lament Historical Foundation has worked so hard to preserve the look and feel of it for today’s visitors.”
He nodded, sitting back and smiling, but without taking his eyes off her for a moment. “Yes, I know.”
“Your great-grandmother, some six generations back, Rose Wilson, I’m hoping you could tell me more about her. I thought you might even have some photographs or letters? Something. Anything to build a picture of who Rose was.” Zoë reached into her purse and pulled out one of the brochures she’d collected in Lament, handing him one describing an upcoming historical exhibit. “We want to present the residents of Lament as individuals with histories, families, records and as much as we can find about them. Lament needs to be more than a collection of buildings.”
Ordinary Angels Page 17
