“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I ask.
“I might be the wrong person to ask,” Jake says. “But this kind of activity tells me something was going on back then. Here, read this one.”
Jake hands me another bulletin he’s printed. Same weekly calendar, two weeks earlier.
The Banderas family sends their love and thanks for prayers. They’ve had several new converts and yesterday watched as an entire family was healed of Chagas disease.
“I know this name,” I say.
“Chagas? It’s awful. It’s transmitted by insects—”
“No, not the disease. The family. The church still supports these missionaries. I saw their picture in the foyer.”
We read through the bulletins for the entire summer of that year. Every single one claiming supernatural activity of some sort.
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I think
we need to keep looking. But at the very least, we know that the year your mother went missing there seemed to be some supernatural activity here.”
“Sabres?”
“That’d be my guess. But we should talk to Pastor Noah. He’d be able to give us a better idea of what that year was like.”
He continues on, researching other area churches. I return to Canaan’s desk and my investigation into the Benson Elementary School fire. The details online are pretty sparse, but nothing in my dreams contradicts what I find on the Internet. One person was killed, a Susanne Holt, who was survived by her daughter. She was graciously taken in by her paternal grandfather, Henry Madison, of the Ingenui Foundation.
Graciously. Taken. In.
I’ve been yawning for hours, but around eleven o’clock Jake follows suit, and we stumble into a vicious cycle we can’t seem to stop. A few minutes later Jake disappears. He returns with a mug of coffee the size of Crescent Lake. He sets it in front of me.
“I need sugar,” I say, pushing to my feet.
He shoves me lightly back to my seat and places the entire sugar bowl in my hands.
“You really are divine,” I say.
“I know.”
I set the spoon aside and dump a good quarter cup of the grainy goodness into my mug. He returns to his side of the study, and our fingers pound away at our respective keyboards. As mellow as the night’s become, and as horrific my findings, it’s a pleasant way to spend an evening. Working together. Quiet. Focused on the same thing.
The idea of spending many, many nights this way is so far
beyond pleasant that I get a second wind, typing faster, my brain clearing. Of course, it could be the coffee.
The clock on Canaan’s desk has just chimed midnight when our companionable quiet is shaken. The music in the living room masks his approach, so we don’t hear Marco until he’s standing in the doorway of the study.
“Hey,” he says. I look him over. He looks clean, fresh. Well fed. Delia’s been taking good care of him. He decided to stay in her spare room for a while. I think being near the halo terrifies him. I stand and pull him into a hug. He accepts the gesture and pats me softly on the back.
“You wanna stay here tonight, Marco? You’re welcome to,” Jake says. “Canaan’s room is just sitting there.”
“I appreciate it,” Marco says, his eyes lingering on my empty wrist, on the spot where the halo normally rests, “but Olivia’s waiting outside. Just came back for my stuff.”
Olivia? I want to sit him down. Tell him we can explain. Rope him into our research. Anything but let him leave with her. She may have been victimized as a child, but I don’t like her here. I don’t like her near Dad or Marco. And something in Marco’s demeanor tells me I’m right to worry.
“Marco,” I say, tipping his chin up so his eyes meet mine. “You’re not going after Henry, are you?”
“You should have told me he was Olivia’s grandfather,” he says. His tone takes me off guard, but Jake steps in.
“We haven’t known for very long, man. We’re just putting the pieces together now. How did you find out?”
“Olivia.”
“How much time have you been spending with her?” I ask.
“We’re old friends. Remember?”
He turns on his heel and crosses the hall to Canaan’s room, abruptly ending the conversation.
Jake drags his hands through his hair. “Do you think he’s going after Henry?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean, I know he hates Henry, but Marco’s not a killer. Is he?”
“We’re all capable of horrible things, Elle.”
Talk about an awful thought. “Okay, what do you want to do?”
Jake steps closer. “I think we should stop him. Make him stay. Get the PowerPoint out and explain angels and demons if we have to. Tell him what we know about Olivia. About Canaan and Helene. Tell him he doesn’t have to be afraid of the halo.”
Pixie dust!
“Jake, I left the halo on the kitchen counter. Maybe we should . . .”
“No, it’s okay,” he says, a hand to my hip. “I put it in my bag.”
Relief washes over me.
“Thank you,” I say. “I won’t . . . won’t leave it lying around like that anymore.”
“I’m not worried about it,” Jake says, squeezing my side. “So what do you think? We tell him?”
His hands are on both of my hips now, and really, what I’m thinking about has nothing to do with Marco. But another glance in Jake’s eyes and I can tell he has no idea what his touch is doing to me. I force myself to focus.
“If you’re okay with it,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’m all in.”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” he says.
He’s right. I know he is. Still, as Jake takes my hand and leads me down the hall, I pray that Marco will handle this information a tad better than he handled the sight of the morphing
halo and tremendously better than he handled the vision of me dying in that fire.
We stick our heads into Canaan’s room, but it’s empty.
“His bag’s still here,” Jake says, nodding at the far wall. Marco’s backpack leans against the closet door.
“Probably just getting his stuff together,” I say. “He had some books in the living room.”
But when we reach the living room, Marco’s not there. Just Shane & Shane, singing, strumming, worshiping through the speakers. I release Jake’s hand and cross to the front door, opening it and stepping onto the porch. The night is cool and smells of wilting wildflowers. I inhale and lean out over the railing. I stretch past the post, looking up and down the highway.
Deserted.
Huh.
“Olivia’s car’s gone,” I say over the blaring music, stepping back inside and closing the door behind me.
“So is my bag,” Jake calls.
He’s staring at the empty kitchen table, his face pale, his hands clenched in a chaos of sandy hair.
“What?”
Surely I heard him wrong.
“My bag. It was on the table and now it’s . . .”
Did he just say . . .
I run over to the stereo and silence both of the Shanes with a slap of my palm.
“Your bag is gone?”
“Gone.”
“And the halo?” I say, fear bouncing from lung to lung, shortening each breath.
“Gone,” Jake says, letting his hands drop.
The icy hammer of panic pounds at my stomach and it folds in on itself in response. But Jake starts to laugh. He leans forward, his hands on his knees, and cackles loud and childlike.
He’s lost it.
Completely and utterly.
It was only a matter of time, right? I’m seeing rogue demons, Marco thinks I’m going to die in a fire that happened sixteen years ago, and Jake’s losing his mind.
“Jaaaake,” I whine. “What are we going to do?”
His voice slowly quiets, but not before releasing another high-pitched sigh.
“What are we going to do?” I ask again.
At last he turns his face to mine. His eyes are white again. Celestial white. My hands shake. The halo’s nowhere to be found, but Jake’s eyes shine back at me, promising to die in my place should occasion call for it. I rub my eyes, but when my hands fall away and I open them again, Jake’s white eyes remain. The same frightening, wonderful white that terrifies me every time I see it.
I have to tell him.
“Jake . . .”
But his long legs bring him toward me until he’s so close I can smell the coffee on his breath, feel the fire radiating from his eyes. He grabs my hands and together we drop to our knees. Before I can say a thing, Jake answers my earlier question.
“We pray.”
I
think we should check the chest,” I say.
Canaan called not long ago from the city. He’s been following the foundation’s money and keeping an eye on Henry. He promised to keep an eye out for Marco and Olivia, but the phone’s been silent for hours, and our prayers have dwindled to whispers. A quick glance at the clock tells me it’s nearly four in the morning.
Jake jumps to his feet. “I’ll do it.”
He jogs down the hall and I head to the kitchen, under-whelmed by the silence of the Father. I fill a glass with water and down it like a shot. Unanswered prayers are still hard for me to understand.
From my perch at the kitchen counter, I see Jake emerge from Canaan’s room down the hall. He has something in his hand. Small, thin, rectangular. It looks like a picture.
“What is it?” I ask, my pulse quickening at the thought of a way forward.
“A tattoo,” Jake says, coming back down the hall. His steps are slow, measured. His face ashen. Jake shows me the picture.
It’s one of those snapshots they hang in tattoo shops showing off their work. The top and bottom of the picture still has tape residue left on it. It’s brittle with age and faded, but the photo is of the back of a man’s neck.
Scrolling artwork creates an oval of sorts, just below his hairline. It’s about three inches wide, all told. Within the oval, inked in heavy cursive, is the name Jessica Rose.
It means nothing to me. I flip the picture over. “Evil Deeds Tattoo Parlor” is stamped on the back along with an address in northwest Portland.
Men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.
I’ve just guzzled a glass of water, but my mouth goes dry, my tongue like sandpaper. I tell myself I’m okay. I’ve seen crazy stuff before. This isn’t anything to be shocked by. But I drain another glass of water, and another.
“This was in the chest?”
Jake nods, his hands in tight fists upon the counter.
“You know this tattoo parlor? You recognize the name?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
“Then what?”
But Jake says nothing. I lift his arm and step between him and the counter, forcing him to look at me. The celestial light that had shone there is gone, and it’s those green and brown eyes that stare back at me. Flesh. Not spirit.
But they still give me butterflies.
“Jessica Rose was my mother.”
My stomach clenches. It’s like a miniature hunter just fired buckshot at the butterflies flitting about inside.
“I thought you didn’t know your last name.”
“I don’t. I mean, if Rose was her last name, she listed
something else on my birth certificate. There’s no record of a Jessica Rose giving birth in Oregon the year I was born.”
“Then how do you know she’s your mother?”
“It’s one of the few things I remember. My dad slamming doors, screaming “Jessica Rose” whenever he was angry. Maybe it was her middle name or a nickname. I don’t know.”
Of all the things the Throne Room could have sent, of all the ways He could have answered our prayers for Marco,
this
is what we’re given: a picture of a man’s neck with Jake’s mother’s name tattooed on it.
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the thought growing there. Of the certainty that this is our way forward. They’re ridiculous, the words I’m about to say—because I need him here. I’m on unsteady ground as it is. With my dad and these nightmares. With the halo gone and Marco gallivanting about with Olivia. With the Celestial sliding in and out of view.
But I say them anyway.
“You have to go.” I flip the photo again and read. “Evil Deeds Tattoo Parlor, NW 23rd. We prayed, and God gave us this.”
“I don’t want to leave you here without Canaan or the halo. Not with the nightmares, Elle.”
“I adore the halo and Canaan’s a rock star, but neither of them can stop the dreams. You need to go. And Helene’s here.”
“Are you sure? You’ll be okay if I leave?”
I want to tell him, “No, stupid. Of course I won’t be okay if you leave.” But I don’t. I remind him about the sketch in Ali’s journal and the scripture written on the page.
“You have to go,” I say again.
Jake leans in and presses his face to mine, the contours of our cheekbones curving perfectly together. “I’ll go because
it’s the answer we’ve been praying for. But so you know, I’d rather stay.”
I can’t go with him. We both know that. Not with my dad so unstable and the possibility that Marco could return.
“I’d rather you stay too.”
My heart bangs in my chest at his closeness, at the heat between us, at the promise of a future together. I think it’s trying to break through—my heart—trying to be closer to the man in front of me.
I know just how it feels.
Close just doesn’t seem close enough anymore.
It’s another few minutes before he moves, but it’s still far too soon.
He grazes my bottom lip with his thumb. “I’m going to go throw a few things in my bag.”
“Marco’s bag, you mean?”
“Yeah, Marco’s bag.”
He kisses me lightly and leaves me leaning against the kitchen counter. I’m still standing there holding the photo when he crosses the hall with Marco’s bag and heads to his room.
I follow him down the hall, wanting to savor the last few minutes before he leaves. I’d help him pack, but I can’t ever find a thing in his room. Still, I can sit in the mess and watch.
I pass Canaan’s room, and that woodsy, outdoor smell tickles my nose. I stop and take two steps backward. It’s coming from the chest. Jake must’ve left the lid ajar. I step into the room and take the five and a half steps necessary to reach the end of the bed.
I look down, but the chest’s not open.
Huh.