The Soul Seekers (21 page)

“What did they say when you gave it to them?”

“Not much. They were real happy to see it. Said they had everything they needed now, and my job was done.”

“So you knew?” I tried to keep my voice even. “When you took that box, you knew?”

He nodded. “It was easy money for us! This will keep us going for at least three months in the big city. This way you won’t have to work while I get some gigs lined up and the record deal put in place.”

I wanted to strangle him. Stupid boy and his flimsy dreams. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” I whispered, moving away from him to press my forehead against his poster wall, eyes closed. “What else did they say? Tell me everything.”

“Emma, there’s nothing, just that lover boy turned himself in. The eclipse is coming, and it’s all set.”

A flash of something shot into my brain. The inside of a car—a van perhaps. It was stifling hot, but someone’s arms held me close. Cold arms that sent waves of happiness through me. A voice whispered in my ear:
The eclipse is coming.
“What?” I stammered suddenly. “What are you telling me?”

“Today is,” Jesse looked over at a wall calendar attached on the refrigerator door with a guitar magnet, “the eighteenth of August. Saturday. The lunar eclipse is on Tuesday, the twenty-first. There will be a big ceremony that night. A new Seeker will be born.”

I fell to my knees as the memories came: seeing William for the first time in the library, the day he touched my hair, the day we first spoke, the gentle way he touched me at the Summerfest, his words outside the van before he disappeared into sundown.

I’ve waited so long. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished for it to happen, for someone to set me free from this oblivion.

No.

To have skin that could be touched. To be heard, to seen.

Stop. I don’t believe any of your lies.

It’s true, Emma. I’ve been like this for many years, longer than you’ve been alive. I’m angry with myself because I was selfish and dreamed that it would be you who found me. Why the hell did it have to be you?

The sobs ripped through me. Jesse dropped down to my side, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “What is it? What’s going on?”

Each memory came like a wave, stronger and stronger until the moment Pontiac and Camaro met in screeches of explosive metal. I looked at Jesse with tear-stained eyes. “I remember everything,” I whispered. “I know what I need to do now.”

“Yes,” he said in grim acknowledgement, burying his face down into my shoulder. “I was afraid of that.”

That night Jesse and I laid out our plans for what was to happen in the next few days. He said he knew every nook and cranny of the caves and could sneak us in without too much trouble, but because of the cult’s extra-sensory powers we’d have to take care to protect ourselves.

“I’ve spent my entire life trying to not understand them, Emma,” Jesse explained, while changing strings on a mint green Fender electric. “But I’ll do my best to help you with this crazy plan of yours.”

“I’m still pretty clueless myself right now. Although . . .” I remembered William telling me about the Indian man in Springvale. “Hey, can we go for a drive? I have an idea.”

“Want to tell me what it is?”

“I can’t really. You’ll just have to trust me.” I saw Jesse flinch, and I laughed. “Come on.”

We drove through Springvale, making it to the lake area on the west side—a little too close to the Seeker’s cave for my taste—when I finally spotted a lawn full of garden statues and tall totem poles around a colorfully painted, ranch style house. He even had gnomes on his roof, which made me laugh with delight. “Bingo,” I muttered, undoing my seat belt and giving Jesse a grin.

“And how is this guy going to help us again?”

“I don’t know.”

I ran up the front path to his door and knocked. I heard heavy footsteps inside, someone fumbling with a latch.

“Yes?” a man asked in a deep baritone. The door opened, revealing possibly the tallest human I had ever seen. His hair was long and dark, with high cheekbones reaching out under coal-colored, crescent eyes. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry. I was wondering. Well, I have this friend who said you could help with spiritual matters. I have psychic abilities, but I need help making them stronger. Can you help me—us—I mean?” I turned to Jesse, pushing him forward a little.

“I don’t have any abilities,” Jesse muttered.

The man leaned forward, looking out into the yard, before inviting us in. “Who is this friend you talk about?”

“You don’t know him, not really. He said he’d visited you but you weren’t able to see him. Does that make sense? His name is William.”

“I don’t know that name, but there was somebody who used to sit in my room every night. I could feel him watching me as I said my prayers to the Great Spirit. You say his name is William?”

I nodded, holding back a lump in my throat.

“He has great soul, very strong. But he not come around for a long time. What trouble is this man in?”

Jesse and I were following behind as he talked, moving past a front room filled with landscape paintings, and into a kitchen where a meal sat, half-eaten. The man plopped down into a carved chair and resumed his late-night snack, which we had apparently interrupted.

“Grave danger. Death. We have to know how to protect ourselves from a group of men that want to take his soul.”

“And hers,” Jesse pointed out. “They want hers, too.”

The man thought for a long time, eating all the while. He seemed like a shy person, slow to speak, but intense. He reminded me of Grandmother Carrie.

“I can show you some ways to protect yourself from the evil spirits. There are prayers you can say, herbs you can carry. But you,” he looked at me with those dark, full eyes, “have to be strong for yourself and believe. No being afraid or it won’t work.”

I nodded. When he finished his food, he took the plate and washed it in the sink, slow and deliberate. Jesse and I remained quiet, occasionally giving each other expectant glances. Just when we thought he had forgotten we were there, he said, “Follow me.”

“What’s your name?” I asked, chasing his figure as he moved through the kitchen in long strides.

“Paul.”

“I’m Emma, and this is Jesse.”

He answered with a grunt, leading us out the back door to a luscious, full garden decorated with more statues. We walked over to a half-circle herb garden and watched as he cut off some stalks of sage with a pocket knife. “For protection,” he said.

Back at the house, he grabbed little sachets and stuffed the sage leaves in with his thick fingers. He poured a few drops of some kind of oil over the leaves and tied the bags closed.

“Wear these around your neck.” Jesse and I reached out as he handed us the bags. They smelled sweet and slightly musky. “Now I say prayer. You can sit down.”

We both fell into the couch at the same time, me landing on Jesse’s lap. He slipped his arms around my waist, but I pushed away and moved over to the next cushion, giving him a warning look. He gave me a wicked smile and slight chuckle.

“You must always surround yourself with white light,” Paul explained, waving his big hands around in the air. “This will guard you against bad spirits. Do not think of bad things, only good. Call on the light to surround you and protect you. Keep your mind strong.”

He began a long prayer for us, singing from the bridge of his nose and shifting to the deep resonance of his chest. He sang for a long time, and Jesse and I both watched in reverent silence. When he finished, the whole house seemed to swim with purity. My soul felt light and clean.

“Thank you,” I sputtered out, in awe.

“Wait,” he said, reaching to the fireplace mantle and pulling out a wad of sticks and leaves that were tied up with multicolor crisscross strings. Lighting a match, the bundle flamed and then glowed, oozing a thick smoke that wafted around all of us in the room. It had a weird smell, and I caught Jesse wrinkling his nose. I had to laugh at that, ruining my perfect record of being serious the whole time.

Paul held out his hand to us. “I pray for you, that you will be safe. And our friend, too.” He looked me deep in the eyes.

I nodded. “Thank you again.”

“One more thing,” Paul grabbed a notepad from a shelf and scribbled down some lines. “These are the prayers for you to say. Put them in your memory and they will protect you always.”

Out in the car, Jesse turned to me, raising his eyebrows before shifting the car into drive. “Pretty weird stuff.”

“Not any more strange than the Seekers.”

“True.”

I yawned. My lack of sleep was starting to gain on me. “What’s the ceremony really like?”

“Hmm, well, I make it a point to never witness their little ceremonies. But from what Dad says, they have a special room with lots of candles and things like that. They put the coin in the bowl and when the eclipse is over, so is John or Jane.”

“Dead over?”

Jesse brushed his hand through his hair. “Might as well be.”

“But what about the person, or at least their body? What happens to them after the Seekers take their soul?”

“The body is left to cure for a few days in a dark, cold room. Then they begin training them to take on the rituals. In a few weeks they are ready and their soul is kept in the coin, hidden in a safe with all the other coins where it’s used as a general source of power.”

“How many coins do they have?” The real question was, how many did they need? Would they ever be satisfied? Seeming to read my thoughts, Jesse let out a bitter laugh.

“They’ll never have enough. They said when they get yours and
his
,” I scowled the way he said that, “they’ll have enough power to leave and start seeking in other towns.”

I yawned again, glad that we were pulling into Brentwood, at two o’clock in the morning no less. Jesse turned to speak to me before getting out of the car, slipping his arm around my headrest.

“You can have the bed; I’ll sleep on the couch. Oh wait, the couch
is
the bed! Oh, man, you’re sleeping next to me tonight.”

I rolled my eyes and followed him out of the car and up the steps to his apartment. “The key word is sleep. I’m tired.”

We walked in and I could barely wait till he had pulled out the mattress. Putting on a huge t-shirt, I crawled in and instantly began to feel the curtain of dreams reaching out for me. “Aren’t you coming?” I asked, barely able to talk.

“Not yet. You go ahead. I have some things to think about. Sweet dreams.”

“Okay.”

I saw him extract a guitar from a case by the back wall and I lay listening to him for a while before going to sleep. Expert fingers picked out a gentle tune, so beautiful I just couldn’t let myself drift off. I felt like crying and didn’t know why. I thought of how we were all at sundown, like William was each day before his fade. Each of us was running from the night, trying to hold on. Like sleep, it eased slowly and before you knew it, everything was gone.

The next morning I pestered Jesse about doing the protection chants. He could only make it five minutes before going to grab his guitar again. “This is how I meditate, okay, Emma? You go ahead though.”

I made a resigned nod of my head and went on, secretly happy that he was going to play. I’d felt a lot of resistance coming from his side, making it difficult to concentrate. The tranquil melodies he provided put me in the perfect place, with William at the center of my focus.

Jesse finished one more song, then crept over to place the guitar on its stand against the wall. He crouched next to me on the floor, stretched out his arms, and took my hand. “I think that we need to go have some fun. If these are our last few days, I want to do it all. Eat what I want, drink what I want, kiss a pretty girl.” He winked at me, but I rolled my eyes.

“Good luck with that last one,” I teased, “but I’m with you. What should we do first?”

I pushed away the thought of William alone in some cave room; cold and ready for death. My time was coming to help him, but for now I would follow Jesse’s lead and make the most of every last moment I might have on earth.

“Ever been skinny dipping?”

“It’s broad daylight. No way.”

“Our last days,” he reminded.

I groaned in exasperation as he pulled me up off the floor.

We found a private cove away from the main beach and tore off our clothes—I left my bra and underwear on—running from a grassy hill to jump into the water. Laughing the whole time, I no longer cared about what he or anyone might think of me. The lukewarm water felt good on my skin as I dove into its depths. When I surfaced to take a deep breath, I caught Jesse staring at me, mouth open.

“What?” I asked. “It’s just skin.”

“No it’s not,” he corrected. “Believe me, when you’re a guy, it’s not just skin.”

“Well, it was
your
idea. So deal!” I splashed him playfully.

“Yep.
The best idea I ever had.
And you fell for it!”

I splashed him harder, diving in before he could retaliate. In a flash, he grabbed my shoulders, pulling me up out of the water and to his chest—his bare, naked chest. “Didn’t think I was going to give up yet, did you?” His breath was hot and close.

“No,” I stammered, “not really. But I don’t love you the way I should. If I hadn’t met William, then who knows, Jesse.”

“Right.” He let go, scanning the watery horizon, seemingly deep in thought. I started to move away, feeling sorry about our good moment turned bad when I felt a movement behind me. “But I can do this!”

He had me up in the air and flying out over the water to a big, messy splash. I guess that made us even because after that we swam in peace, laughing at each other’s antics, enjoying ourselves without reserve.

¤ ¤ ¤

The next day our new agenda was to head to the store and buy food we’d always wanted to try—caviar, blue cheese, smoked salmon, capers, dark chocolate, couscous, anchovies, a big pineapple. When he placed a bottle of wine in the cart I raised my brow, receiving a sly smile. “Party at my place, tonight.”