Dying Day Read online

“Is Jesse okay?”

  “She’s throwing off huge clouds of gamma radiation, but otherwise, no anomalies.”

  “But is she alive?” I ask.

  Nikki licks her lips and holds the swinging door open so that I can pass through. I hardly note the hospital wing we step into except that it’s brighter than the dim hallway where we stood moments before.

  Nikki is obviously preparing herself to deliver news that will upset me. It’s her tell really—licking her lips, followed by a sigh.

  “A team was sent to apprehend her,” she says.

  “I’m sure that went well.”

  “The situation escalated.”

  “Of course it did.”

  “All of the helicopters were brought down and no one survived.”

  “Was she hurt?” I ask. I can barely hear my own words over the blood pounding in my ears.

  “We don’t know,” Nikki says, her words full of apology. “Parish can’t find her on the satellite. It’s possible that she jumped and escaped without a scratch. She wouldn’t still be putting off so much gamma radiation if she were dead, would she?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how this all works,” I say. Breathe. “But she could be seriously hurt.” Hurt in a way that her healing ability can’t help her.

  Nikki licks her lips again. She sighs and says, “They fired Hellfire missiles. Two of them. Parish says…” Her voice falters.

  “Just say it. I haven’t run screaming yet, have I?”

  Her eyebrow twitches as if to say not yet but… “Parish says that her shield disappeared a second before the missile launched.”

  I feel like someone is holding my head underwater. “It could have hit her.”

  A missile could have hit Jesse and blown her apart. Her healing ability could never put her back together again. That gamma radiation might not mean she survived. It could have something to do with the convergence point that Gabriel was talking about.

  A woman in blue scrubs passes by, flashing us a curious look before she disappears through a second set of double doors.

  “Or she saw it and jumped away,” Nikki says, her voice lower now that she’s been reminded we aren’t alone. How could she forget it?

  Please tell me she’s okay. Tell me she isn’t laying in pieces on some half destroyed ice shelf.

  Gabriel says nothing.

  “But we know that two people fell ill,” I say, trying to quell my terror with what few facts and information I have. “Two of her replacements. Did this happen at the same moment as the fire fight?”

  “No. It happened right after. Is it possible she drained them to heal herself or something?”

  “She’s not a vampire!” I hiss.

  She holds her palms out in surrender. “I’m not saying that she is. But two people just fell over dead and you…” She sighs. “Something happened to you outside the elevator and I’m just trying to understand what is going on!”

  “Can I help you?” A brunette asks. Her golden eagle eyes survey us with slight annoyance.

  She’s in scrubs too, her hair dark hair hanging in soft waves around her face. One hand grips her hip where a plastic badge hangs clipped at the bottom of her shirt. I didn’t see her come in.

  Nikki casts a look at the woman in the scrubs. “She needs to be checked out. She’s sick.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “We want to see Gloria Jackson, please.”

  Nikki’s earpiece lights up blue again. “Tamsin.”

  The woman and I exchange awkward glances as Nikki takes her call. When the blue light disappears she says, “I have to go up.”

  “Did—” I begin, but Nikki’s hard stare silences me.

  “No,” she says. “This is something else.” Then to the woman guarding the medical bay she says, “She has clearance to visit Gloria Jackson and Maisie Caldwell whenever she wants. And it wouldn’t hurt if you could check her out while she’s here.”

  “Against my will?” I say, and I hear the accusation in my own voice.

  Her jaw tightens. “I find it hypocritical that you never stop Jesse from doing whatever it takes to protect you—and yet you won’t let me do the same.”

  I laugh. It dispels the last of the dizziness, and I finally catch my breath. “I try to stop Jesse all the time. She just never listens to me.”

  The woman in scrubs has no interest in our squabble. She breaks in. “Okay. Shall I show you to Captain Jackson’s room?”

  “Yes, please,” I say, embarrassed that we’ve just been standing here arguing.

  “I’ll walk you there. Jeremiah will want to know how she’s doing,” Nikki grumbles.

  As we fall into step behind the woman in scrubs, the room comes into focus for the first time. It’s a working emergency room, or at least it looks like one. Top of the line hospital beds and monitors line the wall. All of them are empty, but nurses and staff hurry around, checking machines, prepping stations, restocking supplies.

  They look like they are preparing for something.

  They’re preparing for Jesse, I realize. For the casualties that she might cause.

  Several of the hard-working men and women in scrubs look up, scowling at me for being there. That is until they see Nikki beside me. Their faces soften with recognition. Several come to attention as we pass. I wonder if she ever tires of it, being treated like a general, with such respect and deference. I’m sure she doesn’t.

  If Jesse were here, Nikki would never hear the end of it.

  I think that one wants to lick your boots, Sasquatch. And that one wants to braid your hair.

  A sudden swelling of homesickness and longing makes my stomach clench. Where are you, Jesse?

  I want Jesse to appear before me, wrap her arms around me and take me with her—wherever she has to go, whatever she has to do.

  But if she can’t do that right now, for whatever reason, then I wish she would just tell me she’s okay. That she isn’t laying in pieces somewhere.

  I try to push the image of blood on snow—so much blood—out of my mind.

  Down a bright hallway, we find a room on the right with Gloria and Maisie inside. Maisie is in scrubs too, her hair still wet from a shower and her cheeks pink from steam. She smells like bar soap. Winston is on the foot of Gloria’s bed where she lies supine and unmoving. Her eyes are closed. The monitor attached to her finger with a series of wires, beeps its slow, steady rhythm.

  Maisie has her fingers intertwined with Gloria’s.

  Nikki looks Maisie over. “Are you all healed up?”

  “Yeah,” Maisie says. Her voice is tired and distant. “They said I could go, but I didn’t want to leave her. There’s this one nurse who keeps trying to throw me out because of Winston.”

  Nikki asks for a description and Maisie provides it.

  “That’s Helen,” the woman in the scrubs says. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Thank you,” Maisie and I say in unison.

  Then eagle eyes disappears, leaving us alone.

  Nikki reaches into her pocket and fishes out an intercom like the one nestled in her ear. It’s black with a snail-shaped coil on its back. I haven’t used one in a while. “Keep this. And you better call me if…anything happens.”

  I nod and accept the intercom, knowing it’s the only way she’ll leave. And I suddenly want her gone so I can talk to Maisie—really talk to her.

  Nikki’s fingers linger on my hand for a moment longer than they should before she’s out the door, her boots squeaking along the tile.

  “Have you heard from Jesse?” Maisie asks. Her voice is hopeful if still subdued.

  It tears my attention away from the empty doorway and bright hallway beyond. “No, sorry.”

  Maisie nods as if this no surprise.

  I settle into the hard plastic chair, cold and unforgiving beside hers, and give Winston a scratch on the head. His cinnamon bun tail thumps against the crumpled bedding.

  At this angle, I can see the puffy circles under Maisie’s eyes. What I
mistook for steamed cheeks is probably redness from crying.

  I put an arm around the girl’s shoulder, and that’s all it takes. She falls into sobs immediately and with abandon. And why shouldn’t she? In the last 24 hours, both her parents were murdered, and her sister is missing. Possibly dead for all she knows.

  I pull her tighter against me. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

  Such pathetic platitudes. I almost hate myself for saying them.

  “Nothing is okay! Nothing will ever be okay!” She sobs into my arm. I hold her and stroke her hair even though the plastic chair isn’t conducive to such an embrace. She cries like this for a long time. The people in scrubs—doctors? Nurses? Certainly clinicians of some kind, continue to pass by the door without stopping in.

  Finally her crying quiets. She asks, “Where’s Jesse?”

  I settle on the truth, at least mostly truth. “The last time they saw her was near the South Pole.”

  “What’s she doing there?”

  “We’re not sure.” I don’t dare bring up “convergence points” or “gates” just yet.

  “I’ve been talking to—” She peers over my shoulder at the door. “I’ve been talking to Azrael, but she sounds so far away. And distracted, you know? I think she’s fighting other angels. The bad ones.”

  My heart kicks. “There are still people who think she is dangerous and they’re trying to stop her.” I don’t make any mention of missiles or exploding scientific facilities either.

  “But she isn’t!” Maisie says, all wide eyes and insistence. “She could’ve killed me, but she didn’t! She saved me.”

  “I know,” I say, pushing the hair back from her face. But she’s killed so many others.

  “We have to help her. We have to get to Antarctica,” she says. And it sounds more ridiculous coming out of her mouth than it does in my own head, even though I’ve been saying the same thing on a refrain since Gabriel first appeared to me and showed me where she was.

  I run my fingers through her long, blond hair. Her face is still red, her blue eyes bright and cheeks tear-stained.

  “I don’t see how we can get there,” I say. “We don’t have a plane. I thought Gideon might be able to get us one, but I haven’t heard from him.” I make a mental note to check my email again. My cell phone may not work in this underground bunker, but it’s been hours since I sent that email. Maybe he’s written back. Hell, maybe he is on his way with a jet now, and I don’t even know it.

  I’ve also considered flat out asking Nikki to steal a plane for me, but given how she wants to seal me in this medical ward for my own safety, I can only imagine how that convo will go.

  I pull the intercom earpiece from my pocket and turn it over wistfully in the palm of my hand, my thumb scratching at the red emergency button protruding from the back and the coiled call button, looking like a snail’s shell imprinted on the front.

  “He was there when I woke up,” Maisie says, pulling me from my thoughts. “After Jesse saved me, I woke up and he was the first person I saw.”

  There’s a strange cadence to her voice. She sounds older suddenly. But why shouldn’t she, after all that she’s been through. I realize she’s talking about Gideon.

  She lowers her voice and casts a furtive glance at the doorway one more time. She whispers, “He said he doesn’t trust Jeremiah and that he’s going to find someone else to help us.”

  I’m not surprised to hear this. Jeremiah’s actions do not always inspire confidence.

  “We’ll find a way to help Jesse. I promise,” I say, slipping the earpiece back into my pocket. It sounds like a promise bound to be broken. “In the meantime, we need to take care of each other. You, me, and Gloria.”

  Maisie squeezes Gloria’s hand again. The woman on the bed doesn’t react. The steady rhythm of her heart remains unchanged on the monitor beside her bed.

  Here is the hard part, I think. No point in delaying it.

  “I need to tell you something,” I say and as soon as I say it, I realize that perhaps I’ve already made it worse. I can hear Jesse in my head—oh gee-zus. What? No one says they need to tell me something and it’s good news.

  Maisie’s back stiffens. “Dad’s not dead? He’s going to show up and—”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. Caldwell’s dead. He’s never going to hurt you again.”

  “And my mother, too?” Maisie asks. And it doesn’t really sound like a question. The tears well again and I doubt that I should have brought this up so soon.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I expect more tears, but she is silent, replaying something in her mind.

  I gently urge her back on track. “That’s not what I needed to tell you.”

  Maisie nods, stilling herself. I can’t help but admire her strength. I don’t think I was half as capable at sixteen.

  “I reached out to my brother and asked him to come here. I want you to meet him. He’s a lawyer. A good lawyer. Very smart and very kind. And I think he can help you.”

  Her lower lip quivers.

  “Or I can contact the Michaelsons. They are still technically your adoptive parents. You could—”

  “No,” she says. “No.”

  Her trembling lip breaks my heart. I thought this would be a source of comfort for her, to know she wouldn’t be alone. That she wouldn’t end up in some strange place. But I can see now that as well-intentioned as this talk may have been, perhaps it could’ve been better-timed.

  But when else could I have taken care of this? I couldn’t. Not when I’m planning to hop the first plane out of here.

  “I’m not trying to frighten or hurt you,” I say, pushing the hair back from her face. “I just believe you should have a say in where you live now. I wanted you to know that you wouldn’t end up in foster care or anything like that. You’re old enough to make this decision for yourself.”

  “My parents are dead. And the Michaelsons have moved on. Going back to them will be horrible for all of us. Missing daughter returns thirteen years after being kidnapped? If that gets out in the newspaper, it’ll be huge. My face will be everywhere. How long before someone realizes that I look just like the infamous ‘Maisie Caldwell.’ It would be a total clusterfuck.”

  I flinch at her vulgarity, but she has an excellent point.

  “I can’t do that to them,” Maisie says.

  “Okay. But I hope you’ll speak to my brother. If you want to be emancipated, if you want to get ahold of your parents’ money so you’ll always be financially secure, or if you want to stay with him until you’re eighteen—whatever you want, he is willing to help.”

  The tears threaten to spill over again. They shimmer in her blonde eyelashes. “I guess living with you and Jesse isn’t an option.”

  My own throat tightens. “Even if Jesse survives— whatever all this partis, end of the world stuff is—I don’t think she will have a normal life. Too many people have questions. The best she can hope for is a life on the run until her name is cleared, and who knows how long that will take. You deserve a quiet, stable life.”

  When Maisie nods in agreement, the tightness in my chest loosens a bit.

  “You don’t have to decide today,” I tell her. “But I just wanted you to know that my brother is coming to talk to you, and to vouch that he really is a wonderful human being. I hope you’ll let him help you.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  We lapse into silence. A long, comfortable silence. After ten or fifteen minutes, I get up and untangle myself from the dozing girl beside me. I want to get to the rec room to check my email again. Fingers crossed I’ll find good news from Gideon.

  Maisie turns and looks at the sleeping Gloria, at their clasped hands. “I remember her.”

  I scratch Winston’s head. “Who?”

  “Captain Jackson. I remember her and this guy in a leather jacket with a crooked smile.”

  My heart skips a beat. “That was Brinkley.”

  “When my dad to
ok me from the Michaelsons, we were on the move a lot in the beginning. Lots of empty houses, and when I’d start to cry, he’d bring me toys. But then people would always catch up to us, and we’d have to move again. I didn’t really know what was going on or why we were moving around so much.”

  “—you were very young,” I interject.

  She continues as if I hadn’t. “But I remember that one time he left me with her.”

  “Your dad left you with Gloria?”

  “Yeah. Something happened to my mom. I think she got shot, but I can’t be sure. I just remember her screaming, and all the blood. Then the next thing I know, Dad is bundling me up, in the middle of the night. He still had blood on his hands. When he handed me over to Gloria, I was in this thick flannel blanket with my bear. I remember seeing my father’s bloody handprint on my PJs, and I started to cry.”

  I try to remember what Brinkley said about this in his journal—about Caldwell knowing Gloria loved Maisie too much to hurt her. But it’s been so long since I read it. And we stashed those notebooks in a safety deposit box somewhere in Pennsylvania, on the road to New York.

  “I tried to ask Gloria about it once,” Maisie went on. “I think all I said was something dumb like ‘I remember you.’”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said that we’d met before when I was little, but that’s all she’d say. When I tried to ask more, she shook her head and walked away. I think it hurt her feelings. I don’t know what happened—I don’t remember anything bad happening—but I wasn’t able to get her to talk to me about it either.”

  “What do you remember about her?” I ask, my curiosity too strong to ignore.

  “She was nice,” Maisie says, with a sad smile. “She smelled like lemon drops and Coca-Cola.” She shakes her head. “It’s more than that. You know how sometimes being around certain people just makes you happy? It just feels good to be around them. Like going to Grandma’s house for cookies or something. Except this grandma is an old psychic lady who carries a gun and drinks too much soda, you know?”

  A surprised laugh escapes her.

  “I know what you mean.” I do. Jesse is one of those people for me—the person for me.

  “It was like that,” she says. “I don’t have a reason why, it’s just how I feel. She makes me feel safe.”