Pieces of Hope (33 page)

Tears
burned my eyes, but I rubbed them away. I had cried more here than I had the
entire seventeen years of my life. “Do you think that’s selfish?” I choked. “Or
crazy?”

“I’ve
seen crazier.” Mac sent me a reassuring smile. “But lots of things would go
through a person’s mind if they were faced with the choice that you have to
make. That’s probably why most of us aren’t burdened with it.”

“And
what about the other part, the selfish part?”
         

“Maybe a
little,” he admitted. “Then again, most of the living usually are.” He picked a
green leaf from a nearby branch, examined its tiny veins. “We’re all fragile,
doll. We all have weaknesses. And, if we’re going to have any, I suppose a
weakness for love is one of the best ones to have.”

That’s
when I knew he had listened a little too hard. I smashed my lips together to
keep from speaking, but there was a broken part inside of me that started to
feel better.

Mac
tossed the torn leaf into the wind. “I wouldn’t give a second thought to what
happened at that other Station with Daniel. It seems he’s picked up a new
talent, one that would make him impossible to resist. There’s that, of course, and
the length of your connection.”

“But we
were only together a year,” I said, confused. Surely, from his perspective, a
year had to be next to nothing in measures of time. “That’s not a long
connection, is it?”

“Yes,
well . . .” Mac hedged, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

“Mac . .
.?”

“I
probably shouldn’t have said that,” Mac muttered.

“But you
didn’t say a—” I skipped quietly ahead, listening to his thoughts. Then I
gasped. “I did? I knew Daniel in another lifetime?” I listened for a few words
longer until Mac changed channels on me, and I groaned. “Come on, what are you
hiding?”

“Oh, now
. . . don’t pressure me, doll. I don’t think I can—”

In my
head, I heard Cat scream M-A-A-A-A-C! And I covered my ears.
     

It was a
gross understatement, but I said, “Wow! She really is loud. How long were the
two of you married?”

“It
shows, huh? Fifty-three years. Seven less than
Creesie
and Joe.” With a wink, he added, “By the way, Cat never did wear the pants in
the family. I just let her think she did.”

“Okay,
nosey . . . whatever you say.” My laugh ended in a sigh as I thought back on
something terrible. And wonderful. And unforgiveable.

“Don’t
worry. He’ll forgive you.” And for the second time today, I was glad he had
eavesdropped. “You know, Ethan has a very big heart.”

“So
everyone keeps telling me—the big heart part, anyway.”

“It’s
true. We’ve known him . . .” Mac’s voice broke off. He slammed the heel of his
hand against his forehead.

“You
knew Ethan from before, too!” I shouted, surprised that I hadn’t thought of
this. I was definitely slipping. “And
me
!
Is that why you’re so busy trying to protect me?” I considered the options.
“Were you and I friends? Relatives?” Horror-struck, I shrieked, “Oh, no! Were
we boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“Now,
doll, don’t go letting your imagination run away with you.” Mac snorted a
laugh. “But that’s a good one.”

Cat
screamed again, this time urging us both to return. We ignored her.

“Tell
me,” I pleaded. “I won’t tell a living soul. Are you helping me because we
shared another lifetime together? Is that what you guys do?”

“It’s a
dead thing, you wouldn’t understand.” Mac looked torn, as if he wished he could
tell me but couldn’t. Then he glanced around nervously. “Let me put it this
way, I could tell you—”

I
gasped. “But then you’d have to kill me?”

“Heavens
no.” Mac grinned. “Then Cat would kill us both.”

We
laughed together, leaned back against the rough shingles, and watched puffy
clouds move across the blue sky. The clouds kept forming shapes as I watched
them. I thought Mac was doing it—a dog, a cat—and then I knew for sure when the
cat snarled and began to chase the short, kind-faced dog. After a while, my
thoughts, like the clouds, began to drift.

“Why do
you think Daniel landed at that Station?” I asked him. Of all my questions,
this was the one that terrified me the most. It caused me to obsess over
whether he deserved to be there, or not. I held my breath as I waited, trying
to appear unconcerned.

Mac
stared off at a cloud. I saw the shape before he thought it—a black panther in
a low crouch, grey-blue eyes, its tail flicking in a rhythmic motion. “
Creesie
already told you. He was lost.” He looked back at
me, head tilted. “Even the best of us get lost sometimes.”

I looked
away. I didn’t want to admit that Mac was talking about me as well. “But in
that other lifetime was Daniel evil?” My voice shook at the end. Just then, the
panther leaped into a cloud.
   

“He
seems to be good and bad, likeable and then not. Somehow, Daniel is capable of
being both at the same time. That part, I admit, is scary. Still, if I look at
what he did for you at that Station, it leads me to think that he’s more than
capable of bringing out his good side when he wants to.”

“Did
something happen in that other lifetime?” I begged. “The one where you knew
him? What could be so terrible that you can’t tell me about it now?”
 

Mac’s
face went pale as if I’d hit a nerve. He paused. “I’m more concerned about the
connections Daniel might have made by accident. It’s the reason we kept our
distance from him when he first got on the elevator.” As he said this, I could
see them again—pressing their bodies nearer to the icky black walls, away from
Daniel. At least there’d been a logical reason for it.

“You
mean, if Daniel connected with something, then connected with any of you?”

“Then
all of us would be tied to
it
.” Mac
emphasized the last word in such a way that it conjured up every scary image I
could think of.
     

“And”—I
hesitated—“what do you think
it
is?”

He
pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“Tell
me!” I was doing my best to tune in to his thoughts, but Mac kept shifting the
frequency on me. Several times I nearly had it, but then they’d slip away. It
was like trying to hold sand in your hand.

Mac
shook his head harder.

“But I
came in contact with something, didn’t I?” And I’d kissed Daniel. “Aren’t I in
danger, too? Aren’t we all connected? Me, Daniel, It . . . You?”

“I’m not
sure you’re its type,” Mac blurted. “Well, you are and you aren’t.”

My
eyebrows flew up. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or rejected. “What do
you mean by that? I’m not its type?”

“It . .
. um,
he
prefers females. But not to
steal souls. It . . .
 
um,
he
wants to connect through your
memories. Since he has none of his own, none other than ones he acquires, it
makes the bond more concrete.” Refusing to meet my gaze, he said, “I think the
one that had you in its grasp got carried away, though. He became so lost in
his desire to retrieve every last one of your memories that he came very close
to killing your physical body.”

This
confirmed my suspicions. The strangling. The dying. It was real.

Mac
shook his head. “I just don’t know what he was doing there. It doesn’t make a
lot of sense.”

“What
are you saying? Isn’t that where it—
he
—hangs
out?”

“No,”
Mac said, his face pale again. “He and his kind usually wander the borders of
life and death.”

There was an actual border
? Big swallow.

“Anyway,”
I rambled on, “they don’t have that great of an imagination so there’s nothing
to really worry about. Right?”

“Not
from the depraved, no.” Now Mac visibly swallowed. He wasn’t telling me the
whole story, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

“But if
that evil being isn’t part of the depraved, what else is out there that I don’t
know about?”
 
 

“Too
much.” Mac changed the subject. “But like
Creesie
said, you’re probably more trouble than you’re worth. I’m quite sure you broke
his cold, black heart.” He gave a weak laugh. I faked a laugh with him. As we
sat up, he ruffled the hair on my head.

“This
place keeps getting weirder and weirder,” I said. But there was something else
troubling me.

“Once
you’re here on a permanent basis, it all seems part of the natural order.” Mac
suppressed a smile on this next part. “And we don’t usually ‘hang out’ here on a
daily basis. We tend to favor the more peaceful places . . .”

But I
wasn’t listening. I was catching up with his last few comments . . .
I was and wasn’t its type
. .
.
I was more trouble than I was worth no
w . . .
I’d probably broke its cold, black heart
. . . I was reading
between the lines, recalling the unsettling emotions that had came over me at
the other Station when my stomach dropped suddenly.

“My—my
soul wasn’t being stolen, was it? I asked numbly. There was a slow-firing in my
brain as I began to connect the dots. “It—he—he was seducing me!”

I found
Mac’s eyes. He nodded grimly. “It’s the reason you felt so out of your head.
Sethos
has quite the reputation in our world. His talents,
though warped, are limitless. That’s who I think Daniel picked up his new talent
from.” Under his breath, he muttered, “And apparently, he’s a pretty fast
learner.”

I tried
to block that from my mind and buried my face in my hands. Mac patted my knee.
A couple moments of awkward silence followed.

“Now
that
Sethos
knows what Charlotte can do, you don’t have anything to
be afraid of, doll. Besides, like I said, he prefers to meld with males not
females. Then, through his gift of seduction, he makes the females fall in love
with him.”

“Oh,
yeah, you’re right,” I mumbled through my hands. “That’s comforting.”

Mac
reflected for a moment. Something was troubling him. “No worries for you,” he
said, a little too lightly. “I just hope
Sethos
didn’t show up to make contact with the only other living being there.”

I
dropped my hands and stared at him. “Daniel?” My voice sounded tinny.

“But Charlotte protected him
too,” Mac reminded me in a rush. “So Daniel is nearly as much trouble as you
are. Oh, and he’s not about to lie down and take it . . . Look how he became a
wild animal to keep himself safe from the depraved. Even I have to admit that’s
darned clever. The boy could outwit a fox in a henhouse.” For a flash of a
second, I thought Mac admired Daniel. Or was I reading too much into it?
       

Cat’s
insistent screams sounded again in our heads. He reached for my hand. “We
really should be going. An angry Cat is never a good thing.”

We leapt
from the rooftop and in one fluid movement found ourselves standing on the
steps outside of
Creesie’s
front door. I noticed I wasn’t
even slightly out of breath. Then I thought of something funny. “I wish I moved
this fast in the living realm. I could really kick Brody’s butt on the crags.”
I laughed. “Oh, that’s right, I already do.”

Mac
didn’t return my smile. He looked at me as if he were about to breathe his last
breath. My body went rigid. Dead people’s moods weren’t the easiest to predict.

“One
last thing before we go,” he said quietly.
 

My
nerves were on edge. I hoped it wasn’t something else I
needed
to hear.

“You really
are the cat’s meow, doll . . . so much like your mother that it makes my heart
beat faster just to see you smile. I see her everywhere in you.”

“Aha!” I
pointed a finger in his face. “You also knew Vivienne!”

He
plunged ahead, ignoring my comment. “When the time comes, promise me you’ll
trust your heart. If you can do that, there’s no such thing as a wrong choice.”

“I—um .
. .”
 

He placed
his hands on my shoulders. “It’s true that you may feel love for both of them
and, popular opinion aside, I believe anyone’s capable of loving two people at
the same time—”

I
pretended not to know what he was talking about, but I knew I’d fallen short.
It wasn’t easy to fake something when the other person could hear your every
thought.

“Trouble
is, three really is a crowd,” he said sagely. “Promise me, when the time comes,
you’ll take a moment and listen to your heart.”

Creesie
had obviously looked ahead in time and shared it
with the group. I wasn’t so much angry as envious. With his hands still resting
on my shoulders, I closed my eyes in defeat. Did this mean more choices? That
was the last thing I needed, especially one as difficult as choosing between
Daniel and Ethan. My new love and my first love? Each one so different and yet
so much alike and I loved them both because of that. The pressure was too much
to bear. My shoulders weren’t nearly wide enough.
 

When I
opened my eyes, Mac was watching my reaction, his blue eyes peering at me from
under his cap. “I—I promise—I guess.” I got all choked up as he gave me a hug.

“Ready?”
he asked, releasing me. I nodded, dabbing my leaky eyes. To my relief, Mac
didn’t say anything further, nor did I ask anything else of him.

When he
opened the door, we returned not to
Creesie’s
living
room, but entered the bright little corridor located just outside the
elevator’s entrance.

My
stomach dropped. Ethan’s voice was the first thing I heard. From the sound of
it, something terrible had happened. He wasn’t speaking so much as quietly
moaning my name. What had happened?
 
Hadn’t I only just left him?