Beyond the Grave (10 page)

It was my first visit to the Four Trees Mall, and I was hoping it would be my last. I avoided huge shopping centers altogether, preferring to order anything I needed online, away from the noisy crowds and persistent salespeople. But Michael hadn't given me an option, so I was stuck sipping an orange-mango smoothie and sitting by a gaudy fountain littered with nickels.

I had arrived early and purchased my smoothie, which was really the only thing that made a trip like this worthwhile. Then I claimed a spot at the fountain so I could watch the entrance. People hurried past me, their bulging bags slapping against their legs. There was too much echo, I decided. All those voices bouncing off all that space. It had the potential to become Panic Attack Central. Was it always so crowded on a Monday afternoon?

I looked around. Plastic pumpkins and fluffy black spider-webs decorated most of the store windows, reminding shoppers that Halloween was only a month away. And in an effort to make sure the name rang true, there actually were four trees inside the mall. Four huge, two-story plastic trees. Everything about the place was fake. I glanced at the fountain,
wondering if the water was real. Maybe it was some kind of synthetic, antibacterial syrup.

One thing the mall didn't have was a clock. I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time. Michael was officially five minutes late. Not that I minded. I was nervous about this strange meeting and the news Michael would deliver. Was I really in danger? Maybe a better question was, would I ever
not
be in danger? If the Watcher couldn't be destroyed, what hope did I have of ever living a relatively normal life? Like so many things lately, it was too depressing to think about.

My smoothie gone, I debated a quick trip to the food court for a refill. My day was wide open and I had nowhere else to be. I had attended classes for the day, noting that Michael was absent from our English course. Dante had been walked, which had been nice not only because of the cooler weather but also because I needed a little alone time to think. Noah was in school for another hour, maybe longer. He was staying late every day, working on projects that he never quite defined. Research, he said, but I had no idea what would take hours a day to explore.

His schedule had become increasingly strange lately. If he wasn't putting in overtime in AV class, he was at the public library, studying nonstop for nearly every class he was taking. I knew senior year could be tough, but Noah was being crushed under an avalanche of essays.

Despite her preoccupation with the wedding, even Trisha had noticed. “Is everything okay with you two?” she had asked me the night before. She had stopped by our house to see Shane. “I don't mean to pry, but Noah has seemed so…so down.”

I assured her that everything was fine, and that Noah was simply dealing with a heavy course load at school. Trisha seemed to accept my explanation, but I knew she was con
cerned. I was, too. Every time I saw him, he looked exhausted. He was still waking up at strange hours outside his bedroom, but it wasn't something he liked to discuss with me. It had nothing to do with the Watcher, I told myself. Noah had escaped with minor injuries and a permanent bruise. The sleepwalking was a result of stress. Nothing more.

“Charlotte?”

Great. I had been so lost in my thoughts that I had stopped paying attention to the entrance. “Hi, Michael.”

“Hey.” He stood in front of me, dressed in brown cords and holding a paper shopping bag. “Mind if I sit down?”

I scooted over. “Sure.”

“Thanks for meeting me here.” He placed the bag at his feet. I noticed that he wore black Dr. Martens, which fit his overall look as a potential indie band guitar player. “I needed some new shirts, and I figured this would be a good place to talk.”

“Really?” It was so loud—hardly the best place for an intense conversation.

“Yeah. I figure, the more noise, the less chance someone will eavesdrop. I guess I'm paranoid that way.”

“No, that makes sense.” I smiled. “A little bit of paranoia might be a good thing, considering that we're going to be talking about demons.”

Something changed in his face, but I wasn't sure what. Had I said the wrong thing? “I mean, not demons, exactly, but close. We're here to talk about the Watcher, right?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Absolutely. But I thought we could talk about other things first.”

“Oh.” I had no idea what other subjects we could discuss when only one thing truly mattered.

“I'm your Protector,” he said, “but I feel like we got off to a bad start. I was hoping we could start over.”

“I'm sorry.” I held on to my empty smoothie cup, feeling the cold seep through my fingers. “I wasn't nice to you. At all.”

“I could've done better, too,” he said. “It's my first assignment, and I kind of blew it.”

“You were assigned to me?”

Michael stood up. “I'll explain. Let's walk around, though. I had one of those gigantic cinnamon buns, and I could use a little exercise.”

I almost laughed. Michael could consume a dozen cinnamon buns and I doubted that it would affect his wiry frame. As we walked down one wing of the mall, Michael explained how being a Protector worked. First, he was chosen. No one knew why a particular person was chosen, but it was assumed that, like those cursed individuals who were taken over by a Watcher, a person who became a Protector possessed an important quality that made him or her a strong candidate. Once a Watcher came into power, so did a Protector, but he required something a Watcher did not: guidance.

“I didn't wake up one day with superpowers,” Michael said. “But I did feel different.”

“More protective?” I guessed.

He laughed. “Yeah, but it was more than that.” He stopped suddenly in front of a candy store. He lowered his voice. “See that guy? The one in the green jacket?”

I casually turned my head until I spotted the middle-aged man he was referring to. “I see him. So?”

“So, he's boiling with rage right now.”

I looked again. There was nothing about the man that screamed anger. He was talking on a cell phone, but he wasn't yelling or waving his arms around or anything. He seemed perfectly normal.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Michael didn't respond right away. We took a few steps closer to better watch the guy, but pretended we were interested in a poster outside the candy store so it wouldn't be obvious.

“That wasn't our agreement,” the man said into his phone. “I can't change my plans now. It's too late for that.”

“He doesn't sound that upset,” I whispered.

“Wait,” Michael whispered back.

It took only another moment for the man's face to lose its calm façade. Soon he was screaming into the phone as he paced in front of the candy store, drawing concerned looks from everyone around him. “You will not do this to me!” he shouted.

He didn't notice the alarmed stares from other shoppers—or the little boy running toward the candy store. I took a step forward, reaching out to grab the boy before he crashed into the angry man, but the child was too fast. He ran right into the man's legs.

The man stumbled, dropping his phone. The boy began to wail, and his mother came rushing forward, panicked. “What did you do to my son?” she screamed.

“He ran into me! Maybe you should keep an eye on your kid instead of letting him run wild!”

They screamed at each other as the child continued to cry. Both the frantic mother and enraged man were red in the face, and I felt sure that something bad was about to happen.

Then Michael stepped forward. He put one hand on the man's shoulder and his other hand on the woman. He spoke softly to them. It reminded me of the way I sometimes coaxed Dante into coming out from under Avery's bed. As I watched, the man's face softened and so did the woman's. Even the little boy, still crouched on the floor and clinging to his mother's
leg, changed. I could almost see the anger evaporate. By the time mall security arrived, everything was fine.

“How did you do that?” I asked. The mother and the little boy had entered the candy store, and the man had walked away casually, as if nothing had happened. Two mall security guards stood looking around, confused.

Michael shrugged. “It's what I do.”

We began walking in the other direction. “You stop people from killing each other?”

“I diffuse negative energy.”

“How did you know that was going to happen?” I was pestering him with questions, but I didn't care. I wanted to know more about his powers and how we could use them.

“Basically, I'm drawn to it. I feel the anger, and I move toward it.”

He paused in front of a clothing store and looked at the window display. “Wow. That kind of sucks, though, doesn't it? To be around anger all the time?”

“Sometimes.” He chuckled. “You know where there's the most negative energy? Guess.”

“Um. The post office?”

“Nope. Toy stores.”

Michael explained that people were easily overwhelmed in toy stores. They entered with a specific goal, and left feeling frazzled. Even kids were susceptible to it. They went in wanting something badly, and if it wasn't there or deemed too expensive, their helpless anger practically consumed them.

“Sometimes it's so strong, I have to pull over and go inside, just to try to help a little.” He shifted his shopping bag to his other arm. “It's awful. But it makes a difference, so that's good.” It
was
good, I thought. Michael's gift helped people. We needed more like him, people who could be sent to war-torn
regions. If there were more Protectors in the world, there would be more peace. I was surprised by the admiration I felt for him. This was someone who changed things for the better.

And he had been assigned to me. With power that great, it seemed wrong that it should be wasted on an eighteen-year-old girl. But some distant authority had decided it was necessary. I shuddered a little. What did that say about the power of the Watcher? It spoke loudly about the force that I was up against when my designated protection was a guy who could calm down irate strangers with a simple touch. That was the least of Michael's abilities, I was sure. I wondered what he was like when he was at full power.

We walked around the mall, occasionally stopping to peer into storefront windows. He talked about growing up in northern Michigan, where the snow would sometimes reach the second floor of his house. “My younger brother and I kept sleds in our bedroom,” he said. “Sometimes we would open the window and sled right down into the yard.”

I told him about my family, even though he already knew a little. At one point, he noticed my bracelet.

“Are those Apache tears?”

“Yes.” I touched the dark stones. “It was a birthday gift from my boyfriend.”

“His name is Noah, right? Does he know about me?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “Why? Should I tell him?”

We were back at the fountain. “It's up to you, but if you don't mind waiting a little while longer, I'd appreciate it.”

“I don't mind.” I was relieved, actually. “Can I ask why?”

“I don't want him to see me as a threat,” Michael explained. “A guy assigned to protect you? It might rub him the wrong way.”

It
would
rub Noah the wrong way, I thought. He was very protective of me, a natural instinct since the attack. I didn't
want him to feel that he had failed and now someone else was stepping in.

We kept walking. “Who's in charge of you?” I blurted out. The question sounded silly, but I was curious about the structure of things. Was there a council of wizened old men sitting around a table, assigning Protectors and discussing the problem of battling evil entities?

“It's complicated,” he said. We had arrived at the food court, which was fairly empty. I treated myself to another smoothie, Michael bought a coffee, and we chose a table away from the thin crowds. “You've heard of Swiss bank accounts, right?”

I sipped my smoothie as Michael talked about families that had been affected by different Watchers. Some of the families were powerful or political, and they had established an account for the Protectors, money used for travel and living expenses. Small groups of people all over the world knew about it, and did what they could to help find Protectors. There was even a type of school out West somewhere, a place where potential Protectors could receive training and guidance.

“So, there's no single person in charge,” Michael said. “It's more like different committees.”

I was halfway through my drink and we still hadn't answered the most important question: why was Michael here now? I poked the bottom of my cup with a straw. Around us, the food court began filling up with people. School was out for the day, I realized.

“You're here for answers,” Michael said finally. “And I haven't given you too many of those.”

I didn't disagree. “What's going on? That's the only question that matters.”

He looked away, off to the side where a group of boys stood ogling girls in line for pizza. I wondered if he was sensing an
ger and getting ready to deal with another outburst. His eyes seemed locked on one particular boy, who looked to be about fourteen and was dressed in baggy jeans and a baseball cap.

“What's going on is something that hasn't happened in a long time.” He was talking to me, but Michael's gaze remained steady on the boy. “The Watcher who attacked you should have been subdued, sent back to its place of origin. Instead, we think it's close to finding a way back.” He looked at me, and I thought about how familiar his brown eyes seemed. “It never happens that fast.”

“How long does it usually take?”

“The last one we know of took over 300 years to return.” He let the news sink in for a moment. “I was chosen to help you because we share a certain connection. It's not something I'm ready to talk about, so you're going to have to trust me on this.”