Then: “Yes. He deserved to die. He would have exposed me. Exposed us. Or at least tried to. And I can’t hide how I used to when I looked human. That was a big part of what made it easy, I imagine. Now, though… look at me. No way this will be easy to cover up, explain away. Steve said it was hard to hold on to my image in his head, sure, but he was gone for a while, yet was able to still remember me enough that he knew to come back here to look for me. That would never have happened before. Not when I looked human.”
Faye left the coffees alone, forgotten. Moved to the couch. Fell into it, put her face in her hands, elbows on her knees. She didn’t say anything for a long time. When she finally did, it hit Henry hard: “I want you to leave.”
“Faye, listen–”
“No. Get out.”
“What are you going to do with…” Henry motioned toward Steve’s body.
“I’ll deal with it. Just go. Get out. Now.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
She looked up at him, locked eyes. “I hardly give a fuck.”
As this exchange took place, Milo felt something push upward within him. That feeling of dread had coalesced into something new. Clearly, that feeling had been warranted, and was now at least partially realized with the dead body still leaking blood on the floor. But this was something else. That cold ball of lead in his belly felt like it was heating up; he felt like he was heating up somehow. Becoming more… substantial?
He reached a hand out toward the table upon which Faye had placed the coffee cups. Closer to the cup handle. Closer. Then his fingers passed right through.
But just as his heart was sinking, something caught his eye. He lifted his gaze quickly. Standing to one side of the table was the woman he’d seen in the hospital furnace room. As before, the air pressure in the room seemed to change with her appearance. But back then, she had seemed fairly calm; now she seemed agitated. And this time, Milo thought he heard sounds coming from her mouth. He watched her lips intently, realized he could make out a word here and there. She was telling him something, staring directly at him. And just as he had been feeling more substantial himself, so she seemed more substantial to him, as well.
Concentrating harder, it was like someone had turned up the volume in his brain. Words formed – all of them at once in a sudden rush that shocked him and made him stagger back: “You cannot let him leave. You cannot let him leave. You cannot let him leave.”
Milo turned back to Henry. Neither Henry nor Faye had spoken in the past minute or so. Henry just stared down at Steve’s body; Faye’s face was slack, her initial anger giving way to fatigue. Milo wasn’t sure that she was aware Henry was even still in the room.
Milo was about to turn away from them and focus his attention back on the woman when he realized he was wrong. Faye and Henry were still talking; he just could no longer hear them. He watched their lips move. Henry gesticulated. Faye turned away from him. The anger was back in her features, clouded her eyes. Milo thought the look on her face bordered on hatred.
He turned back to the woman, who was still repeating, “You cannot let him leave,” but had now added “They’ll kill him” to the repetitive refrain.
“I can hear you,” Milo said.
“You cannot let him leave. They’ll kill him. They’ll kill…”
Milo stepped forward, nearly within arm’s reach of the woman. She shimmered the air around her with her intensity. “I said I can hear you, I can hear you.”
The woman stopped speaking. She looked momentarily shocked, her mouth hanging slightly open. She closed it. Opened it again, said, “You can?”
Milo nodded. “I cannot let him leave. They’ll kill him.”
The woman nodded.
Milo took another step forward, close enough now to touch her if he reached out a hand – and if he were able to touch anything at all.
“Who are you?” Milo said.
“Adelina.”
“My name is Milo.”
“I know.”
They looked at each other for a moment longer, something powerful passing between them that neither really understood.
“Milo, you need to stop Henry any way you can. He doesn’t know how important he is.”
“To who? To what?”
“To me, to you, to everything and everyone.”
“Um…”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, and you have no reason to believe me…”
“Well, I’m inclined to believe you to a certain extent, considering you’re a ghost that’s decided to appear to me – a ghost myself – so there’s that.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
“Well, you look like a ghost. More substantial than me, sure, but still, uh, floating off the ground, you know?”
“You’re not listening. Nothing can happen to Henry. He needs to be left alone. He needs to let his evolution run its course.”
“Sure, and I’m not opposed to that – whatever it entails. That’s kind of the point of everything we’ve been doing our whole lives, so I get it. But I can’t touch anything, so that makes it a little difficult to stop massive metal behemoths from doing pretty much as they please, you know? Watch.”
Milo swept one of his hands through the coffee cups on the table – or would have swept one of his hands through them, if his hand hadn’t knocked them both off the table and onto the floor where they shattered into a hundred pieces.
Milo’s mouth dropped open. He looked at Adelina. Then at Henry, then Faye. They both looked back at him.