Chapter THIRTY-TWO
“What in Heaven’s name could you be thinking?!”
Jamison rather thought God Himself might be a kinder, gentler type than Lanny. He was beginning to consider using one of his three wishes, so to speak, to get The Guy Upstairs to save them from her temper. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d read their intent from the freeway and had been working herself into a lather while she waited for them to drive up the long canyon.
They didn’t even get a chance to get out of the car before Lanny was leaning in Skye’s window hissing at her.
“The Somerleds here? My own people? None of them have been told, and you want me to tell him? A mortal child?” Lanny pointed past Skye’s nose at the abomination sitting next to her, which was him. He lifted both arms and flipped down the sun-visor mirror. Still there. Still human-looking. Okay, so she wasn’t Medusa.
“Medusa?!”
Oh, way bad. My bad. I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
He didn’t know if he was apologizing out loud or just really clearly in his head. Either way she’d read it loud and clear and hadn’t been impressed.
He thought about pulling on the steering wheel and snaking his foot over to punch the gas pedal. Half a donut and they’d be headed back onto the road.
“You make one mark on my grass, sonny, and you’ll be planted under it.”
Blank paper. Blank paper. Nothing. Blank paper.
Surely those thoughts wouldn’t get him in trouble.
Lanny snorted.
Good snort, bad snort? Didn’t matter. Blank paper. Blank paper.
Skye shut off the engine, sealing their doom.
Jamison opened one eye; he had no idea when he’d shut them.
Skye was smiling at Lanny. Lanny was freaking smiling back, but when she caught Jamison watching, her nostrils flared and he shut that eye again.
“Come on. She’s teasing you.” Skye’s car door opened and closed. “Coward.”
“No way. No freaking way. I am not falling for that.”
He heard a mature woman’s laugh from the front porch and peeked through slit lids to see Lanny put her arm around Skye’s shoulders and usher her into the house.
“Teasing? Are you kidding me?”
Nope. Not kidding. Yes. Yes teasing. Come. In the house. Even Medusa couldn’t text in someone’s head, could she?
Un. Freaking. Believeable.
Skye stood in a hallway, fidgeting. She waved him to her.
“Do you, um, need anything?”
“I’m good.”
“No, I mean, do you need, um, to use the restroom?”
“If you mean she might make me piss my pants, it’s too late.”
Skye looked at his crotch in horror.
“He’s teasing you, Skye.”
Skye slapped him on the shoulder lightly and he grabbed her hand. He had no intention of letting go, he didn’t care how many cows were stuck in a ditch giving birth.
“Take him in, honey. I’ll just be a minute.” Lanny disappeared behind a door.
Skye walked him to the end of the hall and stopped. “Take off your shoes.” She removed hers and pushed them all against the wall, then pushed on the panel in front of them. It turned out to be a door with no handles and she led him into...Heaven.
Once they were inside, Skye pushed the door closed and turned to him, her face expectant, but nervous; her eyebrows had disappeared under her hair.
“Cool, huh?”
He needed to agree so those eyebrows could come back down.
“Yeah. Very nice.”
“Not me, silly. The room.”
He turned around and kept stepping. The carpet was so soft he felt like he should have to pay someone for the privilege of stepping on it.
He walked over to a mirror and checked his hair. Nothing hanging out of his nose; good. When he glanced over his head, he could see a dozen Jamisons, front to back to front, reflected in the mirrors behind him. The glass was tilted slightly toward the floor so the reflections went on into—
“Eternity.” Lanny sounded amused.
Okay that was cool. But he was nervous again, having Lanny in the room with them. Which personality would harass him this time?
For once, she didn’t answer his thought.
“Look at the light.” Skye bent her head back.
Jamison followed her gaze. A million tiny explosions went off in his head and he looked away, wondering if his eyes were bleeding. He even dabbed at them with the back of his sleeve.
“What’s wrong?” Skye squeezed his arm.
“Mortal eyes, honey. He can’t handle that kind of beauty.”
He looked at the older woman and noticed she’d changed into an odd dress. Like a thick bathrobe over a long tunic. Both white, almost painfully white—or maybe his eyes were just sore.
“Anything else in this room we mortals should stay away from?”
Lanny smiled. “Actually, you’re the first mortal to be allowed into this room, so you’re kind of like a guinea pig, aren’t you? You let us know if something terrible happens.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. This is no place for teasing, Kenneth Jamison Shaw. Will you forgive me?”
Oh, the temptation not to. But she was right. There was something about the room that made him see rudeness, not as something funny, but as something unworthy of him. Whether it was the clothes or the room, he finally felt worthy of Skye and he took a second to memorize the moment. In his mind he pushed the old box away and opened a new one, a bright shiny new one in which he would keep only his good memories of Skye.
“Well done, boy.”
Jamison was mortified Lanny had witnessed such a private thing.
“You’re right, of course. Forgive me. I will stay out of your mind while we are in here. Will that do?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You will not thank me for what Skye wants you to hear, though. I’m sorry.”
Jamison felt his world falling apart, as if the curtains and mirrors were sliding to the floor. None of it mattered without Skye.
He found himself seated across from Lanny, on a chair next to Skye. The object of his affection gripped his hand again, willing him to be tough. For her, he could. For a little while, he could hold it together. Once they were out of there, all bets were off.
“I’m ready, ma’am. What are Skye’s choices?”
“When you two were here last time, I felt, inspired, if you will, to let Skye in on a secret kept from the Final Host.”
“God keeps secrets from his angels?”
“He kept one, that I know of. You see, I’m a Primary, one of the few who negotiated the terms of The Agreement.”
“You mean the one about the Final Host working as angels instead of coming to Earth the old-fashioned way. Then they’d never screw up, so they’d never go to Hell, right?”
“That very Agreement.”
“And what was in the small print?”
Lanny smiled a genuine smile. “You’re a bright boy. Have you got it figured out?”
“Can I speak my mind without getting punished?”
“You can.”
“In spite of your temper?”
“Temper?!”
“Medusa.”
Lanny covered her mouth and laughed. Skye’s eyes widened. Apparently laughing wasn’t appropriate in the room either.
“Forgive my teasing, children. I assure you I have no temper.”
“And when you kicked me out of your kitchen?”
“A lesson in respect? A need for appearances?”
Jamison shook his head.
“How about, I wanted to see if you’d abandon her?”
Jamison would buy that. He gave Medusa a nod.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I think you’re all cowards. The Final Host, I mean.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. And you’re right, of course.”
“I am?”
“You are.” Lanny got up from her stitched leather chair and Jamison flinched. She bit her lip to keep from smiling. Didn’t work. “You see, some of us saw clearly what was going on. We joined the Final Host and got them to let us represent them.”
She smiled at Skye as if in apology.
“We tricked them. We negotiated with The Father, not to save them from temptation, like they thought, but to buy them a bit of time, to build up their courage.
“Oh, The Agreement will still work for them as they expect it will. The Father is not a cheat, after all. But for some who learn courage, and maybe an appreciation for what they missed by not gaining a body, they are entitled to a second chance.”
“You put in a loophole.”
“Your mother is a lawyer?”
“Works for lawyers.”
“You might consider it for a profession.”
“Back to the loophole.”
Lanny smiled as if to say she’d just proven her point.
“Skye is now aware of the loophole.”
“So her choices are to either use it and get a body—”
“Or not.”
“Or not. Right. So, if she wants to gain a body, then she would be mortal—breakable.”
“Temptable. Able to feel pain and heartache, as you feel yourself. Able to feel joy. Able to die years before she finds that joy.”
“You lost me.”
“She’d go back, Jamison. She’d go Home and tell The Father that she chooses the right to be born. Born. Like the calf you helped deliver here. Like the calf that might have died and never known its mother.”
“Born,” Skye whispered, “like a baby. Starting from the beginning. Not 16 years old. Not knowing who you are, where to find you—”
“Not knowing that there is even someone she should be looking for.” Lanny sat back in her chair. “There is no such thing as star-crossed lovers, Jamison. There would be no homing beacon in her heart to lead her to you.”
Jamison’s own heart leapt with just a pinch of hope. “But I’d know. I’d know she was out there. I’d find her.”
Skye smiled weakly. “Jamison, you’re forgetting, I’d have parents. Parents with DNA that would determine what I’d look like. Parents who may live on the other side of the Earth, not speak English, never travel to a large city. Would you comb the planet for me, Jamison? Would you keep looking until you found a little girl that seemed to have something familiar in her eyes?”
“There has to be some way.” Jamison wanted to bring the others in, have them brainstorm. Someone would have a good idea.
“And what if you did find me, Jamie?” She reached over and touched his face. “What if you find me in a couple of years? I’ll be two. How long will you wait? Until I’m twenty?”
“If I need to.” It sounded like a great idea.
“And you’ll be thirty-seven?”
“That’s not so bad. Mr. Evans—”
“Yes, Mr. Evans. Do you think it will be so easy, as a thirty-seven-year-old, to convince a twenty-year-old that she’s your long lost soul mate? What if she thinks you are a pervert? What if she falls in love with her high school sweetheart? It happens, you know.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“That’s what you need to understand, Jamie. It wouldn’t be this me. It would be some girl. She’d have my soul. I’d be the essence of her, but what about environment? Peer pressure? What if I die young and you spend your whole life looking for someone who’s not there?”
“There has to be someone who could tell me things.” His mind was racing, trying to come up with any possible scenario that would bring them back together.
Lanny cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Jamison. There will be no one, including me, who can help you.”
Jamison stood and walked to the windows, looking at the light, unreachable from all the layers of drapes covering it. For all he knew, it was a window into Heaven, not one that looked out on the gardens or fields beyond.
It was over. There was nothing he could do. No miracles that could keep them together. Suddenly he realized they were wasting precious time arguing. He spun awkwardly on the thick carpet.
“How much time do we have? Do you know?”
Skye pronounced sentence. “Until three o’clock tomorrow.”
He pulled out his phone. “Twenty-four hours, almost.”
“No, Jamie.” Skye looked him in the eye. “Twelve.”
He looked to Lanny as if the woman could grant them a reprieve.
“Three o’clock in the morning, son. I’m sorry.”
Cheated again! Where was a sturdy BMW dashboard when you needed one?
Then he remembered that blue car hood, out in the middle of a field. Maybe it wasn’t so out of place after all.
With the sour feelings he had for everyone involved in The Arrangement, he thought it best to get out of their precious white room.
“Come on, sweeting.” He pulled Skye to the door. “How the hell do we get out of here?”
She pushed on the panel and it bounced back toward them. Nothing special.
He gathered up their shoes and pulled her elbow to the front door.
“We’ll see you in the morning, then,” Lanny called.
“No, you won’t. We won’t waste time coming back here.”
“But Jamie, I have to come back! At three. I have to do it right.” Skye resisted his pull.
“And what if you don’t? Huh? They going to send dogs after you, or will you just...evaporate in my arms?”
“Bring her back.” Lanny was right behind them. “Let her do it right.”
The old bitch was lucky she didn’t get hit, but then again, she wouldn’t feel anything. It would still make Jamison feel pretty good for a while. Years maybe.
“Let her do it right. Can’t you see it’s important to her?”
Jamison swallowed, then looked at Skye. It was all there on her face. Lanny was right, damn her. “I’m sorry, sweeting. We’ll come back.”
Skye gave him a pained smile and nodded.