So I waited in the back of the cop car. I wiggled my hands in the air a few times but couldn’t come up with much more than some static electricity. I didn’t feel any different either. What I felt mostly was tired. Seriously bone tired.
Eventually Chief Murdock came over to chat with me. “Hey, Melina,” she said. She sounded remarkably calm.
“Hey, yourself. Everybody okay over there?” I gestured with my chin, since my hands were still cuffed.
“Well, Rosalinda’s not. I’m pretty sure she was dead before she hit the ground.” She rubbed her eyes and yawned.
“It didn’t look good from where I was standing.”
She grunted. “I imagine not.”
We sat for a second in silence.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m not going to even ask you what you were doing out here. You’re just going to lie to me and there’s not much I can do about it. Drew Bossard was going on about witches and curses and vampires, and now one of my deputies tells me that he saw you point your finger at Rosalinda and zap her. She has some marks on her that look almost like burns. He thought maybe you had some kind of Taser or stun gun on you.”
I shook my head. “You guys searched me pretty thoroughly. I’m not packing.”
“Yeah.” She crouched down and looked me right in the eye. “I want you to tell me the truth just one time, Melina. Do I want to know what went on here tonight?”
Finally, a question I could answer honestly. “No, Chief Murdock, you don’t.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “Will you be coming back to my town again?”
“Not if I can help it.”
She stood and called to her deputies. “Set these guys free. I’ve got their contact info. They’re just witnesses.”
Then she walked away.
18
WE SPOTTED ALEX ON THE SIDE OF HIGHWAY 120. HE STEPPED out into traffic and waved us down. He climbed into the truck and apologized. “Sorry. I find it’s best to avoid cops whenever possible. Present company excepted.”
Ted nodded. “I can see where it could get awkward.”
“So what exactly happened back there, Melina?” Alex asked.
It was the sixty-four thousand dollar question, wasn’t it? No one else had asked it yet, though. We’d ridden mainly in silence. “I’m not sure,” I said. I wiggled my hands in the air. Nothing.
“Has anything like that ever happened to you before?” Alex asked.
“You mean, have I ever started shooting lightning bolts out of my fingers before and not mentioned it? No. I haven’t.” I huddled down into the seat.
“No need to get snarky. I was just asking a question.” Alex sounded amused.
I knew he was. It was the same set of questions I had. What had happened? Why had it happened then? What did it mean? “Sorry,” I muttered, as I hunkered down in the seat.
He patted my shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
What’s this “we,” kemosabe?
I thought the question, but I didn’t ask it. If tonight had made one thing manifestly clear, there was a “we.” I was definitely not alone. I could not have survived Rosalinda’s onslaught without my friends and I definitely couldn’t have fought back against her without their energy channeling through me.
More than just their energy, really. Their love. In the end, it had been love that had defeated Rosalinda and kept me from defeating myself. I reached over my shoulder and patted his hand. “Thanks, Alex.”
He leaned back into the backseat and looped his arm around Norah’s shoulders.
These people knew what I was, who I was, and still accepted me, even when I wasn’t sure what or who I was anymore. I’d spent years with only Mae to truly confide in and with only her to have my back. No one would or could ever take her place in my heart or in my personal history, but her death hadn’t left me as alone and isolated as I thought it had.
I might be stuck in the middle as always, a go-between by vocation and stuck in between by circumstances, but I wasn’t alone there. I think it wasn’t until that moment that that fully dawned on me.
Ted reached over and took my hand, lifted it to his lips for a kiss and then set it on his leg as he drove.
I started to cry.
I PULLED INTO MY PARENTS’ DRIVEWAY AND SAT FOR A MOMENT. The morning had been wind-whipped and foggy, but the sun had come through now. I could tell that my mother had already swept the front patio. She was probably out in the backyard, cleaning up any debris that the morning had tossed around and making sure that her roses were well tended.
I got out of the car, walked around the side of the house and let myself into the backyard. Sure enough, there she was, sun hat on her head and gardening clogs on her feet. She was kneeling on the foam mat that I’d gotten her for Mother’s Day, one of the few gifts I’d managed to get her that appealed to her practical nature.
“Hey, Mom,” I said.
She looked up, startled, and then smiled. “Melina, what a nice surprise! What brings you here?”
“I just thought I’d drop by.” Now that I was here, I was feeling less and less sure about this decision. I scuffed at the brick walkway with my toe.
Mom snapped her pruning shears shut and dropped them into her basket. Then she stripped off her gardening gloves and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”
“That’d be great.”
We spent a few minutes covering the usual stuff. My job. The dojo. Dad. Patrick. Grandma Rosie.
Then we sat down on the steps to the patio in the backyard.
My mother’s commitment to neatness and order has meant many things in my life. A lot of my childhood memories are dominated by her telling me to clean up after myself, to keep things tidy, to put things in their place. It had been irritating as hell, but these were also not such bad lessons to learn.
Her neat-freak nature, however, was also the cause of my current condition. After all, if she hadn’t been so damn busy scrubbing the tiles of our swimming pool, she would have noticed me slipping into the pool behind her, and I would not have drowned and come back to life, and would not, I am pretty certain, have ever become a Messenger. I used to regularly curse her about this behind her back.
I’m not cursing her so much anymore. Maybe it’s not so bad to be who and what I am. Sure, I’m different. But is that really so awful? Of all the kinds of hatred I’d encountered over the last few weeks, I’m pretty sure that self-hatred is the worst and most destructive kind.
I looked over the backyard. It was immaculate. The grass was mowed. The flowerbeds were tidy. Everything was edged and defined. Looking at it gave me a peaceful feeling. There were worse things then a well-tended yard. I leaned my head against my mother’s shoulder.
“Mama, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Anything, Melina, you know that.” She looped her arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
It was true. I did know. “Mama, there’s something different about me. I think you should know.”
Berkley Sensation titles by Eileen Rendahl
DON’T KILL THE MESSENGER
DEAD ON DELIVERY