The Vision

for Joe
because no moon is an island

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

—HENRY MILLER

chapter 1

The man on the gurney looked just like Mr. Dempsey, my history teacher back in Ashville, Pennsylvania. He had the same scraggly Abe Lincoln beard, the same bushy eyebrows, even the same too-big ears. His nose was different, but I knew it wasn't
actually
my history teacher anyway, because I was in Illinois, not Pennsylvania, and this guy had come in with papers that said his name was James Killiam.

I'd never seen James Killiam before, hadn't followed him through rainy streets—the mark making him easy to track—or watched him sitting on a bench one bitter afternoon, like I had Walter Ness. I had nothing to do with his being here, which made what I was doing less uncomfortable. Though it was still weird being this close to him, partly because he looked so much like Mr. Dempsey, but mostly because he was naked. And dead.

“Cassie? Are you going to start the cleaning?”

I blinked, shook my head. “Sorry. Zoning.”

Mr. Ludwig handed me the soapy sponge to wipe down the body, guiding as I worked. “Don't press too hard, you don't want to tear the skin. That's good. That part'll be covered by clothes so it doesn't have to be sparkling. No one's going to eat off him, you know.” He smiled and winked.

Funeral home humor is weak. At best.

James Killiam was the first body Mr. Ludwig actually had me work on, though I'd watched plenty. Eleven to be exact. Enough to know the first steps by heart: match the toe tag to the papers, check for a pulse, look at the eyes. Corneas cloud over when someone's dead, and you want to be darn sure they are before doing the stuff we do here at Ludwig & Wilton.

“I think you've got it, Cassie. That's great!” Mr. Ludwig beamed, his eyes crinkling slightly, the only visible wrinkles on his smooth Japanese skin. He stepped back after I'd swabbed from neck to toe. “I guess you're finished for today. You're welcome to stay and watch the embalming …”

I glanced at my watch, trying to erase the feel of clammy flesh. It was already past seven, my shift officially over eight minutes ago. I shook my head. “Not tonight,” I said. “Lots of homework. See you Saturday?”

He nodded, bending close to the body to slip in eye caps as I headed for the locker room.

I tossed my scrubs in the biohazard bin, then washed and rewashed my hands, still smelling like a science experiment as I pulled a hoodie over my T-shirt and jeans. At the door I slipped on Nan's old wool coat—now mine—and yanked my long, dark ponytail free before buttoning up. Then I hoisted my backpack, called good-bye to Mr. Ludwig, and walked to the bus stop a block away.

It was dark out and ice cold as I stood by the metal signpost, wondering aimlessly if your tongue would really freeze to it and eyeing the warm glow of Ludwig & Wilton's lights enviously.

I'd started there almost three months ago, a few weeks after moving to Bellevue, which wasn't a bad place. It had a decent town center and was only a short El ride to Chicago. Still, I missed home.

I missed my friends and school and teachers. I missed the mocha lattes at my favorite coffee shop. I especially missed Jack.

But I couldn't have stayed.

The bus swung wide around the corner, rolling toward me through leftover snow. I climbed aboard, blowing on mittened hands as I sat.

It had taken a while to convince Mr. Ludwig to hire me. People don't usually beat down the door to work at a funeral parlor, I guess. And if they do, they're probably not normal. Or seventeen. Or girls.

But I'm not exactly a normal seventeen-year-old girl either. And I wasn't working there for spending money or just some after-school job.

I was doing it because I need to understand death.

Not just in some hazy philosophical way, but physically, spiritually, emotionally. Any way I can. So that maybe I'll know what to do the next time I see someone like Walter Ness.

It was two weeks ago when I passed him on my way to Wicker Park with Liv. I trotted behind her down the frigid sidewalks toward a new thrift store she'd read about in the
Trib
. My head was bent, mouth and nose tucked into my scarf, and I was thinking how much I wished it was May instead of February, even though I've never seen May in Chicago and it could be just as horribly frozen and slushy as it's been the whole time I've lived here and wondering why I didn't have a good pair of snow—or at least rain—boots, when the unnatural light caught my eye.

It's funny how the limbic system, or whatever controls your emotions, works separately from the thinking brain, because a wave of nervous fear rolled through me immediately before I consciously understood that I'd looked because of the light. It was soft like a candle, in a place where there should be none—no glow cast from a store or ray of sun on this gray and gloomy day. My body recognized it instantly. The mark.

I slowed, grinding to a stop like a machine just unplugged, as I studied the man on the bench across the street. He was old, sitting motionless beside a newspaper that fluttered loosely in the wind. A dark overcoat that didn't look nearly warm enough fell in wrinkles around him, and he wore a newsboy cap, faded on the left center brim where he gripped to put it on. For a second I thought he might be asleep, but then he shifted, just slightly, maybe feeling my gaze, and I saw hollowness under his eyes. And the pallor of his skin. Like the colors of death I saw at the funeral home were already taking over.

My throat felt tight, the way it gets every time, and I couldn't move. Even though it was rude to stare. Even though Liv was now half a block ahead. Even though I wanted nothing more than to be away from this man with the mark that meant he'd die before the day was over.

Tell him or don't? Save him or not?

Trade another life for his?

Liv was almost a full block away when I finally moved, barely conscious I was doing so. I went to the man and started talking, words tumbling out, telling him he was in danger, I had a gift, could sometimes see when someone might die. He just stared. I heard my voice wavering, but I kept on, hating every awful, nervous, guilty instant of telling this terrible secret, second-guessing myself the whole time, fearful of what I might change. Or not.

I finished talking and stood breathlessly before him, my mind racing back over what I'd said.

The man was silent for a few seconds, then said simply, “Thank you for the warning.”

I waited, but he didn't get up. My stomach sank. “Do you need help to stand?”

“No.”

“Well, don't you want to go inside? Somewhere warm? Maybe … see a doctor?”

“Young lady,” he said tiredly. “I'm eighty-six years old. My wife died seventeen years ago, God rest her soul. My son lives in Japan. I see him once a year, if I'm lucky. My body aches most mornings and it's a good day if I can go to the bathroom without a problem. If today's my day, so be it. I'm ready.”

It was exactly like what my grandmother Nan said when I'd warned her. Exactly what I knew in my gut as I stood across the street watching him, hesitating because I knew I shouldn't tell. But I'd done it anyway.

“Did you know you might die today?” I asked too aggressively. I could see Liv coming toward us and I was angry at myself. He looked sick—
deathly
, if I was honest about it—much more than anyone I'd ever told. He'd had his time.

“Any of us might die any day,” he said without drama. “You included.”

Liv reached us then, thankfully too late to hear anything. She punched my shoulder lightly, raising an eyebrow. “What gives, Renfield?”

I steered her away, mumbling something about mistaking him for a friend from home.

“Who?” she asked, glancing back at him. “He's like a hundred years old.”

I followed Liv the final few blocks to the thrift store, where she got some plaid pants and a leather jacket that looks really cool on her. I'd have found it first if I'd been
seeing
the clothes I flipped through instead of that man, outlined in the soft glow of the mark. What if he took my advice? Decided to go to a doctor after all? It nauseated me to realize I was hoping he wouldn't. I was wishing him dead.

All because of a few sentences in an old letter I had little reason to believe. Clearly,
didn't
believe or I'd never have warned him.

Would I?

This is why I need to understand death.

And this is why I'd come to Bellevue, far from home, much bigger and, above all, populated with an unusually strong minority of Greeks.

Some of them would have been able to read the original letter in the book Nan gave me almost two years ago. I didn't need them to translate, though. That was already done. I needed answers about what it said.

Am I really Fate?

Does saving one person condemn another?

Are there others like me?

chapter 2

“Luuucy, I'm home,” I called, hanging my school bag on a hook by the door and catching a whiff of chemicals. Eau de Manicured Dead.

Petra was hunched over a bunch of psych files at our antique dining table, one of the few things she'd brought from her place in Kansas. We'd bought mismatched chairs at a yard sale down the street and painted them red. They looked funky and cool in our otherwise boring apartment.

“How was it today?” she asked.

“Okay.” I shrugged off my coat, then sat to untie my wet Converse. They'd gotten soaked in the slushy walk from Ludwig & Wilton to the bus stop. I really needed boots. “You?”

“About the same.”

“Whatcha working on?” I crossed, barefoot, to the fridge.

“Ugh. Floor round-up for the staff meeting tomorrow. There's so much here …” Over the bar counter of the kitchen I saw her wave at the papers spread everywhere. Petra shook her head. “I can't even find time to organize my notes, much less figure out how to help these people.”

I nodded, having heard it before. Pretty much every week since she'd started at Vauxhall Mental Hospital. I worried she might regret moving, maybe enough to do an about-face. But when I finally had the courage to bring it up, Petra had dismissed it immediately. “What would I go back to?” she asked. “School's done, couldn't find a job, dumped the boyfriend …” She'd ticked off each on her black-painted fingernails. “I feel so
needed
here.”

She was talking about Vauxhall, but also about me.

I wandered closer to the table, soda in hand. Petra glanced at me, her dark bangs sticking up where she'd been resting her hand. Or pulling out her hair.

“Want to take a crack at it?” she offered.

“Uh, not in a million years?”

“It's not
that
bad.”

“Mm-hmm. If you say so.”

Petra went back to her notes and I flopped onto the couch, typing a quick text to Jack: “lots of homework 2nite. procrastinating. how r u?” I tried calling Tasha, too, but her phone was off. Sleeping, I realized. It was almost three a.m. in Romania, where she was spending the semester. I could never get the time difference right. And I knew Liv was out for her dad's birthday, which left me with nothing but schoolwork and laundry.

I was about to head to my room to start one or the other, when Petra said, “Hey, we got an admission this week you might be interested in.”

“Really?” I sounded casual, but my stomach felt like the floor had just dropped out. There was only one thing Petra could be talking about.

“Greek girl, eighteen. Attempted suicide.”

“Yeeeaah …?” A lot like my mother, but I could tell there was more.

“Her parents said she was having visions before her attempt.”

“What kind of visions?”

Petra paused and I could feel my heartbeat, fast and hard, all the way to my eardrums. “She said she saw death.”

Oh. My. God.

I'd been waiting for this, but only in the way you wait for a call saying you've won the lottery or been chosen homecoming queen—something on the barest fringes of possible. I half expected Petra might forget to watch for a patient like my mom. So I could learn what kind of person she had been, I'd said, this mother I never knew.

But I hadn't really thought it would happen. What was the likelihood there would ever be one?

Except there was.

I leaned back slowly, not even sure what I was feeling. Shock, for sure. Elation, maybe? A weird euphoria that I might actually have found someone like her. Like me.

And fear. Definitely fear, because it meant this might all be real.

Petra nodded sympathetically. “It's a little spooky how much she sounds like your mom, right?'

“It is.” I paused, playing the question in my head first to be sure I wasn't giving anything away. “What did she mean about seeing death? Did she say how?” My mom's psych file, which Petra read to me back in Kansas, had no details, so she couldn't make a comparison. But I could.

“Her parents were pretty emotional when they spoke to the doctor,” Petra said. “They didn't give specifics, just said she'd been depressed, progressively more so. Talked about being surrounded by death, even said—and I quote—‘the angel of death is lurking.' Poetic, huh?”

It wasn't how I'd put it, but the mark
did
look angelic if you didn't know what it meant. In fact, I'd thought that very thing when I'd seen it on my ex, Lucas. Until the truth sank in.

“She alternated between withdrawal and bursts of excitement for a couple of weeks. Classic manic-depressive,” Petra said. “And then she slit her wrists.”

“Ugh.” I was silent, chilled by the bluntness of it—the statement and the act—and working up the courage to ask, “Can I come see her?”

Petra shrugged. “Sure. But you know you can't tell anyone what I've told you.”

“Of course.”

“Visiting hours are four to seven. I checked her schedule and she'll be around,” Petra said. “No therapy or anything.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling like I was literally pushing the words out. “I'll come by after school.”

I moved here specifically for this, I told myself. To find someone like me who might know things about the mark and what I was supposed to do with it. But facing the possibility that maybe I
had
made me queasy. Did I really want to hear the things this girl might tell me?

“No Corpse Central tomorrow?” Petra asked.

I shook my head. “Not till Saturday. We've got a viewing.”

“Mmm. Delicious.” Petra licked her lips, grinning. She was alternately repulsed and fascinated by my job. Of course, so was I.

“Has anyone else been to see her?” I asked.

“Not sure,” said Petra. “I haven't actually seen her myself. She was admitted last Tuesday and was in therapy when I had rounds yesterday. Want me to check?”

“Nah.” Not yet. Not until I confirm she's what I think she is—a descendant of the Fates like the women of my family, all dead now. “I'll just stop by, see what she's all about.”

Petra nodded. “I think it'll be good for you, Cass. Not that you're not okay, but closure is good for all of us.”

“Right.” Except this was nearly the opposite of closure. It was like nudging a door sitting quietly ajar just to see what was in there.