Dying Light (3 page)

A girl can dream.

“
Understood,” Jeremiah
relents. “I
am
your friend, Jesse.”

I consider making the pig nose again.
The door opens and Ally appears, smiling, cradling forty pounds of
pug against her chest.

“
Winston. Come here,
squishy.” I reach for him and his cinnamon-bun tail wags, slapping
Ally’s arm. She plops my fat pug on the bed, and he pounces on my
legs. “You want to get under the covers? Get under these
covers.”

I throw the covers over his head. He
turns circles between my legs, nibbling on my fingers playfully as
I poke him through the bedding.

“
This is a sterile room.”
Jeremiah presses one finger against his temple.

“
Uh, therapy dog. I
died
. You can’t deny me
some pug love.”

Jeremiah stands, scrapping his chair
back from the bed. He doesn’t say goodbye or another word to us. He
just disappears out the door.

Ally sits on the only part of the bed
that isn’t lumpy with legs or pug. “Are you bickering
again?”

“
He’s riding my ass about
not killing Jason.”

Ally frowns.

“
Brinkley never asked me
to kill anyone,” I say. “And here Jeremiah comes in trying to tell
me what to do, and acting like offing people is totally normal.
It’s
so
not
normal.”

Ally’s eyebrows scrunch up and her
mouth flattens into a grim line. “I understand his argument.
Killing Jason would make you stronger.”

“
Yes,” Gabriel adds. He
stands at the foot of the bed, arms crossed over his chest and
pouting. A wing draped over each shoulder.

“
You stay out of this,
Gabriel.” There is a momentary hitch where I’m worried someone has
heard me say his name. But it’s only Ally here, so I relax. My
shoulder blades ease away from my ears.

“
What did he say?” Ally
asks, her brown eyes searching mine. I suppose I could be worried
that anyone, even Ally, knows that I have conversations with my
hallucination. My ex-mentor Rachel spent years in a mental hospital
for this very reason. But I wasn’t afraid around Ally.

“
I prefer you don’t hide
it. In fact, please don’t hide anything from me,” Ally had told me
once. “We promised, no more secrets.”

I am doing my best to keep that
promise.

“
Three votes for offing
Jason,” I say. “It seems I’m outnumbered.”

I scratch Winston’s belly.

“
Again, I’m not saying
it’s a good idea, but just think about it, Jess. If you had Jason’s
power, you could heal without dying. Doesn’t that sound so much
better?”

Buttloads
better
, I think, shifting my weight to
relieve the deep, throbbing ache in my pelvis.

“
You’re the ultimate
pacifist.” I lean back into the pillows. “I can’t believe you want
me to off a guy.”

“
I don’t.” She tucks her
straight blonde hair behind her ears. “Every time I think of you
fighting, it makes me sick. But I also don’t want Caldwell to have
any more power.”

“
I agree,” Gabriel adds,
folding his arms over his pristine suit jacket. The black lapel
lies exactly where it should without a fleck of dust on it. The tie
changes from an emerald green to a fire engine red.

“
Shut up, Gabriel. You’re
sadists. Both of you.”

Ally smiles. “Says the person who
pushed me out of a 34-story window.”

She has a point.

I reach out and squeeze her hand.
“How’s your work going? Was the laptop helpful?”

“
I don’t know what
Jeremiah is going to do with the laptop, but yes, we were able to
place two girls, sisters, last night.”

“
You get so much done
while I’m dead.” I try to get comfortable on the pillows but it
isn’t happening.

She smiles. “You grew an entire pelvis
cradle. You’re hardly lazy.”

“
So tell me about these
sisters.” I want to keep her talking. Ally’s voice is calming and
it’s a pleasant thing to focus on when really I want to mash the
morphine drip button a hundred times. Maybe Jeremiah turned it off
on his way out, the spiteful bastard.

“
Caldwell has a
four-person team that’s been working the Louisiana death
replacement circuit pretty hard. Nikki thinks they’re looking for
someone down there. Anyway, these girls had a mother with NRD. She
was killed and the girls didn’t have any other family. God, Jess,
they were so poor. They barely had a chance to rebuild after
Hurricane Katrina and then their mom is killed.”

Tears well up in her eyes and I want
to look away. I hate to see Ally cry. I squeeze her hand a little
tighter as my gaze slides down to her shoulder, hopefully giving me
a thoughtful look.

“
We were able to find a
wonderful couple in Philadelphia that wanted to take them in—both
of them, which is great. I was so worried we’d have to separate
them.”

“
They have you to thank,”
I remind her. “Alice Gallagher, protector of war
babies.”

She frowns and pulls her hand away. “I
know you think what we’re doing here isn’t important.”

“
I never said that. I just
hate these people, and I hate that we have to work with
them.”

“
I know.” Ally sits back
in her chair. “But they have more resources than we do in
Nashville. They are actually doing things to minimize the damage.
We can’t just pretend people aren’t dying and go about our lives
like everything is okay. We have to do what we can to help
until—”

She stops. She looks almost apologetic
as if what she intends to say next really is the worst thing
ever.

“
Until I kill Caldwell.
And the sooner the better because that’s fewer babies to find homes
for.”

She takes my hand again and squeezes.
“He’s your father, but no one holds you responsible for his
actions.”

Is that supposed to make me feel
better?

“
But they do expect me to
use my gifts against him.” They expect me to do what they can’t.
“If I don’t try to stop him—if I don’t
kill
him—then I’m not doing my
part.”

She searches my face. “Maybe there’s
another way.”

Jesse

O
nce Jeremiah’s medical team stops hovering and Ally says
goodnight, I scoop Winston up and carry him to the elevator. By the
time I reach the silver doors, my back is throbbing. I set Winston
on his feet and he looks up at me as if I’ve just stolen a treat
right out of his mouth.

“
I’m sorry, but I can’t
carry you. I hurt. Everywhere.” I gesture at all of me and he cocks
his head as if trying to understand. “Come on.”

The illuminated red numbers descend,
counting down to the hospital ward on the 8th floor, where I stand
with the pug.

I shift my weight, trying
to relieve pressure from one aching joint to another. I’m clenching
and unclenching my jaw when the doors finally open. Winston follows
me inside the small, warm space and I press the button that will
take us to the
rooftop
terrace
.

The doors ding open and an icy blast
of cold air hits me. I suck in a breath, taking that moment to
recognize the thinness of my hospital scrubs. I should’ve brought a
coat.

“
Sweet
gee-
zus
.” I
squeeze myself and nudge the reluctant pug out of the elevator with
my foot. “Do your business quick, and then let’s go cuddle where
it’s warm, okay?”

Winston waddles over to
the large patch of grass growing against a brick wall. Most of
the
roof looks
like a park. I guess that’s what you do when you build
cities. You level all the trees and lay sod on
the tops of buildings
. The only
problem is that 65 floors above Lake Michigan is way colder than
any park on the Magnificent Mile.

I go to the edge of
the
balcony
and
look out over the water. It’s
midnight
blue
and vast as an ocean. It could be the
ocean for all I know, complete with seagulls, a lighthouse, and
waves crashing against the embankment. Little boats cut waves on
the horizon, probably a patrol, given the white searchlight
splashing over the rocks. In the city itself, Christmas lights have
cropped up on a few of the buildings, blinking like red, green, and
silver stars.

The icy December wind pulls tears from
my eyes, freezing them against my cheeks.

I hate being cold.

It makes me miss home more than
anything. It figures that as soon as I start to think of Nashville
as home, I have to leave. Or maybe it’s the fact that Christmas is
on the horizon, which always makes me a little lonely.

Ally is usually good about making me
feel special during the holiday season, but this year we breezed
right through Thanksgiving without much thanks and Christmas is on
the horizon with no hint of eggnog, or presents, or
mistletoe.

I guess this is what happens when you
have shitty parents and no family. Is it too much to ask for a
father that buys me an iPad instead of one that only wants to get
together so he can drug me and bury me alive?

What’s your Christmas
wish, Jess?
Ally would ask this if we
weren’t so distracted. And what would I say?

I wish my father was dead. I wish that
the other Highlander-wannabes would stop thinking I’m an easier
target and stop trying to kill me. I wish they’d just kill each
other instead and leave me out of it. I wish I could find Rachel
and know that she’s okay. I wish Gabriel would finally explain to
me what it is he expects me to do with all these firebombs and
shimmery shields. I wish I could talk to Lane—at least one more
time.

“
Jesse!” Gabriel screams.
His voice jolts my heart, and my shield brightens around
me.

I whirl to find Caldwell standing
behind me.

“
Hello, Jesse,” he says.
His hands are in his pockets and his suit-tie ensemble is a soft
gray with a red tie, and white shirt beneath. No doubt it cost a
fortune and was tailored to fit him. “It’s good to see you
again.”

My
pulse
thrums so loud, I’m certain he
can hear it. Hell, maybe he can see it with his fancy new Liza
vision. He only had to kill the partis girl to gain that ability,
but some people seem to think that’s not such a big
deal.

“
Speak of the devil,” I
say, trying to assume an air of casualness. “I was just thinking
about what a terrible father you are.”

He takes a step toward me, a little
smile twisting up the side of his mouth.

I straighten my back. I
can’t look
tall
exactly, but not appearing as
pissing-myself-in-absolute-terror
is
good enough.

I manage not to glance at
Winston. I want him to come to me.
Run
to me. I’m hyperaware that
Caldwell is between me and someone I love—which has never ended
well. I have no reason to believe this time will be
different.

“
It’s been very difficult
getting you to myself,” he says. “Your friends have done a great
job of keeping you locked away from me.”

“
I guess they don’t want
you to kill me. You know,
again
.” I shift my weight for
relief. “Funny how friends care like that.”

Caldwell’s smile widens. He’s showing
too many perfect white teeth. “They’re doing a great job killing
you all on their own, aren’t they?”

I keep my face unreadable,
expressionless.

“
How many deaths have you
had since that night in Minooka?”

Two
, I think, with no intention of telling him. Instead, I inch
a little closer to the pug rooting around in the bushes. I move and
the camera by the elevator follows.

Please send someone. Send
someone before this gets ugly.

Gabriel is quiet. If he’s somewhere
deep in my head trying to send warnings about Caldwell’s
intentions, I don’t hear him. Caldwell watches me with the
intensity of a snake trained on its prey.

“
To be fair,” I begin,
keeping the pug in my peripheral vision. “I’m doing most of the
dying all by myself. They try to keep me safe, but you know me.
I’ve always played a little rough.”

He smiles another devilish smile. “You
come by it honestly.”

“
Do I?” I inch closer to
the bushes. I try for nonchalance, hands in my pockets. “What’s got
you dying these days? Don’t tell me you only do it as a beauty
routine. I’m surprised Maybelline hasn’t called you
yet.”

The fact that Caldwell is my father,
but doesn’t appear to be more than ten years older than me, means
he has to be dying, but why? With all his powers, what in the world
can kill this guy? I’d pay good money to know the
answer.