Lightning Kissed (21 page)

“I can’t believe it,” Colby’s mother
murmured.

“It’s my fault.” Colby’s body wracked with
sobs as she made the hollow confession.

We both rushed to her side, but she jolted
upright, refusing to accept the comfort we offered. She wrestled
her phone out of the pocket of her dress and shoved it into her
mom’s face. “See? They summoned me yesterday and I ignored it. They
told me. They told me that if I didn’t comply that they would…”

“What else, Colby? What else did they say to
you? Why couldn’t you just have gone when they summoned you?”

By the end of Sable’s questions, her hands
were clamped down on Colby’s arms as if she could shake the answers
out of her. I crossed the room, stalking around the bed and putting
myself between them. I’d never seen Sable get even the tiniest bit
angry at Colby. Even when she was in trouble, Sable’s motherly
instincts were closer to friendly than maternal.

Death will turn any sane person to the other
side.

I spoke to her as calmly as I could, “Sable,
you know we can’t handle it like any other human would. They’re
going to ask you about funerals and what your plans are. Call my
parents if you need help. My dad is good with the humans.”

Having a death in the Lucent ranks was a
fickle business. Usually, we had the bodies taken to Portugal where
we brought them to the original land that was once owned by Xoana’s
father. The female Lucents are all buried there.

“You’re right, Theo. I just—I never thought.
I can’t think. I don’t know how to.” She spoke in choppy
nonsense.

“I know. We will meet you in Portugal. If I
may have the honor, I will flash with Rebekah myself.”

“Flash with her?”

“I guarantee you, it’s perfectly safe. I
swear I won’t let her go. This way, we can have the funeral as soon
as you need to. I know Rebekah wouldn’t want you fussing over it
too long. She would reach down from
Paraíso
and swat you on
the back of the head, for sure.”

“Okay, yes, okay.”

And in a fluster, Sable flashed to take care
of Rebekah’s parting memorial.

Visibly shaken, Colby hadn’t moved from her
spot on the bed. I didn’t know about other people and the
relationships they maintained with their grandparents. My
grandparents were long gone by the time I was born. I did know that
Colby worshipped the ground Rebekah walked on. In terms of people
she revered and clamored to model herself after, Rebekah was second
only to Xoana herself.

Sitting next to Colby, I tried to put my arm
around her. I expected my strong, firm female to resist. Her sandy
hair was plastered to the side of her face with the glue of tears,
and any color in her blush had been replaced by the stark milk of
shock. She leaned over, collapsed against my side, and finally
began to really cry. Before, her cry was the side effect of shock,
but these tears soaked into my chest—these were the real cries of
debilitating sadness.

Being unable to console her was nearly
unbearable. She just cried and cried, while mumbling
inconsistencies.

It was my honor to hold her while she
mourned.

After an hour, she finally crossed the line
between inconsolable and semi-coherent.

Something snapped inside of her. Shifting
away from me, she savagely wiped her eyes as if she had no right to
mourn her grandmother.

“We need to go see mom and help her make
arrangements. Then we need to get to Portugal and set everything
up.” She stomped over to her closet and threw the doors open with
such force that one of the doors protested by breaking free of the
tracks and almost slamming into her. I caught it with one hand and
pulled it away just before it nailed her. In her duress, Colby
didn’t even notice. She started simple enough, moving hanger by
hanger from right to left, callously inspecting each garment and
finding it not up to her standards. Halfway through the rack, it
all turned disastrous. Dresses, shirts and skirts were tossed
behind her, each with a matching curse.

“Colby, I thought we were going to see your
mom. What are you doing,
Querida
?”

A long, lithe finger was suddenly in my
face. “No you don’t, Theodore Ramsey. Don’t you sexy
Portuguese-talk me into whatever you’re talking me into. Look at
this.” She thrashed her arms out toward the closet. “Colby Sage
Evans—probably the best shopping diva in the entire world. The girl
who flashes into Bloomingdale’s and H&M in the middle of the
night to pick up the latest fashion trend—her grandmother dies and
she doesn’t have one single white dress—that—would—ever—do
Rebekah—justice. I’m just a failure.”

Lucents viewed death as another part of
life. When we passed on, the families and friends wore white. Death
was just another form of traveling for us—traveling into the light
of the Almighty.

She’d broken down again. I ignored her
self-reliant attitude and pulled her to me without a second
thought. She cried for another three or four hours before coming
back down from the mountain.

ALL LUCENTS ARE TO
BE BURIED ON THE LAND OF XOANA.

There were now two goals in my life—be there
for whatever was in store for Theo—and kill Regina. I would never
tell Theo about the last goal. Mr. Rule Stickler would gasp and
cough and probably have some kind of seizure.

It was my goal nonetheless.

I knew it was the Synod. There was no other
person so hexing, so foul that would ever kill a person as revered
as my grandmother. And their little warning to me about complacency
was well remembered. The Almighty should’ve struck them down with
murderous lightning years ago.

The next day, Theo took my grandmother to
Portugal, her throat stitched up by a Lucent surgeon. My mom
wrapped her in a length of white silk over a white silk
dress—making sure that her hair was just right and her appearance
was just so. Theo handled her as if she were made of glass, and
somehow held onto her hands in a grip that told me she would be
safer than safe with him.

Lucent funerals were void of music and void
of speaking. I’d never understood that as a kid. I’d been to
several funerals as a kid and wrestled with the silence of it
all.

It was so clear to me as I looked at the
pedestal, adorned with every white flower from every country the
Lucents could pluck them from, that not only was silence the most
respectful thing to do, but there was no music in this great world
that could ever do my love for my grandmother, and the sorrow I
felt in losing her, justice. And this time, this one time in my
life, I would have no trouble keeping my damned mouth shut.

A pinch alerted me that my mother needed me
and tore me away from staring at that pedestal any longer. She led
me by my dress sleeve into the house of Xoana.

“I think we’re in the wrong garden.”

I gave her as stern a look as I could
muster. “No talking.”

“If we have her funeral in the wrong garden,
she will haunt me forever. Look at the maps and compare it to her
letters.”

We sat down at the marble table and scanned
everything quickly. I couldn’t tell heads or tails about the damned
maps. For someone who spent her life traveling, I was horrible at
directions.

“It’s not the right place,” Theo burst
through the glass French doors.

These two together were going to drive me
nuts.

“How do you know?” I doubted his theory.

“The voices—they’re angry. I’ve never heard
them angry. This is a mistake. We must move her to the
keyhole.”

As he spoke, Theo unknotted his tie and
unbuttoned the top button on his perfectly pressed white shirt.
Lucent’s didn’t wear black to a funeral. Black signified death to
us, and we preferred to think of our loved ones as traveling to the
light.

“Look at the map, Theo. Can you see?”

Through all the incessant studying and
reading, we still didn’t have a clear hold about Theo or his gifts,
especially not the voices. There had been no time for me to speak
to him about what Regina had told me and I didn’t know when a good
time would ever be.

I shoved the papers in his direction as he
approached the table. There was no hesitation, no pause in his
movements. His pointer finger pinpointed a garden, deep within the
surrounding acreage.

His honest, dour expression left nothing to
doubt. He knew where we should be—or the voices knew where we
should be. Our eyes were still locked when my mom circumvented what
was proprietary and announced to those already present that we had
to move everything to the other area. Theo led the way while an
empty, yet determined air commanded his path.

And once we got there—it was as if we’d
stepped into the knowledge of the ages. Topiaries of all heights
and breadths formed a key shape and in the middle was a perfect
circle around the most majestic marble, center-staged pedestal. It
put the rest of the gardens to shame.

Xoana’s gardens were open for all Lucents,
anytime. I’d often flashed there when I was going through something
or just needed to be closer to my people. It was the only place
that I ever really felt like I belonged—almost like I was destined
to be there.

It was said that her gardens took up one
fourth of the entire country of Portugal itself.

Lucent females filed in all around us. We’d
had the funeral so quickly after her death that only those who
could flash, or those who were close enough to fly in, could
attend. There must’ve been thousands of Lucents gathered to
celebrate the oldest Prophetess.

And then Regina stepped into view, wearing a
cream-colored gown.

It hadn’t escaped me that ever since my
little meeting with Regina, the Resin weren’t on our tail anymore.
She tucked a stray hair into her conjured coif and all of it, the
off-white dress, the hairdo, and as I stared at her, the way she
sneered back was all more than I could take.

Suddenly, the impact of everything slammed
into me. Ari was in my face, holding my hands down. Regina backed
away into the crowd. She was smarter than I thought.

Ari widened her eyes, begging me not to wig
out. I calmed down at her prompt, but I knew that one day, one way
or the other, Regina’s days were numbered.

She didn’t deserve to live.

I distracted myself by taking in the garden
and trying to make eye contact with those who came to truly
mourn.

I hadn’t missed the fact that neither
Collin, nor Pema were present.

Theo insisted on flashing my grandmother’s
body from the house, directly into the garden. He’d taken care of
everything for us through this whole thing. He’d intercepted phone
calls and took over when my mom and I just couldn’t say the word
‘funeral’ one more time.

When I tried to argue with him, fearful of
his flashing becoming common knowledge, he insisted that Rebekah
didn’t deserve to be carried on the backs of anyone. She deserved
to travel one last time.

And how could I argue with that.

And after he did, he came to my left side to
hold my hand, while Ari kept a tight rein on the other one.
Collective gasps could be heard above the silence and the wind. But
I didn’t want him to be constantly in hiding like Eivan.

That wasn’t living.

Sway had also made her excuses even after I
offered to flash with her.

Instead of allowing myself to mourn during
the funeral, which was little more than each person silently paying
their respects, I chose to count the people as they admired
Rebekah. When the line ended, there were six hundred and seventeen
people in total. The counting was the only coping mechanism I could
come up with.

Some left directly after seeing her one last
time. Others hung around, taking in the gardens. I chose to admire
the place we were in, the place she’d chosen to be remembered.

My mother, Theo and his family, and I were
the only ones who tagged along to see her laid to her final
rest.

When everyone was gone, only the three of us
remained. Me, Theo and Ari. My mom had gone back to Rebekah’s. She
wanted to get everything cleaned up. She said Rebekah wouldn’t want
anyone seeing her house like that.

***

Three days after the funeral, I’d decided to
tell Theo the truth about my visit with the Synod. He needed to
know and I desperately needed to get it off my chest. If they would
kill my grandmother for my failure to show up at a summoning, then
they would kill him or me for not giving them what they
wanted—whatever that was.

I strolled through the gardens, focusing on
his location. He was back in those gardens. I’d begun to call them
the keyhole gardens. Ari had begun to call them the butthole
gardens. Theo was always there and the day before, when I found
him, his head was in his hands. Slumped over in what seemed to be
pain, he rocked back and forth. Whatever was consuming him never
let him rest.