The Space Between

  “We can’t wait,” I say, dismayed at the way my voice spikes up without my control. “He’s still alive, but we don’t know for how long or what’s happening to him!”

  Beelzebub begins to tidy up the desktop, keeping his eyes on my face. “I know you’re worried, but we’re not going to benefit from haste. We can’t just assume that Azrael has your brother.”

  I turn away, trying to control the panic racing in my chest. Trying to close my mouth. My mother might be unpredictable, but she doesn’t make mistakes. If she can’t see Obie, then he’s gone someplace her sight can’t reach.

  “Please,” I say, trying to sound persuasive without sounding like I’m begging. “You don’t even have to help me. I can go myself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My mother said we could find him. She said if I went looking for him, she’d help me. She’s not sure what happened or why she can’t see him, but if she has me there to search for clues, maybe we can save him.”

  Beelzebub has frozen with his hand on the stack of uncounted money. When he raises his head to look at me, he does it with utter composure. “Let me see if I have this straight. Your mother is convinced that something violent and untoward has happened to your brother and her grand solution is to send you in after him?” He stares out over the gallery and his jaw is hard. “She is absolutely unbelievable!”

  “But what if she’s right? She can’t go out to find him and I can. I’ll be careful, I’ll—”

  He throws the remainder of his Russian banknotes into the desk and slams the drawer. “No. Under no circumstances. I hate to be the one to say it, but in case you hadn’t noticed, your mother has some of the most truly terrible judgment I have ever encountered. You are not obligated to act as her little deputy, and you’re not to leave this city. She isn’t thinking straight.”

  “But I can’t just sit here and do nothing. He’s my brother!”

  “I appreciate the sentiment Daphne, but right now, I’ve got a Siberian prison teetering on revolt, and I can’t just drop everything because your brother decided to break every law in the book.”

  I’m running my fingers over the stack of papers on the desk. I know I should stop, but can’t seem to control my hands. The feeling of unraveling is getting worse and I pluck restlessly at the pages in front of me. Then a tab on one of the folders catches my eye. OBIE is printed in Beelzebub’s unmistakable script. Inside is a stack of forms, each stamped with red ink to indicate closure. Pages and pages of red stamps, all RESOLVED, FINAL, THE END. There are margin notes everywhere, mostly in Beelzebub’s careless hieratic, a jumble of slashes and curving lines. Hieratic is difficult. I always confuse the symbol for praise with the one for strike.

  I touch the last form, white and unstamped. “Who’s Truman Connor Flynn?”

  Beelzebub has put away the knives and is now recounting the banknotes. “Sorry, what?”

  “He’s the last entry in Obie’s file. The case is still open.”

  Beelzebub wrinkles his forehead, still counting. “That’s your friend from the terminal—the boy with the razor. With the water.”

  The boy who reached for my hand.

  “Well, what about him?” I say, unable to keep a note of hope out of my voice. “He might not know what happened, but he could still help. Maybe he even knows who Obie’s friends are or where he was staying.”

  Beelzebub sighs. Then he sits down across from me, pocketing his Russian money and his gun. He’s looking into my face and his eyes are almost like a real person’s—pale, but not transparent anymore. He would pass for human on the street.

  “I’m not trying to be a beast,” he says. “But we have no idea what kind of a situation we’re dealing with, and until we do, the best course of action is to sit tight and exercise some caution. I don’t want you getting hurt. There will be a time for you to go to Earth, but now is not the time. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nod. My face feels stiff and I can’t think of anything to say.

  He reaches for his weapons case and stands up. “I have to go,” he says. “But the minute I’m done, we’ll get this all taken care of—I promise.”

  He starts out of the office, then turns back like he’s about to say something else. He looks so righteous and so good, even crawling with flies. He raises his hand, a kind, helpless gesture, before turning to make his way through the gallery and out of the museum.

  Then I’m alone, sitting at Beelzebub’s desk. The room is still. Still enough to think. And what I think is that my mother never would have accepted this stillness. She made her own fate when she was younger than me. She defied God and angels, even if it meant being banished, then chose my father, even when that choice confined her to a jagged, brimstone world. And maybe it’s not what she dreamed of, but she did it anyway.

  I’ve never chosen my mother over Beelzebub. I’ve never trusted her judgment more than I trust his, but this is different. Somewhere on Earth, Obie is bleeding, and I don’t have a choice.

  I get out an atlas of North America and take it back to the desk. Then I open the folder again and pull out the paperwork on Truman Flynn. His home address is in Cicero, Illinois. The street is named Sebastian, like the saint.

  I flip through the pages, but there’s nothing in the file that tells me about Obie. Just Truman’s name and the address in Cicero, which the atlas informs me is a township outside Chicago.

  Leaving isn’t hard, there’s no trick to it. I’ve watched Beelzebub get ready hundreds of times.

  I deal with the money first—bills and plastic, a stack of paper transit cards for the subway, and a handful of coins for good luck. After that, I gather up every map I can find for Chicago and the surrounding area. Then I search the museum for clothing.

  The gallery is huge and organized by a complex cataloging system that only Beelzebub understands. The first stash of girl’s clothing I find is in a big steamer trunk with a piece of masking tape on the lid labeled GREAT DEPRESSION TO WWII. A lot of the dresses are bloody or torn, but at the bottom, I find a few that look rumpled but clean. They all have short, cuffed sleeves and Peter Pan collars. I pull them out and take them back to the desk.

  In the back of a wardrobe marked PROHIBITION, I find a black women’s coat and a pair of patent leather gloves shoved inside a hatbox. I pile everything into a black bag with twin handles and silver buckles.

  Then I rifle through the gallery looking for shoes. Finally, on a shelf above the guitars, I come across a battered cardboard box labeled ALTAMONT, 1969. Inside are an assortment of leather jackets and paper flyers, some clasp knives, and a pair of motorcycle boots, which are a dull, scraped black.

  With unsteady hands, I open the bottom drawer of the desk and pull out the directory for the terminal. It’s nearly four inches thick, and I sit in Beelzebub’s chair with the directory spread open on the blotter, figuring out my itinerary. I memorize the gates first, and then the complex network of hallways beyond. The door itself will be marked, and I should come out right in Cicero. From there, it’s only a matter of blocks to the Sebastian Street address. The route seems simple enough, and if I lose track of my position, I’ll look it up.

  “Can you do this?” I ask myself aloud, staring down at the heap of clothes and supplies piled haphazardly into the bag.

  “Yes,” I reply, knowing that there is no other answer.

  Entering the terminal, I might as well be invisible. I have a long black coat, a pair of boots with ankle buckles. A plaid dress and a striped sweater. I have a black bag full of money and information. I have two ideas of how to behave, one for demons, one for angels. I run my tongue over a pair of metal teeth and don’t know what I am.

  At the turnstile, I press my hand to the pass panel and say “Truman Flynn.” There’s a soft click as I speak it and the door unseals.

  When I step through, the corridor lies empty before me, a series of twists and turns. In the hall leading to eastern Illinois and Chicago, I search through
rows of mismatched doors until I come to a small wooden one marked CICERO. At my touch, it hisses open like a secret, and I’m gone.

  PART TWO

  EARTH

  MARCH 7

  4 DAYS O HOURS 3 MINUTES

  Truman Flynn woke up.

  His head felt heavy, and he had a bad, metallic taste in his mouth. For a second, he didn’t know where he was or if he was still dreaming. Then a car horn sounded outside and he sat up, relieved to find himself in his own bed.

  His heart was hammering in his chest. When he pressed his palms against his eyelids, he saw squirming red shapes, afterimages of his dream.

  It wasn’t one of the bad ones—not a bloody bathtub or a hospital room. It was not a dark, decrepit church. Not a funeral full of crows. This time, he’d dreamed about the girl.

  She wasn’t anyone he knew from work or school, but more like a fantasy—the kind of girl who only existed when you closed your eyes and wished for some magic genie, some storybook princess to sweep in and save you from your life. Her hair was black, and her face was very pale. Behind her, there was nothing but a huge, gleaming expanse of polished metal.

  In his dreams, she never talked. Even when he pleaded with her, desperate to hear her voice, she only sat next to him and held his hand.

  This time had been different, though. When their eyes met, she had smiled, a wide, dazzling smile. She’d said his name, but nothing else.

  Truman untangled himself from the covers and swung his feet over the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees. He thought it was Friday. Wasn’t sure. School was out for the Easter break, and without the routine of late bells and missing homework, the days had begun to bleed into each other. His ears were ringing and he felt pretty catastrophically hungover. He started to stand up, but the room did a slow half-turn and he sat back down.

  The voice spoke from the corner of the room then, low and patient. Pleasant, except for the fact that it was coming from his open closet. “Come here. I need to show you something.”

  Truman froze. The window in his room faced east and the shade was up, flooding the worn-out carpet with weak sunlight, but over in the corner, the closet was a rectangle of darkness.

  “Let’s not waste time,” the voice said. “I have something to show you and it’s important.”

  Truman crossed his arms over his chest, already knowing that he didn’t want to see it.

  “Get up out of that bed and come over here right now. I need you to see this.”

  Truman pressed his back flat against the wall, shaking his head. He already knew what the man in the shadows wanted to show him. In the dream, his mother would still be in her hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and monitors. The room would be too small and too cold, just like it had when she’d lain dying in the ICU at Mount Sinai. He could almost smell the antiseptic and the sour, acrid smell of disease. He could picture her face—horribly, painfully thin—and he knew that when she opened her eyes, the corneas would be a sick, faded yellow.

  He pulled his knees up and ground the heels of his hands hard against his eyelids. “I’m already awake,” he said aloud. “I’m not dreaming, so get out of my room.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m sure.” Truman’s voice sounded hoarse, and as soon as he said it, he began to doubt himself.

  The man just laughed a low, ugly laugh. It rose and faded, then disappeared altogether as the closet door swung shut. The room was quiet.

  Then a truck rumbled by outside and Truman came suddenly, violently awake. He flailed up from the mattress, kicking at the sheets, trying to untangle himself.

  His hands were shaking and every time he blinked, he could see the black-haired girl, flashing that silver smile, whispering his name, but it was all mixed up with the voice from the closet and he needed more than anything to drown out that slow laughter.

  He rolled out of the bed and crossed the room to the desk, where he dug through the drawers until he found an unopened can of High Frequency. It was room temperature and tasted like cough syrup, but it had more active ingredients than any other energy drink at the Stop-N-Go.

  In the last year, he’d gotten pretty good at not sleeping. There were cold showers, cigarettes, caffeine pills, and black coffee. At school, he lived on nicotine and adrenaline, pounding energy shots at his locker or smoking behind the dumpsters between classes. It only lasted so long, though. Eventually, you had to sleep.

  He drank the High Frequency, wincing at the taste. Then he got dressed. He started a load of laundry so his stepdad, Charlie, wouldn’t have to. He made the bed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair—all the little things a person did when they weren’t crazy. He didn’t go near the closet.

  In the kitchen, Truman found Charlie sitting at the table in his undershirt and eating cold pasta out of a plastic container. He’d peeled his coverall down to his waist and was reading the newspaper. Truman squeezed past his chair and they nodded at each other. Charlie worked the graveyard shift at Spofford Metals, and didn’t usually get home until eight or nine in the morning, and by then, Truman had usually left for school. Their lives ran more or less adjacent, but rarely intersected.

  “Hey now,” Charlie said, setting down his paper without looking up. “Shouldn’t you be at school? I thought we talked about this.”

  “It’s spring break.” Truman dropped a fresh filter in the coffee maker. “It’s been spring break for like five days.”

  “Huh.” Charlie nodded vaguely, hunching over his pasta. “Any big plans?”

  “Not really. Maybe I’ll hit the library later—got a project for biology.”

  They both knew it was a lie, but neither of them said anything. It was the kind of lie that just made life much easier for both of them.

  Truman drank his coffee and ate a handful of dry cereal, telling himself he didn’t care about the way that he and Charlie ignored each other. By the time Charlie had finished his dinner and left Truman sitting alone in the kitchen, he almost believed it.

  He poured another cup of coffee and drank it, even though he was starting to feel uncomfortably wired. Then he left the apartment.

  Out in the stairwell, he stood with his back against the wall, trying to decide what to do. He could be responsible for once and actually go to the library, but that might be a bad idea. It was quiet there, and warm, and if he sat down at one of the study tables he was going to fall asleep. He pressed his cheek against the wall. The cement was freezing and the jolt of cold helped to clear his head. He was so tired that the whole world was starting to feel surreal.

  When his neighbor Alexa pushed through the outside door into the stairwell, he jumped a little. She was carrying a paper grocery bag in each arm, and her hair had spilled out of her plastic barrettes, falling sloppily in her eyes. She was too young to be grocery shopping on her own—twelve, maybe thirteen—but the kids in the Avalon Apartments were all like that, running household errands and raising themselves or their siblings.

  “Hey, Lexi,” Truman said, stepping away from the wall. He reached to take one of her bags. “What’s happening?”

  She shrugged and looked away, letting him have the groceries. “I hate when you call me Lexi.” But she was grinning at the floor, cheeks pink, eyes downcast.

  He reached out with his free hand and tweaked her nose. “I’m just being a dick. Seriously, has your break been good?”

  Alexa nodded, still looking somewhere else, over his shoulder maybe, or above his head. She seemed on the verge of floating off, only anchored down by the bag of groceries she held against her chest.

  When Truman started for the stairs, she followed him and they went up side by side, not talking.

  On the fourth-floor landing, he held the stairwell door for her. She slipped past him, then turned and looked up into his face. Her expression was serious. “Were you drunk last night?”

  The question surprised him and he didn’t answer right away, just started down the hall to
her apartment, wondering what he should say. Alexa was a weird kid, but sharp. She noticed things. She hung around the stairwell or the lobby pretty much all the time, but she didn’t pester him or tag along, and he could always count on her not to say anything to Charlie or her mother.

  “No,” he said finally. “I mean, I might have gotten a little buzzed after I got off work, but not drunk. Why?”

  They were at Alexa’s door now, and she was fumbling the keys out of her coat pocket. “I was out in the parking lot,” she said, not looking at him. “I thought I saw you come in.”

  “Nah,” he said, feeling tired and guilty.

  Not guilty enough to stop doing it, though. Drunk was good. It was necessary, because when he was drunk, he didn’t dream. Only lately, it took a lot of alcohol to get him there and even a blackout usually wore off by dawn, making for bad scenes like the one this morning.

  He leaned against the wall, looking down at her. “It could have been one of the guys up on the fifth floor or something. Anyway, what were you doing out so late?”

  “Nothing.” She worked the toe of her sneaker on the carpet. “Looking for you. I just thought—it’s stupid, but I thought something had happened to you.”

  Suddenly, Truman’s throat felt very tight and he laughed uncomfortably. “Me? I’m fine.”

  She didn’t answer, simply looked. He tried to imagine what she must see and it wasn’t good. The shadows around his eyes were so dark it looked like someone had been hitting him.

  “I’m fine,” he said again, and this time her face cleared and she smiled.

  “Yeah, sure. I was just being stupid.”

  But there was a look in her eyes that reminded him of last winter, of red water soaking into the hall carpet. A memory that he spent every minute of every day trying to forget.

  CICERO

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When I step through the little wooden door, everything is so bright that, for a moment, I can’t even make out shapes. Then the blindness clears and the world shimmers into focus.