Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (3 page)

Mara tensed up again and put down her fork.

Sam twisted up his arm to look at it. “Oh, Mom gave me that when I was a baby.”

“You mean, your stepmom, from the other version of here?” Abby said.

“I guess you could say that,” Sam said.

Abby pressed her lips together and nodded.

Mara exhaled and wished the meal would end.

Mara sat lotus-style on the round throw rug in front of the fireplace in the living room waiting for her mother. She picked at the loose pieces of yarn along the edge of the rug, imagined pulling one, unraveling the entire thing, and thought better of it. She leaned back and looked up at the rest of the room. A shiver ran down her spine.

“Have you started without me?” Diana said from the foot of the stairs in the short hallway that led into the living room.

“I’m not meditating, believe me. I was remembering the last time this room looked like this,” Mara said, surveying the space. “The night you went all
evil serpent queen
on me.”

Diana walked over and sat with her legs crossed on the floor in front of Mara. She placed a green crystal between them. Mara recognized it as the demontoid she had on the Oregon City Bridge that night she had confronted her possessed mother.

“You’re wearing your swami muumuu. I’m in real trouble, aren’t I?” Mara said. “Why don’t you just ground me like most parents? Why do we have to meditate before you lay down the law?”

“It’s a caftan, not a muumuu.”

“It’s burning my retinas. I think that pattern could induce seizures.”

“Close your eyes and shut your mouth, and your retinas will be fine.”

“But—”

“Cooperate or we’ll do a guided meditation instead.”

“Okay, please don’t tell me when to breathe in or out. It makes me feel like I’m taking a Lamaze class.”

“Last warning,” Diana said, holding up the green gem to catch the light. “Focus.”

Glimmers of green played across Mara’s face. She instinctively squinted for a second, then relaxed and stared deeper into the light until it engulfed her entire field of vision. The luminescence refracted and split into solid translucent panes of green light, and Mara could see her reflection bounce back and forth, as if she could see into infinity. She raised her hand, but her duplicates did not. They were not reflections. They were her counterparts, other versions of her in other places. Mara looked past them, deeper into the green light, trying to get her bearings, to figure out where she was.

In the distance an obelisk glowed, light pulsing through it from base to tip, thrumming to an unheard beat. An arm reached from behind the pillar; a hand slid down its side, caressing its shimmering surface. A leg stepped out of the darkness, writhing between darkness and light to the timing of the thrumming obelisk, pulling forward the torso of a woman who twisted side to side, flinging her long hair in dark waves across her face.

Mara could hear a whisper, more of a moaning chant, as the dancing figure slid her back alongside the obelisk and slinked around the corner. Now facing Mara, the figure became a twisting silhouette against the backlit stone. The chanting grew louder, and the woman bent forward, the green light catching her features: a serpent tattoo coiled on her forehead, its head diving down the bridge of her nose. It was Diana, not chanting but calling to her.

“Mara! Mara!” her mother shouted.

Mara’s eyes snapped open. In front of her face floated the green demontoid, spinning in midair, casting off beams of bright light that filled the room with an emerald glow.

Her mother sat across from her wide-eyed, her expression shifting from fear to wonder and back again. Diana stared into her daughter’s eyes and said, “What are you doing?”

Mara closed her eyes, shook her head and said, “Nothing.”

The glowing gem winked out and fell from the air into Diana’s hand. Diana leaned forward and touched Mara’s cheek. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I drifted off there for a few minutes, I guess.”

“I almost fell asleep too. I opened my eyes, and the entire room was filled with a dense green light. It almost seemed as if it had substance, like panes of glass reflecting thousands of images of us. For a moment, I was sure we were standing inside the crystal itself. Absolutely incredible! Did you do that?”

“I guess. It seems to happen if I focus intently in what feels like a daydream. It’s like I slip into the essence of the object or something.” Mara blushed and looked away. “I’m starting to sound like you. Pretty soon I’ll be burning incense and going into trances.”

Diana smiled. “I’m no expert, but that daydream of yours looked a lot like a trance to me. This happens when you focus on crystals? Are you tapping into some kind of energy?”

“It happened with a crystal before, but the last time it happened was with a bowling ball. It sorta floated like this crystal, but it caught fire instead of glowing.”

“A bowling ball? You were meditating over a bowling ball?”

“I was working on a bowling ball spinner at the shop, and it happened. Sam saw it. It’s a long story. Anyway I don’t think it’s just crystals, but I have to admit the experiences with the crystals are more—”

“Powerful? You’re drawing energy from them?”

“I’m not drilling for oil, Mom. We’re not talking Exxon Mobil here,” Mara said, rolling her eyes. “I was going to say
intense
. The crystals seem to help me tap into something. It’s like I can see into reality, into infinity, beyond the perception of this realm.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like some of my New Age friends. You’re practically spouting metaphysical dogma, if there were such a thing.”

Mara sighed. “Ping seems to think there is. He’s been helping me understand some of this stuff. You know, he crossed over from a different realm during the plane crash, right?”

Diana nodded. “Like your brother. I talk to Mr. Ping when I drop Sam off at the bakery. He’s a wonderful man. He took great care of Sam after they first crossed over. I’m sure he is a great mentor for you.”

“Why do you say that? What did he say about me?”

“No need to get paranoid. We haven’t discussed you at all. We mostly talk about how Sam is adjusting to his new reality, his tutoring with Mrs. Zimmerman and his work at the bakery. Mr. Ping told me that he is a professor of metaphysics and philosophy, or he was before, but he has not gone into any detail about it. Has he been teaching you some of his beliefs?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“And has it helped you understand what happened during the plane crash and what we went through on the Oregon City Bridge?”

“Yes, it has helped a lot. I’m not sure I understand all of it, but it has helped me put some context around everything.”

“So teach me what you’ve learned.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to talking about it right now. I think I need a little more time to absorb all of this. I know you’re trying to help, but—”

“This might come as a bit of a surprise to you, but everything I do and say isn’t designed to serve your needs, to help only you. You’re old enough now to understand that, don’t you think?” Diana pushed her hair over her ear with a finger, a sure sign she was getting her dander up. The set of her jaw left no doubt.

“Whoa, where did that come from?” Mara leaned back a little. “Maybe a little more meditation is in order.”

“Don’t push this off with a quip. I’m serious. You’re not the only one around here who’s gone through a lot lately. Sam’s living in a whole new world, and I have a fourteen-year-old son who I’ve only known for two weeks. You’re not the only one having to make adjustments, young lady.”

Mara looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. Why didn’t you say you needed to talk about it?”

Diana glared at her.

Mara raised her hands in front of her. “Right. You did. I assumed you were trying to manage me, and it never occurred to me that you needed to work it out too. You seem so grounded and accepting of everything. I mean, this stuff is right up your alley—all this metaphysical hinky hoodoo. I thought you were all copasetic with it.”

“Well, you were wrong. The notion of things beyond this physical world I can deal with. However, trying to kill my own daughter takes a little more time and effort.”

Juaquin Prado slid into the red leatherette booth that smelled of decades-old cigarettes, grease and beer. He grabbed a napkin from the metal dispenser that also served as a holder of keno slips, and wiped away the rings of water and bits of food that remained on the table. Grimacing, he looked around the tavern-slash-neighborhood-restaurant, the name of which he could never remember. He always came in the back door of the cinder-block structure where there was no signage, so he simply referred to the place as
The Chicken
because it smelled like the seldom-changed deep fryers in the kitchen behind the bar.

In front of the bar, a couple regulars slumped over their drinks while the bartender, a frenetic rail-thin woman of forty, ran back and forth dropping drinks and making a few quips, as close as she could come to flirting with the demands on her time. Occasionally a customer would raise a hand, while sitting at one of the video poker machines along the wall at the end of the bar, and she would jog over to them, grab their credit card, run back to the register and return with more cash to feed into the machines.

A pudgy, balding man stepped out of the gloom into the ambient glow of the video poker machines and stopped at the end of the booth where Prado sat.

“Hey, stranger,” Pudgy said. He levered himself into the booth by grabbing the edge of the table with latex-gloved hands, sucking in his gut and hopping across the seat in three short bursts. His face reddened with the effort.

Prado inclined his head slightly, causing his brow to cast shadows over his eyes. “Merv. You’ve not been returning my calls.” He had a deep, sonorous voice and a subtle, almost undetectable lisp, a hiss of air on the end of his
S
s without the tongue that would turn them into a full-on
th
sound. Most people weren’t sure if it was an accent or a speech impediment, and most people never had the nerve to ask.

Merv’s hands fluttered over the table edge nervously. “I’ve been dealing with some stuff since the plane crash. It’s been kinda crazy, you know?”

“This
stuff
you’ve been dealing with, it keeps you from returning my calls?” Prado asked. “It keeps you from taking care of business, meeting your obligations?”

“Man, we ain’t got no business or obligations since they pulled us out of that river seven weeks ago. Everyone thinks I’m a doctor, a freaking dermatologist of all things. Don’t things seem a little strange to you since we got on that flight to San Francisco?”

The bartender walked up to their booth with a pad in her hand. “You gents want something to drink?”

Prado said, “Hi, Linda. We’ll take a pitcher of the usual.”

She looked up from her pad. “I’m sorry, what’s the usual for you guys? Have I served you before?”

Merv’s hands fluttered and pointed at her. “See? Strange.”

Prado made a calming gesture with his own hands. “We’ll take whatever light beer you have on tap. Thanks.”

She scrawled on the pad and said, “Anything to eat?”

“No thanks,” Prado said.

As she left, Merv leaned forward and whispered, “You’re a dermatologist too. That’s what we were doing on that plane. We were going to a skin-care products convention. That’s what everyone thinks. We are friggin’ dermatologists, and
our
office keeps calling me wanting to know when we’re going to come back to work. Apparently there’s an epidemic of zits over on the west side of town that we’re supposed to do something about. Haven’t you heard any of this?”

“I’ve heard. That’s why I’ve been calling, to see if your . . . perspective had changed since our plane went into the river.”

“You bet it’s changed. It’s like we took off in one world and crashed into a different one. I’ve got a friggin’ wife outta nowhere, man. A wife! Well, I had a wife. I think she’s pretty much took off after—”

Prado sighed and said, “Okay. Tell me what you were doing on that flight. Where were you going?”

Merv stared out into the bar to make sure no one was listening and said, “
We
were going to San Francisco, you know, to deliver the drive and pick up the payment.”

“The drive?”

“The flash drive with the source code on it for the wireless payment system.”

Prado’s brow furrowed. “We wrote software code?”

A crestfallen look melted across Merv’s features. “Now you’re doing it, talking craziness.”

“Answer the question.”

“No, we
stole
the code. We were taking it down to our client in the Bay Area. We were hired to get the code and take it down there. Why do
you
think we were on the plane?”

“I was on my way to San Diego, on business.”

“So the way you remember it, we were going to San Diego.”

“Not
we
. Me. I don’t remember ever meeting you before, but I saw your name in the paper, on the list of survivors from Flight 559. Now that I see you, you look familiar. Maybe you sat next to me. I’m not sure.”

“Great. That makes no sense. You called me and told me to meet you here. Why would you do that if we have never met before?”

“We are partners in a dermatology practice, remember? I got your number at the office. It took a while to get out of there. I think a couple patients are going to be surprised when they find they have prescriptions for drugs that don’t exist.”

“How’d you know we come to The Chicken?”

“Again,
I
come here occasionally for a beer. I don’t know you.”

“Why were you going to San Diego?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, if we’re gonna keep being partners.”

Prado slowly rolled his eyes, then locked them on Merv. He took a sip of beer and stared for a moment like a cat trying to decide if the mouse in front of him was worth the effort. As beads of sweat broke out on Merv’s upper lip, Prado said, “Partners in what, dermatology or petty larceny?”