I should probably have had some clever comeback, but nothing came to mind just then. I had not felt much pleasure lately. I had seen murder. I had seen hate. I had dived deep within tortured minds to find the perfect suffering to impose on bad people who . . . who maybe didn’t deserve all the pain Messenger and, yes, I myself, inflicted.
“Don’t you deserve at least a little pleasure, Mara? Or are you proud of the suffering? Is that it? Are you one of those people, that first kind of person, who seems actually to get off on suffering and misery?”
“No,” I snapped.
“Then what have you done to balance the denial Messenger has forced on you?”
I thought back on the time since I had joined Messenger. “I had a very nice Pop-Tart,” I said at last.
To my amazement Oriax laughed. “I think you deserve more than a warm pastry, don’t you?”
“I don’t think it matters what I deserve,” I said, not meaning to sound bitter, but sounding that way just the same.
“Give me one minute. Sixty seconds,” Oriax said.
“Hah!” If I thought that monosyllabic response would discourage her, I was wrong. And to be honest, I was very lonely, and despite what I knew about her, I preferred her company to being alone.
“One minute,” Oriax said. “It won’t harm you. It will just be a break. A pleasure break. Like a coffee break at work, but with really extraordinary coffee. One minute, and then you’ll be right back here, staring glumly at the little doomed girl up there.”
I didn’t answer immediately. I was thinking. But the silence stretched on too long for me to pretend that I would automatically reject her. I was considering, and Oriax could see that I was considering.
“No,” I said after a while. Just that. I didn’t have the will to come up with anything more.
“All right,” Oriax allowed. “But the offer remains open. You have only to call my name and I’ll be there. And Mara, in that minute I can give you whatever . . . whoever . . . you desire.”
I nodded dumbly. The implication was clear. There was no point in pretending that she did not know what and whom I desired.
“Before I take my leave, may I do one thing?” Oriax asked. “May I touch you?”
The request took me by surprise. I didn’t know what she meant by “touch” and I’m ashamed to say that my imagination went in provocative directions.
Oriax smirked, as if she could read my thoughts. “No, not that, unless you want it, of course. For I can bring you all forms and types of pleasure, Mara. But for now, I merely want to touch your . . . face.”
I licked my lips nervously and almost glanced over my shoulder half expecting to see a disapproving Messenger there watching.
I said nothing for so long, and stood unmoving for so long, that I suppose my acceptance was obvious. But Oriax either wanted or needed more. “Say yes, Mara.”
I nodded jerkily. “A touch. Yes.”
She took a half step closer and now I felt again the full Oriax effect. It was as if she were a stove top and had turned the flame all the way down but now twisted the knob so that the blue flame became a flower of fire.
I was trembling before she slowly raised her hand, her perfectly manicured fingers with their green-tinged polish.
She laid her fingertips with exquisite gentleness against my cheek.
I dropped to my knees, bent forward, took a deep shaky breath, arched my back, threw back my hair, and cried, “Oh! Oh!”
Oriax’s hand withdrew. She knelt before me, eye level, met my wondering gaze, and said, “Messenger serves the goddess of justice and wickedness. I serve the god of pleasure and denial. Are you really going to spend your days in carrying out grim and thankless duties without a thought for your own needs?”
At that moment I wanted two things. One, that Oriax leave, leave now, immediately.
And the other, that she touch me again.
Oriax’s face was so close. It was all I could see. I forced myself to bring up memories of her mocking song as Derek burned alive and screamed in agony. I forced myself to remember that she was evil. But memory was a weak antidote to the physical reality of Oriax, and the still-reverberating pleasure that had swept over and through me at her touch.
I can barely bring myself to admit this, but at that moment, I wanted her to kiss me. And she knew it. Of course she knew it.
“No, Mara. You’re not ready for that, yet. My kiss is not lightly bestowed. It cannot be forgotten. It will change you forever. Just ask Messenger about Oriax’s kiss.”
She gave me a lascivious wink, and was gone, leaving me alone with the fitfully sleeping Graciella.
I should have moved forward in the time line, should have learned more of Graciella. But I lacked the strength to do anything. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to push all of it away, forget everything. But I could not forget poor, shivering Graciella. And neither could I forget what had happened to me at the moment when Oriax touched me.
I did not forget her offer.
I did not forget her lips.
Her eyes.
Even much later, when I had learned and experienced so much more, I never forgot her first touch.
“What did you learn about Graciella?”
I jumped. A wave of guilt sent blood rushing to my face and neck. It was dark, though the rushing car lights were bright again.
Not much, I thought. But I learned a great deal about Oriax. I nodded toward the sleeping Graciella. “She’s up there.”
He nodded, not surprised. “Anything of significance?”
Did he know? I could either tell him or not. I sensed a turning point. If I lied to him a gap would be opened between us. No doubt this is what Oriax intended.
“Oriax dropped by,” I said.
His eyes flickered. All he said was, “Ah.” He asked no follow-up question, so I offered no further details. Hadn’t Messenger taught me to be taciturn? Wasn’t I therefore justified in telling him only what he asked to know?
“We will be joined soon by the apprentice Haarm,” he said. He did not say “my” apprentice.
“Yes,” I said, and waited for him to say more.
“It is a very unusual situation,” he said.
“Is it?” I resisted the urge to laugh.
“I will fetch him,” Messenger said. “Go to your abode, we will assemble there.” He didn’t seem happy about it.
I had time to go into the bathroom and stare in the mirror at the place on my cheek where Oriax’s fingers had touched me. There was no sign to betray me.
Graciella. Trent. Aimal. The incubus. Too much. And memories of Oriax. Way too much.
Messenger reappeared with the blond boy. Haarm said a polite hello to me, and glanced around the living room. “Much the same as my place,” he remarked. “A dull and electronically deprived apartment.”
“Coffee?” I asked.
“No, thank you.”
I made some for myself leaving the two of them to stare blankly into space in exquisite discomfort. I didn’t care if they were uncomfortable. I was still vibrating with the Oriax effect. If I were older this sort of experience might call for a stiff shot of whiskey. I made do with coffee and a spoonful of cream.
I could see them both over the rim of my cup, the gloomy boy in black, the more cheerful yet abashed blond boy. Messenger seemed older, far older, though seen objectively the two were much the same age. But Messenger had an aura of power about him, controlled, disciplined power, but power all the more impressive for being thus controlled.
Haarm, on the other hand, looked like trouble. I’ve known boys like him, boys with ready smiles and charm, boys who naturally seek out the line between mere mischief and evil. I sensed that Haarm walked very, very close to that line, and of course he must at some point have crossed it or he would not be an apprentice.
“We will visit Trent so that Haarm may see how he fares,” Messenger said.
“But he’s . . . Isn’t he . . . ,” I said.
“He endur
es his punishment,” Messenger said. “What will seem like days to us is a lifetime to him. In a few of our days he will reach the end of his natural life, and then he will emerge from the trance that holds him.”
This was said for Haarm’s benefit. Haarm said, “I am familiar with the technique. My former master—”
“She remains your master,” Messenger interrupted. “A messenger has but one apprentice. An apprentice but one master.” It sounded like something he’d memorized. Perhaps it was in one of the books I’d been left to read. I strongly suspect that he had gone to seek advice from Daniel and Daniel had given him this formula to recite.
“I’m ready,” I said, putting down my cup.
The instant the cup touched the granite countertop, we were gone from my abode and standing in the aisle of a passenger jet.
“Well, that’s unusual,” Haarm said.
A flight attendant came toward us, bustling and grim. She passed through us and I followed her with my eyes to see that she was rushing to help another flight attendant with a passenger.
The passenger was yelling something hard to understand because he spoke with a slurred voice. Beside the unruly passenger was a large woman who alternated between saying, “Trent, you can’t make trouble now,” and telling the attendants in an urgent voice that, “He needs to go to the bathroom. His bag is full.”
“Ma’am, the fasten seat belt sign is on, he will have to wait.”
“I can’t wait, you dumb bitch!” Trent said through gritted teeth.
Trent was no longer a teenager. He was perhaps twenty-five years old, his hair grown long, his face drawn and sallow.
“Sir, you’ve been drinking, and I need you to remain in your seat and—”
“I have to—”
“He can’t move on his own, anyway,” Trent’s assistant pointed out. “I need to take him to—”
“Ma’am, I understand, and I’m sorry but—”
“Let me go!” Trent raged.
All he could move was his head, which he jerked this way and that, a frustrated, furious effort.
“The seat belt sign is—”
“I know what the —— seat belt sign says!”
The health care assistant tried again, straining to maintain a reasonable tone of voice. “I don’t think you under—”
“Look, the rules are simple and everyone has to . . . Oh, God, what is that?”
Both flight attendants recoiled. One covered her mouth. Expressions of disgust radiated out from Trent.
“He has a colostomy bag,” the health care worker snapped. “I’ve been trying to—”
“The rules—”
“I’m sitting in my own shit!” Trent cried. “I’m . . . I’m . . . I . . .” He lowered his head to his chest and sobbed. “I want to die. Just let me die. Just let me die,” Trent roared. “Just someone, someone have pity and kill me!”
“You don’t mean that, Trent,” the health care worker said soothingly.
Trent unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse on her, on the flight attendants, on the mother who covered her children’s ears.
The health care worker reached her limit. “This is your own fault! I tried to change your bag back in the terminal!”
But Trent was beyond listening. He raged and cursed and wept and demanded a drink. He called out every racial epithet he could think of and ranted in a way that must have seemed nonsensical to those around him about a messenger and a chink.
Messenger advanced the time line, causing hours to pass. The flight was a long one. After his racist, sexist, obscene rant, Trent had earned no sympathy. The flight attendants refused to try and help. Nearby passengers moved away, even sitting in the aisles by the rear bathroom rather than be within range of him. Trent’s health care aide sat staring stonily ahead, probably counting the minutes until she could quit this job.
“I’ve seen enough,” I said.
But Haarm said, “He’s being justly punished according to the rules, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it fun to watch him suffer.”
“You have a soft heart,” he said.
Messenger stayed aloof. Then we were no longer on the plane but back in the basement where the real Trent, the body that still contained the tortured mind, lay on the concrete floor as if in a coma. This Trent, the real one, was no older and was not crippled.
Haarm looked down at Trent with an expression I found hard to read. He was interested, but in a distant sort of way. I took the opportunity to look more closely at Haarm. He had extraordinary skin; peaches and cream some might say. His brown eyes were framed below lashes, darker than his hair, as were his eyebrows. He was tall, maybe six feet, maybe a little more, a little more muscular than Messenger.
Comparing the two objectively I realized that both were gorgeous, to use one of my mother’s favorite words, equally so, except that some other quality shone through Messenger that elevated him to something beyond.
I wondered whether that extra something that Messenger had was supernatural. There had been no unattractive messengers at Isthil’s gathering, but now I sorted through my memories, picking out individual faces and I began to see faces that were quite plain and yet had felt lovely to me.
So, it was supernatural, it could only be. It must be some power that Isthil bestowed on her messengers. Though even with that in mind, and striving to eliminate the effects of that charm, I still saw that Messenger had been a very handsome boy.
Minus the magic, though? Minus the magic I suppose I’d say Haarm and Messenger were equally att—
What was the matter with me that I was standing there obsessing over the relative attractiveness of these two males? Where had this superficiality come from? Was I really that lonely? No, I argued back, I was just a teenaged girl alone with two extraordinarily attractive boys, why wouldn’t I have thoughts? Why wouldn’t I compare and contrast eyes and shoulders and legs and lips?
Then how to explain Oriax?
I had no answer to that.
“This is Graciella, our other case,” Messenger said, and yes, we were instantly with Graciella. She was no longer under the freeway. It was no longer raining. Was it still Austin, Texas?
Hard to say. She was walking down an empty street. It was dark. She was alone. A pickup truck passed by, then I saw brake lights flare as it stopped a block away. Then the white backup lights came on and the truck came back toward her.
I tensed and we were there beside her, the three of us invisible lurkers as Graciella, frightened, shied away and redoubled her pace, heels click-click-clicking on the sidewalk.
There were three men in the truck, or at least one man with a very full beard, and what might be his two sons, one in his twenties, one my age.
“This looks like trouble,” Haarm said.
Strange to have commentary. I had almost wholly adjusted to Messenger’s quiet and reticence.
The man with the beard, the driver of the truck, rolled down his window, leaned out, and in a thick southern accent said, “Miss? I don’t mean to frighten you, but this is not the safest part of Memphis.”
“I’ll be okay,” Graciella said, and kept walking.
The truck kept pace. “All due respect, miss, I don’t think you will.”
It could have been a threat but didn’t really sound like one.
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’d love to believe that and go on about my business,” the driver said. “But I’d love more to get you to someplace where I don’t have to spend the rest of the night worrying what happened, and thinking I shoulda done something.”
“I’m not going to have sex with you!” Graciella raged suddenly. “I’ve already had like eight guys ask me. I’m not a hooker. I’m not a prostitute! I’m a musician! I’m a songwriter!”
She had stopped long enough to say that, to scream it really.
The man with the beard was annoyed and rolled up his window and drove off. But he stopped after fifty feet and cam
e back. “Miss, my Bible says . . . well, you tell it, Perry. Matthew twenty-five, verse thirty-four and just keep going till I tell you to stop.”
Perry was the youngest of the three and after biting his lip to aid his memory, began to recite. “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungry, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
“That’ll do,” the father said proudly. “My boy Perry. He has the gift of memory, almost photographic, if you can believe that.”
“Good grief,” Haarm muttered. “She can’t be such a fool as to be taken in by Bible-thumping rustics.”
But Graciella had stopped walking. She was listening. Exhaustion showed in every small movement she made.
“So, here’s what I propose to do,” the man with the beard said. “I know of a mission that takes in kids and runaways. It’s about, oh, maybe three miles from here. They’ll feed you, they’ll let you take a shower, and they’ll give you a clean bed for the night.”
“I’m fine,” Graciella said, but she was weakening.
“We’re about to see a rape,” Haarm said. Was he being calm and detached about it? Or was he too calm and detached?
“Now, miss, you could come sit up here and Josh could go in the back, he likes it there, but I reckon that would get your back up a little. So how about you climb in the back, and I promise I’ll drive nice and slow. Sound like a deal?”
Graciella had no more will to resist. She nodded wordlessly, and climbed into the bed of the pickup truck.
They drove away slowly and we followed, three voyeurs expecting the worst. I was clenched against it, gritting my teeth, wondering how much of what was to come had to be observed by me. I had already seen a younger Graciella with her demon father, I did not want to see more.