Phoenix Everlasting Read online

  He laced his fingers through mine. “We will have a semblance of that again. This too shall pass. There will be a time when this is all a memory.”

  Part of me truly hoped he was right.

  At some point, Levi fell asleep. I didn’t. Not for the remainder of the night.

  The next day we stood in line together waiting to get through security. It was Saturday, not Sunday, but we’d both agreed getting to Austin as soon as we could seemed like the best idea. The phoenix, still wrapped in its towel and inside the same box, took so much space in my carry-on Levi had to take some of my clothes in his. He sipped his coffee and checked his emails.

  “I’m going to get promoted this week.” He spoke near my ear. “My boss just emailed me a heads up.”

  Excitement rushed through me. I’d never quit caring about his career as if I had something to do with it. When we’d been married, I’d taken pride in his accomplishments like I did the kids’. “That’s fantastic. No one deserves it more.”

  “I could use the promotion to ask for a change of location. Don’t decide anything right this second. Hold the thought in your head. Maybe we don’t have to be where everything is exploding. Maybe we could live in Northern California or New York City. Start again. Reset the timeline. Think about it.” He leaned over and kissed my neck. I shivered from the contact. Levi still knew my spots.

  I took a deep breath. “We have hours on the plane. You want to talk about this in the airport security line?”

  “Color me excited.”

  I shook my head. “Right.”

  I couldn’t disagree; his words played with my mind. How nice would it be to pick up and go to northern California? We could walk on the beach together and pretend the whole disaster of the last few years was nothing. Of course, that’s all it would be—pretend.

  My troubles would follow me wherever I went. Not to mention, I didn’t want to leave Malcolm. Or Victoria. I’d found them again. They were a huge part of my life.

  We made our way to the front of the line, and I put my bag on the belt. I hadn’t brought any electronics, so I didn’t have to take them out. Still, I struggled with my shoes to get them off in a timely fashion. At least I had remembered to wear socks. Going barefoot in the airport seemed kind of yucky.

  I passed through the body scanner with no issue and waited on the other end for my bag and my shoes to get through the scanner. When my bag didn’t come out the other end, I tried to pay attention to what was happening. The security woman looking at the screen pointed at my bag on the monitor and whispered to her co-worker.

  “Excuse me,” the worker who was a tall, graying fifty-something-year-old man with a pot-belly and a sneer called to the crowd. “Whose bag is this?”

  Levi and I made eye contact. Behind me in line, he was one of the crowd now being held up because of my stuff. “Ah … mine.” I raised my hand. “Is there some sort of problem?”

  “Ma’am, we need you to come stand over here while we search your bag.”

  I nodded, my cheeks getting red as everyone stared at me. What had they seen on the monitor to cause alarm? Maybe it was random, although I doubted it since I’d seen how they reacted when they scanned the bag.

  I made my way behind the yellow line. Levi caught my eye and smiled at me, giving me a nod to indicate everything would be fine. I had clothes, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and a paranormal object that wouldn’t set off an alarm to anyone who didn’t know what it was.

  Behind the yellow line, I watched as they pulled everything out of my bag to examine it. Once again, I asked. “What’s the problem? What set off the machine?”

  The TSA worker, who looked like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world, grabbed the towel covering the box with the phoenix and chucked it to the side. With a yank, the sneering man opened the box and pulled out the phoenix.

  I gasped. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that the phoenix might see the light of day—or in this case the fluorescent lights of the airport. To make matters worse, a ghost appeared before me, an older man still carrying his suitcase.

  The ghost hissed. “Oh, you’re in trouble. I don’t want any part of this.”

  No problem. I flung my hand in front of me, sending the ghost to wherever his next destination would be.

  “That’s a family heirloom.” Levi called over the yellow line. “Could you put that away, please? That’s very valuable to my family. It’s obviously not a bomb.”

  All eyes turned to Levi, and I groaned.

  “Sir.” The TSA man pointed a finger at him. “We’re going to need you to back up.”

  He held up his hands. “Come on man. I’m behind the yellow line. That’s my wife’s bag you’re messing with. I want the heirloom put back in the box. And I apologize for saying bomb. But it isn’t one.”

  I rubbed at the headache forming between my eyes. Heaven help me from men trying to be helpful.

  “This didn’t show in the scanner. Is the box it’s in made out of lead?”

  I really didn’t know. I hadn’t examined the box to check. “My late grandmother stuffed it in a box,” I lied. “I don’t know anything about the box.”

  The man held up the box. “This box is going to have to stay off the plane.”

  Was lead now a prohibited item for air travel? I didn’t want to argue; I simply wanted to go. “Okay.”

  The TSA person proceeded to stuff all of my things into the bag, including the phoenix. I hadn’t looked at it before that second. In my memory, it was a small albeit heavy object made to represent the bird from Greek mythology. This one was pleasant to see. Bright, with a wide wingspan, the bird seemed to be formed from many different types of metals. The bird stared straight ahead, and I supposed the designer had given the piece of art a pleasant facial expression.

  Behind me, Levi made a noise. I turned to look at him, and he shook his head. So apparently it was fine to talk about moving and starting over around the TSA but not whatever bothered him about the idol we’d located.

  I grabbed my bag and joined Levi. He took my hand, and we walked toward our gate. There was fifteen minutes until takeoff, tighter than I liked to cut it at the airport. No matter. We were getting home, and that was all that mattered.

  “What was the matter? You made a funny noise.”

  “I might have imagined it …” His voice trailed off.

  I squeezed his fingers. “Assume you didn’t.”

  “The statue had no shadow. Maybe it was how the light hit it or where I stood. I can’t help it; I check shadows everywhere. Sometimes I can see them move. This one had no shadow at all.”

  Levi had gained the ability to see the shadows after a shadow man attacked him. Usually, only people who died and came back to life could see them move. He hadn’t, I didn’t think, actually died. Unless he had for the briefest of seconds and I’d never realized it …

  He continued, “When we get home, I want you to let some of my colleagues look at the thing. Shine some light on it. Analyze the metal.”

  “Maybe after the group and I have gone at it another way. I won’t put you in danger. I have to know it’s safe first. Julie died guarding it.”

  His jaw tightened. “You do realize I’m not a child. I realize I got attacked in front of you. All the more reason to let me help.”

  “Okay, say I do.” I kept my voice low, although I wanted to yell. “Who will you put at risk besides yourself? Your colleagues? Their secretaries? The random guy standing in the elevator who ends up in the crossfire?”

  He didn’t answer me, which at least meant he considered the subject. I took a deep breath. “Remember the time we travelled with Grayson and he puked all over me two seconds before we got on the plane?”

  Levi didn’t laugh at the memory. It was going to be a long flight.

  ***

  The plane’s ascent into the air went smoothly. I sat quietly. Levi hadn’t spoken to me since our little discussion in the airport, and I was just as happy for the silence. Let him ste
w. I spent most of days trying to figure out how far I could push things before someone got hurt. How many jobs could I do before I overdid it? How did I balance my life, my heart, my sense of righteousness, and what the world required of me without losing my mind?

  The first shadow to jump caught my attention. I jolted. It came from the front of the plane; the stewardess stepped on it, clearly unaware that what looked like a normal reflection of a human sitting on the plane was anything but ordinary. I traced the shadow and couldn’t find the owner. A shadow without a person …

  “Levi.” I grabbed his arm. “We have a shadow.”

  He sat straighter in his seat and his gaze followed where I pointed. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Shit.”

  “Something wrong?” The woman next to us stopped coloring in her adult coloring book and turned to us. “Do you see something wrong?”

  I patted her arm. No need to make a nervous traveler worse. “Not at all. I think I see someone we know.”

  “Oh.” She smiled, relaxing. “I just hate flying. Don’t you?”

  “Yes. I detest it.” She’d never know how true a statement I made. Where was Chase when I needed him? He could make her go to sleep or not notice what I talked about.

  A second shadow, this one closer to me, jolted. Levi saw this one at the same time I did and sucked in his breath. “Can you do something?”

  “I’m not a precision strike. I could jam it with the light and short circuit the whole plane.” I remembered how I’d blown out all my lightbulbs when Top Hat had come calling at my house the night Grayson’s possession had been revealed. Yeah, I wasn’t doing that on the plane.

  Levi scratched his head. “What do you need to have happen here? They’re coming toward us. They’re going to hurt people.” He had to be recalling his own encounter with the horrifying beings. “They’re going to take the idol. That can’t be allowed to happen.”

  Although I still had no idea what the phoenix statue did, I tended to agree with him. Michael said it was important, and I didn’t find him exaggerating when it came to this kind of problem. “I need them to land the plane.”

  “Not such an easy thing to have happen. They kind of frown on people demanding to get off, particularly after takeoff.”

  I was completely out of ideas. “Levi, I’m clueless right now. Something bad is going to happen.”

  The woman next to me shrieked when she heard my words, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to make her feel better. As the unfortunate soul seated next to us, she was most likely royally screwed. I wasn’t going to crash the plane to kill the shadows. Maybe that was the right thing to do. Save the phoenix and the rest of humanity while sacrificing myself along with a plane filled with people. I wasn’t afraid to die, but I wouldn’t take others out with me. I’d already lost my life once. How was it up to me to decide who lived and who died? There had to be someone better qualified to …

  Levi looked at me from the side of his eye. “Seizure.”

  “What?”

  He never answered me, instead throwing his body into the center aisle and flopping around. The longest thirty seconds of my life passed before I realized what I had to do. I jumped to my feet. “Someone help. My husband is having a seizure.”

  Levi had never had one in his life. I hoped he could do a really good job of faking it.

  We ended up landing early. Between the scene Levi caused, the commotion in the center aisle, and the flight attendant’s inability to calm the woman coloring next to me, our flight returned to a gate faster than I’d thought possible.

  My ex-husband was wheeled away in an ambulance, and I was left to deal with the police who had questions—lots of them. I held the idol close to my body and hoped the fact that we moved from place to place quickly was enough to make it hard for the shadows to attack. They obviously knew they had the fake phoenix.

  By the time I got to Levi’s hospital room, they had him sedated. He mumbled something to me that I couldn’t understand and fell back to sleep. He hadn’t had a seizure. At this point, the doctor wanted a head CT and thought he’d had some horrible panic attack. My poor ex-husband, who’d never freaked out in his whole life, had really taken one for the team.

  The shadow by my feet moved. I jumped. I didn’t want it here, not near Levi while he was so out of it.

  Hide and seek … I could hear Michael’s voice as he spoke to us. Standing next to him, the equally imposing Gabriel nodded once. They’d loved to have us play that stupid game, even when we were adults. We’d gotten really, really good at it. At some point, they’d told us, we would have to hide for our lives.

  I didn’t want to short out the hospital any more than the plane. I grabbed my phone and called Malcolm. He was 800 miles away. Even if he moved double time—and that was a long way to go using that much magic—it would be a long time until he got here.

  “Kendall,” he answered. “How’s it going?”

  I was running hard, so my voice came out in puffs and starts. “Listen closely; I have lots to fill you in on.” I gave him the report as concisely as I could manage. “I have to hide. I have to find some place pitch black with no shadows. Here in this hospital. I’m turning off my phone. I can’t let light in.” Where there was light, there was shadow. I know it’s going to take forever for you to get here. Find me. Wherever I am. Please.”

  “Count on it.”

  I hung up the phone and, with one hand, managed to power it off. I shoved it in my pocket, and I ran. Even if the shadows knew where I was, with no light they couldn’t find me. The morgue seemed my best shot, and after racing down flights of stairs and hiding behind a door until someone came out, I managed to get down there. The lights were off in one room, and I snuck inside. It seemed like it was some kind of office. I wasn’t afraid of dead bodies—I saw the deceased all the time—but I didn’t think I’d find anywhere to hide. I got under a desk. No light from the hallway reached me, and with the blinds closed, I was in as much dark as I knew how to be.

  Hopefully the office’s occupant didn’t come in on a Saturday. I shook. There was nothing to do but to wait.

  ***

  “Kendall.” I jerked from my half-daze at the sound of Malcolm’s voice. He squatted in front of where I hid. I blinked rapidly. “How much time has passed?” It didn’t seem like enough for Malcolm to have reached me.

  “A few hours. We double-timed. Waited to catch our breath and went again.”

  I took his hand and let him pull me out from under the desk. “We?”

  “Block is with me. He’s checking on Levi. Your ex is out of it but seems okay. I came to find you.”

  I got to my feet. “Thank you for getting here so fast. How many places in the building did you have to search before you located me?”

  “None. I came straight here. Don’t forget, killer, I could always find you when you hid.”

  Heat infused my face. As we’d gotten older, his ability to locate me quickly had been useful. Lots of alone time while others searched. My hand shook from holding the phoenix too tightly. He took it from me. “I’ll watch it now. They’re not getting through both of us today.”

  I let myself lean on his arm, and we walked quietly from the morgue. No shadows moved at our approach. Alone, I was a good target for the shadows; with Malcolm we were a different story altogether.

  “So Levi threw himself on the ground?”

  “I think if I live a long life, I’ll never really be able to believe he did that.”

  Malcolm kissed my head, and I took my first deep breath since coming to St. Louis. “Boy certainly has grown a pair. He’s still not good enough for you.”

  I love you, Malcolm. I almost said the words and closed my mouth before I could utter a sound. Hiding and having him find me seemed too normal. This was territory I’d gotten used to during our time with the Others. I couldn’t slip into old habits simply because they were easy. We weren’t going to our room to make out and sleep. We had real life problems and people who counte
d on us. The troubles of my heart didn’t count very much at the moment.

  Later, in the van we’d rented to drive to Austin, I watched the headlights on the highway. The shadows could attack us in the car, yet somehow I didn’t think it would be so easy. They hadn’t shown themselves since the plane. Had they changed their minds?

  Levi stretched out in the back, still mostly unconscious, and Block laid in the row in front of him. I could feel the other man’s power as he blocked Levi from whatever might be out there.

  Malcolm drove in silence. He didn’t look upset, his facial expression neutral. I thought he was just watching the road, not stewing about anything in particular.

  I turned to Block, whose real name was Keith. Malcolm had always called him Block, and for whatever crazy reason, Block never complained. Eventually, we’d all taken to using the name. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Like I’d miss all the fun.” He grinned, his light blue eyes dancing with amusement. The visible skin of his arms had been burned and healed. I could see the scars, yet I didn’t know the story. What had happened to my friend?

  “Seriously, I owe you one.”

  He snorted. “You owe me twelve. Who’s counting?”

  “I won’t forget.”

  Malcolm caught my gaze in the mirror. I reached out to squeeze his hand, and he let me. “Michael has a lot to answer for.”

  “He won’t see it that way. He gave us a choice. We said yes. There was danger in the decision. He’s going to tell us to suck it up and kill the shadows.” I closed my eyes. I guess I must have been really tired because I dreamed.

  I stood in a field surrounded by white lilies. They were on the ground everywhere, and their petals blew in the wind around me. Levi stood to my left; he looked sad.

  “Hey.” I took his arm to get his attention. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s not fun being dead.”

  My heart sped fast. “What?”

  “I said it’s not fun being dead, watching you make huge mistakes and not being there to help you.”