“You’re okay?” Felicity asked as she pushed a glass of salt water into my hand and picked yet another crumbling leaf from my hair.
Her words ran past me, stretching into a drawn-out, half-speed playback. I considered the question then nodded for lack of anything else to do.
“Then I’m calling Ben,” she told me in her full-fledged ‘don’t you dare argue with me’ voice.
It took a few seconds for the meaning of her words to register. My nerves were so jangled that I seemed to be lagging at least a half step behind everything going on around me. I suddenly noticed that she was no longer in front of me and that somehow my mouth was now full of salt water. I looked to the side and saw that she was across the room. She already had the phone in her hand and was stabbing at the buttons with her dainty thumb. I gave what I thought was a quick swish, twisted my head to spit the mouthful of salt water into the kitchen sink, dribbled a good portion of it down my shirt, and then turned back to her and nodded.
“Othay,” I said, pushing the half-intelligible word past my swelling tongue. “Buth thhith maith be nutthin. Juss enethy baglath”
My response was completely moot. She was already asking whoever had answered the line if she could speak to Detective Benjamin Storm. I kept quiet and took another swig of the warm brine then began to swish it around again as I watched my wife impatiently shuffling in place with the phone up to her ear. My brain was having trouble processing the image, and what I got was more along the lines of a fuzzy pair of Felicity’s dancing in the air before me. I blinked hard and shook my head, trying to get a grip on reality.
“Fek!” she spat after a moment, then pulled the phone away and thumbed the off-hook switch. “Voice mail.”
I spit again, managing to hit only the sink and not my shirt, then asked, “Ovit or tell?”
“What?”
I had made a serious mess of my tongue this time around. Worse than the times before and that didn’t bode well. What I had just tried to tell her was that this might be nothing at all. That it might be nothing more than an energy backlash a few months in the making. An ethereal echo created by all of our attempts to reconnect with Brittany Larson. It wasn’t out of the question. Felicity and I had put every ounce we could spare into the attempts, and then some, so backlash was a very real possibility. Put simply, there were times that casting undirected energies upon ethereal waters was much like gambling. In some cases, however, it could be a not quite practiced, side-armed fling of a boomerang; and, if you turned your back on it you ran the risk of getting cold-cocked.
But, that wasn’t what was happening now. Even though I had said it aloud, I didn’t believe it at all. And, it was obvious that my wife didn’t either. I knew I was just trying to convince myself that this couldn’t be starting again- so much for trying to be reassuring.
I was now fighting a headache that had positioned itself at the base of my skull, and I knew right away that it wasn’t going to be responding to aspirin, willow bark tea, or any other remedy I could cook up. But at least I was starting to be able to see straight even if it was taking a lot of concentration.
I struggled with my aching tongue and tried again. “Ovfith or t-thell?”
“Office,” she replied, finally grasping my words.
“Thry hith tell.”
“That’s what I’m doing, Row,” she returned, waving the phone at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Ah thnno,” I mumbled.
“Aye, sorry then. Wrong number,” I heard her say, then she spat, “Dammit, I can’t remember his cell number.”
“Thith, tthedro…” I started. “Tho. Ith fife, thefthn…” After the second try, I realized I was in no condition to extract the number from my scrambled grey matter. Fortunately, I was still possessed of enough lucidity to notice the caller ID box on the wall. I shook my head and pointed to it. “Thayre. Theck thh calther Idee.”
She was getting better at understanding my new language, and she immediately began scrolling through the numbers until she hit what she was searching for. With a quick flourish, she tapped in the seven digits and tucked the handset back beneath her mane of spiraling auburn curls.
She began her impatient shuffle once again, and I watched her as I fumbled with the cap on a bottle of aspirin. I knew it wouldn’t help my head, but maybe it would do some good for my tortured tongue.
“Aye, Benjamin,” she said suddenly. “It’s Felicity. No, this is important. Row just had another seizure… Yes, just like before… Not ten minutes ago… Yes…”
I watched on as she paused, obviously listening to him. Her face grew hard and her lips curled into a frown. After a moment she spoke again. “When?… No… We haven’t even had the TV on for two days now… Aye… Yes… He seems to be okay at the moment, I think… Rattled… No… No, not yet… Yes… Okay… Should I call her?… Yes… Okay then, we’ll be here.”
She hung up the phone without even telling him goodbye. When she turned back to me, there was an even thicker layer of concern overlaying her features.
“Whathh?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“He’s on his way,” she said. “He wants me to call Constance.”
“Ah kinna gotthh thaa,” I replied. “Whath-elth?”
She shook her head and looked away for a moment before locking eyes with me once again. “He says the Major Case Squad is already working a scene. They found another body, Row. Just like before. Shallow grave, near the Missouri River, no head.”
I looked back at her and closed my eyes as I slowly shook my head. A wave of nausea welled up in my stomach, bringing its thin burn up to my mid-chest.
Even though I had known in my heart that this wasn’t backlash, and even though I had known that this was going to happen again, I had still hoped I was mistaken. Right now, I would have given just about anything to be wrong.
If all this weren’t enough, I was also directing anger inward at myself. I didn’t know if it was because I had tried too hard or not hard enough. Or, if perhaps it were all because I had begun to take comfort in the fact that the dead had stopped speaking to me, and due to that, had ignored a sign I normally would have picked up. Whatever the reason, I knew it must be my fault that I had only now heard the voice from beyond the veil. Only now, finally choosing to listen, after she was already dead and there was no way to save her.
I beat back the desire to vomit and opened my eyes. Felicity was still staring at me, her face stricken with the same pained mask I’d seen her wear four months ago.
“Dammit,” I spat.
It was the first clear thing I’d said in the past fifteen minutes.
“Whoa, back up, Kemosabe,” Ben told me, waving his hand to indicate that I should calm down. “You’re makin’ assumptions, so lemme just tell ya’ what’s goin’ on.”
“I already know what’s going on,” I returned.
Fortunately, the combination of salt water, aspirin, and ice had taken the swelling in my tongue down enough to allow me to communicate normally by the time he had arrived. The lingual organ still had a tendency to get in the way of my teeth from time to time, but at least I was intelligible for the moment.
My friend had barely made it through the front door when I started in on him, all but babbling about what had transpired. The anger I had internalized had grown beyond my limits and was now venting back into the world as I outwardly berated myself for obviously missing something. Of course, what I was missing right now was the fact that he needed me to be quiet and let him talk.
“No, you don’t,” he replied. “There’s more goin’ on here than ya’ know.”
“I know another woman is dead, Ben, and it’s my fault!” I appealed.
“No, it ain’t. Now do you wanna shut up and listen to me for a sec?” he barked.
I started to form a comeback, then decided against it. Ben had a look on his face that told me he was starting to lose his patience, and I knew that if he did, it wouldn’t be pretty. So, instead of a trite objection, I simply said, “Fine. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay,” he replied. “First off, we’ve got a bit of a misunderstanding here. What was found today was skeletal
