Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)

Preview for Lightning Bay

Don’t miss LIGHTNING BAY by Lisa Kleypas.Coming in September 2013. Read on for a preview.

Chapter One

Every day on earth, an average of one hundred and fifty four thousand people died. The man walking along the dock had no idea that he was about to become one of them.

Only minutes left, ticking down to the last breath, the final heartbeat.

An angel named Friday waited unseen by the man’s side. It was his responsibility to collect the soul of the departed and escort him—or her—to the next world.

Most people died by degrees. But some, like Zachary Logan, were caught by surprise. He was thirty-five but looked forty, his dark good looks blunted from having lived too fast, seen too much. As a foreign correspondent, he had reported from war zones around the world with no apparent concern for his own safety. Although he had won awards and accolades for his work, there had been a price for every story he’d written. He had paid out pieces of his heart like coin silver, until he had eventually stopped caring about things that should have mattered.

Today Zachary intended to meet with a boat agent to discuss pricing for a cruiser sailboat he wanted to sell. The vessel was moored at a small private bay in San Juan Island, the dock co-owned by a nearby condo development. Making his way to the foredeck, the man frowned at the cold-breathing ocean, the rustling sky. Waves slapped the hull, causing the deck to bob gently beneath his feet. Sharp little breezes broke the surface of the bay and whistled through the halyard lines strung from the mast.

Rain-fattened clouds tumbled slowly across the sky, their hearts filled with lightning.

Friday guessed that the air was fresh with storm-smell. He had vague recollections of having once enjoyed the scent of rain, the feel of cool wind or hot sun on his skin, the taste of buttered bread, or beer from a chilled brown bottle. Of course, there was a lot about being human that he didn’t miss—pain, stress, hunger. Paying bills. Mosquito bites. Hand dryers in public bathrooms. Screaming children in restaurants.

But there were some things Friday wouldn’t mind experiencing again. Live music, played loud enough to thrum through his bones. Eggs and bacon for breakfast. Sleeping late on Sunday mornings. Most of all, he missed women. The scent and smoothness of their skin, the tangly-soft disorder of a woman’s hair when she woke up in the morning. Friday had never settled down with anyone in particular, which in retrospect might have been a mistake. If he had it to do over again—

His musings were interrupted as Zachary used a cell phone to call the boat agent and let him know that the storm was coming in faster than predicted. They agreed to reschedule the meeting.

Three minutes left.

According to his file, Zachary’s considerable pile of good works had earned him a place in heaven.

Lucky bastard.

Friday had never been allowed to set one foot inside the main gate.

“All you need concern yourself with,” his supervisor Elsegoode had told him only that morning, “is guiding souls to their afterlives as efficiently as possible.” Elsegoode was a former British majordomo who ran his celestial department with all the relaxed charm of a man firmly seated on a porcupine.

“How long do I have to do this? When do I get in?”

Elsegoode had seemed genuinely perplexed. “In?”

“Past the gate.”

“Friday, you’ve been assigned to the lowest order of angels in the hierarchy. You can ascend no higher.”

“Until when?”

“There is no ‘until.’” Elsegoode’s tone had gentled as he saw Friday’s bewilderment. “This is your eternal existence.”

“But…what if I do a good job? Don’t I get a reward?”

“Your opportunity to earn heavenly rewards was during life.”

“No one told me that when I was down there.”

“There are nineteen major religions, any one of which could have helped to improve your character. Why didn’t you try any of them?”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to!”

“You were supposed to do good for others, Friday. That is the purpose of every human existence. But you spent every moment of your thirty years thinking only of your own needs. Pursuing pleasure for its own sake. The only reason you managed to obtain placement in my department is because your life ended with a feat of heroism. You should count yourself fortunate indeed.”

“Oh, I’m lucky as hell,” Friday had replied bitterly.

“Any more profanity and I’ll double your daily quota of soul transfers for the next century. Now, back to work.”

Resigned and surly, Friday now watched as deadly static charges built in top-heavy clouds.

Stepping along the side deck to the cockpit, Zachary Logan made one last call. “Neva,” he said.

Friday looked at him alertly, recognizing the name. It had been noted in the file that Zachary been engaged briefly to a woman named Neva Landry, but he had broken it off about six months ago. Zachary still loved her as much as any man could with a heart as hard as a pine knot.

“I’m here on the island,” Zachary continued. “A couple of days at most. I’m staying at one of the condos at the bay. I thought I might come by and get the rest of my stuff, if that’s…” He paused for a moment. “Tonight works for me. You’re sure it’s no trouble?” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, the dark brown locks cropped short and uneven. “Thanks, but it’s probably better if I don’t stay for dinner.” Another pause. “I’m doing okay,” he said. “No complaints. How about you?” A reluctant smile emerged. “What was that?…It sounded like you just said you’re going to buy a llama.” He gave a brief laugh. “Jesus. If you say so.”

Friday stood right in front of him. “Why don’t you tell her how you feel?” he suggested with a touch of exasperation. “You’ve got thirty seconds left on earth.”

The man couldn’t hear him, of course. Only guardians or messengers were allowed to perform the delicate task of intervening in a life-in-progress, even if that life were just about to end. But even though Friday had never been the sentimental type in life—and even less so now—he thought it was a pity that Zachary Logan’s last words to his former fiancée would be so meaningless.

“There are things you’ll wish you’d told her, once you’re gone,” Friday added.

“Storm’s coming in,” Zachary said brusquely to the woman on the phone. “I’ll talk to you later.” He ended the call and methodically tucked the phone in an inner pocket of his windbreaker.

“There is no ‘later’ for you,” Friday said, staring at the man’s averted face.

The cloud was sullen with unshed rain, the storm settling against the hem of unbroken cloud. Zachary’s head lifted as a metallic crackle filled the air, as if the sky itself were being unzipped. His hair stood on end, his body caught in a streamer of energy snaking upward. A faint lavender glow surrounded him.

I’m too close, Friday realized at that moment.

He’d been given specific instructions about collecting a soul after a lightning-strike. The most important one: keep your distance until the final shockwave had radiated from the strike path. It wasn’t that Friday wasn’t concerned about his own safety; he was already dead. Nothing could happen to him. But there would be plenty of bitching from Elsegoode if the procedure wasn’t done properly, and Friday wasn’t in the mood for any more lectures.

Too late, Friday tried to escape the lightning’s path.

Too late, Zachary perceived the danger he was in and tried to scramble from the boat.

But a chill of brightness had already bloomed around them, and the sky had split with a vicious wrack of light. Branches of plasma wriggled downward, embroidering volatile paths through the air as they searched for a positive charge…until they found the one reaching upward from the unfortunate man on the sailboat.

The strike was instant. Massive. White oblivion caught them both, a billion electric volts pouring simultaneously through flesh and spirit-matter. The bolt crossed Zachary’s heart, followed by a flash that separated his soul from its fragile container of human fabric.

This was the moment when Friday was supposed to take custody and guide Zachary safely through the transition.

Except that Friday had found himself caught in the traction of something he couldn’t escape. He’d been swallowed by a cold and howling darkness that pulled him downward. Everything was chaos. The bottomless descent threatened to pull him apart, the force of acceleration tearing at esse and thought, until what was left of him came to rest, buried, in some lost frozen place.

He couldn’t move nor speak nor hear nor see.

This wasn’t death. It was something much worse.

What’s happening? For the first time since he’d become an angel, Friday experienced fear.

And then he felt pain.

But that wasn’t possible. Angels were beyond corporal sensation.

Nevertheless he became aware of a kind of sickening, suffocating weight all around him, as if he were some tiny winged creature drowning in resin, doomed to an eternal amber prison.

He could not speak or think, could only radiate a despairing voiceless plea.

Someone would have to find him. Someone would have to help him. Wouldn’t they?

He struggled against the hideous entombment, spewing blasphemies like some bound demon. The pain slashed and stabbed at intervals, catching him by surprise each time.

After a measureless period of torment, Elsegoode’s familiar starched tone pierced the shroud of darkness. “Friday.”

Wild relief flooded him as light flourished and he could finally see. The supervising angel stood before him, looking dour and disapproving. Instead of his usual raiment, Elsegoode was dressed in mortal clothes, including a plaid vest, flannel trousers, and a straw boater hat.

“Thank God,” Friday blurted out. “Elsegoode. I’ve never been so glad to see anyone. I don’t know what happened. I was standing with the mortal—“

“Zachary Logan.”

“—and then the lightning struck, and I lost him. What happened to the soul? Did you—” Friday stopped abruptly as he took in his surroundings. They were in a sunlit green meadow, thick-frosted with brilliant wildflowers. Nearby, a sparkling clear creek rushed gently past a small rustic cottage with a thatched roof. “What is this place?”

“One of my favorite boyhood memories. Whenever I’m called upon to appear to someone in a dream, I usually bring him here. The surroundings are quite soothing, aren’t they?”

“Why are we here?” Friday asked warily.

“This is, at present, the only way I can manage to communicate with you.”

“You mean…we’re inside a mortal’s dream?”

“Yes.”

“Whose?”

“Yours, Friday.”

“But angels don’t dream.”

“Quite.”

“Then how—“

“I will explain, if you would refrain from interrupting.” Elsegoode gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “This time you’ve made a real dog’s breakfast of it, Friday. You were give specific instructions to keep your distance from lightning strikes. Was that too difficult to understand, or did you simply decide, as usual, that the rules weren’t worth bothering about?”

“I was careless,” Friday admitted. “But since I’ve made only one mistake in ten years, I think I deserve a pass.”

“What you deserve is to be cast out of my department altogether,” Elsegoode snapped. “And that may yet be your fate. But before anything is decided, the situation with Zachary Logan must be resolved. We’re having some difficulty locating his soul.” Elsegoode looked morose. “I may be reassigned after this.”

“I’ll find him,” Friday said. “I’ll explain to the higher-ups that it was my fault. I’ll take full responsibility—” He paused to grit his teeth as a wave of excruciating pain went through him. It was so intense that he couldn’t control his reaction. “ Damn it, what’s going on?”

“Can’t you guess?” Elsegoode asked, his voice shaded with something like pity.

“Nothing makes sense. I’m hurting like a son of a bitch, but I’m dead. I can’t feel pain. So why…” His voice faded, and he gave Elsegoode a stricken glance as he understood.

“You’re in Zachary Logan’s body,” the angel said.

Neva sat in the waiting area of a Bellevue hospital critical care unit, sipping lukewarm tea from a Styrofoam cup. She set the cup aside and dug for a phone from her bag as she felt it vibrate.

It was a text from her younger brother Rye.

Any news yet?

Still nothing , she texted back. Gonna be a long night.

I’ll come wait with you.

No. Stay home and rest.

Rye, a geologist who was constantly traveling, had just returned to Seattle from a long stint on a marine seismic acquisition boat in the Arctic. He had to be exhausted, and there was nothing he could do for her at the hospital. Besides, he was terrible in waiting rooms, all brooding and bored and twitchy.

Crash at my place, Rye texted. You know the door code.

Thanks.

It was a nice offer, but Neva expected to stay at the hospital for most of the night, in case Zach needed anything. He had no one else. For a man who was admired and respected by so many, Zach was remarkably friendless.

From what Neva knew about Zach’s past, which wasn’t much, he’d always been a loner. After having been abandoned in infancy by a mother barely in her teens, he’d been raised in a series of foster homes. He had survived through a combination of toughness and intelligence, and had eventually worked his way through school to earn a journalism degree. He was a fascinating man, driven and smart, a tough reporter with an instinct for ferreting out elusive pieces of information and seeing how they fit together. He looked exactly how a foreign correspondent should look, with his agreeably roughened handsomeness and sense of endless, effortless confidence. But the qualities that made him so good at his job were the same reasons no one could ever get close to him.

Neva had tried. For a year and a half she had thought that if she loved him enough, if she was patient and forbearing, they would finally be happy together. Zach had flown back and forth to Friday Harbor between assignments, staying with her for days at a time. He would tell her about his work when he could, when the stories weren’t too dark and he could make them sound like adventures. But sometimes he would return with a hollowed-out stare as if he’d been to hell and back, and she had known there would be no talking. Instead she’d held him, offering silent comfort, carefully waking him at night when he was troubled by nightmares. It was after one of those visits that Zach had proposed to her. She had accepted joyfully, and had tried not to notice the shadow of uneasiness that had crossed his face when she said yes.

In the months afterward Zach had refused to set a wedding date, finding one excuse after another.

Finally Neva’s father had talked to her privately. He was a man who preferred to keep his opinions to himself, especially in personal matters. But he had seen enough of Neva and Zach’s push-me-pull-you relationship to decide that something needed to be said.

“Cut him loose, honey,” he had told Neva with his typical bluntness, although his voice had been quiet and kind. “If you think you’re ever going to be happy with him, you’re putting your money in the wrong bank.”

“Dad, there’s a lot of things you don’t understand—“

“You’re right. But there are a few things I do know: If a man loves you, he doesn’t put you on hold while he tries to figure out what he wants.”

“He just needs to be sure.”

“He should be sure right now.” Her father had gripped her hands in his large, warm ones. “Don’t settle for the wrong guy, Neva. Keep looking for the right one.”

“Zach is the right one,” she had insisted, but she hadn’t been able to hold his gaze. “ Almost the right one. And I can be happy with that.”

“For a lifetime?”

“Dad, not everyone gets to have what you and Mom had. Some of us have to be okay with settling.”

“Not you,” her father had insisted. “Not my daughter.”

Troubled by her father’s advice, Neva had eventually brought herself to ask Zach if marriage was what he really wanted.

“I proposed because it seemed like the right thing at the time,” he had admitted. “And you seemed to expect it.”

“But it’s not what you want?” she had asked huskily.

“It doesn’t seem necessary. We can promise to love each other, but promises are broken all the time. There’s no guarantee that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and feel the same about you as I do today.”

“If we can’t at least start by believing in forever,” Neva had managed to say unsteadily, “we may be better off not trying at all.”

Soon after that, Zach had told her that he’d decided to go to Iraq for about six months. He would be embedded with a Provincial Reconstruction Team to report on joint civil and military efforts to rebuild unstable areas. He didn’t expect Neva to wait for him. In fact, he didn’t want her to.

After the call had ended, Neva realized he had just broken up with her by phone, on the way to the airport. She couldn’t hold it against him, however. That was just Zach, taking care of his personal life between plane flights.

She hoped that someday, some woman would walk into Zach’s life and change everything for him. But that wasn’t likely. He was the type who would always go from one relationship to the next, shutting it down whenever someone got too close. The defensive walls that had always protected him had become his private Alcatraz.

When a friend who worked at the island hospital clinic called to tell Neva that Zach had been in some kind of accident and had been airlifted to Bellevue, she had debated inwardly about whether or not to go to him. Zach’s welfare was no longer her concern. She had moved on. But as far as she knew, Zach had no one to help him. And she couldn’t stand the idea of a man she had once cared about lying alone in a hospital.

Her gaze dropped to her hands. She flinched at the rich cool glitter of the diamond engagement ring Zach had given her. It was a beautiful Tiffany solitaire set in platinum, easily the sum of her income for an entire year. She had planned to give it to Zach in person when he returned to collect the rest of the stuff he’d left at her house. It had been six months since she’d last worn the ring. But just before she had left for Bellevue, it had occurred to her that the hospital might have rules against letting non-family-members visit ICU patients. If she said she was engaged to him, they would have to let her see him.

A silver-haired nurse dressed in lavender scrubs came to the waiting area. “Anyone here for Mr. Logan?” she asked quietly. No one looked up from their magazines or cell phones.

“I am.” Neva rose quickly, picking up her bag. She accompanied the nurse to the hallway, where they stood to the side. “How is he? I don’t even know what happened. Someone called to tell me he’d been brought here from Friday Harbor.”

“You’re related to Mr. Logan?”

“I’m his fiancée. Neva Landry.”

“Would you like to sit somewhere while we talk?”

That meant the news was bad. Neva blanched and gripped her bag tightly. “No, thanks. Just tell me right away.”

“Mr. Logan was struck by lightning. We think it may have been a direct hit. “

Blinking, shaking her head slightly, Neva tried to absorb the news. “My God. It must have happened while he was on his boat.”

“It was a miracle that he survived. There are no serious burns; sometimes in people with high skin resistance, the electric current flashes over the skin and doesn’t cause external injuries. But unfortunately the current flowing around the body generates a magnetic field that can cause cardiac issues. Mr. Logan was brought in with a serious arrhythmia, which basically means that his heart’s electrical system went haywire. We defibrillated him to restore a normal rhythm.”

“So…he’ll be okay?”

“There’s still too much we don’t know yet. We’ll run more tests when he’s fully stabilized.”

“Can I see him? Talk to him?”

“He’ll be brought to a room in critical care in about an hour, and you can see him then. But Mr. Logan won’t be able to communicate. He has mild cerebral edema. Brain swelling. So he’s on a drip of barbiturate medication to quiet down the electrical activity in the brain and help lower the pressure.”

“So he’s been heavily sedated?”

The nurse shook her head. “Sedation is a semi-conscious state. This is a deep unconscious state—an induced coma.

Neva swallowed hard before bringing herself to ask, “Does Zach have brain damage?”

The nurse hesitated. “The doctors are looking at the MRI and CT scans right now. They’ll meet with you later tonight, and tomorrow morning, after we have a better picture of what we’re facing. They’ll want to lighten up the coma and bring him out of it as soon as possible, to find out more about the level of function.”

Abruptly Neva felt drained, shaky, a little nauseous. “I sort of wish I’d taken you up on the offer to sit down,” she managed to say.

The nurse took her arm in a firm grip and guided her to a pair of nearby chairs. “Can I get you some water?”

Neva shook her head and carefully lowered into the chair. “I just…nothing’s ever happened to Zach before. He goes into the most dangerous situations you could imagine, and he always comes out without a scratch.”

The nurse sat beside her. “I don’t want to give you false hope,” she said gently, “but there are a few things working in his favor. He’s young and in good physical condition, and his heart rate is back to normal. And he’s got a team of doctors, nurses, specialists, a respiratory therapist, all of us doing everything we can to get him—and you—through this. Your presence here will play a big part in his recovery. I’m sure he’ll know you’re with him.”

As Neva waited for the opportunity to see Zach in ICU, her thoughts spun and collided like a carnival bumper-car ride. Zach had no family, but there were a few friends and business associates who should be told about what had happened. And his agent would get in touch with the people at the magazine and keep them updated on the situation. She wondered if he still had an apartment in New York—surely he had designated someone to take care of his bills and investments and property in case something happened to him? Probably not—Zach had always been convinced of his own invincibility. “If you let yourself get scared,” he had told her once, in regard to a life threatening situation he had faced in Libya, “You’re dead. You have to shut your feelings off in emergency situations.”

Neva had refrained from pointing out that sometimes Zach forgot to switch his feelings back on when the emergency was over.

Someone was going to have to gather all the stray threads of Zach’s life and keep them together. Someone was going to have to spend days, weeks, perhaps even months, sitting by him in the hospital and watching over him, trying to reach through to him. But Neva couldn’t be that person just because no one else happened to be there. She had a farm and a business to run. She couldn’t afford setbacks, especially right now. And no one would claim that she owed Zach a sacrifice on this scale. Especially after the way he’d treated her. How could she put her life on hold for a man who had refused to be part of it?

She thought about calling her father or brother, or one of her close friends on the island, but she already knew what they would say: Zach’s caused you enough pain for one lifetime. Let someone else pick up the pieces. If she allowed her business and her personal life to suffer for him, she could easily imagine what he’d say: Nobody asked you to do that for me.

Right. She was going to spend one day, two at the most, doing what she could for Zach. Then she was going back to Friday Harbor and leave her former fiancé to the life he had created for himself.

“Neva?” A petite brunette nurse approached her. “My name is Maureen. We’ve got Mr. Logan—Zachary—settled in his room. I’ll to take you to see him now, if you’d like.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Neva was surprised to discover that she was slightly out of breath. She was more nervous than she would have expected. “How does he look? I mean, I guess there are a lot of tubes and bandages and wires—“

“No bandages, really. He’s hooked up to a lot of machines, though. He’s on an IV, a ventilator, a catheter, an EEG, and there are lines to measure intracranial pressure and blood oxygen. If you have questions about the monitors or the intubation or anything like that, don’t hesitate to ask.” She sent Neva a faint smile. “He’s your fiancé?”

“Yes.”

“While he’s in ICU, you can visit him for five minutes every hour.”

“Can Zach hear anything while he’s in a coma?”

“It’s best to assume that he can. Just talk to him in your normal tone of voice—explain what happened to him, where he is, what time of day it is, things like that. Mention people you both know, or things you’ve done together in the past. The most important thing is just to let him know that you’re there, and you love him.”

That elicited a stab of guilty annoyance. She no longer loved Zach. And she wasn’t even certain why she was there. No one would have blamed her for staying on the island where she belonged. For a moment she let herself think of how nice it would be to go home and curl up in her big cozy loveseat with a glass of wine and a book. Instead she was going to sit in a hard plastic chair and spend five minutes of every hour talking to an unconscious ex-boyfriend.

“Don’t be surprised,” Maureen said as they entered one of the rooms in the ICU, “if you see muscle movement or eyelid-twitching, things that make it seem like he’s conscious. But those are just unconscious reflexes; he’s deep under.”

A skein of wires trailed from the motionless figure on the bed. This looked nothing like the scenes in soap operas or primetime dramas, where a small cannula was picturesquely arranged beneath the patient’s nose. This was ugly. Overwhelming. Zach was a mass of inert human flesh attached to machines, tubes hydrating, feeding, breathing, regulating, draining. Quiet beeps from the bedside monitor punctuated the ventilator’s constant rhythmic whoosh.

Neva approached the bed slowly, her hand trembling as she gripped the cold metal bedrail.

She wanted to touch him, but she didn’t know where. He was crisscrossed with leads that had been fastened to his chest with adhesive patches. A ghost-pallor had infused his usual tan, and his face was swollen, the hard line of his jaw nearly obscured. His eyes were closed, his mouth lax around a ventilator tube that had been secured with tape. An IV needle had been inserted and taped to his left hand, but his right, the one closest to her, was unencumbered. His palm was turned upward in a way that seemed broken and helpless.

Maureen sent Neva an encouraging smile. “I’ll come back in five minutes.”

Neva sat on the chair at the bedside and carefully reached for Zach’s hand. It was cold and motionless. What would it be like, to lie there unable to communicate or defend himself?

She kept both her hands around his. “Zach,” she said carefully, “It’s me, Neva. You’re in a hospital, but you’re going to be fine. There was an accident—you were struck by lightning. I’m guessing you were probably out on the dock. You’re on a lot of medication right now, to keep you still and let you heal. They’ve put you on a ventilator and you’re hooked up to monitors. I’m going to stay with you and take care of you. I’ll stay until—” She broke off, staring at his familiar profile, the long line of his nose, the smooth arc of his forehead that led to his hairline. The thick locks, a dark brown approaching black, had been chopped short and uneven. Forever lacking the time or opportunity or patience to hold still for a decent haircut, Zach had been known to grab the nearest scissors or hair clippers and trim it himself.

Retaining his hand in one of hers, she reached out with the other and gently stroked her fingertips through the hair at the side of his head. “You cut your own hair again,” she said, smiling slightly. “Probably at one in the morning in some airport bathroom. You hate to slow down, don’t you? I’m truly sorry about this, sweetie. I could think of a million things you’d rather be doing than lying in bed with only me for entertainment.”

Zach hadn’t said a word or moved at all, but she felt somehow as if she could sense the enormity of his need and pain. It seemed to radiate from him. Compassion welled inside her at the sight of someone so robustly healthy brought so low, a worldly and capable man who now had to let a machine breathe for him.

“Remember when you told me you never let yourself be afraid?” she asked, clasping his hand a little more firmly. “You said you could turn it off at will. But it probably isn’t so easy to turn it off now, is it? Anyone would be scared. The thing to focus on is that you’re not alone. You’re going to be fine. You’re safe now, and they have everything they need here to make you well again. And I’m…” Her voice trailed away. A long, wrenching sigh escaped her. There was no way she could abandon him in this state, if only for the sake of what he’d once meant to her. Damn you, Zach.

Slowly she lifted his hand and pressed her cheek to the backs of his fingers and kissed one of his knuckles. “I’m going to stay with you,” she said. “For as long as we’ve known each other, I think this is the first time you’ve ever actually needed me. Once you told me the only person you could ever count on was yourself. Well, now I’m going to prove you wrong.” She rested their joined hands on the mattress. “We’ll get through this together,” she said. “I’m here for you. And you won’t owe me anything afterward, so don’t worry about that. You just focus on getting better. That’s all that matters.”

“The situation is…singular,” Elsegoode said. “There are angels who, of course, are able to assume a mortal appearance for various purposes. But I am not familiar with any examples of an angel actually replacing a mortal’s spirit in his body. And certainly an angel would never attempt to do so without having been directed by a higher power. “

“It was the lightning. I was in the way. It struck us both.”

Elsegoode looked troubled and perplexed. “Somehow the current must have conveyed your immaterial essence, or esse , into Zachary’s mortal form at the same time that his soul departed. It appears that you are united with this corporeal form and are giving life to it, just as Zachary Logan did until this morning.”

“But I’m not him.”

“Certainly not.”

“And he’s not…with me.”

Elsegoode shook his head. “Unfortunately his soul has gone astray. But do not worry, the situation is temporary. We’ll locate him in short order.”

Friday was far less worried about Zachary’s situation than he was about his own. “Listen, Elsegoode—I have to be released from this body right away. The central nervous system is fried and every damn second is agony. Let me out and I’ll go back and do my job. I’ll never complain again. I—“

“If it were in my power, I would free you at once. However, I can’t simply reach in and pull a soul from a body.”

“Then how do I get out of this?”

“I intend to consult an archangel. Heaven help me, we may even have to approach an Empyrean seraphim. But we’ll find a way. In the meantime, you must stay where you are.”

“ No .” Friday felt himself sliding back into the dark well of fear and fury. “Elsegoode, I can’t. You may think you remember what it was like to be human, but trust me, you don’t . I can’t go through it again. Especially not this way.”

“Even for a short time?” Elsegood asked with quiet chiding.

“No. I’ve had enough.” Friday hunched slightly and wrapped his arms around himself as fresh thrills of pain went through him. “Take me back up there,” he said through gritted teeth. “End it. Asphyxiate the body or make something happen so that I can’t stay in it. Please.”

“As you well know, that’s impossible. Our kind is not allowed to end a mortal life. Moreover, even if I could, there is no certainty about what would happen to your soul afterward.”

“I don’t care. If you leave me like this, Elsegoode, I swear—” He broke off with a savage groan and clasped his aching head in his hands.

Elsegoode watched him with a curious frown. “How quickly you’ve adapted to mortality again. Your expressions, gestures…so very human.”

Friday cursed him with a few choice words, causing the angel to react in offended startlement.

“There’s no need for that. I’m doing what I can to help you.” Elsegoode’s brows lowered. “All this could have been avoided, had you done as you were instructed.” The dream began to fade. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

Friday plummeted back through the inchoate blackness, into dancing knife blade pain and choking smothering stillness. He was surrounded by machines and metal and plastic lines. One of the machines blew air into his lungs at far too slow a pace. With each breath, he thought he would suffocate for need of the next until it finally came. The tube was all the way down his throat. If they would take it out, he could breathe on his own, but he couldn’t ask for himself. Couldn’t move. Thoughts flew and buzzed around him like a cloud of insects, too fast for him to catch. Dark can’t breathe burning cold…end it…please…

He strained at the invisible cords that tethered him to the body, to the earth.

He heard a low and lovely sound, a woman’s faraway voice. He quieted and focused desperately, trying to understand what she was saying.

She had taken his hand, her grip soft but comforting. She seemed to be telling him about the lightning and his condition, that he was in a hospital. Her fingers stroked his head, through his hair, tender against the murderous ache of his skull. Had he been able to make a sound, he would have groaned for her to continue. So good, that kind and sensitive caress, accompanied by words like take care of you…safe now…I’m here with you .

His entire soul yearned for her, begging her not to stop, not to leave him. She spoke again, the quicksilver slurry of words beyond his comprehension. He struggled to reach her, return the pressure of her fingers, anything to convey the deluge of gratitude and need. As long as she was with him, he could tolerate the torturous pace of the breathing machine. He could even take the pain. Anything. Just stay.

But all too soon another voice intruded and the hand pulled away. Someone was telling her to go. His response was visceral and immediate. His arm twitched, which in his current medicated condition was the equivalent of a primal howl.

She leaned over him; her voice a silken rustle near his ear. “They’ll let me come back in an hour. I won’t be far.”