***
The next morning, my parents were all smiles. Colby had become a jittery mess like I’d never seen her before. In fact, I’d never seen her nervous about anything before. She always carried a charismatic version of pompousness that couldn’t be rivaled.
She paced the kitchen as I tried, in vain, to finish breakfast. I was taking my time on purpose, just using this opportunity to make her wig out a little bit more than she already was. It was ridiculous. Every time she passed a different surface she would tap on it twice—once for her nervousness and once for her frustration with me for taking so long.
She groaned so loudly when I asked my mom for more orange juice that I figured I’d pushed her to the limit.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
“Well, I’m glad the Synod wasn’t waiting, you’d be Resin ground meat.”
“Let’s go. You’re extra snarky today. Rebekah will get a kick out of that.”
We said our goodbyes to my parents and flashed to Rebekah’s kitchen. Rebekah didn’t have a phone, that being one of the modern day conveniences that she openly shunned, so there was no way of announcing our visit.
We flashed directly into her kitchen. She’d once told Colby not to flash into her living room, because she often had canasta games in there with her friends and didn’t want to frighten them. Colby agreed, not wanting to be the person that put an old woman over the cliff.
Colby’s wake faded quickly, but I could still see it was tinged red along the edges. Colby’s wake was never red.
Something was very wrong.
Several sensations hit me at once. The first was the temperature of the place. It was wintertime in Louisiana, and one of the reasons Rebekah agreed to move there after she was dismissed was the jungle-like heat. She often said when she got too cold her joints rebelled.
It was cold as ice in the house.
Colby was more still than a marble statue, staring at something behind me. I turned, expecting to find a robber or something worse. Instead, I found a half-eaten peach, perched alongside a paring knife—the fruit had already begun to spoil.
The thing about Rebekah was she was so put together—nothing was ever out of place.
Colby screaming Rebekah’s name broke the silence. We didn’t bother to walk, we flashed throughout the house. Every room was checked in seconds except the bathroom. When we were kids we’d called it the blood bathroom. Everything in the room, from the tiles on the floor, to the claw-foot bathtub, and even the toilet were bright red, the color of a poisonous apple.
We stood in front of the door, which was shut. Colby’s hand shook so much when she tried to turn the knob that I had to help her with it. At first glance, there was nothing wrong. Everything was in place, just like Rebekah liked it. The stark white towels that so contrasted the red tiles and fixtures were all in order, the floors were waxed to a gleam—everything but the shower curtain.
The atmosphere in that tiny room palpitated with sin. Wickedness and sorrow thickened the oxygen and my throat closed a bit, wanting to keep the wretched air out. My heart pounded, expecting the worst.
Colby took one step toward the bathtub and before I could stop her, she jerked the shower curtain open, nearly ripping it from its keeper.
And inside was Colby’s grandmother.
The water surrounding Rebekah matched the shade of red she adored so much. Her head hung back over the opposite side of the bathtub, revealing a large gape in her neck. Her impeccable pearls drooped over the tub’s side.
Someone had slit her throat wide open.
The edges of my vision clouded and my heartbeat drummed out the sound of Colby’s soul-wrenching screams.
The Prophetess, the messenger, born to give our species divine direction and knowledge lay murdered before us. It would take someone beyond reprieve, beyond forgiveness to pull off a crime so mutinous. It was a sign to me—a sign sure to hurt Colby—which was the same as slitting my throat.
There was no time for planning what to do next, the only thing left to do was catch Colby before her head hit the bathroom floor. Because as soon as she stopped wailing at the sight of her grandmother, her knees buckled, as she apparently realized the truth of the situation. I didn’t think. I didn’t consider my options or weigh what was best for anyone in the situation but her. Lifting her up, I pulled her against my chest and got out of there.
The first place I thought of was her mom’s house. She’d want to go there. It felt like the situation was steering me—like I had no control over my movements or decisions. Straight into her bedroom I travelled—except in the irrationality of my motions, I landed right next to her dresser, and everything on top of it turned over in my haste. I set Colby down on her bed. Nothing was ever too much for Colby to handle—nothing.
Her passing out scared the hell out of me.
“What in the hell is going on in here, Colby?” Sable barreled into the room, guns blazing, until she saw Colby laying on the bed and me, standing there, looking like an idiot—or a coward, I didn’t know which.
“Rebekah,” was the only thing I could mutter and it killed me how pathetic I sounded.
With no hesitation, Sable was gone, leaving a scarlet and gray wake with grainy notes. Seconds later, she came back, and for the next few minutes, she and I stood in a stale silence. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were already ringed with red.
“I can’t believe it,” Colby’s mother murmured.
“It’s my fault.” Colby’s body wracked with sobs as she made the hollow confession.
We both rushed to her side, but she jolted upright, refusing to accept the comfort we offered. She wrestled her phone out of the pocket of her dress and shoved it into her mom’s face. “See? They summoned me yesterday and I ignored it. They told me. They told me that if I didn’t comply that they would…”
“What else, Colby? What else did they say to you? Why couldn’t you just have gone when they summoned you?”
By the end of Sable’s questions, her hands were clamped down on Colby’s arms as if she could shake the answers out of her. I crossed the room, stalking around the bed and putting myself between them. I’d never seen Sable get even the tiniest bit angry at Colby. Even when she was in trouble, Sable’s motherly instincts were closer to friendly than maternal.
Death will turn any sane person to the other side.
I spoke to her as calmly as I could, “Sable, you know we can’t handle it like any other human would. They’re going to ask you about funerals and what your plans are. Call my parents if you need help. My dad is good with the humans.”
Having a death in the Lucent ranks was a fickle business. Usually, we had the bodies taken to Portugal where we brought them to the original land that was once owned by Xoana’s father. The female Lucents are all buried there.
“You’re right, Theo. I just—I never thought. I can’t think. I don’t know how to.” She spoke in choppy nonsense.
“I know. We will meet you in Portugal. If I may have the honor, I will flash with Rebekah myself.”
“Flash with her?”
“I guarantee you, it’s perfectly safe. I swear I won’t let her go. This way, we can have the funeral as soon as you need to. I know Rebekah wouldn’t want you fussing over it too long. She would reach down from Paraíso and swat you on the back of the head, for sure.”
“Okay, yes, okay.”
And in a fluster, Sable flashed to take care of Rebekah’s parting memorial.
Visibly shaken, Colby hadn’t moved from her spot on the bed. I didn’t know about other people and the relationships they maintained with their grandparents. My grandparents were long gone by the time I was born. I did know that Colby worshipped the ground Rebekah walked on. In terms of people she revered and clamored to model herself after, Rebekah was second only to Xoana herself.
Sitting next to Colby, I tried to put my arm around her. I expected my strong, firm female to resist. Her sandy hair was plastered to the side of her fac
e with the glue of tears, and any color in her blush had been replaced by the stark milk of shock. She leaned over, collapsed against my side, and finally began to really cry. Before, her cry was the side effect of shock, but these tears soaked into my chest—these were the real cries of debilitating sadness.
Being unable to console her was nearly unbearable. She just cried and cried, while mumbling inconsistencies.
It was my honor to hold her while she mourned.
After an hour, she finally crossed the line between inconsolable and semi-coherent.
Something snapped inside of her. Shifting away from me, she savagely wiped her eyes as if she had no right to mourn her grandmother.
“We need to go see mom and help her make arrangements. Then we need to get to Portugal and set everything up.” She stomped over to her closet and threw the doors open with such force that one of the doors protested by breaking free of the tracks and almost slamming into her. I caught it with one hand and pulled it away just before it nailed her. In her duress, Colby didn’t even notice. She started simple enough, moving hanger by hanger from right to left, callously inspecting each garment and finding it not up to her standards. Halfway through the rack, it all turned disastrous. Dresses, shirts and skirts were tossed behind her, each with a matching curse.
“Colby, I thought we were going to see your mom. What are you doing, Querida?”
A long, lithe finger was suddenly in my face. “No you don’t, Theodore Ramsey. Don’t you sexy Portuguese-talk me into whatever you’re talking me into. Look at this.” She thrashed her arms out toward the closet. “Colby Sage Evans—probably the best shopping diva in the entire world. The girl who flashes into Bloomingdale’s and H&M in the middle of the night to pick up the latest fashion trend—her grandmother dies and she doesn’t have one single white dress—that—would—ever—do Rebekah—justice. I’m just a failure.”
Lucents viewed death as another part of life. When we passed on, the families and friends wore white. Death was just another form of traveling for us—traveling into the light of the Almighty.
She’d broken down again. I ignored her self-reliant attitude and pulled her to me without a second thought. She cried for another three or four hours before coming back down from the mountain.