Wildcat Fireflies (3 page)

My current theory was that Custos wasn’t simply a wolf or a dog, but a creature sent by the Creators to help us. Just like my mom promised in the letter she had given me. My heart cramped at the thought of my parents and my younger brother, Sammy. This had all started on my sixteenth birthday, when I came into my Fenestra destiny. I blinked onto the radar of the Nocti and my mom had to finally tell my dad the truth. I was shipped from Portland, Oregon, to Revelation, Colorado, to save my life and learn what I most needed to know about helping souls transition to the afterlife. My parents were forced to go on the run with my little brother because the Nocti might, and did, try to use them against me. I didn’t know when I’d be able to see Sammy again. But I was angry at my mother for lying. It wasn’t as if the omissions were harmless. Because the dead and dying were naturally drawn to me, my father spent years thinking I was a serial killer; I thought
freak
was too nice a word. That part of my life had been such a mess, I pushed it to the back of my mind. All I could do lately when I thought about my family was hope that someday Sammy would understand why I had abandoned him.

I wandered, sniffing fruity candles containing the whole rainbow of a produce stand. I shook cellophane
bags of potpourri, bundled-up pine needles, and cinnamon sticks. I tried on sunglasses covered in sparkling crusts of bling, pictured them on Custos’s snout. They were more her than me.

I wrapped an embossed velvet scarf around my neck and reveled in the luxurious texture. I ran my hands over soft flannel pillowcases printed with bright spring flowers, butterflies, and yellowish-bottomed insects I didn’t recognize. I closed my eyes, wishing for a bed—a
real
bed, not a motel bed—with real sheets, and a couple of days without riding in the truck. My ass was flattened like a pita.

“Your soup is ready,” called a soft voice behind me.

I thanked the server and unwound the scarf, then wandered back to our table. A couple of granny types dressed up in embroidered sweatshirts and velour pants and a few ladies who lunch decked out in Ralph Lauren country chic, complete with Louis Vuitton bags, had joined the crowded dining room while I browsed.

Tens had already polished off one bowl of soup. “I told her to let you do whatever so I could get a head start.”

“I only saw two rooms, didn’t even get upstairs. Carrot?” I pointed at the empty bowl as it was whisked away with a smile and a tea refill.

“Yeah, bisque or something.” Tens paused. He pointed up at the glowing glass globes. “That’s all you. Most definitely you.”

My stomach clenched. Another mystery. Another blindside by Fenestra questions.

I’d been afraid of that.

“P
sst. Juliet? Come quick.” Bodie’s face peeked around the corner of the antique buffet, into my peripheral vision. Intent on staying out of sight of the kitchen itself, he was hiding from Dunklebarger Rehabilitation Center’s headmistress, who was dictating my daily list of duties. A list that would take most people three days to complete. Bodie didn’t want the Mistress’s notice any more than I did; it never ended well for any of us.

When she finished her endless critique, I wiped my hands clean on my apron and turned down the heat on the soup pot. Industrial packaged tomato soup and grilled cheese was our lunch menu every other day.

Her nasal Northeastern twang spat at me. “Where are you going?”

“I heard a patient’s bell.”
Who was in the Jungle Room right now?
I’d learned ten years ago a calm voice and a steady answer solicited the safest, least painful reaction from her. She was predictably unpredictable. I gave any answer she wanted so I could break away and find out what Bodie needed.

“I didn’t. If I didn’t hear it, how could you?” She continued to question. Always with questions. If only she’d listen to the answers.

I didn’t respond, simply moved out of the kitchen, down the drafty hallway, far enough away so that Bodie was in no danger from Mistress. Moving targets were much less likely to be hit. Literally and figuratively.

Bodie’s stubby legs ran through the warren of damp hallways at the back of the house and up the murky side stairs even servants must have avoided generations ago. “Come on,” he hissed in an urgent whisper, one we’d all perfected. “Hurry.” We minced around these walls like ghosts, ghosts who didn’t want attention. “She’s sitting with Mrs. Mahoney.”

She
in this case, the cat, Mini. Fellow inmate and newer arrival Nicole had researched cats on the Internet and pronounced Mini an oversized Maine coon. With fluffy long hair that looked teased like the hair of an eighties rock star and an expansive, demanding personality, Mini gave the impression that good-sized dogs were no match for her.

When did Mini arrive at Dunklebarger? At my side?
When did I first notice her sitting beside the dying, before we even knew they were actively dying? Those barely alive bodies that gave the impression their souls had more than one foot in the next world.
I don’t know
. There’s a definite glitch in the time line that divides my life between before Mini and after her, but when was that? Blurred in my memory. It must have been somewhere around fourteen months or so ago she’d appeared at the bedsides of the dying.

My world is brighter with her here
.

I bounced up the stairs two at a time, overtaking Bodie’s running steps. His six-year-old legs were chubby and short, in that transition period from baby to child.

“When did you notice?” I asked.

“Just now. I came to get you like you said.” He stopped at the doorway of Mrs. Mahoney’s bedroom. His chin quivered. “I did good, right, Juliet?”

I paused with my back to him, shutting my eyes against the tears his tone evoked, so he wouldn’t see how his pain and uncertainty wounded me. I turned to him and knelt, bending farther at my waist, my eyes level with his. “You did exactly right. Exactly. You’re perfect, Bodie, and I thank you. I think there might be cookies later.” I tasted snickerdoodles in the back of my throat, knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I made them. I hoped Mistress went out tonight.

His furrowed brow smoothed and his smile beamed; it seemed as though the forty-watt bulbs lining the hallway intensified their light.

I tucked his hair off his face, mentally noting he needed a trim. “Now go play, and let me check on her, okay?”

“I have to clean the bathrooms.” His face dropped and he stuck out his tongue. “As punishment. I swore.”

I sighed. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d sworn or not. Mistress was in the process of toughening Bodie’s skin, so although the bathrooms were stained with years of use, that didn’t stop her from making him think they could be cleaned with enough painful effort. He’d been here for only six months and he fought the dampening with everything in him.

I remembered trying to resist her discipline when I was his age. “I’ll try to come help you, okay? Or see if Nicole can.” I worried that the bruises on his knees from kneeling on the cold cereal he’d spilled yesterday morning would bother him.

I did my best to protect them all, the young and the old, but I couldn’t be everyplace, every minute. No matter how hard I tried to do exactly that, it was never enough.

He shook his head, trying to convince me not to worry. “Mini needs you.” He gave me a matter-of-fact look and ran.

I pushed open the door and Mini’s eyes shot gold at me while her tail coiled and struck at the sheets. I almost saw the air around her head dance and pull at the curtains, but that was sleep deprivation catching up to my imagination. She was clearly upset it had taken me so long. Ten minutes maybe. If she could talk, I knew I’d receive a lecture about keeping elders waiting. I’d learned to pick up on her body language; mainly so she didn’t resort to claws and teeth like in the beginning. She was fickle and demanding, but possibly the best friend I’d ever had. Quite pathetic to think of
friend
and
claws
together.

“Sorry.” I briefly touched her head, scratched behind her
ears. Her hair felt like the delicate fluff of a dandelion, but her body was sturdy and muscular under all that pillowy down.

“Hello, Mrs. Mahoney, it’s Juliet here. And Mini.” I gently took Mrs. Mahoney’s hand in mine. Her breathing was labored, her palm and lower arm chilly, her lips blueing, and her jaw slack.
Any time
.

I settled myself next to her on the mattress, knowing from experience that at this point there was nothing I could do to disturb her. I hoped my presence provided comfort.
Maybe
.

Her gasps were jagged, and silence lengthened between them. I smoothed her thin white curls off her forehead with my other hand.

Mini leaned against my chest and stomach, sitting herself firmly in my lap, her front paws perched across Mrs. Mahoney’s heart. The first few times Mini had done this, I’d put her down on the floor gently, then with more force. But each time, she came back and took up the same position. I gave up. No one ever complained. How could vigil be anything but good?

“It’s all right, Mrs. Mahoney, you can let go. I’m sure your family is waiting for you.” As a small child, before coming here, my vision of death was like a light switch, or someone hitting the stop button on a song in midphrase.
So wrong
. I’d learned quickly, like Bodie was learning now, that it’s hard work, labor. Between the dying there are always similarities—that was the second lesson. One I passed on to the other inmates, the newbies, the unwanted kids like me sentenced here until, or before, their sixteenth birthday. It was a lesson
about knowing, seeing, making it less formidable a thing to be a kid around so much death.
There are signs
. Signs telling those who were willing to see, that the body’s curtain was falling.

I always felt so inadequate in this moment. I never knew the right thing to say or do, how to help. So I sat and spoke quietly of nothing and everything. I wet their lips and washed their faces. I rubbed lotion that Nicole smuggled into the house for me into their dry skin. If I were dying, I think I’d miss casual touch the most. I dreamed about casual, affectionate touch. Touch in DG always felt like it had an agenda attached. Except for once, a brief time three years ago, when I felt valued.

I snapped myself back to the present. Dwelling wouldn’t help.

The long days and short nights inevitably caught up with me if I sat still too long. My eyes drifted shut. I jerked awake. Mini never moved and her heat against me relaxed my core. Every time. I shook myself, trying to think of other things to say. When I sat like this, my mind wandered to my early years, to a featureless woman I thought of at the oddest moments.
My mother? Why couldn’t I remember her clearly?

I held no respect nor love for my mother. She named me for the most romantic heroine ever—Juliet. The idiocy is that Juliet killed herself; I fail to see how that is romantic. Live for me, don’t die.
Live
. But then, that’s what I’ve been told by Mistress: I’m named after the dead idiot in
Romeo and Juliet
.

Abandoned at a hospital, a note left in my pocket. One of those safe havens set up so young girls will stop flushing their
babies down the toilet or throwing them away in Dumpsters behind a McDonald’s. The law didn’t say how old, or how young, a child had to be to receive haven. At least, it didn’t back then. Or so I was informed.

Even undernourished, most six-year-olds aren’t babies by any standard.

Mini yowled and purred. My eyes flew open, but already the empty silence descended and filled the space. Mrs. Mahoney had died while I’d … what?
Daydreamed? How disrespectful
. Yet no matter how hard I tried to stay present, awake, and with them in the moment, I forever missed the actual blink of their passing. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t help it. I tried.
Maybe trying is all I can do?

Mini jumped off my lap and hid under the bed.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Mahoney. Pleasant sleep to you.” I stood, my legs buckling as a wave of dizziness flooded me. I shook back burning, twirling fatigue. I had to get to sleep earlier.

“Here’s grape juice.” Nicole moved out of the shadows of the doorway. “Bodie mentioned Mini’s vigil. Have you eaten anything today yourself?”

I shook my head and gulped down the sweet slick of generic purple.

She clucked and frowned. “You need food too, you know? Not just cooking for the rest of us.” Nicole turned her face toward Mrs. Mahoney. “She gone?”

I nodded, finishing the juice and then smoothing the blankets. My hands didn’t stay quiet. Not for long.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” Nicole asked with a half smile as she pushed a chair under my quivering knees.

It was a running joke, macabre though it might be, among the inmates. When a guest passed away, I cooked like a madwoman—something new, something old, just something—before I could rest. The other kids stopped questioning me and simply accepted the pattern. “Snickerdoodles. Beef Stroganoff.” Of course, I did it covertly, when we were left alone, so Mistress was none the wiser. She’d been gone more often than not recently, which made everything much easier. But when Mistress was around, her wrath seemed amplified and edgy these days. I shuddered.

“At least we can help with those dishes. I live in fear you’re going to say something with a French name and exotic ingredients.” Nicole helped me acquire foodstuffs that Mistress didn’t ordinarily stock. I never asked how she got them.

“Bodie doing okay?” I asked.

“He’s cleaning those bathrooms. I have Sema posted as lookout and left a coloring book under the radiator.” We tried to sneak play in where we could. I didn’t feel the least bit bad about lying. I knew no other way to survive.

“Don’t let Mistress see you, or she’ll just make it worse,” I cautioned.

“I know. I know.” Nicole lifted her hands away from her body in surrender. “Why don’t you disappear for a little while? Catch your breath? I’ll call the funeral home.”