“Okay.” She blows fallen tendrils of her hair out of her face. “We’re up. One step. Another one. Good. Another one…” If this were any other time, I would roll my eyes and tell her I’m not five years old. I don’t need coaching to walk. I don’t roll my eyes. I can’t. Eva bends to pick up her backpack and my balance threatens to run away.
Outside the door to the upstairs study, she props my hands against the wall and disappears in another angelic blur. I’m whipped by wind and heat, the floor rocking under my shoes. At some point in the distant past, I must have considered school. I lean my head on the wall and look at my dark uniform pants and the white shirt. How did I put all this on? Why? I can’t wear white. Not anymore. The blood—
Eva returns, her hands moving quickly at her pockets, at an envelope, at her backpack. I can’t go any farther. I can’t. But she puts my arm back over her shoulder and we take one step.
Another.
Another.
My sister’s voice becomes a whispering echo spilled down from our cathedral ceilings. A prayer. I’m taller than she is. Heavier. She’s got her backpack and me. Too much for one person. But Eva doesn’t falter. There’s a scent of burning incense. Someone must be giving me last rites. The person receiving last rites isn’t supposed to be walking. Maybe this is the last penance, this long, long walk. I can’t lean against the wall in the staff elevator or I won’t start walking again. Eva sways, trying to keep her balance. Or maybe it’s me. When the elevator lets us off, she murmurs something to a dark shape. Money flashes through her hand, leaving a green streak in the air.
Another corner. Another hall. Outside.
The springtime air is ice water on my burning skin. A shiver rakes across my spine but can’t put the fire out. “Almost there.” Eva’s stoic. Determined. “Almost at my car.”
She got her permit two weeks ago. No license yet. It’s another eternity to the garage, which holds a fleet of cars. Thank God Eva’s is the closest one. Thank God it’s one of those compact SUVs, so I don’t have to climb into it. Her hands around my arm give me enough stability to fall into the passenger seat and curl away. More light streams in from the opening garage door.
I feel so bad. I’ve never felt so bad. Eva slams my door and it shakes the earth. A lifetime later she slides into the driver’s seat and stabs at the button to start the engine. “Jesus. How did you get so sick this fast?”
A beam of sunlight from the garage window makes a halo around her head. “Purgatory.”
“No.” One deep breath, and she puts the SUV in drive. “No, this is real.”
The transition from garage to driveway jars my teeth. More flames lick the back of my neck. Eva’s face is white in the afternoon sun. This is scaring the shit out of her. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
My throat is gravel and glass, and it all hurts so much my vision blackens. “I should have known better.”
An admission I didn’t want to make. That this is my fault. That I deserve this. If only Eva could understand that I deserve this. I’m not really here, in this SUV. Take me farther away from here.
Please.
“You’re absolved,” Eva says. I think she says it. I’m not sure. Her voice comes from far away. Through deep water. Through wind and the roar of a fire in a massive grate.
“You can’t absolve me.”
“Leo, you’re not making any sense.”
We turn onto the main road and the world shudders. It’s violent enough to shatter my spine. To expose more flesh. The wounds on my back writhe and sting and oh, god, oh, fuck, it hurts.
“I got in too deep,” I announce to the Angel of Death at the gates of hell. More than I meant to say. More than I meant to admit, even to myself. What was I thinking? What was I ever thinking?
“With who?”
Eva accelerates. It’s illegal, what she’s doing, but there are greater laws at play, like the laws of heaven and hell. The sun glints in her hair. Another halo. “An angel.”
She was not an angel. She was a demon disguised in blonde hair and knowing eyes. I should have known better. I should have known. All this pain—it’s penance.
“Who, Leo?” Eva’s tone demands. Insists. “Tell me who did this.”
“She did.”
“Tell me her name.” I can’t say it. I’m falling, tumbling toward the center console, pulled down by sheer gravity and the collapse of my skeleton. Eva pushes me back up. “Tell me now.”
“No.”
Caroline. It’s only three syllables. Together they mean pain. They mean hell. They mean fire, and flame—
I bite through air so hot it’s turned to glass, but I won’t say her name.
Eva turns her head, and there are tears in her eyes. Glistening tears. She looks like Mary at the tomb, right before Mary wept for Jesus. “Just tell me who she is,” she whispers. “That woman. That bitch.”
On my next breath something happens. A small miracle. The heat becomes bearable. My vision clears. There’s Eva, no longer blurry in the driver’s seat. Her knuckles are white on the wheel. I’m filled with a fresh conviction. A directive from God. He points the way out of purgatory. I look into Eva’s huge, dark eyes. I don’t have much time to say what I want to say. I can feel the pain coming back. It’s only held at bay for a few seconds.
“Eva.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll return the favor one day. Promise.”
CHAPTER TWO
I look like a horror movie.
If I couldn’t see my shirt and leggings, I’d know by the way people blanch when they look at me. No one is at the hospital for any good reason, but I’m the nightmare. I’m the one covered in dried blood. Leo’s blood. There’s so much. Because Ronan shot him. Because he was shielding me. Because, because, because. I’ve followed the loop around a hundred times since I’ve been here in this waiting room, at the entrance to the Katherine Campbell Surgical Wing.
He got shot protecting me.
He could die from trying to save my life.
This waiting room is as far as they would let me go. I came here in the same ambulance as Leo, pushed into a jump seat by a paramedic who didn’t believe that none of the blood was mine. My throat is still raw from what happened when we got here.
I tried to stay with him. They kept saying things like family only and emergency surgery but no one wants to be the one to drag a woman in blood-soaked clothes out of the hospital. Security hasn’t been summoned to do it.
I won’t get up. Won’t wander over to the coffee machine, or use the bathroom sink to try and get the blood off my hands. I won’t give them the chance to catch me.
My options are limited. Look at my hands, which are stained with Leo’s blood. Or look at the rest of the waiting room, where there are a few other people avoiding eye contact. There were more when I got here. I’m not sure how long it’s been. Hours, at least.
I’m staring into the middle distance and trying not to think of gunshots when the doors to the waiting room burst open.
Black suits. All I can see are the black suits. Six men—no. Eight. Ten? A lot of men in dark suits come through the doors, moving fast. Security. I’ve seen men like this at Aunt Caroline’s, but always in the shadows. Never occupying a waiting room. That’s what they’re doing. The front two split off, each going different directions. The nurse behind the check-in desk stands up, and the men in black suits break apart their formation, and the woman in the center is—