Praefatio: A Novel (10 page)

Several hundred outfits later, I settled on a black tee, black leather pants, and my Skelanimals hoodie. A black and white pair of vintage Chucks, some Secret Wonderland lip gloss (
yum
), a tiny bit of blush, and I was ready to go. Sort of.

Dad’s Maserati was still in the garage. I knew where the keys were, though knowing where the keys were and driving the car were two different things, of course. But if there was one thing I was quickly learning, it was this: Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it.

I slinked down the steps, then tiptoed past the archway to the living room, where Mr. and Mrs. Larson sat watching reruns of
The Benny Hill
show. Mrs. Larson turned her head in my direction, wrinkled her eyebrows, then returned to watching TV. I could’ve exhaled the breath I’d been holding when I made it to the kitchen, but I was still so nervous.

Mrs. Larson kept a lock box in the kitchen cabinet closest to the back door. The box held Dad’s keys, wallet, photos, and other things they’d found on him when he died. I remembered hating myself at the thought of getting an instant auto upgrade from a 1995 Jeep to a 2010 Maserati GranCabrio after his death, but I didn’t feel so bad now that I knew he wasn’t really dead.

I practically floated across the kitchen floor, high on the thought of racing around town in one hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of blue metallic magic. With a wave of my left hand, as Mom had done in the hospital, I directed the door to open by sending my will through as a command from my mind to my hand. When it obeyed, I stifled a giggle. Could they hear me?

I grabbed the small, wooden lock box and headed for the back door when the sound of footsteps heading in my direction stopped me. The last thing I wanted was for them to see me and start asking all kinds of questions I was not prepared to answer.

“Did you want something, dear?” Mr. Larson asked, just as my hand landed on the knob of the back door. I froze, then turned around slowly to face him. I’d left the cabinet door ajar.
Crap
. But he didn’t see me even though I was standing no more than three feet in front of him.

Mr. Larson opened the refrigerator door and grabbed two cans of soda and a jar of salsa. He turned toward me, looked me right in the eyes, and then went back to the refrigerator to retrieve his favorite cheese assortment. He stopped as if he had forgotten or remembered something. He walked over and closed the cabinet I’d left open and looked right at me again!

“That’s strange,” Mr. Larson mused with a wrinkled brow.

“What’s taking you so long in there?” Mrs. Larson called between laughs.

“Hon, did you look in on Grace today?” Kenneth Larson asked, not losing any of the intensity of thought as he looked from the cabinet then to me. My jaw dropped, and I instinctively started walking toward him. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but was afraid.

“Her doctor said she’s being released tomorrow, that it was just a stomach bug. Are you all right in there? Do you need me to help you carry something?” Mrs. Larson offered, a hint of exasperation in her tone.

I’d never heard of a stomach bug that leaves you with broken ribs.

“Good,” Mr. Larson said emphatically, as if they could both enjoy their snack without worry for me or my condition. He turned his eyes from me. I stopped short of touching him, realizing he couldn’t really see me, but maybe he could sense me. Maybe my presence brought me to mind, and that’s why he asked Mrs. Larson about me.

Then I wondered how the heck I was supposed to drive a car if no one could see me? I guess someone would notice InvisaGirl driving a Maserati. Since flying was out of the question (so far, just a few sorry, itchy feathers), and walking would take too long, the odds of my attending the concert were pretty bleak. In fact, being an invisible, wingless half-angel made me no more capable of attending a rock concert than anyone. Go figure.

***

“Is she OK?”

Dad?

“She’s OK, just left us for a little while, but she’s back now.” Nurse Cipher’s voice was cool and collected as she left the room, leaving me with someone I could not see clearly, but that sounded exactly like Dad.

“It’s OK, Gracie; everything is going to be OK. Just relax now.” My dad’s voice was like a twenty-ton boulder being dropped on me. He wasn’t screaming, but his voice boomed in my ear.

I sat up in bed, trying to get a better view. As I projectile puked all over my blanket, it became clear that sitting up was not the smartest idea I’d ever had.

“Holy cow. I heard you’d be able to astral project when you ascended. How was it?”

Remi? Oh Remi, you came!
I was beside myself with excitement, followed by a crushing sense of nausea. It felt like vertigo, I think, considering I’d never had vertigo.

Dad reached over and removed the soiled blanket, and quickly replaced it with a clean one from the drawer next to my bed. Remi wiped my mouth with a tissue, discarded it, then blotted my face with a wet, cold cloth. My breathing was erratic and more noticeable. My emotions were a jumbled mess of sorrow, regret, pain, excitement, loss, fear, anger, love, and resentment. Tears stung and fell steadily from my bloodshot eyes. I didn’t even know how I ended up back at the hospital. Everything I’d thought about over the past few hours came falling out of my mouth in one garbled, snot-filled speech.

“Mom came and told me that she’s really an angel and that I’m an angel, well, a half-angel. Remi is too, but I can’t hear his thoughts anymore, unless he wants me to, and for some reason he doesn’t want me to. Nurse Cipher’s been watching over me, but I’ll be released soon. I have no idea what happens after that. And, Gavin Vault … I’ve been hearing his voice since I was nine, and I had no idea who he was until a day ago. And I don’t know how that’s even possible. But I’m in love with him, or his voice, and now he’s a real, live person, and I have no idea what to do. He came to visit me, here. How come neither of you came to visit me? What is he? Gavin. Is he an angel too? And what about all that stuff I read about in the book Remi gave me,
Praefatio
? What’s it supposed to mean? Remi. Remi, you’ve been an angel this whole time? How could you not tell me? Why were those creatures after us? And that girl, she looks just like me. Is
she
my sister? What’s going on? Do you both think I’m crazy? Dad, Dad … You’re alive. Oh God, you’re alive. Please don’t leave me.”

Exhausted, I closed my eyes, afraid to face the answers to my questions. I clutched a box of tissues instead, wiping snot and tears alternately as they fell. Neither Dad nor Remi moved.

Finally, Dad took my hand in his and whispered, “Gracie, everything’s going to be OK. I promise. You’re ascending. You’ve already been able to separate your spirit from your body, and this is a very important skill for an angel who is also human.” His body was warm, as if there was light beneath it, like when you put your hand over a light bulb. He exhaled deeply.

“The book I gave you, did you read it?” Remi asked suddenly, sitting on the other side of me. I fully understood the question, but I had not, in fact, read the entire book. When was I supposed to have had time to do that? I read as much as was revealed to me on the pages. “Grace.” Remi stared hard at me. His voice was as gentle as it had been before, with love permeating his tone. “You must finish
Praefatio.
It has everything to do with you.”

“Everything, Gracie,” Dad added. “The answers to all of your questions, the reason you exist, why we
all
exist, can be found within that book. Our job is done now. Vivienne, Remi, and I must return to our posts, take other assignments.” The finality of his tone felt like a knife in my heart. I could not stand the thought of any kind of life without him or Remi in it. After Dad died, I’d found a way to go on, but only because of Remi. How could they leave me when I needed them more than ever?

Dad stood, looking to Remi then back at me. “Grace, it is not within us to become attached to humans. Our jobs are to protect, guide, to bring word when needed. You were the first human I stayed with for so long. I came to care for you like a real daughter. I pray I am not punished for it. I hope you will always think of me as your father. It would be an honor.”

The revelations were too much. Dad’s words triggered more projectile puke, ferocious tears, and long, stringy snot. He wasn’t my real father either. I had no one. The only family I had was a wretched sister who wanted me dead and a mother who no one had seen or heard from in years.

Remi was at the door in a heartbeat. He looked out into the hallway, but before he could open his mouth Nurse Cipher greeted him with replacement bed linens, clothes, and cloths for me.

Nurse Cipher was beside herself. “We have company; they must have followed her when she left her body. I need to get her cleaned up and out of here, now!” She pushed the door open a few inches and looked at me, then back at Remi. Remi stopped her with a hand to the chest.

“This isn’t your fight,” Remi stated.

“You don’t have to do this alone, Remiel. If I die, I die saving Grace,” Nurse Cipher insisted. Another reminder of the email.

Remi turned to me; the look in his eyes contradicted the smile on his face. He turned back to Nurse Cipher, pushed her gently back into the hallway, then closed and locked the door.

I heard him.
I will take care of you now,
was all Gavin said. That was all I needed to gain composure.

I reached for Dad’s hand, and he took mine long enough to add, “Your life has meaning, Grace. Open your mind and heart to it, and you will find your way. I promise.” With that, he was gone. No puff of smoke, no flying out of the room, just gone.

Remi raced to my bed and offered me the clothes Nurse Cipher had given him. He turned his back and I put them on. No angel trickery, just one arm and leg at a time.

I heard what sounded like bending metal coming from the hallway. The sound stopped, then restarted. It grew louder, then softer, and louder again. It was as if someone was playing a trick on us, trying to scare us. But I knew in my gut that it wasn’t a trick. A knocking sound joined the bending metal, followed by scraping and swishing.

“OK,” I managed, so Remi would know I was dressed. But I hadn’t been paying attention. Remi turned and handed me a sword—a really long one that looked as if it could have been samurai.

“Seriously? What am I supposed to do with this?” I was only half-joking and terrified as I reached out to take it.

When the sounds stopped, all that was left was my nervous laughter. I guess I wouldn’t need my sword after all. I placed it next to me on the bed.

“Just swing it at whatever comes your way that isn’t me. Or better yet, swing at whatever comes your way, including me. Just swing and don’t stop swinging until everything is dead around you. Everything. OK, Grace? I mean it.”

“Remi?” Nurse Cipher knocked on the door at the same time that she called him. Remi stiffened.

Something stank like rotten eggs, and this time it wasn’t me.

Remi opened the door to Nurse Cipher, only it wasn’t Nurse Cipher. There was nobody there.

The fluorescents hummed to a dim before failing completely. I kept my eyes focused on the door and reached slowly for the sword. I was dizzy, yet surprisingly steady on my feet. With my hands behind me, I managed to unsheathe the sword as if I’d done so a thousand times before, steady and in control.

“It’s OK. Nothing,” Remi advised me, though he still peered out into the hallway. Its lights had not returned.

“Do you hear that?” I asked, turning my head from side to side like a dog. It sounded like dripping—not water—something heavier. Oil-based. Pooling. Something was dripping from the air vent directly above me. Warm around my feet, then my legs. So warm, hot even. Then burning. Scathing. Ripping. Tearing through my pant legs.

I looked down and screamed. An oily creature with sharp, jagged teeth and a ton of eyeballs was encasing me in hot, dark, oily goop. It was slowly coiling and making its way up my legs. I brought the sword from behind me and started slashing at it.

“Remi, help!” My pants were hanging off me from my thighs to my feet, ripped to shreds by the creature and my sword.

But Remi didn’t move. He stood fixed at the door. It seemed something more important commanded his attention.

I remembered what Remi said. I kept stabbing the thing, slashing and knifing. Eyeballs popped off left and right, but the teeth kept biting. I didn’t know which was worse, the pain from the creature, the gashes I’d made with my own sword, or the sound of popping eyeballs. I kept slashing, growing weaker as I did. I had lost a lot of blood.

When the pain got to be too much, I decided I’d had enough of being attacked.

“Get off me, you slimy, filthy demon, and don’t come back!” As I spoke, the power of my words energized me. “I said, get off me, you slimy, eyebally freak!”

It worked. The thing slowly retreated down my legs, to my ankles, and then my feet. I watched until it was nothing more than a pile of googly eyeballs and gnarled teeth.

“Gross!” I shook my head and looked over at Remi, who scrunched his nose up in a stink face at the thing on the floor that had about eighty eyeballs and more than a hundred teeth. Remi blinked often when he was worried, and I feared he might have thought the attack was not yet over.

“What?” I felt good despite the blood pouring from the slashes in my skin. Right around the time the pain in my legs intensified to one hundred on a scale of one to ten, dizziness set in. I tried sitting on the bed, but my foot slipped on the oil, and a few of the eyeballs went rolling across the room.

“Those eyes belong to someone who’ll probably want them back, all of them. Don’t make enemies, Grace,” Remi added. He took another look down the hallway. If all those eyes belonged to one person, I really didn’t want to know who.

What?
Wasn’t he the one who told me to go ninja on whatever attacked me, including him?

I sheathed my sword and slowly placed it on the bed. I couldn’t leave the googly-eyed evidence lying around, and I didn’t think the angel vs. demon clean-up crew was coming. A pillowcase seemed like the most sensible way to transport eighty oily eyeballs and a lotta teeth, so I pulled it off the pillow and prepared myself for what I had to do. Dizziness made it hard to focus. My feet sloshed in the blood and oil that had pooled up around them.