Color of Angels' Souls (3 page)

“You're making him feel bad.” She pointed at the police officer. “If you eat his Mist now your color will change, and you'll start moving more and more toward negative emotions. That's probably not a good idea.”

Jeremy walked over to her. There was nothing special about her—except of course the fact that she was blue, a much darker blue than Jeremy. She was short and chubby and had a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

“My name's Tetisheri, passed over in 1600 B.C.,” she said as she extended her chubby little hand to Jeremy. “And you?”

Jeremy's eyes opened wide. He thought he'd heard that name before.

“Uh, Jeremy Galveaux,” he replied. “I passed over about a half an hour ago, I think. Like to be more precise but I've lost my watch.”

“So I saw. What a strange way to go.”

Jeremy could only sigh. He got the feeling his decapitation would be following him around for quite some time: ‘Hey, there's the guy that got his head cut off in New York City! What kind of afterlife is this anyway …'

“What were you saying about the Mist?” he asked nervously. “I shouldn't eat the brown stuff, is that it? And why did you say I made him feel bad?”

“We can … have an influence on the living. On most of them anyway. We can arouse their emotions: anger, hate, love, sadness, happiness. Weren't there ever times in your life when you suddenly felt angry without knowing why? Or frustrated, or worried, or exhilarated for no apparent reason?”

“Um, yeah … sure!”

“It was because of us. Not always, but most of the time. We need the living in order to survive, and if they're indifferent or uninterested they can't give us any food. So we have to rile them up a little bit.”

“That's what the other Angel told me,” Jeremy said, aghast. “You're like … vampires. You don't drink blood, but the emotions that you arouse from the living.”

“What
other Angel
?” asked the blue woman, who looked tense all of a sudden.

“Flint. He's the one who helped me out when I died—or
passed over
, I should say.”

“What color was he?”

“Blue. Even darker blue than you.”

“Oh good, a Blue,” she said, suddenly relieved.

“He was in a hurry so he couldn't explain everything to me. What am I supposed to do now?”

“The first thing you need to do is relax. Then you have to start feeding yourself. That's very important.”

“I still don't understand why Angels have to eat. Aren't we pure spirits?”

“Mmm, not completely. As you can see for yourself, there is life after death. And believe me, it you want to survive, you're going to have to fight just as hard as you did when you were alive.”

He looked at all the Angels around him and felt depressed again. What kind of afterlife was this anyway! If he ever ran into God, he would have a little talk with him about what “paradise” was supposed to be like! Then something else struck him: He should probably ask her about the rules that governed his new existence while he had the chance.

“And what about sleep? Do we sleep? I mean … can we still sleep if we want to?”

“Yes—and thank goodness, or else we all would have lost our marbles a long time ago. Pick any bedroom you want.”

“What do you mean?” Jeremy frowned.

“Walk into a house or an apartment building, go into a bedroom and lie down,” Tetisheri replied impishly. “Just like you usually do. What's so hard to understand about that?”

Jeremy's eyes opened wide.

“You think I'm going to just walk in and sleep on top of somebody?”

“You don't sleep
on
people. We pass right through all living creatures. You can sleep
through
people. But don't worry about that, there are all kinds of places where you can rest. You don't really need a bed—you can even float in the air if you want. But it's true we don't sleep as much as in our past lives. Just a few hours a day. There are some sleep addicts here though. The Sleepers. The only time they wake up is to get some food. Then they go right back to sleep. A lot of them disappear though because sometimes they forget to eat.”

“I see.”

Actually he didn't understand a thing but preferred to drop the matter.

Then Jeremy jumped back when a pigeon suddenly appeared right in front of him. Its head was smashed flat and its wings were all askew. It barely had time to emit a “cooo” before it disappeared.

“Whu … what was that?”

“What?”

“I … I just saw a pigeon, and it was in pretty rough shape!”

Tetisheri smiled.

“Oh, he probably just got run over by a car this instant. Animals don't stay. No one knows where they go. They pass right through without a trace. Which is probably all for the best, or else we'd constantly be hounded by packs of ferocious beasts who'd be none too happy about how we killed them for their skin, meat, and bones. Thousands of animals and insects die every day, but you usually don't see them because they pass through so quickly. It's usually the Newcomers who see them, but it only lasts for a few hours. Pretty soon it'll just seem like the air is shimmering all the time.”

He heard a “Pop!” and half a dozen surprised-looking cockroaches suddenly appeared, then disappeared almost instantly. Jeremy felt miserable again and could feel his whole being begin to slump, but his sense of humor came back in full force to save him from a humiliating crying fit.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat to cover the trembling in his voice. “Considering all the mosquitoes, spiders, and wasps I killed in my day, I'm relieved to learn there won't be zombie swarms trying to seek their revenge.”

Which made him think of something else he was wondering about: “Are we … immortal?”

“Not exactly. Let's just say that you've got a good chance of surviving for a few thousand years. But it's rare to find Angels that old. After a while they tend to get bored and disappear.”

“They get bored?” Jeremy asked, all ears. “So what do you do with yourselves all day—and all night?” he added as he took in the frenetic dance of the Angels around him.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

Tetisheri sighed. She had probably repeated the same thing thousands of times before to Newbies, but Jeremy had no intention of letting her off the hook now.

“On who you are,” she finally answered. “There are different sorts of Angels. I already mentioned the Sleepers. They're the most passive Angels. There are also the Happy Ones, who forget completely about the living and just eat the Mist and enjoy their new lives to the fullest. That's what most of the Angels do. Then there are the Activists, those of us who still participate in the world of the living.”

“Participate?” Jeremy asked with surprise. “How do you do that?”

“We go to the movies, or read over the shoulders of the living, or even directly over the computer screen of our favorite authors. We can even eat while we're reading. We whisper into their ears, and we go to plays, concerts, and cocktail parties. We entertain ourselves. And,” she added sadly, “last but not least, there are the Avenging Angels, who don't think their lives on Earth ended the way they should have, and who want to go back. Or those who were … murdered. Many of them go crazy.”

Jeremy could feel the lump in his throat.

Her face suddenly brightened and she gave him a warm smile, as if she were sorry to have scared him.

“But the best thing you can do here is find a purpose for your new existence. To keep busy. To avoid disappearing.”

His goal had been to become the youngest king of the financial world, but he got the feeling that he wouldn't have much luck on that score in the afterlife.

They stared at each other, neither one speaking.

“If I were you,” she finally said, pointing down at his corpse, “I would try to figure out why someone killed me in such a horrible way.”

Her words bothered him and he reacted without thinking.

“It was probably all a huge mistake,” he snapped. “I don't have any enemies! I can't see what there is to figure out. In a couple minutes they'll say that the murderer emptied my pockets and that'll be my epitaph:

DECAPITATED FOR FIFTY DOLLARS

AND A MODEL 3137 BREGUET OPEN-WORKED
GRANDE COMPLICATION WRISTWATCH

BY SOME NUTCASE WHO WATCHED

TOO MANY KUROSAWA MOVIES.

“Hm. Maybe you're right. But on the other hand, do you have anything better to do than to look for some answers and—who knows?—maybe to find them?”

Before he had time to argue the point, she gave him a mischievous grin and closed her eyes tightly, as if she were concentrating very hard on something. Then she winced, and Jeremy was just about to ask her if everything was OK when suddenly she began to … fly away. Just like that. Not like some angel beating its big chicken wings, but more like a balloon filled with helium. A big blue balloon—or more like a blimp, since it looked like she could change directions as she rose.

OK, maybe it wasn't the most appropriate image, since she was nowhere near as big as a blimp, but the resemblance was certainly striking. Jeremy stared on in wonder as she rose into the sky (the whole process looked awfully painful), until she passed out of sight behind a building.

He looked back down at his body, and realized that, in addition to feeling anxious, lost, and abandoned, he could sense another emotion that was slowly creeping into his psyche.

Anger.

He started to look around to see if he could figure out what was going on.

The coroner had just arrived. He was tall, thin, and very grave, with incredibly long, bony hands. When he saw Jeremy's head lying askew, he shook his own and officially declared Jeremy deceased without missing a beat. Then he pulled out a thermometer and with no further ado stuck it into Jeremy's liver. Jeremy winced. He couldn't feel the pain of course, but the way the doctor had jabbed the thing into his body sent shivers down his spine.

The police officers took hundreds of pictures, made drawings, and took measurements. Jeremy couldn't believe how much time they were taking. In the movies, this type of stuff usually only took a few minutes, not hours!

“You all done, Doc?” the first officer asked him. “You got everything you need?”

“All done,” sighed the coroner. “I'll have the body sent right down to the morgue; then I've got two more patients to see before I can finally get some shut-eye.”

Jeremy was surprised that there were so many deaths in just one night, but it certainly didn't seem unusual to the policemen. Just another night with a bunch of bodies littering the streets. Business as usual!

They put on rubber gloves, placed his head next to his body, and zipped them both up in a black bag. Jeremy walked up to one of the policemen. He'd spent so much time talking to Tetisheri that he hadn't heard what the officer said about the second murder.

“So, apparently we can have an influence on the emotions of the living,” he said. “Well, let's see if it works with you. Tell me everything you know about the other murder.”

The policeman didn't react at all, and calmly continued to take notes and make sketches.

“Hey! I'm talking to you, buddy! Give me all the details!”

Jeremy's presence must not have had any effect on the man at all, because he didn't give any sign of having heard any Angels.

“That stupid blue lady told me a bunch of crap,” Jeremy groaned. “It doesn't work at all!”

Jeremy stopped ranting and listened attentively as the other officer walked over.

“His name was Jeremy Galveaux,” he said. “The murderer didn't take anything. He's still got his wallet and his Swiss watch. He's got a French passport too—looks like he's a froggy.”

Jeremy tensed up: His theory about it being just a random crime didn't hold water.

“That's the Irish in you talking,” his partner said. “I like the French. They like their food about as much as we like our money. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Yeah maybe, but take a look at his business card: The guy owned his own hedge fund!”

His partner snapped his fingers.

“That's it! I knew I'd seen his face before!”

“You mean when it was attached to his body?” the other officer smirked.

“Uh, yeah … you know what I mean. He's that young wiz kid who gets all those great returns off investments he makes in Dubai and India and all those countries. They say he … he had amazing intuition. He was super-talented. He created his own company when he was twenty, I think, and won his first million in no time. The kid really had brains.”

“Well, all his brainpower didn't stop him from getting his head cut off! Anyway, it looks like he lived right across the street.”

“Alone?”

“It doesn't say anything about that on his passport!”

“I'm well aware of that,” his partner replied, trying to remain calm. “I was wondering if you might have questioned the doorman?”

“Nah, not yet.”

The first officer raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“All right, all right, I'm going already!”

“It's all so pathetic,” Jeremy whispered. “So few people will even miss me. A few of my partners, two or three friends. Maybe my mom, if she doesn't hate me too much. I worked so much that I never even saw the time pass. Ugh! What an idiot! I wasted my whole life!”

His head dropped into his hands. But then one of the policemen said something that caught his attention.

“… and the girl wasn't either!”

They were talking about the other murder victim.

“Oh no, if they didn't steal anything from her, and she has the same wounds as this guy, then there are only two options. Either we've got a serial killer on our hands who just killed two random people—and then we'll have a lot of fun trying to find him—or it was a double murder, a contract killing. That would be much easier to solve. If you can figure out the motive you can usually figure out who's behind it. We'll have to see if we can find any connection between the two victims—besides the fact that they both had their heads cut off with a katana.”