My voice was a quiet murmur, fitting perfectly with the dust and neglect surrounding me. As the words spilled over my lips I began to feel dizzy and disconnected, as if the moment before sleep falls had been magnified a hundred times. My entire body began to tingle, and if I touched someone right now I'd expect to shock them.
I opened my eyes as I felt myself rise. It scared me, actually. I thought maybe I'd truly begun to stand up, and I sure didn't want to end it all with an accidental Ka-Boom. Part of me, the gravity-bound bomb-sitter, stayed put. But another part continued to move up to and through the ceiling, into the roof's crawlspace and through that as well. I started to wonder if anything would stop me from floating away like a hot-air balloon minus its release valve. I tried to direct my movements, without luck. Up, up I went, a space-bound spirit with no hold left in the world.
"WRONG!" It was the Voice, still sounding more like thunder than communication. "LOOK!"
I am looking! The snippy little reply was on the tip of what now passed for my tongue. It was also a lie. All my attention had been directed inward. Now I looked outside myself. Seven golden cords stretched from various points of the earth up, up to me. I concentrated harder and realized I could tell who the cord was touching simply by the way it vibrated. Actually, the vibration was more of a song. I identified Albert and Evie immediately. Dave, whose cord had just been a yellow blur the first time I'd traveled beyond my body, was there too. Vayl had his own tune, as did Bergman and Cassandra. Cole's was the one I focused on, however. I grabbed that cord of music with what passed for my hands and hurtled down it, delighting in the speed, wondering if this was how it felt to be a skeleton racer.
I stopped just short of ramming into Cole or, more likely, through him. He slumped against the post of a traffic sign, trying to hail a cab. But nobody wanted to stop for a guy who looked like he'd just been mugged and, therefore, had no money for fare.
"Cole," I said softly, whispering right into his ear. "Relax. Vayl's coming."
He jerked upright and spun around, his face a picture of relief and joy. The picture quickly changed to confusion and disappointment. "She's not here, fool," Cole chastised himself. "She's sitting on a bomb. Where you should be."
Okay, I'm invisible. Why is that? Dave saw me.
I let go of Cole's cord and grabbed Vayl's. It took me right into the van, which he was trying, and failing, to start. I settled into the passenger seat as he cranked the key and stomped the gas pedal. Over the sound of the struggling engine I heard him mutter, "Stupid, stupid, stupid son of a bitch!" He slammed the steering wheel with both hands, making it shudder on its perch.
"Geez Vayl, chill would you? At this rate Cole's going to freak out and walk in front of a bus while you're still deciding whether to flood the van or trash the steering column."
He gaped at me, smiled his dangerous smile and grabbed for my arm. I think he was hoping for a hug, but his fingers went right through me. The dismay on his face would've been funny any other time. "Um, I guess I should've warned you I'm not quite solid. But I wasn't sure you'd see me."
He shook his head slowly. "Unbelievable."
"You say that like you're impressed, but you're making that face, the one I get after I've made a stupid mistake."
He made a frustrated, that's-exactly-what-you've-done gesture. "How are you planning to rejoin your body, that is, if it is not blown to bits during the course of events?"
"I thought I'd try just jumping in."
"Are you insane?!" Now that Vayl had a living—sort of—target for his anger he had no problem starting the van. And now that he'd asked me the one question I'd feared most, I found I was too mad to care.
"You know what? I probably am! I did walk straight into a trap so obvious even a wooly mammoth could've avoided it. Because that's my job. Yes, it is insane to leave the biggest part of me sitting on an explosive device. But, according to my job description, I'm supposed to save innocents, not endanger them. Yes, it's crazy to stick around waiting for a plague beast to eat my soul. You'd think one death would be my limit. But apparently I just can't get enough of it! So can we just agree I'm bonkers and move on already?"
Vayl jerked his head, his version of a nod, and said, "So where is Cole?"
"Two blocks west of here, last I saw him."
"You… saw him. You went to him first?"
"His nose is broken," I said, as if I needed an excuse. "And, you know what, I don't need an excuse. I might be a couple of hundred years younger than you, but I'm still an adult! If I want to show concern for a friend, I will do exactly that!" I nearly stomped my foot, but that seemed a little too junior high to ram home my point.
Vayl steered the van back onto the street as he began to mutter again. I didn't catch it all, but I thought I heard him say, "That won't be all that is broken."
Dammit! If there is any way to screw up a relationship, I will find it. I pictured Cupid sitting in a crappy little bar, drunk and depressed, while he moaned to the bartender, "That Jasmine Parks, gods she pisses me off! Did you see what she just did? Totally blew off this immortal stud who's nuts for her to play kiss-the-boo-boo with a fickle little rent-a-cop. Why? 'Cause she's the biggest chicken-shlit on the planet! I'm ready to toss my bow and pick up a bazooka!"
"Vayl?"
"What!"
"I love you."
I knew he was going to ask for a repeat before he even opened his mouth, as if it wasn't hard enough to say the first time. That's what convinced me it was the real deal. I wouldn't go through this for anyone else on earth.
"What?" he whispered, looking suddenly young and vulnerable.
"I love you, Vayl. There's Cole, see? Can we stop and get him before he keels over?"
"Only if you love me."
We smiled at each other. "I do," I said. "Sorry about the crappy timing. This sort of thing should be sealed with a kiss. Or… something."
"I suppose we will have to save that for the plane ride back."
Oh my.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I thought as I floated into Bergman's house, leaving Vayl and Cole to pass the doorknocker's muster. From the looks of things, we shouldn't have left the cowpokes to their own devices for quite so long. With Bergman bristling like an irritated land baron and Cassandra throwing off bad vibes like a cornered gunslinger, it looked like we were about to have a good old-fashioned bar fight. Never mind that the bar had never seen a shot of whiskey in its whole upper-middle class life, Cassandra looked like she wanted to drag Bergman down the length of it, scattering test tubes, chemicals and bags of contaminated blood all along the way.
I moved over to her, hoping to overhear her low-pitched mutterings. "Lousy, neurotic, egotistical, bigoted, neurotic bastard!" She threw a sidelong glance at Bergman as she sat down at the dining room table, unaware she'd called him 'neurotic' twice, and that I agreed with her 98%. The bigoted part I'd never witnessed, but I was willing to kick his ass once I got my legs back if that part proved true. Then I realized she wasn't referring to skin tone at all. "Thinks magic's for fanatics, skanks and lesbians, does he?" she muttered. "Why, I'd like to…" her words trailed off as she narrowed her eyes, envisioning some satisfying form of retribution. Then she looked skyward and growled, "What is the deal with you? You'd think a thousand years of atonement would serve for one woman. But noooo, you've got to torment me even more by shoving me into a gang full of wiseasses and crackpots!"