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By Root 365 0

What I wanted was to draw out the squad, to spot one of them. Instead, I found you. It was so much easier having a target, someone to speak to, someone for the Shades to focus on. So I’m going to reward you. I was holding a terminus when I died. My fingers were on the buttons. I suspect—I have no proof, but I suspect—that it had something to do with the way I am. I not only returned, I returned quite strong. And I was the only person in that station to return. I’ve always wanted to know if these things are connected. I’ve cut you, and now you’ll bleed out. I had to do the abdomen. You would have lost consciousness and died within moments of my slashing the neck. I avoided the femoral artery as well. That’s a good cut.”

He backed up to the far wall and bent down and slid the terminus across the floor to me.

“Go on,” he said. “Pick it up. Use it on yourself. Hold it as long as you can.”

I took my hand off my abdomen and grabbed for it. I tried to find the one and nine, but there were spots in front of my eyes, and my fingers were slippery. Maybe I could get up. I decided to try. My hands, however, were too slick with blood. They skidded over the tiles. I had no grip—and moving made it worse. Moving made it hurt, a lot.

“Don’t struggle,” he said. “You’ll bleed faster. Just rest and press the buttons. It’s your best chance, Aurora. Let’s find out what it can do. Let’s see if we can make you into a ghost.”

Something was happening to the door. The door was moving. No, the door was growing—the door was growing inward . . .

I had to be hallucinating.

No, the door was growing inward, in strange lumps. Then the lumps became things I recognized. The top of a head, with a hat. A knee, then a leg, a foot, a face. It was Jo, forcing herself through.

Even Newman didn’t appear to expect this—some World War II woman soldier to come through the door.

“How the hell did you do that?” he asked. “It would have taken me ages to get through a door like that.”

“Experience,” she said. “And willpower. It’s not pleasant.”

Jo was closer to me than Newman was. She got to my side at once and plucked the terminus from my hand.

“I believe you took this from a friend of mine,” she said, holding it up. “I understand you also threw her in the path of a car.”

Newman stepped back toward the stall. He was trying to remain calm, but his composure was slipping.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Flight Sergeant Josephine Bell of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.”

“I don’t think you know what that does,” he said. “You should be careful.”

“Oh, I think I know precisely what it does,” Jo said.

There was no hesitation in her movement—it was swift and even in a way that no living person could manage. In the next moment, she was in the corner with Newman. I remember the light. Something like a tornado formed in the middle of the bathroom, and the stall door flew open. The floor shook from the force. There was a noise too—a rushing sound that was soon drowned out by the shattering of the mirrors above me. They blew out powdered glass in one massive cloud. It seemed to hold itself in the air for a moment before falling. And the smell—that sweet, burning smell—it filled the room. Then the light faded, and they were gone. Both of them.

36

AT HEALING ANGEL MINISTRY, COUSIN DIANE reads people’s auras. She says the auras are the angels who hover behind you, who protect you, and that you can tell the kind of angel it is by the color. She has a chart. Blue angels deal with strong emotions. Red angels deal with love. Yellow angels deal with health. Green angels deal with home and family.

The ones you want to watch out for are the white light angels. They’re at the top of the chart. The white light ones come when big stuff happens. If Cousin Diane sees a white light angel behind someone, she tends to check the newspaper for articles about accidents and obituaries.

“White light,” she’ll say, tapping the article. “I saw the white light, and you know what happens then.” And what happens then is that someone gets hit by a bus or falls into an old sewage ditch and dies.