Out of Body

Chapter 38

Gray reached Marley and bent over her. He found a pulse in her neck. With his heart pounding, he turned her onto her back.

Relief was short-lived. She looked bloodless and her flesh felt so cold it was hard. Her fisted hands pressed into her chest.

“Nat,” he yelled, struggling out of his jacket. “I need the blanket from your kit. And anything else warm.”

In seconds Nat skidded into the room. He looked from Gray to Marley and pulled his T-shirt over his head. He tossed it at Gray and ran out.

Gray pulled his own shirt over Marley’s head, drew Nat’s on top and wrapped his jacket over everything. Marley’s eyelids flickered. She looked at him, but her eyes rolled to one side.

“Don’t you die on me,” he said, shaking her. “I won’t let you die. Don’t try it.” He grabbed and held her against him, sat on the edge of the couch and chafed her back hard. He pulled the T-shirts down as far as they would go which, given her size, was knee-level. Wrapped against his naked chest she sent a deep chill all the way to his heart.

“Hey, hey,” he murmured. To warm her hands he forced her fists beneath his arms. “Stay awake. Nat’s gone for a blanket. I’ll get you thawed out and you’ll feel better.”

Her lips moved, but she didn’t speak.

Nat pounded in and skidded to a halt beside Gray and Marley. He threw down an old plaid blanket, then snapped open the silver sheet from his kit. The thing wanted to float rather than be wrapped around her.

“Rub her arms and legs,” Gray said, and they worked, side-by-side, pulling first one, then another limb free of the cocoon they had wrapped her in.

She began to shake, a steady, rhythmic shuddering from head to foot. Her eyes were wide-open now.

“You’re going to be okay,” Nat said. “We’d better call 911.”

“No.” Marley croaked out the word. “I can’t do that. Don’t try to make me.”

Gray could feel her panic. “Okay, okay. Calm down.”

“I won’t go,” Marley said.

“You don’t have to,” Gray said. He had been warned to take care of her himself and he wouldn’t fail.

Nat kept rubbing an arm. “Let’s get her home, then,” he said. “She’d be better off in bed. It wouldn’t take too long to get her there.”

Marley shook her head, no. She pulled away and sat on the couch with her hands clasped between her knees. “I can’t go there.” She hung her head forward.

“Just let us get you home,” Gray said. He massaged her shoulders and held her face in his hands. “Being in your own bed will feel good, Marley.”

“No,” she said through chattering teeth. “I’ve got things to do. I can’t go home.”

She extended one fist and unfurled the fingers. A scrap of torn black fabric lay bunched in her palm.

Nat moved closer to look. “Is it from someone’s clothing?”

“Mine. In the warehouse…that thing, the creature tore my sleeve and he must have kept this. Tonight…here, he gave it back. He was letting me know he’s the one who took Pearl Brite.”

“He was letting you know he can find you, too,” Gray murmured.

Nat opened the space blanket bag and held it out. “Drop that in here,” he said.

Marley did as he asked and turned her face into Gray’s shoulder.

He met Nat’s eyes and the other man made a motion with his head, offering to leave. Gray nodded.

“I’d better get back,” Nat said. “But I need to know where you’ll be.”

“We can’t stay here,” Gray said. Marley still seemed as cold as ever.

“My family would try to stop me,” she said and Gray knew what she meant. “Only because they love me and want to look after me,” she added quickly.

“I’ll take you to my place,” he told her. He wanted time alone with her to go over not just the case, but what was happening to him. While he had waited for her outside this room—after the voices had faded, he had felt and visualized things he must understand and he needed to talk to Marley about them. “Gus will get the wrong idea when he sees you, but why not give him that pleasure?”

Nat laughed, but Marley’s expression remained dull.

“Is it okay to go to Gus and my place, Marley?” Gray said.

She nodded and put her mouth near his ear. “I’m afraid. I don’t want to be, but I am.”

Rather than answer, he picked her up and carried her to the front door where Nat let them all out.

The night had turned heavy with the promise of another storm. A thick layer of tight warmth pressed in and the air was still. Gray hurried to put Marley in his car and as soon as the door was shut he walked around, passing Nat on the way.

“This isn’t my first time with this kind of stuff,” Nat said, looking straight into Gray’s face. “Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think so.” He didn’t want to be the first to reveal that he put a lot of credence in areas not readily accepted by all.

“Before I met Wazoo, I thought it was all bunk. It’s not. There’s a lot we can’t see or touch, but it’s there. I feel we’re close to breaking this case.”

“I don’t disagree. But I have to look out for Marley. She’s very vulnerable.”

“I know,” Nat said. He gave a lopsided smile. “Now you know what it feels like to…Ah, hell. What it feels like to love someone with a side you can only guess at.”

“Maybe.” He wasn’t giving everything away.

“They get so deep under your skin, you can’t dig them out.”

“So why aren’t you doing something about being with Wazoo all the time?” Gray felt Nat had opened the door to the question.

“What makes you think I’m not trying?” Nat said and got into his Corvette. He waited until Gray left the property with Marley.

When she opened her eyes, Marley stared into complete darkness for a moment. Lightning pierced windows and slashed across a room where she lay on a bed covered with a mound of blankets.

She lay very still, afraid to move even her head.

Then she heard breathing.

The covers were pulled tight across her. Someone was lying beside her on top of the blankets.

Dull pain throbbed from her temples to meet over her eyes. The side of her head felt raw.

The face of a young, beautiful black woman hovered inches above her and Marley barely stopped herself from crying out. High, rounded cheekbones, liquid-black eyes with an Asian slant, full lips parted a little to show perfect teeth, and brows that winged away. Hair pulled smoothly back and fastened at the crown and the most perfect skin completed a stunning woman who looked at Marley with a desperate plea in her eyes.

Marley couldn’t speak.

Thunder rolled, quite close, and wherever she was, the building shook. Within moments lightning struck again. She should be hot under all the many covers, Marley thought, yet she was so cold.

“Tell me what you want,” Marley said at last, forcing the words past a dry tongue and lips. “How can I help you?”

“Help me, please.”

“I want to.” Panic overwhelmed Marley. Of course, this was the cottage in Faubourg Marigny where Gray and his father lived. How could this vision come to her like this? She was always called by the Ushers and guided where she was to go, the way she was drawn through the portal that appeared in the red dollhouse.

“I don’t have much longer,” the woman said. “He told me. He said you should come with me. He sent me for you.”

“Who are you?” Marley felt mortally sick. The perpetrator of the wave of disappearances and killings, that’s who this one spoke of. Now he wanted Marley. Why hadn’t he taken her at the warehouse, or earlier, at Myrtle Wood?

Drops fell on her face.

The woman faded.

Marley wiped at her cheeks, wiped away tears shed by the other.

“Pearl Brite,” Gray said beside her.

Stunned, she shook her head. “You saw her, too,” Marley whispered, trying to turn toward him. “How?”

“I don’t know, but I did. And I’ve seen her pictures. Nat showed me.” He lifted the blankets and climbed into the bed beside Marley, took her in his arms and held her tightly. “Do we need help from someone with greater…with more of whatever we need to deal with this?”

She sighed and pressed her face against his neck. “Each of us—those of us with parapsychological gifts, must carry our own burdens. That’s a law we live by. I was given a task to perform and I must do it. There are people in my family who are stronger than I am, but this isn’t their task to deal with and in trying to protect me, they could do something I couldn’t bear. They could seal off any chance I have to get to the ones who need me.”

“You mean you must try to save Liza and Amber, and now Pearl, on your own?”

“Yes.”

“But I’ve heard and seen things, Marley. Just as you said, I have powers, too, and they’re getting stronger. There were voices that came out of a whispering mass that told me I must protect you. They said I must be prepared to fight for you. And I am. I’ll do anything to keep you safe.”

She heard the slow, hard beat of her heart. “The Bonding,” she said. “I had forgotten all its parts.”

“Explain.”

“We are bonded, you and I. By a physical, sexual dynamic that was preordained. You have felt the pain and the strangeness and so have I. We will never touch without total awareness of each other. There is more, but I’m too tired now. Because we have a Bonding, we are responsible for each other. The Ushers must have sensed what has occurred between us.”

“Ushers—”

“The voices you heard. They are my guides. To a degree, my protectors, although they tend to panic when they worry about me.”

“I know how they feel,” Gray said. “Tell me more about this Bonding.”

The thought intimidated her. “In time, Gray. I have an unusual heritage, more unusual than you’ve guessed.”

“I doubt it, sweet cakes.”

“Sweet cakes?” The words exploded from her. “I’ve never been called—”

“Well, you have now. And I never called anyone that before, so you’re special.” He sounded smug. “What the hell do we do next? I’d better bring Nat up to speed.”

“He can’t help,” Marley said. “It will be up to me.”

“Who is the other one?” Gray asked. “The man on his own?”

She let her eyes close. “What man?”

“The one I saw. Tall with long hair that’s turning gray. His face is young.”

Marley held her breath. “Where?”

“In your workroom. Then at Myrtle Wood. He said he was your mentor.”

“Mentor?”

“I think…I think he’s a ghost.”

He held her tighter. Her eyes were wide-open now and she stared at his dark shape. “Are you sure?”

“How would I know? I never saw a ghost—”

“No. Are you sure he said he was the Mentor?”

For an instant he was quiet, then he said, “Yes, that’s it. The Mentor. He told me…he warned me to be watchful for you.”

Gray had seen the Mentor, talked to the Mentor. There couldn’t be any doubt of his existence—it was all true. And Gray was Bonded to her.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“I will be. I’ll know when it’s time to go for Pearl. The Ushers will agitate.” She looked at the gleam of his eyes and wrestled with the notion that he could well develop a mirror image of her skills. How would he deal with that? Or not deal with it? “I need to eat first.”

Gray leaped from the bed and said, “I hope to hell there’s chocolate in this place.”