Luminous Part 22

"Sissy!" she cried.

"I'm here!" the familiar voice shouted back. "I'm coming."

The snick-click of the lock gave way and Consuela pushed into the room, wrapping her friend in a hug.

"Thank G.o.d," Consuela breathed with a squeeze, and let go.

Consuela shook where Sissy's lone hand touched her arm. "It's Tender! I saw him!" she said. "Tender's got a sword!"

Sissy gaped. "A sword?"

"At Maddy's. He killed Maddy. Then he tried to kill me!" Consuela shouted.

The Watcher stood, stunned. "He attacked you?"

Consuela nodded. "Then he tried to kill V!"

"With a sword?"

"With scissors! With phantom Flow scissors!" Consuela squeezed her eyes, knowing that she was babbling.

"Where's V?" Sissy sounded scared.

"He got away."

"Good. Great. Okay." She grabbed a dry-erase marker and wrote a v on the mirror. Her right hand was missing, so she scribbled with her left. "He'll see this. And at least we have that," Sissy said, and pointed upward with the pen. Tacked above the door was the roll of fax paper on which were handwritten runes in flaking, brown paint. Not paint-blood. Old blood. The Yad's? Sissy gave a half nod, her one eye glossy. "Yehudah made it for me as a last-ditch defense. We weren't sure if the ward could work this way, but I thought I'd put it up, just in case."

Consuela stared at the banner. There were no licking, black flames. She doubted it worked. It drooped above them like a dead paper flag.

"Tender's killing everyone," she said, her panic growing no matter how she swallowed it back. "Why is he killing everyone?" She clawed at her memories. "He kept talking about making the most impact-he showed me something with ants . . ."

"Slow down, slow down-you're not making any sense." Sissy tried to sound soothing, which was odd; Consuela had been the one comforting Sissy as of late. "I've got pieces searching," she said. "And you guys were right. Look." Consuela allowed herself to be led to her usual chair and sat down, feeling the unfamiliar sc.r.a.pe of the armrests against her thighs. Was this chair always so narrow?

Sissy fell into her desk chair, fingers flying comfortably over the keyboard, seeking calm in what she did best. "They say that once there used to be attendants for this-a.s.sistants, couriers, that sort of thing . . ." she said absently as she typed. "Now I use UPS." She was at the Web site, punching tracking numbers into their pull-down menus. Her voice sounded almost flippant as she concentrated. "I play this little game with myself about what part of me will find stuff first," Sissy muttered as Consuela looked over her shoulder. The screen was all confirmed shipping orders and addresses around the country. She squinted, trying to make sense of it, and rubbed her arms violently.

"Here we go . . ." Sissy gave a wicked little smirk. "The eyes have it."

"What?" Consuela stammered.

"Well, one eye, any way," Sissy said. "Because the d.a.m.n thing was a PO box number, I had to wait until they'd picked it up before I could look around. Tender's real name is Jason Talbot and he's at Mercy House in Willoughby, Ohio." She awkwardly wrote something on a Post-it note and handed it to Consuela, who stared at the little square of yellow paper as if it were a dead mouse.

"Bones?" Sissy prompted.

"We have to stop him," Consuela said, detached, uncomprehending. "Here. Now."

Sissy grabbed Consuela's hand in hers, crushing the note between them. She noticed then.

"Your hand . . ." Sissy began. Consuela pulled back, ashamed and embarra.s.sed. The shadow pulsed with pain.

"It happened . . ."

". . . when you lost one," Sissy finished for her, stroking the spot delicately. "It happens sometimes. It hurts, both inside and out. That's why we all need Tender. He doesn't just tend the Flow, he tends all of us, takes away the pain. He's supposed to, anyway. He's supposed to . . ." Her voice changed, shaking.

"Yehudah said he couldn't trust Tender. That no one was supposed to be here for so long, living off pain." Sissy squeezed their hands and shook her head. "We can't do anything to stop him here. In the Flow, he's too strong. And with weapons, who can stop him? Maddy's dead."

"Wish . . . ?" Consuela started.

"I've been looking. He's either hiding, or dead, too," Sissy said, her calm breaking at the edges in high-pitched quivers. "Who knows who'll be next?" But she knew. They both did.

Consuela shivered with renewed panic. Death had come so close, it had pierced right through her. She put a hand over her belly.

"You can come with me," she begged. "I barely got away . . ."

"I can't," Sissy said, and grabbed her arm, hard. "Listen, Consuela, I found him. I found Tender in the real world. We've got him. I can't go out there, not in one piece. I'll be safe here. I promise." She said it so she could believe it because Consuela couldn't. Sissy was placing all of their hopes in her.

"Now listen," Sissy added with a tinge of menace. "If anyone can appear in the world and put the fear of G.o.d into someone, it's you. Do you hear me?"

Consuela nodded, feeling numb.

Sissy shook her with a little emphasis, boring into Consuela with her one blue eye. "Do whatever you have to do," she said. "Once he sees you, he'll have to listen-he can't do anything to you there, he's only mortal. You're you. Go out there, find him, and get him to stop!" Her eyes hardened, her words d.a.m.ning: "He deserves to die!"

Sissy grabbed Consuela and gave her a quick kiss on both cheeks. "For luck," she said. "For Yehudah and Nikki and everyone else. We're counting on you. Without us, there's no Flow. No one to save them from Tender or Death."

Consuela struggled, uncertain and needing certainty. She wanted to ask Sissy so many questions. Why was this happening? Why Tender? How? How long had he been here? How long had she been gone? Where was her body in the real world, right now? Was she drugged up in some hospital on the brink of death? Did her parents know what happened? Was she missing, presumed dead? Or was she really dead and just didn't know it yet? She wanted to know more about life, about death, and most of all, about the Flow. She wanted to ask enough questions to hold back time. But Consuela knew none of the answers would make one bit of difference. She had to go. Right now. She had to live, or die now. Her choice. Right now.

Consuela disengaged gently. She walked under the banner of dried blood from a dead guy she'd met trying to protect a baby boy. It all seemed so impossible and unreal. Even her hatred for Tender, her newfound fear of scissors, seemed to belong to someone else-some other skin long undone. At the door, she stopped.

"Abacus . . ." Consuela said in soft confession. "I never saw him. Tender said he was out and I believed him. He's probably dead, too," she whispered. "Forgive me?"

The Watcher nodded. "I forgive you," she said quietly. "You know, we called him William Chang, but his real name was Weizhe. Remember that. The living are left to remember." Her voice dropped to a whisper as Consuela opened the door.

"I am Cecily Amelia Gardner," Consuela heard her say. "Remember me, too."

RUNNINg. Again. The Flow could be navigated once you got the knack. Wish had the knack, but unfortunately, Tender did, too. Wish stumbled while looking over his shoulder as he ran.

He wasn't here, yet, but like a shark with blood in the water, Tender could smell betrayal in the Flow. Wish knew-Tender wasn't here, but would be soon. And, like a shark, Tender was made for killing.

Wish didn't know if he swam with the fishes or was closing in on sh.o.r.e.

It didn't matter anymore.

He'd done what he could. For now.

He ran.

CONSUeLa debated appearing as a figure aflame, but the fire felt as slippery as oil as she struggled it on. It felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.

There's no time!

The thought made her angry and her skin flared in response. Consuela tore the fire from her body and let it whisper to the floor. It burned, but not hot enough for her.

She burned. Frightened, angry, and doubtful, she burned.

Consuela looked into the lipstick-lettered mirror, searching for truth in her own sockets-but, in truth, searching for V. Instead, she noticed herself, her glittering bones streaked with red. Stripped of her skin, it was as if she had peeled away what it meant to be human, leaving behind the hard, cold, beautiful, and terrible truth that Death eventually comes to us all.

This is me.

Bones. Angel Bones.

She didn't need a skin. She could go as herself. Life. Death.

Bones stood grim in the mirror.

She was coming for Tender.

If that didn't stop him, perhaps nothing would.

tHe name and the address hummed in her brain as she settled to a stop. Sissy hadn't needed to tell her that this was the place; Consuela recognized the door.

She stepped through it while a nurse in purple scrubs pa.s.sed by, carrying a tray of pills in plastic cups like tiny bowls of Halloween candy. There was a quiet bustle in the room punctuated by strange, wordless sounds, the sc.r.a.pe and rattle of chairs, the snap of checkers. Soothing, steady instructions from male nurses in loose orange clothing ran a lulling undertone, while beneath it all, a rich baritone voice read aloud.

Consuela hesitated in the spotlight reality of the ward, the invulnerable feeling of righteousness evaporating in the face of something so mortal. It was bright and vibrant and colorful. It smelled like a hospital under heat lamps. It smelled like Tender.

She turned around slowly as she walked, taking in the spa.r.s.ely furnished room and its spa.r.s.ely dressed patients and its vividly patient crew. She wandered to where she knew the chair would be, in front of a large window, the sunlight playing merrily with the muted colors dancing in her bones. Opal rainbows reflected on the walls in sprays of aurora light. She circled around to look directly at the tall boy in the chair.

He stared, sightless, out the window, his face hollow and slack. His eyes reflected the pale light outside, unenc.u.mbered by eyebrows that were clipped short to smears of five o'clock shadow. His head was similarly buzz-cut; the blond bristles made his ears stick out like trophy handles and his neck seem extra long. A light blue T-shirt hung straight from his shoulders. His hands were folded, politely useless in his lap. He was neat and clean and utterly still. Without his c.o.c.ky, charismatic spark, he was pale and calm as milk.

This wasn't Tender. If not for the pug nose and the shape of his lips, Consuela would not have recognized him as Jason Talbot either.

Her attention flicked to the man sitting in the opposite chair. He was a large man, bald and ruddy, wearing a business suit and a pair of gla.s.ses that nestled against unsurprisingly thick, bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows. Consuela remembered seeing those gla.s.ses before. The table beside him still held the adjustable lamp and a fresh cup of coffee. The man read from the large book in his lap, its t.i.tle written in stamped foil letters.

"' . . . To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything . . . ' "

His rich narrator's voice told Consuela everything.

He had been reading to Jason for a very long time. Not just today, but perhaps every day. He'd read reams of pages from huge, old books; hundreds, thousands, because he thought that Jason would like the stories, or the cadence of words, or might even remember the sound of his father's voice. There might once have been a hope that the words would make Jason smile or cry or come back to life, though the words of his family thus far had not done so. There was something in his timbre that said that that's how it had started, anyway. Sometime long ago.

Now he read because he had promised himself-or Jason or someone else-that he would. That promise kept him coming back and reading from the great works of literature instead of the old, battered children's books that littered the plastic hospital bins. He read Jason the books a young man could appreciate, the ones he'd be expected to know in school; books filled with ideas a clever mind would find challenging and intriguing, a mind that might be still lurking somewhere just out of reach.

His father read because he'd promised to read, and he had a good voice for reading-but now the intonations were tired, the pauses skipped, and the vowels flat. Once in a while Mr. Talbot might show some interest in a line or a well-written phrase, but more often he read with the unconscious awareness of having an audience, of being overheard by someone, even if that someone was not his son.

Mr. Talbot paused in his reading of A Tale of Two Cities to take a sip of coffee and adjust his gla.s.ses on his own pug nose.

". . . 'You can bear a little more light?'" he continued, "'I must bear it, if you let it in . . . '"

Consuela backed away, b.u.mping into the windowsill. She held her breath and watched Tender's face register nothing of this world. She waved a shimmering hand in front of him. Iridescent light caressed his sharp features, pa.s.sing over his face like mist. A grayful of nothing, she thought. Like cream poured into coffee that billowed to fill the darkness, changing the nature of everything it touched, the image of Tender clouded and revealed itself to her.

The world snapped open.

The world snapped shut.

And, in that moment, Consuela understood.

Tender had lived years-nearly his whole life-in the Flow; a place meant for the few who were caught in the cracks for a time. They were the souls that kept others from crossing too soon, filling the porous, pitted holes where the living might slip unseen. They were a last defense, guarding those who still belonged to life as they, themselves, no longer did. But this was only supposed to be a temporary occupation. They died, like everyone died, before the Flow might overtake them. New angels arrived every day to save the living and take one last dance on the heads of pins.

They were young, but each of them had experienced some life, some history, to make sense of the unreal. They manifested their extraordinariness-their abilities reflecting who they really were. They took some small part of what was real with them so that they could adjust. But they knew that this wasn't real, wasn't permanent-Sissy, Wish, Joseph, and V-they knew the difference between the real world, their past lives, and the Flow.

But Tender never did.

She could imagine that tiny window where Jason might touch the real world and feed a mind hungry to understand and be understood; one that wanted, needed, to take control of a world that he could affect, to make up for the one in which he had no control.

Jason Talbot had been trapped in this body, trapped in the Flow, with no escape, no end, and no handle on the real. The Flow was only meant to be a layover, with a continuous changing of the guard-but Tender had lived there all of his life without ever living his own.

Never ending, never changing.

What would that do to a strong-willed mind, naked and brilliant, but unable to touch? How long had he been staring out an imaginary, one-way window? How long had he been trapped in the Flow? What would he do with his power over pain once he'd learned to control it?

Consuela looked deeply into Tender's dark-as-night eyes and saw, reflected, tiny bright skulls. She touched his face with her hand. He felt nothing. She felt that, too.

He couldn't see her. She couldn't tell him. She couldn't stop him here in the world. There wasn't anything anyone could do.

A wordless shriek made her start and Mr. Talbot stopped reading. A girl in a pink dress and violently copper hair gaped at Consuela, screaming and slapping the side of her head. Two nurses hurried to help. Consuela stood up, surprised and embarra.s.sed, and spun away in a blur of glimmer and shine.

CONSUELA ran to her room and picked up her skin, taking comfort in the tactile memory of being human, once, even if only temporarily. She hugged herself to her chest. She'd been alive, she'd been real, she'd had a home and a family and friends and a life, strangely sad that Tender had had none of those things-or, worse, he had them, but didn't know it, or-worst of all-that he knew it, and mourned it every day.

She hoped that maybe he really didn't know how much his father missed him and loved him. Then she was mad at herself for feeling anything for Tender. Then guilty for being heartless. She had no eyes for crying, yet tears spiked the corners of her sockets. Consuela shivered and felt rippling-sick.

She draped her skin gently on her bedsheet and turned toward her mirror . . .

No.

All the mirrors had been splashed black. The paint, dried and crusty and caked in layers, had been smeared in thick liquid shrouds.

She picked at it, pulling off bits and soft chunks that stuck in globs to her finger bones. Consuela took the screwdriver off of the desk and tried chipping the seam between gla.s.s and frame, trying to loosen a sheet like ice on a windshield. She heard a squealing sc.r.a.pe, and stopped. She'd scratched the gla.s.s. What would that do if V needed to get through? She dropped the screwdriver on the carpet, speckled with dried black drops.

"V," she whispered, and touched the cold, lumpy surface. Someone had come into her room and painted his doors shut. As one of the Flow, they'd changed it-her place-and it wouldn't change back. Her room had been violated, vandalized like Joseph Crow's. She felt victimized, hunted, trapped.

Tender, the fear whispered. She spun in place, searching. Even when she was Bones, he could affect her this way.

She had to get out of here. She had to find V.

Running to her bathroom, she found all the mirrors obliterated in the same sloppy, tarlike ma.s.sacre. Consuela ignored them and rummaged through the collection of upended lipsticks, eye pencils, mascaras, and base in her sink; she snapped open case after case of shadow and blush, looking for even the tiniest mirror.

She saw it near her curling iron: a silver compact case that she recognized, although it wasn't hers. Gratefully, she clicked it open, heedless of its oddly shimmering surface. She pressed her finger against it, willing V to be there.

And he was! She could feel it!

Consuela surrendered to the touch of his hand and the telltale pull, not realizing until it was too late that he hadn't drawn her forward, but was trying to push her back.