Inquisitor, a voice said from next to me.
Startled, I turned to see a vaguely human form kneeling next to me, its shape a swirling mass of blue and white light. Cassie looked around, not knowing what I was looking at.
May I speak to her? the spirit asked. I nodded dumbly. He dissolved and flowed around me, through me. A random jumble of thoughts and feelings crashed through my mind like a hurricane.
“Hey honeylips,” I said. It was my mouth that moved, my voice that spoke, but they weren’t my words. Cassie recoiled, pushing flat against the wall. “I know you’re scared and confused, but I just needed to talk to you one last time before the Inquisitor sets you free. You can trust him, Cassie. He’s one of the good ones.” She leaned forward and looked from one eye to the other. Paulo? she mouthed. “It’s me, honey.” I smiled at her and felt myself tearing up. “I know you must hate me for what I did to you, and I wouldn’t blame you. Not one bit. I’ve been in my own personal hell for the last week watching you. It tore me up knowing that I was the one responsible for what happened to you.” Cassie shook her head as if to deny that it was his fault, but Paulo was having none of it. “Frank freed me when Christian stuck me in the body of a ghoul. I thought that I had dodged one hell of a bullet, but then I found you. That was so much worse.” Salty tears streaked down my face. “I couldn’t do anything. Just like before, I was powerless to stop him get what he wanted and it nearly destroyed me. I thought that this was my punishment for killing myself: an eternity of watching you suffer.” I could barely get the last part out through hiccupping breaths that degraded into sobs. “I’m lost without you, Cassie. You have no reason to, I know, but could you ever forgive me for what I’ve done?”
Cassie leaned forward, a graying hand tinged green in the glow from my eyes reaching for my face to wipe away my tears. Her blue-tinged, cracked lips turned up in a smile and the white light trapped inside of her flared. I forgive you, she mouthed. My heart sang with the beatification! Paulo relinquished control of my body and my power surged to meet hers. Her thumb wiped moisture from my cheek. The contact closed a circuit between us and the bindings that had kept her spirit trapped vanished in a magical implosion. Cassie’s eyes fluttered closed and her body fell back against the alley wall. A vision of her freshly dead superimposed itself on the body in front of me. The wall behind her became a bed and I felt the cool metal of a pistol in my hand.
“Inquisitor.”
The scene broke and reformed into the alley. Two amorphous blobs of light hovered side by side to my right. I stood and looked back down on the body. “Is it over?” I asked.
“Only this part,” Cassie said. She had regained the beauty she had in life and now had something more. The flowing white tunic she wore glowed like a star and her hair looked like spun gold even in the dark. She reminded me of a Greek goddess come to earth. Her smile was as striking as the rising sun. “Nothing is ever truly over.”
Paulo stepped forward, resplendent in a suit that matched Cassie’s dress. “You were never meant to have this,” he said, touching the side of my head. “It is a burden for me to carry, alone.” I felt the vision of Cassie’s death fade like the vague memory of a dream. “You are a good man, Frank Goldman. You gave me my Cassie back. I am forever in your debt.”
Cassie entwined her hand in Paulo’s. “Know that if you ever need help we will be there.”
“I’m just glad that something good came out of this.” The drug was wearing off from the power expenditure, and I felt bone-deep tired. “It’s odd to think that someone’s death is a sort of victory.” Mumbling, I added, “God, I’m tired of seeing death.” I walked over to Cassie’s body, laid it flat on the ground, pulled off my jacket and placed it over the corpse.
“It was just a shell, Inquisitor,” Cassie said. “More a prison actually, at least these last days. There is no reason to honor a husk by covering it.”
“I think she deserves at least that much, if it’s all the same to you.”
“As you wish.” Her smile widened.
Blue flickers of light began appearing up and down the street, along the rooftops, in windows, and in the sky above. They shifted into human forms but retained that inhuman glow that showed them as spirits. There were hundreds of them.
“Paulo,” I said. “I know why you’re here, but what about them? Did I break some rule, because I don’t have a guidebook to go with these new abilities.”
He laughed a deep and soothing chuckle. “No, no, Inquisitor. They just wish to bear witness.”
“Bear witness to what?”
“The birth of possibilities, Mr. Goldman,” Cassie pronounced.
“This is where your path truly begins,” Paulo said, picking up the thread of conversion. “You’ve been told that what has been happening is a game.”
“You know about that?”
“We observe, Mr. Goldman. That is what we do.”
“Sounds like a boring afterlife.”
“You’ll understand everything when you’re on this side,” Cassie said, reassuring me with a smirk.
It was unnerving to think that she had just died moments ago, and yet she already seemed entirely in tune with what was happening. Could the transition really be that fast? “Just tell whoever’s in charge not to hurry with bringing me over.”
“Not to worry,” Paulo said. “You have many decisions ahead of you, and that is what I’m trying to tell you. Only those who are deluded enough to believe that they can manipulate life’s events think that it is a game. They find out at the end just how wrong they were. Life is a journey, Frank, and every choice you make takes you along a path.”
Cassie cut in. “Death isn’t the end of it either. It’s merely a change in directions and scenery.”
“But what if I make the wrong choices?” I asked, eyes downcast to avoid those piercing stares. “What if I’m not strong enough to do the right thing?”
“For that matter how will you know what is the right thing?” Cassie said and laughed. “Silly boy, you do what you think is right, you follow your path until the journey takes you elsewhere. That is all anyone can ask of you.”
My eyes ran across the shining spirits, all of them looking at me, assessing me. I felt my life being measured and weighed.
“I won’t lie to you by telling you the decisions will come easy to you, because some of them won’t.” Paulo’s face went somber. “You’ve already faced so much, more than most people ever will, but there is always more. People will die like they always do and you won’t be able to prevent it. At some point your heart will break and you will wonder if you can go on.” The spirits above and along the street began to fade out a handful at a time. Soon it was just Paulo and Cassie in front of me. “When this happens I want you to remember what lights the path of your journey.”
With a shaky voice, I asked, “What lights the path?”
With a beaming smile, Cassie replied, “Hope.”
Table of Contents
Demon’s Play
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