Chapter 26
I smile at Joel. He regards me, unblinking, torment in his eyes. I command myself to keep looking at him without reacting. I won’t let myself feel his sadness, I’m annoyed I even notice it.
I lean forward, shortening the already short space between us.
His gaze moves to my mouth. His lips are parted.
Our shoulders brush, dock. I feel the slippage of my mind again, the wriggle of it trying to get out from under the saddle of my plan.
I pull back—ruthless, inhuman self-control!
—and ask, “Are you really going to kill them, my half siblings?”
He blinks. “Yes,” he says, gruff. He clears his throat. “Yes, of course.”
“You don’t have any hesitation? After what I’ve told you about Grub. After what you’ve seen.” I reach out, run my fingers down the side of his face. The subtle roughness of his cheek catches at my skin like it’s trying to slow me down, make me stay.
He breathes in shakily, leaning into my touch. I think I might lick his lips. I close my eyes for a moment to refocus. It’s not good, how often this is happening.
“No,” he says.
I open my eyes, look into his. I realize I’m trying to find their color in the dim; the warm gold with its implication of an underlying green. Olive, maybe. A summer color that takes light like antique wood. I saw it in the park, after all these nights, and now I want to see it again.
“Yes,” he whispers. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
Yes! My spine unfurls, stands alert. It’s working. I wasn’t imagining things with the telemarketer, the pharmacy rep, the people I’ve run into in the world who have wanted to help me, to give in, instantly. Even Dee, when I asked her to let Al stay. She just complied. No argument.
“Damn it,” Joel whispers, panicked. “Don’t!” He says it a little hopelessly, like he already knows I won’t listen.
“No, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I soothe, stroking his cheek again, his hair. I am a thief dropping down on a rope from a hole cut into the ceiling.
He puts his hands over his face, curves forward, elbows meeting his knees. I rub his back, an addictive expanse, and he shivers under my hand.
“I just want to know what you’re really thinking,” I tell him softly.
“I’m trying,” he mutters. “I’m trying so hard.”
“I know,” I say. “But you don’t have to.” I’m ambushed by the urge to put my head on his shoulder. To wrap my arms around him and hold him and let myself feel small against him. I draw back a few inches, keeping my hand on him.
“No, I do,” he says into his hands.
“It’s lonely, isn’t it?” I prompt.
He nods.
“Your grandmother told you about another person like you. Who can do what you can. Do you know who that person is? Have you met them?”
He shakes his head. “We’ve never met.”
“Do you know where they are?”
He shakes his head again. “Far away, I think. I got the sense . . .”
“No one else is helping you?”
“No. But— ” He won’t continue. He breathes harder.
“But what? Tell me.”
He turns his head from side to side, a trapped animal, willingness to fight flashing in the pull of his tendons even as defeat flickers in his eyes.
“I reached out. For help. The way my grandmother taught me. There’s a signal.
If I ever need.” He says it in a rush: angrily, guiltily. “Damn it. Damn it.”
“When did you do that?”
“After the second time. When I realized I couldn’t kill you.”
“You reached out to this other . . . angel?”
He looks faintly startled at the term but accepts it without argument. “Yes.”
“Then where are they?”
“No one came,” he says. “Maybe they’re dead.”
“And you can’t cancel it or something?”
He shakes his head.
“Crap. This isn’t great, Joel.” Maybe he’s right and they’re dead. Just because his senile grandmother thought there might be another angel out there doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
But what if they aren’t dead?
For a moment, I can almost feel them behind me—a sudden looming presence, the night solidifying into the form of a person—I can almost feel hands reaching for my shoulders.
I shake this feeling off.
“How did you figure out you were like this?” I ask, moving on.
“I killed someone, by accident,” he says, muffled. “A patient.”
“Really? What happened?” I’m surprised.
“I didn’t know he was a . . . like you. I didn’t know there was such a thing. I didn’t believe her yet.”
“You tried to heal him?” It’s so satisfying, being able to ask him anything.
“I thought so. But I didn’t like him.” He takes his hands off his face, but he’s still talking as though to himself, not really to me.
“Why not?”
“He was cruel. To his family. He had them completely under his control. They acted like his servants. I’ve seen a lot of people. He was one of the worst.”
“You have to like the people you heal? Is that how it works?”
He shakes his head. “No. But I thought maybe it worked that way. I felt like I had killed him somehow, even though I didn’t know how or why. I wondered if it was because I didn’t like him. Later, I realized it was because he was one of you.”
“When did you realize that?”
“After Adam died. I remembered what my grandmother had said. My cousin did this oral history project, too. Recorded her talking about being a healer, a guardian. I tracked that down. Listened to the whole thing. She had been dead for years then. If she had been alive . . .” His words dissolve into bitterness for a moment, maybe loneliness, too, and I imagine him digging through the recording, desperate for answers, as alone in his strange, impossible power as I was in my own.
As I still am. I don’t want to think this way. It feels slippery, dangerous.
He manages to continue, his voice thick. “She’d predicted the healing. So maybe she was right about the rest.”
“When did the healing start?”
“In med school, but it wasn’t clear. Just felt like I was lucky. Then, after he died—that patient—it got stronger. I started saving people who were really badly off, people who should’ve died.”
“And then?”
“And then Adam.”
I take a breath. I almost can’t ask the next question, knowing that he will tell me the truth. I still don’t want to know, after all this time. But I ask anyway. “What happened to him?”
“He was in a coma,” says Joel. “I tried to heal him.” He has regained control of himself through some painful internal process, and he speaks without inflection, as though measuring out just enough breath for each word. “I woke him up, but his mind was compromised. Broken.”
I resist the sudden childish urge to cover my ears. I asked. Now I have to listen to the answer.
“He couldn’t focus, couldn’t remember things, couldn’t do his work. He seemed to get worse and worse. I kept trying to heal him; it was like there was this block. Like a poison I couldn’t drain.”
No, I think. No. Although of course I know it’s true. Of course I’ve always known.
“It was . . . sapping me. I wasn’t doing as well with other patients.” He takes a precise breath, his face rigid with the effort of containing himself, of concealing his emotion.
“I asked him about everyone he’d interacted with, trying to figure it out.
His memory was getting worse, but he told me about you—this woman he’d met at a concert, who he’d .
. . he’d liked. A beautiful voice, he said.
A beautiful speaking voice.” His voice finally breaks as he says this.
“I should’ve known. It is beautiful. Even when you’re just talking. ”
The air stutters in my lungs.
I killed him. I killed Adam. This whole time, it was always the truth. It had always happened that way.
I knew.
My hair had thickened, my hands had felt strong and limber. He had been in a coma.
Of course I knew.
“I didn’t want to know,” he continues, speaking quietly, helplessly now. “I think that was it. I didn’t want to think that about you.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” I stroke the back of his neck. This is part of it, the touching, I tell myself. It’s part of my plan. My hand is shaking.
He shudders. “It’s going to be his yahrzeit,” he says. “The anniversary of his death. This week.” His voice lowers. “And I’m sitting here with you. The woman who destroyed him.” His shoulders cave in.
“I’m sorry!” I gasp before I can stop myself. “Joel, I’m so sorry.”
“Why would you be sorry?” His tone is acid.
“You can believe me,” I say. “I’m not lying.”
“I don’t want to believe you.” His voice gets suddenly louder, threaded through with rage.
And then it trembles. “I do want to believe you. I’m not—I’m not sure if I want to believe you.
She told me we are the only ones left. She was right about me even before I knew.
” His voice pulls tighter as he talks, the words spinning like beads on a string.
“We have to eradicate— There’s evil in the world. That’s the whole point of this gift.”
“I know,” I say. “And if you killed those people, and they weren’t really evil . . .”
“Then I’m just a killer,” he finishes for me.
“Some of them are evil,” I say. “My father. I think he is.”
“I don’t know what he is, exactly,” he says. “I don’t understand how it all works.”
“Me, either,” I say.
“He was just a boy,” he says. “Your . . . brother. James.” He takes another shuddering breath, and then I can tell he’s crying even though his face is turned away.
“I always touched them first. She told me to do that, when she was telling me everything and I thought she was delusional. Good thing I listened anyway. It’s the only way to protect myself.
He was facing the other way. He was . . .
tall. I didn’t realize. I put my hand on his shoulder.
He turned around. It was too late. He looked so young.
I couldn’t tell, online.” His hands are over his face again.
My hand on his back freezes, falls away. Grub was tall. I never really saw him standing up. Maybe briefly, and I got the impression that he was tallish; he was so skinny and his arms seemed long. But I never got to see him in person. Joel got to see him in person and I didn’t.