Dead Souls (12 page)

“Anyone who knows anything should contact police or call the anonymous tip line . . .”

I know something, all right. Was it a message? A warning?

Or maybe just a promise of things to come.

I GINGERLY SIT DOWN
on the couch next to Justin, leaving him his own cushion. Sometimes being too close physically sets his frayed nerves even further on edge.
Everything prickles,
he says. He notes this small kindness, but pretends not to.

I slip my phone out of my bag under the pretext of reading his messages when really I need to catch up on the chatter. Someone's made us our own text group.

Everyone checked their cards?
—Mike

Mine's clean
—Jasmine

Clean
—Renata

Is he still alive?
—Jeb

Life support
—Renata.

VUEWORKS stock dropped ten points before closing bell
—Dan

Not a good sign. Supposedly there's always a fluctuation in whatever you got from Scratch right before he collects, or so Alejandro said. Like a power surge that can either suck away your ability or increase it substantially.
Call me immediately if you have a hard time becoming invisible, or turn invisible without planning to.
A tremor before the quake.

So do you think he knew? Is that why he didn't come?
—­Clarissa

NASDAQ dropped five. Statistically not relevant.
—Mike

Justin turns up the volume.
“We ask the community to remain vigilant and report any suspicious behavior . . .”

A passive-aggressive move, I haven't mentioned his texts yet. So I click over to Justin's contact, find five from him, unread.

Can you pick up some Pepto-Bismol on your way home? XOXOXO
—7:20 p.m.

Feeling awful. Christ, I hate this. Need that Bismol. XOXO
—8:15 p.m.

On your way home? Situation desperate.
—9:36 PM

Two missed calls. 9:47 and 10:12 p.m. No voice mail messages.

Having that much fun, huh? Shitting up a storm over here.
—10:28 PM

You know what, don't bother. See you when I see you. All shat out and buying new sheets on eBay. Thanks for your love and support.
—10:42 PM

A moment passes. Two.

“You know I hate this,” he says suddenly.

I run my hand through my hair, utterly exhausted.
I hate this too
. “Anybody would. And I'm not much use. I'm sorry.”

“Don't . . .” He stops himself, struggles to find the words, and looks me in the eyes. A glimmer of old Justin there. “Don't just talk
at
me,” he continues. “Talk
to
me. What is going on with you? Really?”

It would be so lovely to tell him, all of it, every dark and twisted detail. You never know, he might even believe me, or not hate me for missing the one chance to save him. But to voice it here, in front of him, in the place we call home feels dangerous, like it might bleed out into unexpected places.

He reaches out, cups my chin in his hand, just like the old days. “Forgive me.”

“Forgive
you
—”

“It's not easy for you either. Sometimes I forget that. Or I don't forget, but I don't care the way I should.”

Oh Christ, I don't want these feelings right now, they won't help, nothing will help. Tears start. So I try to push him away instead.

“Yeah, you've been a real possessive, neurotic, pain in the ass lately. Sure, it sucks that you have cancer, but that's no excuse to take it out on me. You might not have noticed, but someone I love is suffering.”

I slipped—it's not often I use the four-letter l-word. It costs me dearly every time.

He laughs, lets his hand drop to take mine—so thin,
damn
so thin. “There you are, the Fiona I used to know.”

I entwine my fingers in his. “There you are, the Justin I used to know.”

A commercial for fabric softener plays on the TV,
“for clothes that smell as fresh as the great outdoors
.
”
He rubs the back of my hand with his thumb. It's the nicest moment we've had in months, and I realize my part in that. I've been so obsessed with finding a way to save us both that I haven't been present for him in the here and now. But what good is a double deal to cure Justin's cancer and save my soul if our relationship falls apart in the meantime?

“I really fucked everything up royally, didn't I?” he asks softly.

“
You
fucked up everything. Getting cancer wasn't your fault.”

A thin, bitter smile. “Technically I know that, but it still feels like it though. And I hate needing people just for the basics. I don't mean to take it out on you.”

“Justin,
I'm
the one who's been distant.”

“And I'm jealous, you know.”

“
Jealous
.”

He hesitates a moment too long. Tries for an awkward recovery. “That you can go out. I'd love to ditch this place and hit a bar, forget things for a while.”

I lean my head against the back of the couch. He was going to say something else instead, something truer, but I don't want to press. “We can go out. There's no law stopping us.”

“The looks though. That double take.”

The double takes
are
horrible. The last time we went to the store together and he looked four instead of eight months pregnant, people would look, and then look again,
hard
, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean, this man with a protruding belly. Was he a man or a woman? Was he on some gender-changing testosterone regimen? And the small children, they would take a step back, obviously afraid, reaching for adult hands or hiding behind adult legs as we passed.

Justin stares at the coffee table. Something indecipherably sad and resigned flits across his face. “I'm jealous that one day you'll move on. Be with someone else. Even though that's selfish of me.”

Here's
what he didn't want to say. “Justin, it's a little early to be talking about—”

“There,” he says quietly, firmly. “In the envelope.”

I look to the coffee table and see it—a manila envelope, torn open. My heart stops momentarily. Justin releases my hand and I try, and fail, to keep that hand steady as I reach over, pick it up.

It's addressed to me, or the nickname Justin gave me, which I shared with only one other person on earth.

Scratch.

For the Invisible Girl. We will meet again.

Soon.

I CAN FEEL THEM,
a series of psychic fractures that start in my heart and then cascade out through my limbs, a crackling fear that trips along the floor, rises up the walls, slips through cracks and corners into and out of the building, down the street, radiating like the aftershock of an atomic blast. Fear, the word
fear
doesn't cover it. Fear is for things like walking down the street alone at night, for the moment you're about to be pulled into the womb of an MRI, fear is looking under the bed as a child, ready to find a monster. Fear is just an aperitif to sheer terror.

He
was
here. He was here, in my apartment complex, a door the only thing standing between him and Justin. My heart pounds wildly, like it's about to fly up and out of my throat. I wonder if this is how the children felt after the first eruption of gunfire, as they saw their classmates crumple to the stage. But at least they could run away. A possibility of escape.

I have to find Saul Baptiste.

Justin watches me closely. “You're not even going to look?”

The envelope—right. Whatever's inside, Scratch has touched, and now Justin has touched, witnessed.
Soon
. I reach my hand in, expecting the worst, a missive that will connect and consume us all. My fingers touch smooth photographic paper. I pull out a series of eight-by-ten photos, black-and-white, all pictures of me, Alejandro's work. He's been intent on trying to capture the unique shade of dead souls, invisible to the eyes of regular people but visible to the camera if the aper
ture is set right. Something about ray bundles and whether the soul can be quantified.

They're not bad—I've never seen them before, and for a moment, narcissism trumps fear and I'm absorbed by my own images. The first is the picture taken at the cemetery a little more than a year ago. I look startled, eyes wide, caught midturn, creating a blur that makes me look like a ghost. Another photo, this one of me standing by a tall window at Alejandro's Victorian, looking pensively out at the street, wearing one of his shirts, my hair askew. It looks more intimate than it is. A few too many drinks at the New Parish and I'd inadvertently ghosted myself, vanishing and then reappearing in his living room because he'd been describing a new mixed media piece he picked up. Of course, that meant I'd left my clothes behind, so I'd done the practical thing and crashed in his guest bedroom, curling up under a cashmere blanket. Didn't wake up until later in the morning, the smell of strong black coffee percolating. He asked if he could shoot me, and I was flattered—who wouldn't want to be part of a master artist's body of work?

I can see why Justin would think . . .

And then I get to the next photo. Must have been taken earlier when I was still asleep, the blanket either fallen or pulled slightly to reveal everything from the waist up. It's artful of course—I look like a classic reclining nude, porcelain skin, light nipples—but it's creepy too, slightly pervy. I'd always assumed Alejandro was gay. We all did. He caught it though in this one, the slight shading that extends around my body, a dark aura.

But how did Scratch get a hold of them, and why would he . . . ?

Justin sits next to me with a fixed intensity.

I know it then.

Something about my favor will involve Justin.

No. No, no, no, no.

“That night you didn't come back,” he says.

I want to confess, I want to tell him everything, but it would all sound like a lie now, a confabulated story so outrageous that it would have to be covering a more mundane, disgusting truth. I should have told him before, and now it's too late. So I say nothing. Guilt by silence.
Devil takes all
.

Magnanimous, Justin takes my hand again. Something achingly wise, near Buddhist, in the gesture. “I'm glad you have someone. I am. And I don't think I have much longer left. I just . . . if you could just hold off for now . . .”

On the TV there are helicopter shots hovering over the managed chaos surrounding the theater. White triage tents, ambulances still pulling up, people already starting to gather around the periphery of yellow police tape.

The thrust of all I want to say is hard to swallow, so instead, I lean into his shoulder, feel the push of his tumorous belly against my rib cage. My mind races down all the paths it has raced down before.
I could stay invisible forever . . . If Scratch can't see me, he can't find me, right? And the card, it doesn't come with me when I'm invisible, so maybe if I don't have it he can't call in his favor . . . Or I could vanish somewhere if I do see him, let him try to catch me.

Alejandro has warned us that our talents won't work with Scratch, the way they won't work with other dead souls. Those who have tried to get out of their favor, thinking they're clever, end up setting off a series of circumstances that lead directly to
Scratch anyway.
Selling your soul is spiritual slavery. And the first casualty of that isn't the promise of hell but free will
, he'd said.

But then how do we know he's telling us the truth?
That nude photo was an unnerving violation, doesn't fit the person I thought he was.

Saul Baptiste might have the answer. If I can find him.