Pulse

Chapter 10

Cian

"I don't have this in the bag."

My head was on the desk in my bedroom, hair spilling across my forearms as I groaned in frustration. I was immersed in a mood of intense despair and self-deprecation, and I was not trying to do anything about it. I was a liar, after all. I'd told Lucie I knew what I was doing, but in earnest, I did not. I had gathered no clues. I had no leads. There was nothing. This guy had disappeared off the face of the earth!

"No offense," said Vinny from his perch atop my bed, "but I'm not surprised."

"Some offense taken," I muttered, and picked up my head, sitting back in my chair. I kicked up my feet, knocking some pencils over and sending sheets of looseleaf paper flitting to my bedroom floor like fragile doves. Shadows were cast across my face by the blinds, which were half-shut against the afternoon sunlight. Evening was fast approaching, the sky already turning faded shades of lavender and pink. "What do I do, Vince? I've got her trust now, so I have to do something."

"Well, you could quit sulking, for one," Vinny replied, then got up and went to the light switch near the door. For a second, he stared at it, then sighed and thrust his hand out, flicking it up in one fluid movement. I watched the care, the precision, with which he did it, and smirked to myself. I suppose flicking a light switch was an art for a ghost. "You're sitting in a dark room and groaning over and over again. I mean, loosen up. Don't you have, like, some souls to reap or something? Something to take your mind off things?"

"For goodness' sake, Vinny, I am not a reaper. The Grim Reaper is just an urban legend!" I yelped, then made a gesture towards myself, widening my eyes at him. "Death angels are real. I am real. Geez."

He narrowed his eyes, folding his arms. "Like I care about your stupid terminology. You're missing the point."

"No, I've got the point," I argued, drawing an air-bow and arrow and shooting it at nothing in particular. "Bullseye. You want me to stop sulking and think about something else other than the thing I've been thinking about all day. But that, Vinny, is called procrastination, and it never gets anyone anywhere."

"Neither does moping!" my little brother shot back, then sighed and put his face in his hand. His voice was quiet again. "Fine. Maybe there's something we missed."

I paused, skeptical. "Did you just indirectly agree to letting me think about the thing you were just telling me not to think about?" I gasped. "How un-Vinny of you!"

He glowered at me through his fingers, then dropped them and made his way back to my bed, where he was seated before. I swiveled in my desk chair to see him better; he seemed drained, his eyes on the ground, shoulders bent forward. I suddenly felt bad for not taking him seriously. "Vinny," I said. "Go ahead. What did we miss?"

"If I knew that, we wouldn't be in this pickle in the first place," he remarked. "But, I mean, all I could tell from following the tracks was that there weren't any spirits there, but there could be more to it I can't see."

I considered it for a moment, then sprang up, rattling more pencils. Vinny jolted in surprise. A laugh escaping my mouth, I flew to my closet and tugged on one of my black sweatshirts—of which I owned too many, according to Mom. My hair, now mussed, hung in my eyes as I pointed at the frazzled Vinny, a wild grin at my lips. "Genius, Vincent Sylvester Horne! Absolutely genius!"

"Cian...?"

"Think about it, Vinny. I'm an angel of death. Of death. If someone died there, I'll know exactly where and when. I'll feel it."

"And if not?"

I gnawed at the nail of my index finger for a bit, then reached for the doorknob instead, my back to my brother. "Then we'll be back where we started. But it's worth a shot, isn't it?"

A long, significant pause. Then: "You're interested in her, aren't you?"

I jolted, glimpsing Vinny over my shoulder. The frazzled look on his face was gone, replaced by a smirk. A smirk. Vinny never smirked. The smirk almost made me more uncomfortable than his words did, and I couldn't fight the heat of my cheeks. "Who?"

Vinny rolled his eyes. "You know who."

I shut the door, leaning back against it, my chin tipped up. I closed my eyes, pictured Lucie's face, her angular cheekbones and quick smile, eyes as candid as poetry. I pictured the golden brown tone of her skin, the stray curls falling across her eyebrows. I saw her fingers move deftly to put them back in place... "I'm not doing this because I like her. I'm doing this because I don't want to see anyone else hurt." I had started to crack my knuckles, one by one, but halted as soon I realized I was doing it.

Vinny noticed. His eyes twitched a little.

"I'll be back," I said, and started out the door.

Vinny's voice called: "Tell Mom so I don't have to manufacture a note out of refrigerator magnets. Or ketchup."

I chuckled. "Not the ketchup again."

By the time I'd reached the crash site, the sun had already set. The headlights of Dad's Escalade were knives cutting through the darkness, illuminating the trees in white LEDs as I rumbled over to the highway's shoulder. I put the car in park and stepped out, keys jingling as I stepped out into the night. The air was thin around me. Car horns sounded behind me, and I turned, glancing back at the passing head- and taillights.

On a normal evening, searching for a place of death would not be my activity of choice, but then again, what even was a normal evening for me? Normal was a relative term, and being an angel, I knew that more now than I ever had.

I flicked on a flashlight, because night vision had not come with this job, unfortunately, and trudged further from the road. I went past Dempsey's cross, past the one Lucie had made for Vinny earlier. I glimpsed it for a moment, and felt a smile tickle my lips. The girl had a big heart, I thought as I walked. I remembered giving her a confused look as she tied those two sticks together, but she had ignored me and gone on working as if nothing else mattered in the world. And why? Just to bring a smile to Vinny's face.

It warmed me up a bit more than I cared to admit. I blushed at the thought.

Okay. Back to work.

A few more minutes in, I located the scuff marks again. There they were, little disturbances in the mud, evidence of an attempted escape. I stared at them for a while. What were you running from?

This accident was not an accident, was it? Someone had wanted him, but who, and why?

I kept going, following the tracks by the light of my flashlight, in which I'd thankfully just inserted new batteries. The tracks seemed as if they would never end, yet they suddenly cut off, at the same moment I fell to my knees with a hacking cough.

I rolled over onto my back, indifferent about the dirt no doubt soiling my hair. I clutched at my chest, my flashlight slipping from my trembling fingers. It skidded away from me as I crawled feebly away from the path, trying to distance myself. Only when I was far enough away from the spot did my heart retain its normal rhythm; it had stopped again, paused as if it no longer had the will to go on.

I got to my feet, dusting myself off. It took me more than a few moments to gain my breath back.

I stood, looking down at the where the marks ceased, like an unfinished sentence. My heart sunk in my chest, wondering how I was ever going to tell Lucie.

Dempsey was dead, and I was staring right at the spot where he'd sprayed his last breaths.