Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) (15 page)

“She thought if I talked to you I’d feel better. Or that if I talked to you, we might be able to figure this out, and that would make me feel better.”

Eve popped into my head. “Did someone attack you?”

She shook her head. “No, not exactly.”

I thought she’d elaborate, but she just sort of paused, falling into a neutral pose. I refrained from shaking her. “What? Just tell me.”

“Would you think I was crazy if I told you—” she swallowed. “If I told you I’d seen something. Something really, really, really weird.”

“What kind of weird? Midget clown porn weird or like Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not weird?”

“Like a guy with wings weird,” she said.

My throat twitched like my larynx might have a seizure. I took a deep breath. “You’ve seen him, too?”

She exhaled as if she’d held all the air in the room in her lungs. “Thank God. I thought I was losing my mind. Not that I feel any better of course.”

“When was your last death?” I asked. God, I didn’t want this to turn into another Rachel incident. Then I remembered all the strange questions Garrison had asked me about Rachel and wondered if this was connected somehow.

“Nine days ago,” she said. “But I’ve got one tomorrow.”

“Why did Gloria bring you here?” I asked.

“Maybe she wants us to think we aren’t crazy,” she said. “But we totally are.”

“Definitely. And shocked,” I said, thinking of the first time I saw Gabriel against the wall. “I mean, who sees—Gabriel, right?” I bit off the words
‘the archangel’
, suddenly feeling weird about giving Gabriel such a formal title.

Cindy’s ecstatic relief vanished. “Gabriel?”

“Tall guy, black hair and wings, crazy green eyes, stupidly gorgeous—”

“—No. That’s not who I see.” Cindy’s fear crept into her eyes.

“Who do you see?” I asked. I couldn’t get Rachel out of my head, the sight of her covered in her own blood. I tried to imagine finding Cindy the same way and my blood turned cold.

“Tall guy, red hair, brown eyes. He’s got white wings and says his name’s Raphael.”

“You’re seeing someone else?” I desperately tried to remember exactly what Rachel had said about the angels, but that was years ago. All I could recall was good angels and bad angels. “But—” I kicked up proverbial gravel, the wheels spinning so fast. “What’d he say to you?”

“He wants me to go to Church,” she said. “He wants me to go confess all of my sins.”

I bit my lip, but that didn’t work. I couldn’t contain my laughter. “You’re kidding.”

“No!” Cindy’s face flushed bright red as a ream of sobs burst from her lips. “He told me I’d be dead within the week and I’d better do it while I had the chance.”

My brow furrowed, pinching together. “Raphael sounds like an ass.”

“I don’t want to die,” she said. “I’m still single.”

Lord, I wasn’t about to go into romance with her. Like my life was any less of a mess in this department. “Have you talked to the cops yet?”

“Why, are they cute?”

“I didn’t mean for a date,” I said, shaking my head.

“If we mention this, you know they’ll lock us up quicker than honey can stick to a bee’s ass.”

I had no idea what that meant. “That…sounds disgusting, but true, yes.”

I always thought—because this is what Brinkley told me—that Rachel lost it because she died too much. Too many deaths scar the brain irreparably until one day it just pops. But Cindy and I had far less deaths than Rachel, and the fact that we would all have similar hallucinations didn’t make sense. Each mind is individual. Each of us would “lose our shit” as Cindy put it, in our own ways. One thing was for sure, we couldn’t tell anyone this was going on. I had no intention of being locked up and fed mashed bananas for the rest of my life.

“Can you drive?” I asked. We needed to get out of this house so we could really talk.

“Sure,” she said.

I had my shoes and jacket on when Lane caught us at the door. “Wait. Where are you going?”

“We have to run to the hospital,” I told him. “I don’t have much time before I’m loopy from the meds so I need to go now.”

Gloria appeared with a packed dinner. I had no idea what it was but it was still warm and smelled fantastic, like sweet tomato and basil—the last taste of summer.

“I’ll be here when you return,” she said.

“Thanks.” I accepted the food.

Lane wasn’t letting me go so easy. The scowl said so. I don’t know what came over me, the drugs maybe, but I was up on my tiptoes kissing him before I even realized that’s what I meant to do. His mouth was hot on mine. He tensed, probably as surprised as I was because I’d never kissed him in front of anyone before.

I broke the kiss.

“I’ll be right here,” he whispered. But I pretended not to hear.

Chapter 12

D
r. York entered the small examination room and barely glanced away from the file in his hands. He did reach down and help me up from the floor where I’d collapsed in part boredom, part pain pill high. But before speaking he hit the lights, throwing us all into darkness. A heartbeat later a small lighted box fixed to the wall flickered and hummed to life. He tacked several see-through pictures up side-by-side on the lighted box, the light beneath illuminating its shadows.

“This is yours, and this is yours,” he said. He pointed to Cindy then me, respectively.

I looked at my fuzzy brain picture on the right. I blinked several times, trying to clear my head enough to comprehend what was being said.

“You see all this scarring,” he said to Cindy. “Jesse’s scarring has reduced somehow. By almost twenty percent.”

He pulled another photograph from the file. “This was her picture from a year ago.”

“I have no idea what this means,” I said. Apparently, I’d been leaning backwards because the good doctor pulled me upright by the shoulder.

“It’s not entirely healed, showing some small areas of damage here as we typically see in death-replacement agents, but it’s certainly improved since the last scan. The damage is reversing itself, particularly in relation to the temporal lobe and cortex. You see here,” he said. He pointed from my scan to Cindy’s. “Every time an agent dies, they get a little tick mark like this on the brain.”

“I thought we healed almost anything,” I said.

“Your brain fixes your body, but the oxygen loss the brain experiences during each death can only be partially repaired. Small scarring still occurs from the oxygen deprivation.

“And this scarring affects memory?” I asked, just to be clear.

“Yes,” the doctor replied.

“They sure didn’t mention that in the Become an Agent brochure,” I told him. These so-called repairs might explain my sudden memory of my mom. It might also mean that more memories would come back to me sooner or later—for better or worse.

Cindy bit her lip. “It’s also why we go crazy, right?”

“I do not see anything on the scans that indicate you girls are mentally unstable,” he said. Then the doctor’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“We told you,” I said. I rocked back on my heels and it was Cindy’s turn to push me upright. “I’ve been having these terrible headaches.”

“And you?” he asked Cindy.

“Just thought we’d use my brain, my completely normal, average and not-insane brain as a comparison for Jesse’s test,” she replied, her tone an octave too high.

“How accommodating.” He clicked his pen several times as if trying to decide who was full of more crap. “Well, to answer your question, no. There is scarring but it is typical given your occupation and other than that, I see no abnormalities. Physically, you’re both fine.”

He didn’t smile. He just studied us as if expecting us to confess the real reason for our visit. Finally he asked, “Anything else?”

“Nope, nothing else,” Cindy replied.

“Nothing at all,” I added.

The doctor removed the X-rays and turned off the lighted box, leaving little spots to dance in front of my eyes. “If you don’t have anything else for me, I need to go save Cooper.”

Cindy placed a hand over her heart. Her accent thickened. “What happened to Cooper?”

The doctor pushed his reading glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Bullet to the throat just under the mandible. The first five vertebrae of his spine disintegrated. Every thing we’ve tried so far has failed to work. I’m out of ideas.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Cindy said. “How did this happen?”

“We aren’t sure,” he said. “We don’t know if it was part of his replacement or if he was attacked like Jesse.”

That explained why I hadn’t heard from the charming Agent Garrison. Apparently, he had his hands full, as if chasing Brinkley or threatening me wasn’t enough.

“I was shot like that once,” I said. “You just need a bone donor.”

“Are you volunteering?” he asked.

“Uh, I can’t regrow that much bone.”

“We won’t take up any more of your time,” Cindy said, motioning to the door. “Go save Cooper.”

After depositing a fresh piece of butterscotch in each of our palms, he disappeared. My eyes had drooped closed again. Cindy swore and plopped me into a chair.

“When you suggested coming to the hospital I thought you’d stay lucid enough to get through the visit.”

“Don’t judge me,” I said. “I was in pain. I needed those pills. I’m not a junkie or anything.”

“I’m not judging you. Half of America is on pills,” she said. “But it’s difficult to talk to someone seriously when they’re falling all over the place.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was trying to help you.”

Cindy sighed. “You did. At least we know there isn’t anything physically wrong.”

“We know that?” I asked. I’d heard the words “brain damage.”

“He said my scan is normal,” she said.

“We could be physically fine and still crazy,” I said. “But at least we ruled out tumors, yes.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “You don’t believe in angels?”

“No.” I knew something was up with my brain. Stuff in there was changing, but I couldn’t help but be excited. Maybe I’d remember my dad next. Or maybe I’d spontaneously combust.

“Raphael isn’t a hallucination,” Cindy said, challenging me.

I didn’t want to debate. “They might not be hallucinations, but that doesn’t mean they’re real.”

She tilted her head. “Let’s get you to bed. You’re not making any sense.”

“I am too,” I said. I was high, but I knew what I was saying. Kind of.

“I’m listening,” she said. Her lips puckered as if she had a mouthful of sour candy.

“Sometimes Gloria sees stuff, and it’s not real,” I said. “She calls them cues.”

Mentioning Gloria’s name seemed to give legitimacy to my ramblings. Her face lost its sourness and softened.

“She’ll see something that, of course, looks really real, but really it’s more like a hint.” I searched for the right phrase. “Like something we’re sensing in the universe.”

“How can we sense things in the universe?”

“Like spiders,” I said. “They take down their webs before there’s ever a cloud in the sky. You know. They sense the pressure change or whatever and know it’s going to rain. Animals know when storms are coming, right?”

She was having difficulties deciphering my slurred words so I had to repeat myself twice before she got what I meant.

“So we’re spiders,” she repeated. “But what are we ‘sensing’ then?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it's probably got something to do with the replacement agents dying.”

Cindy shifted her weight. “Cooper has been going on for months about how we’re special. Replacement agents being natural evolutions of—”

“Cooper is an asshole and an X-men freak.” I went on to explain what Brinkley had said to me about the agent attacks. When I finished I wasn’t sure if Cindy was in shock or if she was pissed at me for not making any sense in my drug-induced state.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re leaving.”

The transition of scenery was instant. One minute Cindy was pulling me out of the chair in the examination room, and the next minute Gloria was laying me down on my bed at home. My bed was super soft and cool against my face. I squished a pillow against me and listened to them talk animatedly, while Gloria removed my shoes and tucked me under the covers. My eyes fluttered closed and their soft voices became disembodied sound waves, vibrating overhead.

“Where’s Lane?” I asked into the pillow.

“I sent him home,” Gloria replied.

I pouted my lips out to show my disapproval.

Cindy didn’t give a shit about my boy troubles. “She said there’ve been killings.”

“You think it’s connected to Raphael and Gabriel?” Gloria asked. There, she’d said it. Just put it all out there. No turning back now.

“Jesse thinks we’re picking up, uh, a disturbance in the force or whatever.”

“It’s possible,” Gloria said. “I’ve long since believed that my visions weren’t supernatural. I’m just sensitive to the world around me. I sense the natural order and can predict how it will play out based on the present course. Humans are habitual. Every single one of us is traveling on a trajectory created by our own habits whether we realize it or not.”