My Soul to Take Read online

  Dawit saw the memory in Johnny’s face. And in his thoughts.

  “You and your kind baffle me,” Dawit said. “So careless with what little life you have.”

  Johnny’s face burned, and he was mad at himself for his jackrabbit’s heartbeat. Was Dawit threatening him, or only telling a razor truth? After last year’s terror with Michel, Johnny had vowed never to fear any man.

  “I don’t have time to be afraid of him,” Johnny said. “Or anyone else.”

  Dawit shook his head, patting Johnny’s shoulder as if to give condolences. He moved aside to let him pass. “Enjoy your days, youngster,” he said. “Sip them slowly, like honey wine. Fana will remember you fondly.” There was no cruelty in his voice.

  The immortal’s words had the disturbing ring of prophecy.

  Phoenix wondered if she would sleep all night, or the next night. Her mind and skin still sizzled from the stage. Each time she heard the swelling of the audience’s voices in her memory, her stomach dropped with raw amazement.

  The guest cottage smelled like sweet, earthy incense. Marcus had fallen asleep hours ago, curled on a love seat in a corner beneath a sheepskin blanket that looked as warm as a womb. Children could sleep anywhere, after anything.

  She and Carlos alternated between pacing the tiny living area and sitting at the round table while they waited, exchanging long gazes but few words. How could they capture it? Carlos fumbled for an explanation for his tears when Marcus asked him why he’d been crying, but he’d finally whispered his confession to Phoenix: I saw Mami on that stage, Phoenix. She had envied him. What would she have given to see Mom and Sarge?

  “Do you think it was a vision?” Phoenix asked, finally past her envy. “A ghost?”

  Carlos shrugged. “I don’t know which. She looked more like a ghost in movies, almost transparent. Not like …” He didn’t say the rest. Carlos didn’t like to talk about Scott Joplin, either. “Maybe I saw what I wanted to see.”

  Carlos squeezed her hand, checking over her shoulder to make sure they were still alone. She hadn’t seen the men in white in the guest cottage, except silent shadows passing in the hallway in the rear. Caitlin hovered nearby, in the kitchen, with only occasionally clanking dishes to remind them that she was there.

  “What was it for you?” Carlos said.

  Phoenix searched for words. “Peace. Flying. Like the flying dreams I used to have when I was a kid. Maybe we’re all born with a memory of it. That’s why we long for it so much. Maybe it’s in our souls.”

  They both believed in God, but neither of them had a clear picture of what they thought God was. Carlos was a Baptist-slash-Catholic, and Phoenix had been raised by a Jewish mother and a father who’d flirted with the Nation of Islam. Their experiences with Scott Joplin’s ghost had taught them that there was much more to existence than they could see, but Phoenix rarely spoke of the soul. Tonight, the picture seemed clearer.

  “Maybe,” Carlos said, muffling his words with his wrist. “And maybe they drugged us.”

  “Drugged us?”

  “Shhhh.” His eyes darted toward the corridor.

  “Eight hundred people?”

  “Think about it. Something in the water. Or the Kool-Aid, more like it. I showed you those articles. Don’t forget Clarion could be a cult.”

  Carlos’s theory didn’t explain the woman who’d risen from her wheelchair to dance, but Carlos would probably say she was a plant. Phoenix might have believed the cult story once, but not anymore. Something special had happened.

  “You’re too young to be so cynical, Carlos.”

  “I’m too old not to be,” he said, looking at his watch. “Jesus—it’s after midnight. Why are we letting them keep us waiting like this? This is insane.” He swore in Spanish.

  That was when she emerged from the hallway.

  She was dressed differently, in jeans and a faded Phoenix concert T-shirt, but the girl looked the way Phoenix remembered from her earlier glimpse on the porch: brown-red skin like smooth clay, a lithe, willowy figure, and a mane of long dreadlocks. She was slightly taller than Phoenix, about five ten, but she was a teenager. A child, almost. Awkward in her limbs.

  Fana came into the room alone, but Caitlin hovered close-by, leaning over the kitchen-bar counter. Two of the white-clad men stood sentry in the hall.

  The girl entered the room so quietly that Carlos didn’t see her until Phoenix gestured, and then Carlos jumped to his feet, flustered, sweeping an imaginary hat from his head. How had Carlos missed the floating sensation again? The room felt wired with high voltage.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry,” the girl said, her voice too small and soft for her presence. Her brown eyes were filled with a fan’s bright glimmer as she held her hand out to Phoenix. “My name is Fana, and I’m so happy to meet you. I’ve been listening to you since I was ten years old. ‘Gotta Fly’ saved me once. That song was in my head when I changed my life.”

  Phoenix clasped the girl’s hand and couldn’t let go at first. Fana’s hand felt magnetized. Phoenix tried to study the sensation before she slipped her hand away. Strange.

  Phoenix watched Carlos’s face as he shook Fana’s hand next. He felt it, too. Once his hand was free, he glanced down at his palm as if he thought she’d left a mark on him.

  “You made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives tonight,” Fana said. “Not everyone understands Clarion’s work. We needed you to bring them here. You helped us give them something to believe in. And now they’ll help us convince others.”

  “Glad to come,” Phoenix said.

  Phoenix had questions, but most words had fled her mind. Years ago, she’d met Nelson Mandela and the Obamas and encountered the same tongue paralysis, but that hadn’t prepared her for the sensation when she met Fana, as if the girl were an eight-foot giant.

  “The plague is real,” Fana said. “It’s worse than anyone has admitted. A whole village has been wiped out in Nigeria. And in North Korea. It’s been to Puerto Rico. It’s airborne. People have been infected through very casual contact. It kills almost everyone it touches.”

  “Yes,” Carlos said, stepping closer to her, as if awaiting a command. Finally, someone willing to admit what he’d seen in Puerto Rico.

  “But we aren’t helpless,” Fana said. “Thank you for helping us heal the world. With your music. With your story.”

  “What … story?” Phoenix said.

  Fana was no longer standing five feet in front of her. Somehow, Fana had climbed between her ears, into her mind, filling her: PLEASE TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOURSELF, PHOENIX, Fana’s voice whispered inside her thoughts. YOU WERE AFRAID, SO YOU LET IT GROW TO YOUR BONES. THE WORLD NEEDS YOU. I NEED YOU.

  Her heart sailing, Phoenix brought her hands to her chest, wrapping herself as if she were cold. She patted herself, already knowing, but needing to be sure. Tears flooded her.

  The lump in her right breast was gone.

  Eight

  “It’s up on HuffPo,” Caitlin said.

  Johnny raced to peer over Caitlin’s shoulder at her window seat, reading the Huffington Post on her notetab. Caitlin tilted her screen so they could both see the color display under the GLOW WARS graphic of a vial. “Phoenix concert puts Glow center stage,” by Mike Middleton. Johnny knew his name: Middleton taught biochemistry at UCLA Medical School and was a fierce critic of Glow and Clarion. He had also been one of the first to RSVP for Phoenix’s concert when he got his invitation.

  He would get a surprise at his next doctor’s visit.

  “Bet he’ll have some nice things to say about Clarion now,” Caitlin said.

  Johnny’s eyes skimmed the glowing screen: “… unforgettable experience … no easy answers … rethinking my assumptions about what is possible in approaches to healing …”

  Johnny never trusted blind optimism anymore, but he was glad the headlines had started. Huffington Post. MedNet. Even People magazine’s website! Truth overpowered lies. Glow was becoming a political and social move
ment, beyond the realm of medicine. People would demand access to Glow, the government be damned. Once that happened, vials would be available at drugstores. Hell, the vials would eliminate drugstores.

  If only Fana could conduct mass healings every night! Maybe she could. The idea made Johnny’s heart pound. God’s vision manifesting through Fana’s Blood!

  Fana was staring out her window at the clouds, but Johnny saw her cheeks dimple in a small smile. Fana didn’t smile nearly enough.

  Johnny took the empty seat next to Fana, the one he avoided if anyone except Caitlin was nearby. Now that the plane was in the air, only three of them shared the first-class cabin. He wanted to ask Caitlin to leave them alone, but how could he?

  Caitlin and Fana had started the Glow movement, so this was their triumph more than his. But he’d persuaded Fana to do the concert, and she had listened to him. If he couldn’t at least advise Fana, he had nothing to offer her.

  “You’re the new religion, Fana,” Caitlin teased her. Fana hadn’t spoken to either of them in nearly an hour, caught in her head, but Caitlin had a knack for reaching her.

  Fana made a face. “And be like him? No, thanks.” Fana rarely mentioned her fiancé when Johnny was present. “Why do you think I didn’t show myself?”

  “Oh, please,” Caitlin said. “They knew it was you.”

  “She’ll learn how to mask better next time,” Johnny said. Fana was the telepath, but Johnny often finished her sentences or spoke her mind before she did. Fana smiled at him, patting his hand. Johnny’s skin sparked beneath her touch.

  Johnny almost caught Fana’s hand and squeezed it. Almost.

  WE CAN’T, Fana said silently, sadly. Johnny moved his hand away.

  “Let’s see if anybody recognizes a miracle anymore,” Caitlin said. She seemed far away; Fana must be carrying him with the current of her thoughts. Caitlin’s distant voice went on: “Fana, are you zoning? I never know where you are….”

  Fana wasn’t listening to Caitlin, her eyes closed.

  THANK YOU FOR THIS, JOHNNY, Fana told him. TONIGHT WAS THE BEST FEELING OF MY LIFE. MY GRANDMOTHER USED TO SAY I NEED TO BE WITH PEOPLE, TO TOUCH THEM. I’LL NEVER FORGET IT.

  Johnny’s heart leaped. Fana seemed barely to see him sometimes, and now she was sharing her mind with him, enfolding them in a private cave.

  “Anything, Fana,” Johnny whispered to her ear, wishing he could burrow into her thoughts, too. “For you? Anything.”

  Fana’s heart soared as the plane charged the skies.

  A year ago, her grandmother had died as Michel’s prisoner on this Embraer Legacy 600 jet, one of her colony’s planes, and the pain and terror of her family’s ordeal still clung like wallpaper. She closed her eyes, acknowledging Gramma Bea in her painful dying place. Gramma Bea had forgotten the pain in an instant, but Fana hated how she had suffered. Now Fana was living the life Gramma Bea had wanted for her, out in the world.

  We did it, Gramma Bea! We’re doing it!

  Fana’s father emerged from the cockpit, leaving the others to pilot the plane. Johnny rose from the seat beside her, pretending to check the luggage compartment overhead.

  “How’s Mom?” Fana asked her father. “Did you talk to her?”

  Mom didn’t travel, or do much of anything, since Michel’s fire had burned their compound to the ground. Mom had folded up her life in the ashes of the Washington woods. Two weeks ago, Dad had retrieved Mom from her dreaming chamber, where she’d been trying to live in her past. Fana knew from peeking into her mother’s thoughts that Mom still sometimes burned Dreamsticks to sleep at night, though Mom had sworn to stay away from them. Her dependency was far from behind her.

  But Fana couldn’t blame her. Mom’s life had been uncomplicated before. Since then, Mom had been fighting a war to share the blood Dad had given her.

  SHE’LL BE FINE, Dad told her privately in his clipped way, avoiding her question. He didn’t discuss anything important in front of mortals, except family.

  Dad glanced in Johnny’s direction, and Johnny got the hint. He nudged Caitlin, who was reading the report Fana’s cousin had sent from Nigeria. Caitlin’s heartbeat raced in Fana’s ear as she read. The outbreak there was worse than expected, with nearly two hundred villagers dead.

  Fana and her father would visit Nigeria next.

  Caitlin stood up to leave the cabin. “Party’s over,” she said.

  “Afraid so, hon,” Dawit said. Caitlin was one of the few mortals he liked and respected.

  Fana was grateful that Mom had raised her with mortals in her family, closest to her heart. Her cousin, aunt, and best friend were all mortals, so she hadn’t grown up with the feelings of superiority shared by her Life Brothers, and even her father. She tried not to feel it, anyway. Fana always began her meditations by asking for humility so she would not lose herself.

  But her rush from the concert scared her.

  After Caitlin and Johnny went to their cabin, Dawit sat beside Fana.

  “He’s angry,” Dad said. He didn’t have to say he was talking about Michel. Until now, Fana hadn’t been sure Michel knew she’d been to California.

  “How do you know?”

  “Teka feels it. Michel isn’t hiding it—except from you, maybe. It was ill advised to come so close to him on the whims of a singer.”

  Fana realized her heart was speeding. A visit to California must have looked like she was mocking Michel, or provoking him. He disapproved of her sharing her blood and gifts, so it was all too easy to imagine what he might think about her behavior. If he lost patience, he might take control of her mind. I could have ridden you like a horse, Michel had told her once, in anger.

  A year ago, Michel had hijacked Johnny’s body, and Caitlin’s, and made them say and do things against their will. Michel had done the same to other Life Brothers, strong telepaths who were still mortified by their actions under Michel’s control—even her powerful teacher, Teka.

  And he could do it to her, too. He could have at any time.

  “The game you’re playing with Johnny is foolish, Fana,” Dawit said.

  You have no idea what he’s done for me, Dad. We’re not playing a game, she told him.

  “It looks like the oldest game in the world between men and women,” he said. “I nearly brought shame and dishonor to an empress with a game very much like it. You risk much more.”

  His stories were endless. “Empress Taytu?” Fana said.

  “Shhhh,” her father said, still protecting his lover’s dignity nearly a century after her death. “Yes. She was a miraculous woman—before her time, truly—but she was married to Menelik. We shouldn’t have begun a conversation that had nowhere to go.”

  Yes, but you were sleeping with her, Fana reminded him silently. Whether she liked it or not, she was a virgin who was supposed to be saving herself for her fiancé.

  “Johnny is with you constantly. He is more a husband to you than Michel. Why create a foe for Johnny he can never hope to vanquish?”

  Michel isn’t infallible, Fana said. No more than I am.

  NOT WHEN WE ARE SO CLOSE TO HIM, FANA. DON’T MAKE IT WORSE. Her father was so angry, his thought seemed to carry physical heat. And surprising clarity.

  Michel could probe her at will, no matter what her distance from him, so she’d stopped being afraid he would know what she was thinking. If Michel insisted on marrying her at the end of the decade as she’d promised, at least he would know the woman he was marrying. She would not wear masks for him, just as she wasn’t with Dad.

  I’ll be more careful with Johnny, she said. But we’re just friends.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t see the longing that’s plain to all of us.” AND NOT JUST ON HIS SIDE, he went on.

  I heard you, Dad, Fana said. She wondered if her engagement to Michel might have been what finally drove Mom to her Dreamsticks.

  NO, FANA. DON’T BLAME YOURSELF FOR JESSICA.

  He’d been sharp enough to hear her thought. Fana’s father cla
sped her hand and leaned close to her. “Emperor Menelik agonized over the question of diplomacy versus war,” he said quietly. He always used spoken words for more nuanced communication. “Taytu helped him make his decision: they chose war. They took their destiny in their own hands.”

  “And which way did you counsel her?”

  His eyes brightened with a memory. “I think you know your father by now.”

  In war, Ethiopia had shocked Italy at the Battle of Adwa. Acting as an adviser, her father had helped Emperor Menelik create an army from disparate tribes, uniting his nation. Later, when her husband was sick, the empress had been Ethiopia’s true ruler for a time.

  “How would you have counseled me with Michel?” Fana said. “If I’d asked you first.”

  This conversation was like a bedtime story between them. Fana already knew her father’s answers, but she enjoyed the comfort of hearing them. Dawit bumped his forehead against Fana’s, the way he had since she was a toddler. “My daughter made the only choice she could—to save lives,” Dawit said.

  Michel would have killed her father if she hadn’t agreed to marry him. Perhaps everyone in her family. The veil of civility over the meeting between their two families had been flimsy, ready to shred. Fana was still surprised that Michel had let them go when he could have kept her with him by force: his one redeeming act. Dad was a great warrior, but he had never faced anyone with mental gifts like Michel’s. Even the strongest Life Brothers had been manipulated like puppets by Michel, and from hundreds of miles away.

  “You wanted to fight,” Fana said. “Take our chances.”

  Her father’s loathing of Sanctus Cruor was generations old. Sanctus Cruor was to blame for Italy’s failed invasion of Ethiopia, in search of sacred blood before Michel was born. That same search had uprooted Fana’s family a hundred years later—this time at Michel’s doing.

  “We may still fight,” Dad said. “As long as we count the cost.”

  He’s not infallible, Fana repeated, to make sure her father understood.

  “Fana, he’s a man in love.” Dawit sighed. “When you forget that, you underestimate him. I loved your mother, and love became madness. I traded everything I knew for that love. For her. Let time judge where love will take Michel.”