Intuition: The Premonition Series (14 page)

Reed pauses in his recitation. “Wwhat’d yyyaa sssay?” I ask haltingly, because the violent shaking of my body is making it difficult to speak.

“Evie!” Reed sighs like he is vastly relieved about something. When I don’t answer he asks, “Are you there?”

“Uh huh,” I manage to say as another violent bout of shivers runs through me.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“Yyyou…ffirst,” I reply.

“I was telling you all of the reasons I have for loving you,” he says rapidly. “Now where are you?”

“Dinerrrr,” I reply. “Ssnuck in ttthe bbbaack rrrrooomm.”

“Is it warm?” he asks, sounding almost happy.

“Yesss,” I say.

“I’m coming. Just stay there. We’ll find you, do you understand?” he asks.

“Uh huh,” I nod.

“How much charge does your phone have?” Reed asks.

“One bbbarr,” I say after I look at the phone, noticing that it’s nearly out of power.

“We will have to hang up then to conserve the battery, just in case we need it later to locate you,” he says in frustration. “Just stay put, okay? I’m coming,” he says again, and I know that this is somehow way worse for him than it is for me, since he is safe and I’m not.

“Sstaying pput. Sssee yyaaa ssooonnn,” I say before hanging up the phone.

“Are you cold, honey?” a feminine voice next to me asks. I jump in fear, springing up off the sofa and turning to see who had spoken to me. Just for a second, I thought it was the Power who had chased me down the hill and across country, but I realize that if it had been her, I would never have heard her speak. I would probably already be dead.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, dear. You go on and sit back down, I’m not going to hurt you,” the older lady sitting in front of me smiles. She isn’t that old, maybe in her fifties, with thin brown hair streaked with silver all pulled back in a French twist. She is wearing the restaurant diner attire of blue jeans, a black top, and a short black apron that has convenient pockets in the front to hold the order forms.

I just stare at her. She smiles again and pats the seat where I had been sitting. I want more than anything to sit back down where she indicated because my legs are shaking and I feel weak. “You’re an angel,” she says, more as a statement than a question. I nod. “You’re wings gave it away,” she says, pointing to my crimson appendages that I can’t hide. “We don’t get many like you around here,” she says, and the twinkle in her brown eyes makes me relax a little. “There is usually a blanket in the last locker on the right,” she says, indicating the locker by pointing to it. “You should get it. We use it when we do double shifts and there is enough of a lull to take a nap. I’m Brenda, by the way.”

I stumble over to the locker Brenda had indicated, finding a folded blanket on the shelf. Pulling it down, I wrap it around me. It smells like French fries, which makes my stomach growl again. “You remind me of my daughter, Jenny. She works here, too, and she is never prepared for the weather either. I tell her she shouldn’t leave the house without a coat, but she’s young,” Brenda says with a shrug of her shoulders. “Here, you have to sit down before you fall down, honey,” Brenda says, scooting farther away down the sofa so that I have more room to sit. Tentatively, I sit down on the couch next to her. “Do you have a name?” Brenda asks pointedly.

“Evie,” I say, snuggling further into the blanket.

“That’s a pretty name,” Brenda says. “I never knew anyone with that name. My ex-husband liked the name Jenny…I think he had an old girlfriend with that name, he was kind of a jerk like that,” she says, shrugging again. “But that’s okay. I like the name Jenny, too. Do you have an ex?” she inquires.

“No,” I manage to say without stuttering. I’m warming up.

“Was that your boyfriend? On the phone?” she asks.

I nod.

“Is he coming to get you?” she asks in concern.

I nod again.

“Why were you out alone on a night like this, if you don’t mind me asking?” she asks me warmly.

“It was kind of not my choice.” I say in relief that I can answer her now without my teeth chattering. “I sort of have a few problems,” I add honestly.

“Who doesn’t, honey?” she asks conspiratorially. “Is this boyfriend of yours part of the problem, or is he helping you with it?” she wonders aloud.

“He’s trying to help me with it but…” I trail off.

“But what?” her eyebrow arches.

“But I don’t know if he can. The problem might be bigger than he is capable of handling and the closer he is to me, the more danger he is in.” I reply, and being so honest with another person and hearing myself say the words aloud brings tears to my eyes. I remember watching Reed exit the gondola today to face the assassin that would have welcomed him with open arms, had it not been for me. I make them enemies. I make him suspect.

“I can’t believe that you’re the problem,” Brenda says kindly.

“Believe it,” I mutter. “I know what I should do to protect him, I’m just not sure I’m strong enough to do it.”

“What do you think you should do?” she asks in confusion.

“I should leave him. I should go somewhere that he can’t find me so that he will be safe from me. He would never willingly let me go, so I would have to run from him, too,” I whisper, and the thought of doing that fills me with a sickness from which I’m not sure I will recover.

“Leaving him would protect him?” she asks, probably for clarification.

“Yes,” I state. “At least, he would survive. I don’t know if he would live though.” If he feels half of what I feel for him, he may survive, but he will never live again.

“Honey, I don’t pretend to know your situation, but if you want my advice, I’d be prepared for anything. You may never have to choose the option that you just agonized over, but if the day came when it became necessary, you would have a plan in place to execute and save the one you love,” Brenda advises. She tries to rest her hand on my knee in a comforting way, but her hand goes right through my leg like an icy blast of air. I am so off guard that I can only sit and stare at Brenda.

“I tried to do that, you know, at the end. But, I didn’t tell Jenny about my plans for her, so she never knew before I died,” Brenda explains. “I made a will and left her the house, but my second husband didn’t tell her. He kept my house and kicked her out.”

I gasp as I realize what she is telling me.
Brenda is a soul. She’s dead, why didn’t I realize it? I must be really out of it,
I think, staring at Brenda.
Of course she’s a soul. I’m sitting in the dark talking to someone who wouldn't be able to see me otherwise. She acted so casual when she realized that I’m an angel, probably because she’s seen us before.

“You didn’t know I’m dead, did you, dear?” Brenda asks. I shake my head. “Are you new at this?” she asks with sympathy in her voice. I nod my head.

“Do you have a copy of your will somewhere?” I ask her, trying hard to recover.

“Yeah. I didn’t trust my second husband, not after what the first husband put me through. I had more than one copy of it and put it in my locker here at work,” she says excitedly, pointing to one of the lockers in the corner. “They didn’t find it when they cleaned out my locker because it’s stuck between the shelves in the back. Crystal took over my locker, that’s her padlock on it. You probably can’t get it open,” she says disappointedly.

Getting up from the sofa, I drag the blanket with me over to the locker that Brenda indicated. The padlock is a combination. “Do you know her combination?” I ask. Brenda shakes her head in remorse. “Oh well, I guess Crystal is gonna have to make a trip to the hardware store, huh?” I say, before I yank hard on the lock, feeling the metal latch release from the casing without much resistance.

The rest of the lock looks smashed when I open my hand and I smile a little, seeing how strong I’m getting. Opening up the locker, I reach my hand to the back, feeling around until I locate a curled edge of a piece of paper. Gently, I dislodge it from the back of the locker without tearing it. Pulling it out, I scan the legal document, noting it is the last will and testament of Brenda Wilson.

“Which locker belongs to Jenny?” I ask. Brenda points to the one a few lockers down. “Should we leave a note on it?” I ask, looking around for a pen to write with. There are several in a plastic cup on the round table in the middle of the room. Plucking a pen out of the cup, I flip the will over to write on the back of it. I look at Brenda who watches me poised to write whatever she wants me to.

“Please write: Dear Jenny, Mommy loves you from the first day to the last and everyday in between, in this world and in the next.” I write it on the back of the document. I go over to Jenny’s locker and slip it in through the vent at the top of the locker door. I turn back to Brenda. Smiling broadly, she says, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I reply.

“God’s blessings on you, Evie,” Brenda says. “I have to go now, they’re calling me.”

I can hear the whispering voices of a multitude speaking in unison but in their Angelic language. It is a hum, just a light melody whose vibrations are so soft and sweet that it makes me feel light inside, as if I’m floating, rising and falling gently on the waves of sound. It is compelling and I want to reach out and gravitate to wherever the music is coming from, but it’s all around me, engulfing me in its cadence.

Brenda begins to flicker, as if she is a piece of film on a screen that isn’t threaded correctly, so that she shimmers in bright flashes of light, and then fades rapidly. Her body maintains the same image of her from the front angle, but I notice when I tilt my head, she seems to be flat; she is no longer three-dimensional, but is now two-dimensional. Her features are fading, but her silhouette remains; it’s as if she is made up of stars and galaxies all swirling around with pinpoints of light and dense darkness, like the night sky within the shape that used to be Brenda. The silhouette caves in on itself slowly, disappearing from sight in a pinpoint of darkness. There is no sound now, but I detect a lingering scent, if I can call it that. It’s more like the way the air smells after a lightning storm. The smell of energy floats in the air, like pollen on a spring evening.

With the absence of the beautiful melody that had just filled me with feelings of joy and contentment, I begin to feel crushed and broken. Desolation sweeps through me. I have been given the barest insight of what others have referred to as Paradise, and the loss of it is leaving me feeling as if I’m bleeding inside. I feel vulgar and unwanted as if I was passed over like a piece of garbage.

“Evie?” Reed whispers from the doorway of the employee lounge. I want to answer him, but I can hardly breathe from despair. In confusion, I realize I’m lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling. “Evie…” Reed says, lifting me up and holding me in his arms.

“Reed, you smell that?” Zephyr asks darkly, sniffing the air. “It smells of transcendence. Is that possible?” he asks.

“Anything is possible when Evie is around. Can you find water and some sugar?” Reed asks Zephyr just as darkly, placing me on the couch while holding my face, tipping it up so that he can look in my eyes.

In seconds, Zephyr is back with a glass of water and a sugar dispenser. “How much sugar?” he asks, pouring a generous amount of sugar into the water.

“Good,” Reed responds, propping my head up while holding the glass to my lips. “Drink this, Evie,” he says. I struggle a little to fend off the water glass. I feel hopeless and I just want to be left alone to bleed, maybe if I bleed enough, the voices will come back for me. “You have to drink it, love,” he insists before speaking to me in the lovely language he knows so well. I turn my head toward him as I drink the water he holds to my lips. “That’s it, drink all of it,” he says.

When I finish all of the water, Reed scoops me up again and we are outside under the starry night in a fraction of a second. Placing me gingerly in the front seat of the car, he belts me in. The heater vents are blasting out hot air and they are all pointed at me. Reed speaks briefly to Zephyr who gets into the car with Buns that is parked directly behind our vehicle. I barely notice when Reed pulls out of town, driving as fast as the car can go with no headlights on to alert others of our presence.

Feeling Reed’s eyes on me, I look over at him, reaching my hand to place it on his hand. He grasps it tightly, bringing it to his lips, and kissing it hard. “Did a soul transcend in that room?” Reed asks me tensely, watching my face for my answer.

I nod and he closes his eyes briefly, and then he opens them again. “How?” he asks and I shrug. “Evie, it’s not easy to be around a soul when it transcends. That is why Reaper angels are so bubbly and enthusiastic, so that when they are exposed to the loss of not going with the soul, it’s bearable. You were way too close to it. It’s like watching a black hole open up—it pulls energy into it as it prepares for the journey—it will take some of your energy with it if you get too near to it. Did you feel sad?” he asks me and I have to turn away from him, so he won’t see how wrecked I feel inside from being denied entrance to the bliss I had glimpsed. I nod because I can’t speak.

“Even I would feel sad, if I had been there. You feel left behind— unworthy to be called—that is normal, it just wasn’t your time to go… and I’m grateful that it was not your time,” Reed admits. I glance at him silently again. “I feel very selfish for saying that out loud, but I don’t know what I’d do if you had gone tonight.”