Chasing Before (3 page)

Autumn releases Neil, and he stumbles back to my side. “See? That wasn’t so bad.” The honey in her voice is sticky and leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Libby poises her pencil above her clipboard. “Your verdict, please.”

Autumn shrugs. “I’d say they’re both suitable for something midlevel. Muse, maybe. Felicia is, like, a genius on the piano.” She’s casual about it, but I notice the extra emphasis she gives the “mid” in “midlevel.” She always had a competitive streak, especially with me. She’s obviously earned her high position, and I don’t begrudge her for it.

Libby raises her eyebrows but makes another mark on her clipboard, while Megan jumps up and claps her hands, knocking her grass figurines over. “Muse? How cool! I can totally show you two around!”

“Great,” Autumn says. “But don’t you think someone should be at the records room in case any new arrivals come in?”

Megan looks over to Libby for instructions. “You will handle that this afternoon while I help these two get settled in,” Libby says, addressing Autumn. Her hard tone suggests it’s more an order than a request.

Autumn’s mouth gapes open at this obvious deviation in protocol, and her nose wrinkles in irritation. “Of course.” Then she pulls me into another quick hug. “I still can’t believe you’re really here—”

“So,” Libby interrupts, “the fact that you two are friends works to your advantage, Felicia. Because Autumn is so well known as the head of security, the Morati will steer clear of her if they’re smart. So far they’ve kept a low profile, so we don’t anticipate a major attack. It gives us time to figure out what their end game is.”

If Autumn is surprised that we’ve been briefed on the Morati’s infiltration, she hides it well. “You’re safe with me.” She squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll come by your room after my shift and check on you, okay?” The conviction in her voice helps to tamp down my panic about the Morati a few notches. If my powerful best friend is watching out for me, maybe I won’t have to constantly look over my shoulder.

“You’re the best,” I say. She grins, gives me a thumbs-up sign, and sets off back the way we came.

As shell-shocked as I am by Level Three’s revelations—that the Morati somehow slipped through, that Autumn is here and doesn’t hate me, and that it appears we’ll have to choose and train for some sort of afterlife career—I can’t help but feel a tiny shiver of excitement for all the
possibilities that await. And maybe that does make me courageous.

Neil bends down and retrieves Megan’s discarded grass giraffes, cupping them carefully like he once handled a baby bird. “Can I keep these?” he asks her, inspecting them up close. “They’re beautiful.”

Megan nods excitedly. “Thank you. I was really into sculpture before.”

“It shows,” Neil says.

Libby sighs, indicating she’s not nearly as impressed. She leads us through an archway and down another narrow walkway until we emerge onto a perfectly manicured lawn, bordered on all sides by impressive stone buildings.

There are small clusters of people milling about, lounging on benches, sitting cross-legged under trees. Oddly, the members of each group all wear the same color. Otherwise, the scene looks straight out of all the glossy college brochures I used to get before my scholastic achievement took a nosedive midway through my senior year. After my meltdown when Autumn died, my mother sent me to live with my paternal grandmother in Ohio. The Foreign Service revoked my diplomatic passport for abusing it, and my mother had to make a choice between her career and me. She didn’t choose me. I was so upset, I didn’t even bother to apply to any schools. Neil was all set to go to Ohio State, and I thought about joining him at the start of the spring semester. I’m now hit with another twinge of longing for my earthly life. I mourn the fact that I’ll never know how
things might have turned out if Neil and I had lived.

As we walk, Libby passes Neil and me each a brochure from her clipboard. “In Level Three you train for your afterlife careers. Like Megan said, she’s training for the muse program.”

I flip through the brochure. Careers are divided into sections based on where the work is performed. Under “Earth” I see headings for muses, demon hunters, spirit trappers, and guardian angels. Under “Level Three” are the healers and caretakers, and under “Level Four” is the seraphim guard. The careers are ranked by degree of difficulty, and muse is, indeed, considered midlevel. The most elite careers are with the demon hunters and the seraphim guard.

Neil points to one of the subheads on page two. “I think muse does sound perfect for us.” He reads aloud from the brochure. “Muses inspire the arts and enrich people’s lives. Prerequisites include: one, an excellent memory; two, a complete detachment from one’s earthy life; and three, a natural talent in art, poetry, dance, music, comedy, or history.”

I nod, Autumn’s less-than-stellar recommendation still rankling a bit. “Yeah, we should do that.”

“Really? You want to?” Megan asks. “I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone in the program. I also played the tuba for years.” She puffs out her cheeks and places her arms out in front of her like she’s holding the large instrument. “You should’ve seen how much my lungs could hold back then.”

She looks so comical, both Neil and I have to laugh.

“Well, you’re still full of hot air,” Libby teases. It’s the first time she’s loosened up the whole day.

On the building north of us, which is the Muse Collection Library, according to the map Megan showed us, a brick changes color from blue to orange. The facade is a mishmash of different styles, as if hundreds of architects had a hand in its construction. It’s strange but beautiful.

“It is lovely here,” Libby says. “Everything that wasn’t already put in place by the celestial custodians is collectively materialized. There are subtle changes every day, when the mood strikes someone to update something.” She points at a frowning gargoyle on the peak of one of the towers, and its expression morphs into an enigmatic,
Mona Lisa
–type smile.

We stand for a moment, taking everything in. A clique of students all wearing yellow jostles past us. One of them stops to give me a backhanded high five and shouts into my face, “Hunters are yellow!” When I don’t respond, he mutters “Demons are blue” and rushes off to catch up with his friends.

“Uh, what was that?” I ask.

“Your dress is yellow,” Megan says. “They thought you were a demon hunter.”

“Here you show your affiliation to your career by wearing its color,” Libby explains, pointing to the yellow background behind the demon hunter description in the brochure. Below it the healer text appears on a red background. Some healer might come by and spout off a motto to Neil now, all because of the color of his shirt. In any case,
he looks as lost and confused as I feel.

“Don’t worry if this all seems complicated at first. You’ll learn the peculiarities of this place as you get settled in,” Libby assures us. “We all have the goal to make the most out of our afterlife, but we go about it in different ways.”

“Muses wear orange,” Neil says, obviously deducing it from the color of Megan’s dress. He scans the brochure. “But what is pink?” he asks, referring to Libby’s suit.

“Pink is neutral.” Libby materializes a big black binder stuffed with ragged-edged papers and dumps it into Megan’s arms. These papers don’t look like they’ve been burned, merely crinkled and haphazardly arranged. “I assume the two of you would like to room together.”

“Yes,” I say at the same time that Neil says, “No.”

I spin and face him, confused. “What do you mean, no? Why not?” I don’t want to leave his side for a second, let alone whatever time we’re meant to spend in our dorm rooms. And with the Morati lurking, I’d feel safer with Neil around.

Neil flicks his gaze back and forth between me and Libby, biting his lip. “It’s just . . . well, we shouldn’t live together until we get married.”

He stresses that last word so earnestly, it’s all I can do not to laugh derisively. I can’t believe he thinks being married or not matters in the afterlife. “You’re not serious.”

Neil reaches out and caresses my face, looking me straight in the eye. “Don’t be mad. I
want
to room with you. It could very well be that nothing I was taught to
believe is true, but I can’t flip a switch, forget about my morals, and be a different person. I need time to adjust.”

Maybe Neil thinks I’m immoral because I’d room with him without hesitation. Is Neil still too good for me, even in death? Back on Earth he was the worship leader at church, until he had to give it up because I wouldn’t sign a purity pledge. People whispered behind our backs that I was corrupting him. But I never intended to. I only ever wanted us to be together. What’s so bad about that? Still, I can see that I need to be patient. Neil was patient with me. When I couldn’t open up to him about my shameful past, he never pressured me. Maybe he’ll be more relaxed once we get used to it here, once he realizes his church group is not patrolling his every moral move. So I nod, letting him know I understand, even if I can’t trust myself to speak right now.

“We’ll put you in rooms across the hall for now, and if you want to move, you can tell me.” Libby scrawls something on one of her tattered sheets and hands it to Megan. Then she shuts the binder and taps the cover with her pencil. “Megan, go ahead and show Neil to his room. I want to talk to Felicia for a moment.”

Neil raises one eyebrow but gives me a peck on the cheek and follows Megan. “See you in a second.”

Once they’re out of earshot, Libby leads me to a bench and we sit down. “I think we need a second opinion regarding your mental fitness. You should go out for the seraphim guard. That’s the best way to develop the kind of skills you’d
need to expose the Morati.”

“But Neil wants to be a muse. Couldn’t I develop those skills another way?”

Libby pats my arm. “You don’t have to share everything. I learned that the hard way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came here with someone as well. My fiancé.” She pauses as if she’s lost in thought. “Life on Earth is finite, so we make promises easily. When we say ‘forever’ there, we know that it will end sometime. In the afterlife ‘forever’ is a much bigger promise. And it’s one that most of us are not capable of keeping.”

My skin prickles. “But some people can.”

I need to believe that this is true. Neil has saved me more than once already. I love him and I can’t lose him.

She shrugs. “Maybe. But Jeremy and I couldn’t. It was his idea to camp out on the side of Interstate 70. I found it too difficult not to blame him for us getting murdered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Look, all I’m saying is that you should do what’s best for you. You’re a person first, and part of a couple second.”

I stand up, and immediately feel light-headed. “Yeah. I’ll keep it in mind.” I don’t care what Libby says. Neil and I will always be together. And I’d bet my afterlife on that.

three

LIBBY AND I WALK to the dorms in silence, ascend four flights of stairs, and then enter a wide hallway. With its red-and-gold-patterned carpet and white walls, it looks like a fancy hotel rather than a dorm. A bellboy pushing a luggage rack wouldn’t be the least bit out of place.

Libby leads me to room 532 and opens the door. The room is completely bare except for beige wall-to-wall carpeting and a window. “This looks comfy,” I say, unable to stop the biting edge to my words. Thanks to her unwanted relationship advice, Libby’s not exactly my favorite person right now.

“It’s up to you to materialize your own furniture.”

When I respond only with a glare, she turns on her heel abruptly and walks off. “Neil’s in 531,” she calls. “Good luck.”

Good riddance. I slam the door to my empty room, cross the hall, and raise my knuckles to knock on Neil’s door. Finding that it’s open a crack, I peek in. He’s laughing with Megan. He has already changed into an orange T-shirt and set the grass giraffes on his old desk from home. His curtains are there too, drawn over the window above his bed and his guitar stand. The only item I don’t recognize is a wooden kitchen chair. Megan sits on it with her hands tucked neatly under her thighs.

“I’m here.” I push the door lightly and step in. “Libby left.”

“Hey! Megan is ready to give us a tour. Isn’t that cool?” Neil asks.

“Sure,” I say, trying to muster up some enthusiasm. It occurs to me that Neil’s bed looks lonely without his cat, Sugar, on it. It will look even lonelier without me in it with him at night.

“You might want to change clothes.” Megan giggles. “Unless you want to attract more demon hunters.”

“I’ll be fine,” I insist. I’d have to search long and hard through my memory to find anything orange in my wardrobe, and I don’t feel up to it right now. “I can’t recall ever wearing orange, to be honest.”

“It doesn’t have to be something you wore, just
something you touched.” Megan kicks up her legs. “I borrowed these socks from my sister’s Halloween costume. She dressed up as a pumpkin.”

Neil puts his hands behind his back and then grins widely, his dimples on full display. “Before we go, I want to give you something.” He steps forward and extends his right hand, revealing a small box wrapped in silver paper, with silver bells dangling from a gold ribbon. It’s an exact replica of the gift he gave me in the car before we crashed. And died.

My fingers fly to the hollow at the base of my throat. The skep charm. I never had the chance the wear it.

“Go ahead.” Neil shakes it so that the bells swing back and forth. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment, but I think it’s time we finally celebrate your birthday.”

It’s sweet how he’s trying to make up for disappointing me concerning our living arrangements. I take the box from him and rip into the paper, unwrapping the white fabric-covered ring box. I pop it open eagerly. It’s empty.

“The skep charm’s not there.” I slam the box back into his palm harder than I intended, and the hinge snaps closed.

Neil’s face falls when he reopens the box. “I don’t understand. Where is it?”

“Maybe you never touched what was actually inside,” Megan suggests. “You have to have had physical contact with something in order to materialize it.”