Hereafter

A gnat's blink

Joaquin walked right into Tristan’s house without knocking. Somewhere nearby I heard voices whispering urgently, but they fell silent when I closed the door. Joaquin was already striding toward the mayor’s office.

“Just go,” I heard Tristan’s voice hiss.

A female voice answered. “But, Tristan, you have to understand—”

“I don’t want to hear it! Go!”

I was still trying to figure out who the girl’s voice belonged to when Tristan and Krista appeared from around the corner in the living room.

“J.,” Tristan said, his eyes smoldering. “We need to talk.”

I hesitated in the center of the entryway. Krista fidgeted with her bracelet. A door near the back of the house banged shut.

“Not now, man,” Joaquin replied. He walked right over to the mayor’s office and rapped loudly on the door.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tristan demanded, following him.

“Reporting a problem to the mayor,” Joaquin replied.

Tristan got between him and the door, pushing him backward. “You can’t just storm in here like that.”

“Get off of me!” Joaquin yelled, windmilling his arms to throw Tristan off.

“This is my house!” Tristan yelled.

Joaquin laughed in a sarcastic way. “Don’t even start with that shit, Tristan.”

“What shit?” Tristan countered, shoving Joaquin in the chest. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Joaquin shoved back.

Tristan’s nostrils flared.

“Rory, do something,” Krista pleaded, hugging her arms to her chest.

“Guys! Cut it out!” I shouted, trying to get between them. “We didn’t come over here to fight.”

“Well, then get him out of here,” Tristan spat. “The mayor’s gonna kill us. You know she hates it when we—”

The door behind him suddenly flew open, and the mayor stepped out. My heart seized up at the sight of her. She wore a crisp blue pantsuit, a light pink shirt, and a politician’s smile. Her blond hair was pulled back so tightly from her face it made her skin appear stretched. She seemed taller somehow. Broader. More intimidating.

This woman could send me to Oblivion. She could send all of us there if she felt like it.

Tristan slid out of the way, taking position behind Joaquin like he was getting ready either to back him up or throw him out. The mayor started to close the door, but not before I saw that someone was sitting in the chair across from her desk, tucking two black Converse sneakers out of sight just before she banged it shut.

“Can I help you, Mr. Marquez?” the mayor asked, clasping her hands together in a patient way. When her eyes flicked to me, I felt a chill in my bones.

“Yeah. There’s something going on around here, and I think you should know about it,” Joaquin said, his chest heaving. “Something aside from the obvious.”

Tristan shot me a betrayed sort of look, as if asking whether this was about what he thought it was about.

“All right, then,” she asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Tristan said, trying to drag Joaquin away. “It’s nothing.”

A tiny crack snaked through my heart. He really didn’t believe in me. In Aaron. He truly thought the coin was in the right. He was embarrassed that Joaquin and I were wasting his “mother’s” time.

“It’s not nothing,” Joaquin said, staring the mayor in the eye with impressively unyielding determination. “I just sent a girl to the Shadowlands, someone who didn’t belong there, and Rory did the same last night. The weather vane has been pointing south a lot more often than it ever has before. All these people can’t belong in the Shadowlands.”

The mayor glanced at me over Joaquin’s shoulder, then tilted her chin toward the floor and chuckled. My palms went slick.

“Mr. Marquez, the coins are never wrong,” she said simply.

My fingers curled like claws, red-hot adrenaline rushing through my veins.

“They were this time,” I said, my pulse pounding in my ears.

“Excuse me, but you don’t know anything about this,” she replied condescendingly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you haven’t even done a solo ushering yet, have you?”

She looked at Tristan. He shook his head, mute.

“But I do know that Aaron was a good soul,” I protested, my voice quaking. “I felt it. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

The mayor’s blue eyes crackled with anger.

“It means you’re still new here,” she said sharply. “And you have no clue what you’re doing.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Tristan said, squaring off next to Joaquin.

“Maybe the weather vane’s wrong,” Krista piped up suddenly, her voice reed thin. My heart swelled both with gratitude toward Krista and with hope. The weather vane being wrong would mean that Jennifer and Aaron had actually gone to the Light and the vane had simply indicated the opposite.

Another chuckle from the mayor. “Sweetie, the weather vane is never wrong.”

“Well, it is now,” I said, stepping toward her as calmly as I could. “Please, if we could just talk about this,” I implored. “Something is wrong. I know what I felt. I know that Aaron was a good person. If you’d just—”

“Stop!” the mayor thundered. She stepped around Joaquin and Tristan like their wall of muscle was nothing more than a puddle on the floor and came to a stop right in front of me. Terror seized my gut, and I staggered back a step. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? Weren’t you some sort of scientific genius in your former life?”

I said nothing. At that moment it was hard enough to breathe.

“What do you think is more likely? That a system that has been in place without a single hitch since the dawn of time has suddenly gone haywire, or that you, someone who has existed in this realm for less than a gnat’s blink, has made an error in judgment?” Her lips curled into something that resembled a smile but felt more like a threat. “What do you say, Ms. Miller? What’s your hypothesis?”

My whole body shook under her scrutiny as she looked me slowly up and down. I clamped my teeth together and held my tongue.

“That’s what I thought,” she said smugly.

“Look, we all know something’s off,” Joaquin said calmly, patiently. “Flowers and animals dying, leaves changing, hornet stings… Did you know Kevin found a nest of worms in his yard this morning? And there are spiders and flies and—”

“I’m well aware of what’s going on, Mr. Marquez,” the mayor said tensely. “I don’t need you of all people coming in here to tell me.”

“So you won’t even listen to what we have to say?” Joaquin asked. “You won’t even consider the possibility that people are being misplaced?”

She lifted her head and looked at Joaquin and Tristan. “I think you’ve wasted enough of my time. I’d like you to leave now,” she said, striding back toward her office, back to whomever was waiting in that chair. She paused next to Tristan and looked down her nose at him. “All of you.”

Next to me, Krista made a sound somewhere between a squeak and a squeal.

“Let’s go,” Tristan said to the rest of us. He walked over to the door and held it open. Krista was the first one through, fluttering like a startled butterfly. Joaquin hesitated for just a moment but eventually tromped out.

I was just passing by Tristan when the mayor’s voice stopped me.

“Oh, and Ms. Miller?”

I stopped and looked at her. In the shadows cast by the curtained window next to her, her face looked like a skull.

“Don’t come back without an appointment.”

Then she walked into her office and slammed the door.