Sissy went vertical stiffly and hit the Morton bag, grabbing one of the remaining containers. She was more concerned about Jim than anything else, but that didn't mean she wanted Devina in here while they figured out exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. With hands that shook, she peeled off the little paper square over the spout, and then there was that hiss again as she closed the loop around the bathroom.
"Can you take care of this?" Ad said to Eddie.
"It's outside of what I can heal."
Sissy shut her eyes and thought, No, no, this is not how this ends. It just can't be.
"Is he dead?" she heard herself ask as she went back and crouched down. "Is he?"
Eddie didn't meet her eyes. "No. But he's gonna be soon."
Chapter
Thirty-nine
As the archangel Nigel stared up at the Manse of Souls' great walls, his eyes were focused on the new victory flag that waved next to the other two. But he wasn't thinking about Jim's victory or dwelling on the fact that although it was customary for the savior to come up and mark the occasion with a visit, the angel had not, in fact, made an appearance.
No, Nigel was tied up in his head. He was well aware of what had transpired and was transpiring down below--Jim was on the verge of passing away, and given that they were heading into the final round, Nigel should be taking initiative and interceding. After all, the Creator did allow interaction with the savior by him, and curing a head wound, one could argue, was a sort of "interaction."
Instead, he waited for the summoning. And was rather unimpressed by his apparent willingness to use this dire situation for his own, personal, means.
Indeed, desperation changed one, didn't it--
"Ah, yes," he whispered. "Welcome, Edward. . . ."
With permission from him, the angel materialized on the lawn beside him . . . and it was rather good to see the chap. So tall and strong, Edward was, but what made the male even more useful was his calm stare--even with Jim gravely injured on earth, all the necessary faculties were intact.
Nigel smiled, and not in a politely dismissive manner. He was honestly pleased to have this fighter back. "How nice to see you."
Edward's bow was reverent. Appropriate. Considerate.
And it was like a cool glass of water in a hot, dry place: oh, so very appreciated.
"I have missed you, my old friend." Nigel offered his hand and the two shook. "And I shan't waste time. I am aware of why you come."
"Can you help?'
"No," he lied. "I am still recovering from my ill-advised holiday. But let us go and conscript another, shall we?"
He led the way across the lawn, striding by the table that was already set for afternoon tea, though that repast was as yet hours away. Predictably, the closer they got to the meandering river and the tent of his former lover, the more Nigel's immortal heart pounded. Colin had been avoiding him with such studious and concerted effort, that there had been neither hide nor hair of him.
Beneath Nigel's calm mask, he was on the verge of breaking down, and the energy required to affect the lie of pragmatic reasonableness created a pain at both of his temples.
He was terrified that the other archangel would not be there, but alas, Colin was reclining upon his cot, an old leather-bound book cradled in his palms--and he looked up at Edward as they approached. Immediately, he put the Tennyson aside. Walked over and embraced the angel. Clapped him hard upon the stout back.
"I am glad you have returned, mate." Colin's eyes, those lovely, intense eyes, roamed around Edward's face as if checking to see that the features were all in the right place. "And you look no worse for the wear."
Oh, how one longed for that kind of welcome home.
The two exchanged brief pleasantries, none of which Nigel heard or cared about.
"Your assistance is required," Nigel interrupted. "There has been an accident down below."
Edward glanced in his direction as if he were surprised at the show of tension. Meanwhile, Colin stared out of the entrance to the tent, no doubt wishing that the visit from Edward had been a solitary affair.
Nigel felt compelled to tack on, "There is healing to be done and I am not capable of it."
"Then lead on, mate," Colin said to Edward. "And I shall--"
"Let us all go together."
That got him the attention he had been seeking, those eyes swinging over and narrowing on him with a dislike the archangel had previously reserved for Devina, yellow-jacket wasps, and television evangelists down on earth.
Nigel cocked a brow. "I know that you would never let personal enmity stand in the way of doing your duties."
Colin's jaw ground hard, the hollows under his cheeks standing out in sharp relief. But he didn't disagree.
It wasn't much of an easing to the conflict, but at least the two of them were going to be in an enclosed space together for however long it took to get Jim back and in action--and, of course, that had to be the outcome with the savior. Whatever the troubles between him and Colin, they truly did have to work together to ensure Jim was not lost.
And if there was a chance to broach a discussion? In the midst of it?
Nigel was prepared to be an opportunist.
In her old life, Sissy had seen a couple of head injuries--mostly on playing fields. She'd been in the football stands three years ago when a left offensive tackle had pulled a pile drive into one of the opposing team's guys, popping off his helmet, knocking him out cold. She'd never forget how everyone in the crowd had fallen quiet and barely breathed as paramedics had rushed onto the field and stabilized the poor kid. He'd been so far gone that he'd had to be carried out on a stretcher and he'd not even acknowledged the standing ovation he'd gotten. Later, she'd read in the newspaper that they'd had to teach him how to walk all over again.
Then there had been that catcher on the girls' softball team who'd been hit by a ball. The kid on the hockey team who'd ended in the goal. One drunk guy at a house party who had decided he could fly and learned the hard way he could not.
Each one of them had gone to a medical center.
"Can't we just call nine-one-one?" she heard herself ask.
Jim had been admitted into a hospital in the last round, not that it had helped him much--and that had been when she'd learned that she could step into the skin of people. If she could do that now? With him? She'd put herself in his position in a heartbeat. He was needed and important. She was not.
Especially with one more round to go.
"It's better to wait here," Ad ground out.
"Is he still breathing?"
"Yeah. He is--"
There was a flash of light, as if someone had turned a lamp on and off real quick. And then suddenly there were three more people in the bathroom: Eddie and the archangels, Colin and Nigel, had materialized out of thin air. But they didn't have little doctor bags with them. Or a stretcher. Hadn't come in an ambulance, either.
Hard to decide whether the arrivals were good news or not.
Both of the archangels narrowed their eyes on her.
"Good," Nigel said. "This is well-done."
"Not if he's dead, it isn't," she muttered, getting out of the way so they could do whatever it was they had to.
When Nigel gestured forward, Colin gave the other archangel a nasty look--then he stepped over and crouched down next to Jim. Leaning this way and that, he checked out the angle of the head, and the pool of silver blood that was getting larger.
And then he ignored Jim. Rising up, he inspected the corner of the sink, making the mm-hmm noises she'd assume would be associated with--hello--the assessment of the nonresponsive semi-corpse on the floor.
Just as she was about to say something, Ad took her elbow and whispered, "The way humans get treated for injuries like this is different from how we need to deal with Jim."
"What do you mean?" she asked in a hushed voice.
"It's an accident. So there's no will attached--he didn't have it done to him by someone else, and he
didn't choose it for himself and that's what makes the difference. Without malice or will involved, Colin can try to erase the impact--but it gets done where he hit his head, not on his body."
Without making any contact, Colin cupped his hands around the silver smudge that had been left behind on the sink, then moved his palms upward and around in a slow, deliberate motion. At first she didn't think anything was happening, but then there was a subtle sound that rose up--
Cracking. The porcelain was cracking as if being subjected to some kind of pressure or heat even though there was nothing that she could see between those hands and the surface. And the spiderweb pattern grew more intense and spread wider as Colin kept up whatever it was he was doing.
"Oh, my God," she hissed as she looked at Jim. "It's working."
Like magic, the blood on the marble floor was retracting, that puddle growing smaller and smaller . . . until it disappeared under his hair.
Meanwhile, Colin began to shake, a gritted string of curses coming out of his mouth, the muscles in his forearms standing out in sharp relief like he was pulling at a rope. And Jim shook, too, his arms and legs twitching, his head going back and forth in a series of jerks.
Then the strangest thing happened. A warping emanated from Colin's hands and suddenly, the sounds of someone falling, hitting his head, and slumping to the ground were played in reverse: shambling fall of arms and legs under the sink; sharp, nasty impact; and then whoosh! as if somebody had flown through the air in front of her.
Abruptly, Colin slumped to the side as if the effort had taken all his strength--and Nigel was the one who caught him before he hit the ground, the other archangel rolling Colin over onto his back and then easing him carefully onto the marble.
"Is it done?" she asked as Nigel moved away.
But she knew the answer to that as she rushed over to Jim: His lids flipped open and he took a deep breath, his mouth gaping, his eyes popping wide. And then he all but jumped up off the floor, focusing on the tub--
"Sissy!" he screamed.
"I'm right here, hey--I'm right here. Jim?"
Jim turned his head so fast, it was a wonder it didn't snap off his neck. And then he froze--like he couldn't figure out if he were seeing things right.
"Jim, I'm okay. I'm all right."
He grabbed her face with both hands and kissed her. Then he patted her down. "Are you sure?" he asked hoarsely. "Fucking hell, tell me you're--"
She pulled up her sweatshirt and flashed her smooth, unmarked belly.
Jim sagged with such relief, she actually reached out to make sure he didn't land on his face. And in response, he wrapped her up tight and held her against him.
"It's over," she said. "It's over and we're all okay . . ."
As he trembled against her, she offered up a prayer of thanks, and took a deep breath of relief. She had no idea how long this precious slice of peace was going to last, but she sure as hell was going to enjoy it.
Especially because she was, once again, alone in her own skin.
Chapter
Forty
As Nigel sat on the hard marble floor across from Colin, he kept stock-still. Although ordinarily he was not one for long periods of inaction, it had felt like an eternity since he had been allowed an unimpeded view of the male, and he was going to damn well take advantage of the good fortune--especially as the others departed and the two of them were left alone.
It was a long while before Colin stirred from exhaustion, and as those lids slowly opened, Nigel jumped into the silence, seizing what was no doubt going to be his only opportunity to say his piece.
"I am so very sorry, Colin. I should never have left you as I did. I should have spoken unto you my fears, and come to a solution with you. My thinking . . ." He motioned toward his head. ". . . was faulty. I blame none but myself, and do not expect you to forgive. The explanation, however, is necessary."
Colin grabbed the edge of the sink and pulled his torso upright. Then he rubbed his face. Took a deep breath. Scrubbed his short, dark hair.
"And yes," Nigel said, "it is unfair of me to accost you here when you are not at your best. But how else am I going to say this."
Colin arranged his legs such that they crossed at the ankle, and he put his palms upon his thighs. His hands moved slowly up and down.
Nigel cleared his throat. "I regret this. . . ." His voice cracked. "More than you can know. But in asking Jim to give up Sissy, I felt it was unfair of me not to offer a sacrifice of similar impact in this war. A true leader expects no more of others than they do of themselves. You are the basis of Heaven to me. There is no greater pledge unto the fight than leaving you--and that is why I acted alone." He wanted to reach out and try to take the archangel's hand, but he knew that would be folly. "Whilst I was over in Purgatory, the pain at losing you was more unbearable than the torment that was upon me from that place. I was . . . bereft at the loss of you, and what I had done in favor to the battle against Devina was cold, cold comfort. I would choose another path, if I had to do it all over again. I would . . ."
As his voice drifted off, there were so many more words clogging his throat, jamming up his mouth, twisting his mind, but they were simply variations on what he had just spoken. Still, there was a temptation to give in to the torment, to keep talking and talking in hopes that something would change the position he had put them both in.
But Colin hated wasted time, and the justification, such as it was, had been made.
Dropping his eyes, Nigel got to his feet and found that he was unsteady and fairly well close to fainting. Especially as he turned away and began to walk out of the water closet and across the vast emptiness of the loft Devina had once inhabited.
The barren expanse seemed such an apt metaphor.
"I do not believe you understand what it was like."
At the sound of Colin's voice, he turned so fast he had to throw his arms out into the thin air. With a thundering heart, he said, "Tell me."
Even though this was going to kill him.
As he stood in the loo's doorway, Colin's face was drawn in lines of anger. "I stood over your body. I cried . . . over your body. I picked you up and carried you to the river's edge and I sat beside the fire that consumed you. It burned for hours."
Nigel closed his eyes and put his hands up to his face.
"No," Colin snapped. "You do not get to do that. You do not get to shield yourself from your actions. There was naught that I could do with your aftermath--you left me to deal with that alone, without knowing . . . goddamn it, without knowing why you had done what you had. So you can damn well be present in this moment."
Nigel lowered his arms and refused his eyes the permission to go anywhere else--even though his chest was so tight he could not draw breath. "I am so sorry. I am so very sorry. . . ."
Colin's dark brows drew tightly together. "Do you think I do not know you."
"No, you know me better than all."
"And that is why I am offended anew." Colin crossed his arms over his chest. "Did you think . . . dearest God, Nigel, did you think I did not know what was ahead of us at that moment in the war? What you were facing and what choices you would believe you had? With Jim in failure as he was, tied up within the destiny of that innocent, Sissy, giving wins away, do you think I did not recognize all of that and . . ."
When Colin did not finish, Nigel cleared his throat. "And what?"
"Do you think, no matter how much it destroyed me, that I would not have let you go?"
Nigel returned his hands unto his face, and this time Colin said naught about the veil of palms over his eyes.
"I would have let you go," Colin said roughly, "because that was the best thing to do, the only pathway that we had in this forsaken war. Someone else needed to be the savior at that point, and the only way to get Jim out of the role . . . was to do exactly what you did."
It all seemed so freshly devastating, Nigel thought in the silence that followed.
Colin exhaled a curs
e. "I would have made the sacrifice, too. But you either didn't trust me enough to do that or worse, mayhap, you do not really know me that well, after all. I am a soldier, and as such, I do not forgo logic to feeling. Even if the emotions are . . . overwhelming."
Nigel was aware the moment the other archangel left, even though there was not a sound or further movement taken. Instead of following Colin back up to Heaven, however, he found himself sinking unto his knees in the middle of the emptiness.
He had no practice with regrets. He had hitherto lived his immortal life with deliberation and self-control--and had curried no small amount of superiority because of it.
Now, though, he felt connected unto humanity at a whole new level.
Compassion was easier to proffer if one had suffered.
Chapter
Forty-one
"Did you get enough to eat?"
As Jim sat beside her on the front steps of the old mansion, Sissy took yet another deep breath. She'd been doing it a lot since they'd all come back here, eaten five large pepperoni pizzas between the four of them, and gone their separate ways.
Which was to say, Ad and Eddie had headed up to the attic.
And Jim had come out here with her.
After a day of on-and-off rain, the night was cool and damp and smelled of good earth and growing things. Smelled of Jim's aftershave, too, she thought as she pulled his leather jacket closer around her.
"Sissy?"
"What--oh, sorry. Yes. God, yes. I don't think I'll ever eat again."
Shoot. Maybe she shouldn't phrase it like that.
Down at the far end of the lane, a car turned onto their street and proceeded carefully toward them. For a moment, her whole body stiffened--except it was not a big black Mercedes-Benz that was missing a hood ornament.
She relaxed the instant she recognized it as a Lexus.
"It's so weird," she murmured. "I feel the absence more than I noticed the presence."
"Of what--oh, that." He cleared his throat like he didn't want to give the thing a name. "What'd gotten taken out, you mean."
"Yeah." She put her hands over her pizza-filled stomach and rubbed back and forth. "I had no idea it was there and controlling me. But now that it's gone, I feel . . . myself. Which doesn't mean that I've, like, forgotten everything that was done to me or what I lost. I still feel the same things I felt before. It's just . . . the foundation is different. More solid. More . . . me, I guess? I'm babbling, aren't I."