The Vision (12 page)

“Yes.”

“But you don't cause their death?”

“Right.”

“But you also don't do anything about it.”

Zander frowned. “No, I do what I'm meant to. I expedite, help the soul get to where it belongs.”

“Like a fast lane to hell?”

“Or heaven. Whatever they've earned in their life. But yes.” He nodded. “That's not far off.”

“So, you're like … saving them the afterlife paperwork?”

“That's a very earthly view.”

“It's the only one I have, Zander.”

“Right.” He sighed and ran a hand through his loose curls. “Try to think broadly, Cassie. Metaphysically. There's more to the workings of the world than you can frame in our terms.”

“So explain it to me.”

“A soul guide's role …,” he started, but seeing my expression, stopped and shook his head. “I don't think you're ready to listen.”

“What do you mean? I'm listening.”

“No. You're sitting there, frowning, with your arms crossed,” he said pointedly. I looked down. He was right: classic defensive posture.

“I'm sorry, Zander. You're right,” I said, wondering why I wasn't feeling the way I thought I would if I ever found out there were others. I was feeling sad. Disappointed. Not that I'd found someone—but that it was Zander. “I think you just caught me off guard with this whole thing,” I told him, my heart aching a little as I said it. “I thought there might be others like me out there. I just didn't expect it to be you.”

“What? You weren't waiting this whole time for me to tell you I was the angel of death?” He wasn't grinning, but I could tell he was holding it back.

“No,” I said, smiling weakly. “That was a bit of a surprise.”

Then I realized what he'd said, the way he'd described himself: angel of death. It's what Demetria had called her visions. Had I been right about her all along?

“Wait … is she one too?” I asked, confused.

“Who?”

“Demetria.”

“We've already been through this,” Zander said shortly. “No. She is not.”

“But she knew about you, didn't she? She told her mother she'd had visions, seen the angel of death.”

Zander looked down, picking uncomfortably at the frayed knee of his jeans. “Sometimes they can see. Just a little bit. I don't know exactly how.” He shook his head. “It's happened to me once before. Both times they were Greeks. Maybe they had a touch of the blood, distant relatives or something.”

“Huh.” My brain was sluggish, unable to come up with anything more intelligent. It hit me then that I was exhausted. Completely drained. How could I not be after going from Nick to Demetria to Zander to this, the truth I'd been seeking?

Outside the sky was black. Like despair, my overwrought mind offered.

“I've gotta go,” I said to Zander.

“Okay,” he said. “We should talk more, though. There's a lot to cover …”

“Another day. Please. I can't take any more right now. Really.”

He drove me home. I watched dim shapes pass by—road signs, houses, cars—their images moved across my brain like Rorschach inkblots, meaningless and forgettable.

We pulled up in front of my building and made plans to meet again, talk more. As I was reaching for the handle, Zander said, “I was wondering … all these weeks you kept trying to get me to admit I'd been at the hospital with Demetria. Why?”

“I thought you were the father of her baby,” I said simply, feeling silly to be reminded of my oh-so-human crush, the worries I'd had about Zander. Stupid nothings compared to the truth.

“She's pregnant?”

I nodded. “When I saw you there, or thought I saw you, I …” I shook my head, embarrassed.

Zander snorted. “I can see why you were worried about me. First your friend tells you I'm a player, then that.” He smiled. “It's a wonder you ever went out with me at all.”

“Yeah.” I smiled too, surprised to find it still a relief to have him confirm there was nothing between them. He hadn't even known she was pregnant.

Then he said, “You understand now why I was hanging around her.”

No. I hadn't. But suddenly I did—her bandaged wrists, the reason she was at the hospital.

The warmth of our shared moment turned icy.

“Were you with her when …?” I couldn't even say it.

“No.” Zander didn't elaborate and I didn't have the strength to ask more; I wasn't even sure what the questions should be.

He leaned over to kiss me before I got out, but I didn't have the heart for it. Thinking about him lurking, waiting to be a part of her death put a serious damper on romance. I turned my head and it became nothing more than a chaste and brotherly peck on the cheek.

chapter 19

Back in Kansas, when I learned that my mom hadn't died the way I thought she had, I had to wait for the library to open to find out more. Drea, my aunt, only had a laptop that she shuttled from work to home to the airport and back again. I guess I could have looked for an Internet café or something, but that hadn't occurred to me at the time. When your world is rocked, you don't always think straight.

Like now.

I sat in the quiet of our apartment, wishing Petra were home so I'd have an excuse to avoid the computer that sat patiently in front of me.

But she wasn't. Reluctantly I lifted my eyes to the screen, where my news-filled homepage glared brightly. A message scrolled across, offering pain relief, then listing about a hundred side effects you could expect if you took it.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I knew all about that.

I typed in the name. It seemed to expand ominously as the letters built one upon the next: THANATOS.

I'd heard it before, of course. Maybe from Nan, in the bedtime stories she used to tell. Definitely in my earlier research. I'd spent hours online and at bookstores and libraries after reading the translated letter that claimed I was a descendant of the Fates. But there was surprisingly little to learn about them, and far more fiction than fact. The Fates made it to TV and video games and books, but though Christianity has the Bible and Islam has the Koran, Ancient Greece has nothing. Maybe their sacred texts were destroyed when the religion was outlawed, leaving only myths about myths.

What sources existed were full of errors, calling the Fates immortal and ugly, a trio of weavers and spinners. None of it applied as far as I could tell. We were definitely mortal, I didn't
think
I was ugly, and I'd earned solid Bs in Home Ec, only for effort, not skill with a needle or thread. My pillows and wash bags came out lumpy and crooked without fail.

The things I'd read made me doubt the letter and its claims more than believe them. Maybe that's what I'd wanted. Now I was back at it, trying to pick truths from these flawed sources, not about my ancestors this time, but about Zander's.

The first thing I learned was that the articles called him Death.

He said he didn't kill them. Most of what I read claimed otherwise.

But I did find a few sites that talked about Thanatos as a guide—what Zander asserted he was—leading souls from one world to the next. The Ancient Greeks thought most people went to Hades, which, despite being cold, damp, and dark with the dead bumbling around like pathetic ghosts, was
not
the equivalent of hell. That was Tartarus, for the very wicked. Elysium was their heaven. Without proper death rituals, the soul would struggle to gain access to its proper realm, suffer during the passage, or be trapped indefinitely between worlds. This, according to Zander and two of the thirty-plus things I read, was where Thanatos came in.

I'd been so caught up in the tornado of revelations about myself that I'd learned almost nothing about Zander's role—what exactly he did and how. Online it said Thanatos and his brother, Hypnos, carried off the dead or enveloped them in a black cloud. I couldn't imagine Zander walking around suburban Chicago with dead bodies or surrounding them with a spooky mist and getting away with it.

I was about to give up, my vision blurry from reading the convoluted language of ancient writings that seemed to be taking me nowhere, when a quote from Thanatos in a two-thousand-year-old play by Euripides caught my eye: “The woman goes with me to Hades's house. I go to take her now, and dedicate her with my sword, for all whose hair is cut in consecration by this blade's edge are devoted to the gods below.”

I printed it out, remembering how the first day I'd spoken to Zander, he'd held my hair, twisting a lock of it between his fingers.
Beautiful
, he'd said.
Don't ever cut it.
It gave me chills. Was that how he did it?

It was easy to imagine a consecrated blade—a sword, a knife, even an old pair of scissors—among all the antiques in his house.

I sat back, trying to assimilate what I'd read, what I'd heard from Zander, and what I'd known before. What was true? What did I believe?

I believed there had once been Fates and that I was descended from them, even though I still had no real proof. Only that Zander had known what I was, things about me that I hadn't told him. And then there were the notes in my mother's file. And the letter and the myths Nan had told me throughout my childhood that, in retrospect, seemed more purposeful than just bedtime entertainment. All of that taken together was like person after person telling me the sky was red. Like the people in the Greek Orthodox church, I now believed.

The question remained: what was I supposed to do about it?

chapter 20

Zander and I met by his car, parked in its usual spot outside school. It was Monday, five days after he'd hijacked my visit with Demetria. He'd pushed me to get together sooner, talk more. Even texted me over the weekend, but I'd said no to everything. I needed time to think.

I'd picked up hours at Wilton & Ludwig instead, wearing scrubs Friday night while my new “date sweater” stayed home. Ryan and his dad were loading up stuff for the annual Funeral Directors Convention in Milwaukee. They'd be gone this weekend, Ryan told me, but maybe we could try a synagogue next week? Maybe, I agreed vaguely, our visit to Zander's church feeling like a hundred years ago, though it had been less than two weeks.

At school, I'd sensed Zander watching me. By my locker, walking to class, leaving homeroom. I pretended he wasn't there, but in truth, I felt him more than ever, as if there were an invisible string connecting us. Binding us.

“Zander's staring at you,” Liv told me at our table in the cafeteria.

“Yeah.”

“Well, why doesn't he come over? You have a fight?”

“No, not really. We're just taking a few days.” I shrugged. “Like a cooling off period, you know?”

She glanced over my shoulder, where I felt Zander's eyes searing into me. “He doesn't look cooled off,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “He looks like he wants to eat you for lunch.”

I didn't feel cooler either. As days passed, things just got more jumbled. I wished I could forget that I'd wanted to be
with
Zander and approach him with a rational game plan like I'd had before coming to Bellevue. But I couldn't do it. I felt an overpowering need to see him, so now, standing near his car, every inch of me was zinging with anxiety and anticipation.

My stomach flipped as he walked out of the school's doors, the wind making him wince slightly. He came toward me, wearing the same intense look I had pictured in the lunchroom. The one I'd seen when I glanced sidelong down the hallway toward his locker each day since we'd last spoken, always finding his eyes on me, as I knew I would.

He stopped just inches away. We weren't touching, but the space between us was so charged that I knew even if my eyes had been closed, I'd have felt him there. He paused for the shortest second and without waiting for a hello or any sort of consent, reached down, sliding a hand behind my neck, into my hair, his bare skin somehow hot against mine despite the rawness outside, and kissed me so forcefully that I lost my footing, bumping into his car.

“I've been waiting days to do that,” he whispered, holding me steady as he pulled away.

I looked down at my boot kicking leftover snow so he couldn't see the things I knew he would if I met his eyes. My head was buzzing. I felt him slip his arm around me, the only thing keeping me upright as he guided me into the passenger seat.

I studied the fuzzy gray ceiling while Zander rounded the back of the car, recalling the things I'd read about Thanatos. Get a grip, I told myself. This is not just a hot guy from school. This is Death, or some version of him. Nothing is surer to have an unhappy ending than swooning over Death.

I heard the rush of wind, a swish and rustle of fabric as he sat, the double-click latch of the door closing firmly. Then silence. For a minute, neither of us spoke. It was still freezing in the car and I squeezed my gloved hands together, the leather crinkling and stretching.

“Zander …”

“I know,” he interrupted, his voice low and earnest. “I promised I wouldn't do that again. Truly, I couldn't help it.”

I rolled my head to the side and found him watching me, smiling, but without any irony or mischief. As if he was sure I'd understand what he meant. I did.

I took a deep breath. “We need to stay focused,” I said primly, as much to myself as to him. “There's a lot I don't understand and I need to.”

He nodded briefly, then faced forward, shifting the car into drive. “I know.”

Zander pulled away from the curb. Out the window, I watched bundled students hurrying home. We passed Hannah and Erin and I waved quickly. I'd face twenty questions in the morning, if not sooner.

Before I came face-to-face—and closer—with Zander by his car, I had planned for this to be
my
conversation. I told him everything I knew last time. He gave little besides confirmation. Today, I'd find out the stuff
I
needed to know. But it hadn't exactly started like I'd expected.

“I've been doing some reading,” I told him as we left school behind.

Zander nodded.

“They call Thanatos ‘Death.' ”

He shrugged, eyes on the road, cucumber cool. “Yes.”

“But you don't kill them?”

“I already told you I don't.”

I let out my breath, unaware I'd been holding it in the seconds it took him to answer. He
had
told me before, but it was a relief to hear it again. “You're a soul guide.”

“Right.”

“How do you do it?” I asked, rubbing my lips gently. The bruised feeling of his kiss had faded, making it easier to concentrate. “What exactly do you do?”

“I take the necessary actions to escort the soul to its proper realm.”

It sounded like he was reading from a textbook. “C'mon, Zander,” I scoffed. “You can do better than that.”

“No,” he said, glancing at me sharply. “I can't.”

“Well, do you need to be with them?”

“Yes.” He leaned forward, checking street signs, then turned left.

“So you need to be at the deathbed of all these people?”

“Not exactly,” he said evasively, “but I need to be with them. At some point.”

“Don't the police get suspicious? I mean, isn't that like a telltale sign of a serial killer or something? Someone who's always showing up at crime scenes or around people who wind up dead?”

“I've been questioned once or twice.”

“Really?”

Zander shrugged. “It's not a big deal. I didn't kill them. It's not like it's ever the same cop. This is a big city, Cassie. Not some one-traffic-light burg.”

Yeah. That's exactly why I'd come here.

“So what happens if you're not there? With people about to die?”

“What happens if
you're
not?” We'd stopped at another red light, Zander glancing out his window, then mine, before settling his eyes on me.

“I guess things just play out the way they would have anyway,” I said slowly, adding, “In which case, maybe it would be better if I was never there.”

“Talk like that'll get you tossed in the lock-up with your buddy Demetria,” Zander warned with a smile.

“I didn't mean like that, Zander.” I wasn't going to let him drag me off-track. “So if you're not around, the person doesn't get escorted to … Hades?”

He laughed outright. “Hades? You know no one calls it that anymore, right? That went out, um, about two thousand years ago.”

I flushed. “No,” I said crossly, glad the green light forced him to look away. “I guess they forgot to put that in my descendant-of-the-gods training manual. Along with everything else.”

“Listen,” he said, squinting at a street sign, “I think you're getting too wrapped up in worrying about stuff you don't need to. The important thing is that you've got this ability for a reason. You have a role, a job to do. Don't worry about my role—it doesn't concern you.”

“Actually it does,” I said. “It concerns me a lot. I am very concerned.”

“What are you so concerned about?”

“I'm concerned that you know people are going to die and can ignore it so easily. Don't you feel like you should try to help them? Maybe not all of them, but there must have been some, somewhere along the line, that you felt like you should have warned.”

“No. There haven't been. It's not my job to warn them.”

“That's like the guards at Dachau saying it wasn't their job to help the inmates. Just following orders. Is that what you do, Zander?”

“I'm not a bad guy, Cassie. You of all people should understand that.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said. “After all, you're saving them lots of time with the post-death paperwork and everyone knows when you're dead, time is money.”

Zander pursed his lips. “You're not taking this seriously.”

“Zander, I assure you, I couldn't take it
more
seriously.”

“Then why are you being flip?”

“I'm not being flip. Or if I am, it's only to try to show you how ridiculous what you're saying is. How come, if we both know someone's going to die, it's up to me to decide whether they should or not, but you have no responsibility?”

He started to answer, but I cut him off. “Yeah, I know, Zander, because it's my role, not yours, right?”

“Yeah, Cassie, that's right.”

“Even assuming for a minute that's true, which I'm not saying it is,” I said, “how could I possibly know who to save and who not to?”

“You just know.”

“But, Zander,” I said, feeling the sudden sting of tears. “That's the problem. I don't.”

He frowned, glancing over, then right back to the road. I tried to explain.

“I'll give you a perfect example,” I said. “I was in town with Liv one day and saw this old guy sitting out in the cold, with the mark. Everything about him told me I shouldn't warn him. I mean, what good could it possibly do? The guy wasn't going to suddenly cure cancer or save the world from nuclear war or even be there for some sad kid trying to grow up, like Nick Altos.”

Zander looked confused and I realized I'd never even told him about
that
mess.

“I warned him anyway, the old guy. And you know what he said?”

“What?”

“So be it. I'm ready.”

Zander shook his head. “You should have known better.”

“I did,” I said. “But when I got out there, I couldn't
not
do it. And then I felt so bad about making that mistake and putting someone else's life on the line, that I went too far the other way and let Nick Altos's dad die for no reason.”

Zander raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I was there. I didn't know who he was, but I saw the mark, I followed him. Spent a whole day doing my damnedest to learn enough about him to make a good decision. And in spite of all that, I couldn't even find out he was the father of one of my classmates, who's a good guy and totally crushed by it.”

“So what's your point?” Zander asked quietly.

“My point is …” I stopped, wanting to be sure I said it exactly right so maybe he could give me the answer, help me figure out how to live. “My point is I don't know how to decide. More than that, I don't know if I can. I'm not sure if I can live with the idea that what I do—or don't do—leads to someone else's death. I've tried to believe it's their actions, their choice, that everything they do leads up to the moment where I see them with the mark …”

“That's what you should believe, Cassie.”

I shook my head, thinking of how I'd told off Lucas at the end of philosophy class in Kansas.
People are responsible for their own actions
, I'd said
. In making choices, they accept the outcome.
I'd tried so hard to believe it, to live it. “The truth is, Zander, I think it's impossible for me to walk away from death like that. I don't know how you can, role or not. You still know they're going to die. But worse for me is the idea that if I
do
intervene, I'm damning someone else.” I shook my head at the frustration of the ultimate catch-22.

“You're too human,” is what Zander said. “I'm going to help you get past that.”

That's what we'd come to.

Zander was driving more slowly now, his head tilted slightly as if he were listening or watching for something. I looked out the window, trying to find a restaurant or shop or coffeehouse or any likely destination, but metal gates were pulled down over the storefronts and the people hurrying down the streets didn't look like they'd be friends of his. Nothing about the neighborhood suggested it was somewhere we would visit. Or
should
visit.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I finally asked him.

Zander pulled to the curb and shut off the car, answering with a single word. “Hunting.”