7. Arrival
7
ARRIVAL
The King whom thou seekest here,
Unless thou bring Him with thee, thou wilt not find.
— ANONYMOUS NINTH-CENTURY POET, “THE PILGRIM AT ROME”
“ L adies and gentlemen, we’d like to welcome you to Portland International Airport. The approximate time is four-thirty p.m.”
I woke with a start when my seatmate nudged my shoulder. His thoughts were dull and groggy, clouded by sleep as he wondered whether his wife would be on time to pick him up and then considered whether he should sneak a Big Mac on his way to baggage claim before he went back to the health kick she was on.
I edged away toward the window, as far from him as possible while the rest of the passengers rose in their seats, eager to disembark after six and a half hours in the air.
Under normal circumstances, I would have driven home. Rent some tiny compact that would chug across the country in three to four days, drop it off in Portland, and endure a final two-hour bus ride to the coast at one in the morning to avoid as many people as possible.
Instead, I had gone through the seventh circle, otherwise known as a packed transcontinental flight. The red-eye departure from Boston left me exhausted to begin with, and the constant nudges of my seatmate’s knees or shoulders, both of which he seemed to be unable to keep within his allotted space, ensured that within an hour, I learned just about everything there was to know about Leonard P. Brinkley, a forty-eight-year-old insurance salesman from West Linn who had a crush on his son’s babysitter and played Dungeons and Dragons when his wife thought he was at the gym. It wasn’t until the Xanax kicked in that I was able to relegate his planned campaigns to dreaming only.
I kept my leather-covered hands in my lap and watched the baggage handlers while the final bits of the last dream I’d just had came back to me. I’d write it down when I got to Reina’s, but it wasn’t anything new.
My father’s death.
My mother’s betrayal.
My first vision.
And then there was everything that followed.
Ten days after that fateful afternoon, two men in dress blues, with shiny black boots and their hair cut high and tight, sat down with my mother on Gran’s old Victorian couch. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” they said, over and over again as they recounted Jimmy’s death exactly as we’d all Seen it through Sibyl.
Two days later, Sibyl and I were on a plane for Dover—a unique torture for a young witch who had just discovered that every touch was now potentially as explosive as the one that had killed her father. We didn’t speak the whole time. Along with the families of the eleven other men in his squad, we met my father’s casket, covered with an American flag, as they unloaded it from a cargo plane directly onto the tarmac. We drove down to Washington D.C., and Sybil and I gathered with Dad’s estranged sister and parents to watch as his body was carried through Arlington cemetery on a horse-drawn carriage and lowered into the icy, hardened ground with the rest of the men buried beneath gleaming white crosses.
When the chaplain finished the brief service, and everyone touched the steel-covered coffin, Jimmy’s mother—my Grandma Charlotte—turned and glared at us.
“This is your fault,” she said, pointing a chubby gloved finger through the tears streaking down her grief-lined face. “If you hadn’t put that boy under your spell and gotten pregnant with this one, my Jimmy would have never joined up. You killed him, you hussy, you and your daughter!”
Her words blazed off the fresh shiny silver coffin, but no one replied. Sybil just stared until it was fully lowered. Untileveryone was gone, and it was just the two of us left.
The following day she put me on an airplane back to Portland, alone. More and more visions were coming by that point, and I needed my mother there to help me manage them. But she needed to stay with him more, she said.
I didn’t protest, just steeled myself against the barrage of people and marched numbly down the gangway. By the time I reached my seat, I knew the other truth that would keep us apart: I didn’t want her anymore either.
“Cass! Cassandra!”
I almost felt my best friend’s gravelly voice before I heard it for real.
Almost.
As soon as I stepped out of the terminal, Reina West flew at me with a bear hug that rocked me off my feet even though she was just a hair over five feet tall. One of the few people whose thoughts never bothered me, her positive sympathy and good emanated from her body like a halo, and I was happy to be wrapped in its warm embrace. People probably thought we were reuniting lovers, not best friends.
Reina chuckled. “I mean, no offense, Cass, but you’re not my type.”
I grinned as a face flowed through her touch. “Still stuck on that redhead from cardio?”
Reina huffed as she stepped back. “I can’t get a solid read on her. Her thoughts are all over the place. I swear she notices me. But she also notices everyone.”
Reina West was a fellow seer I had met when we were both nervous undergraduates at Reed. Standing in the same line at orientation, she had identified me within ten feet, and unlike most fae, she had no issue with my defects. After all, as a Guatemalan adoptee who hadn’t learned English until she was ten, she understood what it meant to be different.
Within an hour, I knew she would be the best friend I’d ever had, even if—or maybe because—her internal dialogue was often in Itza’ or Spanish, not English. We convinced the housing director to place us together and lived together for another four years until I left for Boston and she started medical school. Because her adoptive parents were plain, Reina often spent vacations with Gran and me on the coast since that first meeting in the quad, if only to learn from Gran what she couldn’t learn at home. Ten years later, we were more like sisters than friends.
“Maybe she doesn’t know what she likes,” I said as we started for the exit. “Not everyone has to. You don’t. Men, women, fluid, whatever. You never cared.”
Reina shook her head, her long brown hair swimming around her waist. “I suppose. But sometimes I think that’s a byproduct of knowing what people are like on the inside . The outside matters a lot less.”
“I think the inside is what counts for most people in the end.”
We walked toward the exit, and Reina stepped in front of me with more purpose than her short, squat frame might intuit. She reminded me of a bull charging through the streets of Pamplona, shielding me from potential passersby who might rub shoulders and disturb my thoughts.
Once we were outside, I breathed a little easier. A few people were waiting for their rides, but the concrete curb was pleasantly devoid of visions. My Sight was still a bit muted by the pills.
“Where are you parked?” I asked as I followed her toward the crosswalk. “You can just drop me at Union Station on your way home. There’s a bus to Manzanita at three.”
Reina stopped at the curb. “What kind of friend do you think I am? You just lost Penny and had to endure air travel. The least I can do is give you a ride home.”
I blinked. “Rein, you don’t have to do that. I know you’re busy, and you have a life.”
She nudged my shoulder with so much empathy that even the residual Xanax couldn’t stop it. “I’d never let you do this alone. At the very least, you need help cleansing the house, don’t you? I just got a new box of copal.”
My shoulder sank. So far, I’d avoided thinking about the tasks ahead of me. Collect Gran’s body from the morgue in Tillamook and arrange for its cremation. Clean the house in more ways than one and get it ready for immediate disposal. And at some point, I’d have to make my way up to Seattle and find Sibyl to...I honestly wasn’t sure. Whatever normal families did when someone died.
Some things, I already knew. Gran had never been quiet about her final wishes. In fact, sometimes she was downright morbid. Her trust was already taken care of, she had told me from the time I was young enough to understand, and in the event of her death, she was quite clear: all traces of her were to be removed from the house and property as soon as possible. Every. Last. Bit.
I’d never asked why. It was Gran, after all. But in light of the horrible box currently sitting at the bottom of my closet, and now this…I suppose I’d have to start asking that question and more.
Nothing of concern , the coroner had informed me over the phone. She was old. Her heart gave out in the kitchen. She was found on the floor by the mailman. Natural causes .
I wasn’t so sure. Nothing with my grandmother was ever as it seemed.
“I should have been there,” I mumbled.
The hand on my shoulder gripped tighter. Sympathy again, paired with love. And pity. Reina wanted me to feel the depth of her sorrow, the understanding that lay there. She knew it wasn’t fine, but she also wanted me to know that no one blamed me for anything. At least not her.
“You don’t get to beat yourself up,” Reina said, even as I felt the truth of her words through her fingers. “Penny didn’t ask for a protector. You were living your life, and she was living hers. Her time was just here.”
“Thanks,” I said, leaning my head against her ponytail, which rose to approximately my shoulder. “I’m glad to see you. But you don’t have to come if you don’t want.”
“Shut up, Cassandra. I can’t stay because I have a shift at the hospital tomorrow night. But at least I can give you a ride in the morning.”
Considering the barrage of shadows that awaited me in my childhood home like gargoyles ready to pounce, I was suddenly more than happy to accept Reina’s offer.
“Thanks, Rein,” I said as I hiked my duffel farther up my shoulder. “I owe you one.”
“Try twenty,” Reina said, having already read my thoughts. “No one likes visiting houses of the dead, even when we loved them. Besides, it’s been almost a year since you’ve been home, you know. You owe me some ‘us time’ too.”