Wildcat Fireflies (45 page)

Tens nodded to confirm my declaration.

“That’s what I thought,” Tony said.

“What happened then?” Rumi prodded Tony to continue.

“I went to the police. I reported an abduction. There was nothing they could do. They thought she’d merely run away again. Or her parents had found her. Like I said, she was young, around your age. They didn’t take me seriously. Not that I blame them, there was so little to go on. Her name wasn’t even right.”

“What do you mean?” Juliet asked.

“I told them her name was Roshana Ambrose. There was no such person—not that they could find.” He seemed to deflate. “I returned to the church, to you. And on my desk was a letter for me she’d left. It said that the truth would challenge everything I’d ever thought about my religion and would require a new faith from me. But that she couldn’t tell me how it ended yet because she didn’t know. She feared she would never return. She repeated her demands to care for you and protect you.”

“Then how?” Juliet asked, aghast.

“How did you end up in that hellhole?” Tens clarified.

She nodded.

Tony continued. “I raised you until you were just past your sixth birthday. I took dozens of photos. I tried to capture every moment for your mother, but I gave up when the photos kept not turning out.”

“That’s a Fenestra thing,” I said.

“What?” Juliet turned to me.

“There’s something about film and even digital images that makes it hard to capture a Fenestra—what gets captured is the light the dying see instead of our human form. As we gain control, we can have pictures taken of us.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t able to before, but I haven’t tried recently.”

Juliet seemed overwhelmed, so overcome that she no longer questioned any of the reality we threw her way. It was as if she’d passed the point of ludicrous, so now everything was acceptable. “Please, go on?” Juliet asked Tony. “How did I end up here?”

“Not being able to adopt you is one of the reasons I left the church. But early in your life they transferred me to the orphanage and school, so I could help raise you there. With the nuns. You were like my own child, Juliet. I kept looking for the right family. We’d get close, but something always happened to derail the paperwork. Once you handed me a dead kitten you’d found and asked me if you could keep it—I was standing with prospective parents and they were spooked. You were such a serious child, always outdoors, always trying to heal animals who’d been hit by cars. You were fascinated by the saints and their stories. You had a favorite stuffed animal named Tiger.”

“A cat?” I asked.

Tony nodded. I wondered if that was why Minerva was in this form. Juliet had a foundation of comfort from a feline. I could tell from Tens’s speculative expression he was thinking the same thing.

Tony shrugged. “We made it work. I know my other parishioners sometimes suffered, but I felt my first obligation was to you. There were times when I felt like you were handed to me directly by God for my devotion, my trials. And then I was called to New York for the weekend. I left you with the same nun I had trusted in the past. Before I departed, the Bishop told me they were shutting down the school and dispersing us all. There was scandal with another priest. It was ugly, and I decided to leave and take you with me, after I returned from New York. I was actually planning to go find Tyee.” Tony shrugged.

“But you didn’t,” Tens said.

“No.” Tony stood and paced. “When I returned, chaos abounded. My nun friend was dead, a heart attack. You were gone. The other nuns said a woman had shown up claiming to be your grandmother. When they were skeptical, she produced a signed statement from me saying it was okay to release the baby, that’d I’d been delayed in New York. She left an address and contact information. Of course, I hadn’t given her any of it.”

“Was she the same woman?” I asked.

“As the one who rode off with Roshana? Based on what the nuns said, yes.”

“Did you check the contact info?” Tens asked.

“Bogus?” Rumi added.

Tony nodded. “The building was empty and cleared out. I searched for you, Juliet. I’ve never stopped praying for you. And I prayed every day that God would send an angel, an army of angels, to guide you, protect you, help you survive until I found you again.” Tears rolled down his face. He knelt at her feet. “Please forgive me for not doing more. If I’d taken you to New York with me, it wouldn’t have happened. If I’d made your mother tell me, I could have helped her, too.”

I shook my head. “Nocti are more powerful than you realize. If they were involved, you’re lucky not to be dead.”

Juliet fingered her braid. “You really kept looking for me?”

“I did. I pay a private investigator to look for you—he monitors online transactions and records. Anything that your name might appear on. I can’t believe it’s been a decade. To be in the same state, hours from you, and now to be so close and never see you. I am so sorry for what you’ve endured. Maybe if I had been here or stayed with the church? I don’t know.” He reached a hand out toward Juliet and let it hang there. “I hope that someday you’ll forgive me.”

Juliet lightly touched his fingers. “I remember you. I remember my mother. You’ve given me that. And you tried to find me.” She nodded. “If you’d known I was at DG, would you have come to get me?”

Minerva rubbed against Tony’s hands and shins.

“By all that I consider holy, I swear to you, I never
would have left you there. Or anywhere. I truly thought of you and your mother as my family. I’m not going anywhere. As long as you want me in your life, I’m here and I’m sticking. We’ll fight the bad guys and rescue your friends.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, T.” She gave him a small twist of her lips.

“You remember!” Tony laughed. “She used to call me T all the time!” he told the rest of us.

I felt as if I was watching Juliet heal, a fraction perhaps, but knitting her heart back together just the same.

Rumi slammed down the rest of his coffee. “I hate to bring us into the now, but there are two bantlings we have to find. How do we rescue them?”

The seriousness of our current situation turned all of us into frowning, furrowed worriers.

Tony stood, looking at Tens. “Your grandfather would tell us to turn and fight.”

Tens nodded. “Agreed.”

Rumi rubbed his hands together. “I packed quite a punch in my youth.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be a fistfight.” I couldn’t resist a smile. Custos jumped with her paws against Rumi’s chest and pushed him back into his chair. She licked his face with such verve it made all of us laugh.

The phone rang, reminding us all of what we were waiting for. It was closest to me. Rumi shrugged around Custos sitting in his lap. “The note said to pick it up.”

I did, while Tens placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed reassurances. “Rumi’s Glass Studio. How may I help you?” This cracked up Rumi and made me smile too.

Until I heard “This is Kirian. Can I talk to Juliet?”

M
eridian held out the phone, but Rumi quickly pressed the speakerphone button so we could all listen.

“Juliet?” Kirian’s voice sounded scared and determined.

My head pounded. My stomach rolled. I wanted to curl up and try to assimilate all the information. My mother loved me. As much as I’d prayed to know that, it was hard to believe it was real. She
loved
me.

Kirian repeated, “Jewel, talk to me.”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked. Meridian was holding the question up on a piece of paper. I was grateful she was able to think. I didn’t have the strength to do this alone.

“I don’t know where you are. Ms. Asura dialed the phone. You need to come to me. I can explain everything.”

“So explain. I want to talk to Nicole. Put Bodie on the phone. Or Sema.”

“Not on the phone. I can’t. Please, Jewel? I love you. I’ve always loved you. We can be together. Live the rest of our lives. Travel the world. Just like we talked about. Don’t you remember?” His words rushed together in excitement or desperation, as if he too was being told what to say.

I remembered a lot of things, and if I’d trusted myself more I would have realized the little boy who had loved me was gone. I didn’t know this Kirian at all. “Where are Bodie and Sema? Nicole?”

“Who’s Nicole?” he asked.

He sounded genuinely puzzled. “Where are they?” My voice cracked at the top.

“Calm down. Bodie and Sema are fine. You can see for yourself.”

Meridian touched my arm. The paper said,
Where?

“Where?” I asked.

“Follow the Wildcat from DG to where it merges with the Wabash,” he said.

“Can’t we meet at DG? Or the coffee shop Ms. Asura took me to?” I asked, hoping for something more public.

“Hold on.” It sounded like Kirian put his hand over the
receiver and talked to someone. We all exchanged looks. Tens and Meridian whispered over the paper. I waited.

Finally, Kirian said, “No, you have to meet me along the creek where the waters meet.”

“Let me talk to Bodie,” I demanded.

“Juliet, trust me. I’ve never done anything bad to you. Meet me at midnight.” Kirian clicked off.

“Why midnight?” Tens queried.

I shook my head. I didn’t even know what day it was.

Meridian ran to the calendar hanging on Rumi’s fridge. “They think tomorrow’s your birthday.”

“But it’s not,” Rumi said.

“They don’t know that, though.”

“At least we know something they don’t,” Tony said.

Rumi’s phone rang again. This time it was Joi, saying Enid had been released from the hospital and was coming home with her.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked. I needed to throw cold water on my face and gather my composure or cry. Whichever came first, the other was sure to follow.

Meridian said, “I’ll show you.”

I followed her down the hallway. I heard the men start talking about plans and strategies. I felt as if I were hovering above the whole scene as a spectator.

Meridian flipped on the light switch and moved out of my way. The light felt harsh as I leaned over the sink. Bruises ringed my eyes and a bloody scratch ran down one cheek. Meridian hesitated, then backed away.

“Wait.” I turned to her. “Stay? Please?”

She nodded and sat down on the lip of the bathtub.

I had never been alone, not really. There was always someone needing something. Since Mini and Nicole had arrived, the brief moments of alone under the stairs or by the creek were golden gifts, but only because I knew they were there. “I don’t know how to—what to do.” I leaned against the sink, turned the water to cold, and splashed my face, hoping the chill might ease the ache in my head.

She stayed silent.

I stared at my face in the mirror. The bruises turned my eyes into hollow sockets. My hair was lank and dull. My skin looked as if I’d never seen the sun. Vanity was never something I clung to—I’d have been eaten alive by the need—but I certainly looked as bad on the outside as I felt on the inside. “What am I again?”

She blinked. “A Fenestra. You help the dying get to heaven, the afterlife.”

“How?”

“We look human until someone is dying and then we are the light they see and move toward, through us, to transition.”

“I’m not human?”

“Not all of you. It’s like a recessive gene that only works if you’re born on the solstice or equinox—I used to think only the winter solstice, but now I guess all the seasonal midpoints are possible.”

Pieces of my life started to fit together. All those times I’d held the hand of a dying person and saw things, knew things I shouldn’t have. “Then it wasn’t my imagination, was it?”

“What?” She leaned against the wall like she was afraid I’d spook again. Couldn’t really blame her for the caution.

“I’ve started to fall asleep and daydream when they’re dying. I taste things, know recipes and foods that I shouldn’t. Do you?”

“You’re probably fainting from the strain of the energy trying to use you. But you’re not a full window until you’re sixteen. So souls probably push. Have you been standing at windows?”

“No, nothing like that. I dream of my mom, or cities. Mostly I can taste their favorite foods and know how to make them.”

“Has it always been like that?”

“No. I mean, I’ve always cooked, but only in the past year, since Mini showed up. It got worse when Nicole came, but I thought that was because I could relax more—”

“Minerva is more than just a cat. I think she transitioned the souls with you to keep you safe.”

I sat down on the toilet, my legs turning to jelly. “Is Nicole dead? Could she have died in the tornado?”

Meridian handed me a fluffy towel. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think she’s with Ms. Asura and Kirian, though.”

“She believed in angels,” I said, thinking about Nicole’s necklace.

“You don’t?”

“It’s hard to believe in anything that let that place exist.”

“You’re part angel. And you’re real. I know it’s a lot to take in, but do you think maybe Nicole was your—”

I waved her off. “So Ms. Asura wants to trade me for the
little kids. Or Kirian wants me to leave with him? Why are they doing this?”

“There are Aternocti—Nocti for short—that take the dying to hell. They want to turn us into them, or kill us. They think that tomorrow is your birthday and it will open the window. They may try to convince you to join them nicely, but if that doesn’t work, then they’ll probably try to take you someplace and force you to transition.”

“And you’re saying that Ms. Asura is one of those Nocti?”

“Yes. And I think Kirian—”

I put my head between my knees, trying to breathe.

Meridian scooted over onto the floor, at my feet. “I know this is a lot to take in. I’m sorry, I wish I could make it easier for you. I really do. The good news is that your window won’t open until March, so we have time. If we, you, can make it through this, then there’s time.”