Chapter Twenty-Nine
Baptista’s crew, who had indeed introduced krokodil to their own neighborhood, nearly blew Naked City away. The combustibles inside Little Havana burned through the night, but in the end, the place ended up looking pretty much the same. Meanwhile, Yulyia Kolyadenko died as she lived. Hard. Eyes open, and ever looking forward.
And Dennis was in a medically induced coma.
Unlike Jeannie Holmes, he had a room of his own: private, secure, and well-monitored. Kit brought her computer, setting up vigil just as she had with Marin. She thought having something to do would keep her mind off her friend’s fight for life, but her search through the family archives for more information on her father’s death suddenly seemed less important than it had only days earlier. The past was gone.
And the people she loved kept on dying.
“Please. Be okay,” Kit whispered, staring at Dennis’s impossibly still body. It was her incessant prayer. The words ran together in a river of supplication.
Grif had remained with her through the long, uncertain night as the doctors operated on Dennis, though she knew he believed her friend was already doomed. Yet for the first time since they’d met, Kit didn’t care what Grif thought. After all, she’d read his thoughts involving a woman whose loss was his life’s greatest sorrow—after Scratch had revealed Grif to her more thoroughly than he’d ever opened himself—and Kit didn’t care if he remained with her or not.
Knowing all of this, Grif stayed. He remained still, and mostly silent throughout the night, perched near the window of the impersonal room like the Dark Knight overlooking Gotham. But angels weren’t superheroes, Kit thought, keeping her back to him. For all the help they provided, those might as well be feather dusters on their backs.
Finally, near dawn, Grif stepped in front of her, obscuring her view and forcing her gaze up. “You’ve been staring at the same thing for hours.”
“It’s not a thing,” she replied coolly. “He’s a person.”
His jaw clenched. “I meant the computer screen.”
She knew that. But picking a fight gave her a place to put her anger and guilt and, yes, sadness. Because deep down she knew she could sit next to Dennis’s sickbed and pray for a miracle, yet if God decided to pull the plug, then Dennis could be Grif’s very next Take. Scratch might be gone, but no matter how many evils were banished from the world, it seemed there was always some new horror ready to break your heart.
“I’m going for coffee,” Grif finally said, running a hand over his face. “Want to come?”
Kit’s eyes burned from being trained on Dennis the whole of the night, but she shook her head. As long as he was here, so was she. She waited until Grif’s hand was on the door before blurting out the only question she had left for him, the one woven like a black thread between the prayers looping in her mind. “Could you have done it to her?”
Silence was his answer. Maybe he didn’t know what she was asking. Maybe, she thought, as she turned to face him, he didn’t want to. Eyeing Grif coolly across Dennis’s body, she clarified. “Could you have done that to Evie? Held her under water while she struggled for life? Watched her drown?”
He squinted, thinking about it, and finally nodded, giving her the truth—and her newest heartbreak. “Of course. Anything to save her.”
Neither answer, yes or no, would have been right, but Kit still felt gut-punched. Anything. She turned back around, thinking, I’m tired of competing with the past. Grif wavered where he was, she felt him on the edge of saying more, but what more was there? He loved her, yes. But he still loved Evelyn Shaw, too. Kit knew that for a fact.
The door opened, and closed. Bowing her head, Kit almost sobbed. Yet the door swung right back open, and Kit straightened immediately. It was yet another doctor. She slumped.
“Well, that looks like a good way to pass the time.” The doctor smiled, and pointed at Kit’s forgotten computer. DR. MARKHAM was embroidered on his crisp white jacket, and there was a burning bunny pin on the left lapel. Whatever that meant. “Video games are a good escape. It’s nice to disappear into another world for a bit.”
Kit didn’t bother telling him the Ms. Pac-Man ticking across her computer screen was her screensaver. Somewhere in the night she’d lost her capacity for small talk.
“So how’s our patient doing?”
Kit had been sitting in the room for almost eighteen hours, and hadn’t seen this man once. Edging away from the bed, she stood to give him room. “You tell me.”
Dr. Markham used a penlight to check Dennis’s pupils. “It’s hard to say with a GSW. It’s an open brain injury, and there’s been some hemorrhaging, but only time will tell.”
But, Kit wanted to ask, would he be able to foxtrot and drink rum from tiki mugs and flirt like James Dean . . . or not?
“Is he your brother?”
“No. I was there when he was shot,” she said, explaining why Dennis’s family, and the department, had pulled strings for her. They wouldn’t arrive until the next day, and they didn’t want him alone.
“Boyfriend?” Dr. Markham pressed.
Kit shook her head. “Just a friend.”
“That’s good,” Dr. Markham said, but before she could ask what was good about it, he bent over Dennis’s chest, talking with his back to her. “You have to understand that Mr. Carlisle has experienced one of the most severe brain traumas possible. He may never think or speak normally again. Frankly, it’d be a miracle if he even wakes.”
He was scribbling on his chart, so he missed Kit’s wince, but flipped the chart shut a moment later and tucked it under his arm. “There’s nothing more to do now but wait.”
That was the extent of his medical care.
He smiled. “Guess I’ll go grab a late dinner.”
Kit looked at him. “It’s six A.M.”
“I’m just kidding.”
Kit didn’t smile.
“I am off my shift soon, though.” He hung the clipboard on the peg at the end of the bed. “Maybe you’d like to take a little bedside break. Let me buy you a coffee?”
Kit’s fleeting instinct was to wish for Grif, but no . . . she could handle this one herself. “Are you asking me out over my friend’s sickbed?”
“He won’t know the difference.” Dr. Markham added a nonchalant shrug to his handsome smile. Behind him, Dennis’s heart monitor continued its steady beat.
“Sure, he would,” Kit said, in time to the beat.
The doctor tilted his head. “How?”
“Because every time you have a drink with an a*shole, an angel loses his wings.”
The smile, the invitation, and the doctor disappeared. “Ring the nurses’ station if you need anything.”
“Imperious bastard,” Kit said, still glaring as the door clicked shut.
“Yes. That one has a serious God complex,” said a voice next to her.
Kit whirled to find Dennis’s eyes open wide, but there was no relief for Kit in the look. The blue depths swirled with liquid marble.
“No!” Kit said, leaping to her feet. The computer wobbled on the bedside stand, but she pushed it all away. “No,” she said again.
“Oh, but I think I know a God complex when I see it.” Dennis’s face lifted, but it wasn’t her friend’s lopsided, heartfelt smile.
“Get out of there,” Kit spat, grabbing Dennis by his shoulders, surprising them both. She gave him a shake. “Get out!”
“Relax, kid. Every life is improved by that which is Pure.”
Not my life, Kit thought, and the expression across from her altered, as if whatever was inside Dennis heard the thought.
She tilted her head. “Who are you?”
“I’m Saint Francis of the Cherubim tribe, the first Pure to ever experience mortality as a part of God’s divine will. But you can call me Frank.”
The familiar name calmed Kit somewhat. “You mean . . . Sarge?”
“In the flesh.”
Kit crossed her arms. “That’s not funny.”
“Admit it, Katherine. You’ve wanted to know more of the Everlast since you first learned of it. So here I am.”
It was true. Ever since she’d seen Grif’s wings flare from his shoulders in a rising wave of black smoke, and tasted forever in his kiss, she’d wanted to know more. She looked continuously for signs that angels walked among the living. She could admit now, under that roiling, marbled gaze, that she even searched for signs that she was favored. After all, she thought, staring back at the Pure, who didn’t want to be one of the Chosen?
“I like you, Craig. You’re what we in the Everlast like to call a Blender,” Frank said, the swirl in his monochromatic gaze slowing to match his tone. “You might as well mix your faiths in a cocktail shaker. You bend dogmas to suit you instead of bending yourself to fit a dogma. You believe in God and angels, but you also believe in Satan and demons and ghosts and spirits and astrology and witchcraft and the evil eye and dousing. A Blender could say their Hail Marys on the weekend, then consult the Ouija board during the week, with equal faith in both.”
“I’ve never played with an Ouija board.”
“I know. Out of the same openness of faith.” He paused. “Dennis is a Blender, too. That’s why you can both so easily mix eras, combining your love for the past with the demands of modern-day life.”
Kit brightened a bit at his use of the present tense. Surely he wouldn’t use it if Dennis were destined to die?
“Griffin Shaw, on the other hand, was an Apostate.” His mouth curled, the word a bitter pill on his tongue. “They believe only in what they can see and touch. The hard-core ones actively work to disprove the existence of God and angels and anything that is divine. The irony is that Apostates are actually closer to the angels than anyone. They’re the ones who’ve already been touched by a miracle or a near-death experience. Yet it was so traumatic that not only do they not remember it, they harden their hearts to anything remotely mystical.”
“Grif is a Centurion,” she said, sticking up for him out of habit.
Frank huffed. “And he still doesn’t believe in miracles. I ask you, who else has ever had a second chance in the earthly realm? Who do you know that is both angelic and Chosen? Griffin Shaw is one of the greatest miracles there is, yet he doesn’t believe in himself.”
“I believe in him.”
“Why? He doesn’t believe in you.” He held up a hand at her indrawn breath. “No, don’t get mad. You’re the girl who seeks out the truth at any cost, are you not? You value it above all else?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘all else.’ ”
“And would you tune me out just because it’s not what you want to hear?”
Kit took a deep breath and couldn’t help but ask, “What do I not want to hear?”
“Griffin Shaw will discover who murdered him a half-century ago. It is destined. It is why we have indulged his return to his fleshly nature. But . . . it’ll do nothing to bring the two of you closer together.”
Tears immediately filled her eyes, even though the words weren’t a surprise. It was only surprising to realize that it was something she already knew.
“He is not of this time, Katherine. He is only in it.”
“He is Chosen,” she pointed out. “Like me.”
“Like you said, he is a Centurion. And you—”
“A mere mortal.” She put her head down, and closed her eyes. “I know.”
Frank was silent for so long that Kit thought he’d left. But when she glanced up, Dennis’s gaze was still grainy and swirling and foreign. “Have you ever wondered what would happen if Shaw and you did live out your lives together?”
She’d dreamed of it.
Kit thought she saw sadness visit the churning eyes. “You would age, he would not. Eventually, it would worry you. As you know, living on while those around you die can be a special sort of hell.”
Kit wrapped her arms around herself. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He surprised her by reaching out and touching her shoulder. Dennis’s fingertips were ice-cube cold. “You have a gift, Katherine. An ability to see the bright side of every situation despite your insistence on, and knowledge of, the truth. You’re cheerful by nature, and that is good. But the real reason you live so fully in the present, while still celebrating the past, is that you have the certainty, the knowledge, the truth that death looms ahead. So you do not sip of life, you gorge on it.”
And Grif, because of his everlasting angelic nature, did not. His tomorrows lay before him on a road without end.
“This man,” Frank said, gesturing down Dennis’s body, “lives in the same way as you. He sucks out the marrow, seeks truth, bringing justice to light. He also cares for you, deeply.”
“He’s just my friend,” she told him, as she had the doctor.
“But you want him to live.”
“Of course.” What did that have to do with anything?
“And, were things different, you could have feelings for him, too.”
Kit wanted to argue, but as soon as the words were loosed in the room, she knew they were true. If circumstances were different—if she’d never met Grif—she may have developed real feelings for Dennis.
Biting her lower lip, Kit glanced at the door.
“Don’t worry.” Frank knew her concern. “I sent Shaw after a soul cowering in manhole beneath all this city’s ridiculous flashing neon. He’ll be gone for hours.”
“You know that makes you sound like a jerk, right?”
“It’s a job.” He shrugged, and settled back into the pillows.
Kit glared, hating him for it. Frank glanced at her, churning eyes moving over her forehead as if reading a ticker tape. “Does it feel good to be Chosen?” he asked suddenly. “To be loved so deeply that He’d give everything for you?”
Angels, Kit realized, had wondered this for ages. It was the same question that drove the fallen angels to turn against God. Kit lifted her chin. “None of your business.”
Frank barked out a laugh. “True enough. Let me ask you something else then? Since you are made in His image.”
Arms crossed, Kit waited.
“Would you give up everything for someone you loved?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
“Think about it,” Frank sang.
“Is this rhetorical?” Kit asked.
“No, I can be very specific. What, for example, would you give up in order to prevent Dennis Carlisle’s death at eleven A.M. this morning?”
Kit’s gaze shot to the wall clock, and she read the time before her vision swam. Five hours, she thought, closing her eyes. I hate you.
“I know,” Frank said lightly. “But people die. Life goes on.”
“But not for Dennis,” she said, standing. “Unless . . . ?”
“Walk away from Griffin Shaw,” Frank said.
“No,” Kit countered, folding her arms.
“Then Dennis dies, and you’ll be left knowing you could have prevented it. Then your impossibly cheery disposition will begin to crack. Your moods will swing like a pendulum.”
Frank continued to speak and watch her with utter impassivity. “You’ll skip work, meals, eventually bathing. You will cease living life as you know it, and dwell only on your mistakes. In effect, you’ll be addicted to memories that should already be buried in the past. You’ve seen the havoc that can wreak.”
Kit shook her head. “No. That would never happen.”
“That’s exactly what will happen, and even having Griffin Shaw by your side won’t be enough—”
“It will. It—”
“—because you’ll wake up one day and realize you gave up a chance at a real life with Dennis for a love that is already dead. Then you, too, will be lost.”
Lost is just the opposite of Chosen. And who has ever really chosen you, Katherine?
She looked at Dennis, then back at the wall clock marking his march to death. She thought of Grif, seeing and seeking Evie everywhere, even with Kit by his side. She recalled Mary Margaret’s heart-rending words.
Why does so much of life have to be about letting go?
“Because that’s the art of life,” Frank said simply, reading her mind again. “And letting go is the only way you can take up something new.”
And Grif had never done that. But . . .
“He might. I mean, he might still choose me, you know.” Kit’s voice was soft and shaky, and though she hated herself for doing so in front of Frank, she teared up, too. “In time, I could be enough.”
“After fifty years?” Frank tilted his head. “Come on, Kit.”
“I’m a good person.” A single tear fell. The Pure tracked it with his surging gaze.
“I’m not arguing that. But I suppose to properly answer the question, you’d really need all the facts.” Frank shrugged at her sharp look. “I have a secret that could change your answer.”
A long moment passed. “Is it truth?”
He inclined his head. “But it’s a hard one.”
Kit placed her head in her hands. The angel was silent, though surely eavesdropping on every one of her tangled thoughts as she let her mind travel as far as it could down each fork in this decision. She felt the moment upon her like gravity itself.
Finally, Kit did what she always did when faced with a mystery. She lifted her head and leaned close. “Tell me.”
He did . . . and her shoulders immediately slumped with the knowledge. Her overactive, tired, and taxed mind slowed beneath its weight, and all of her options turned to dust.
She allowed a fleeting regret for not kissing Grif before he’d left the room.
Then she looked at the Pure, and swallowed hard.
“Let’s make a deal.”