He set me down, his eyes glistening and happy. “Miss Charlotte, you came back.”
I chuckled. “I told you I would come back.”
“Okay, but you have to go now.” He clutched me around the waist, and I suddenly found myself being stuffed back out the basement window. The same window I had just latched.
“Wait, Rocket,” I said, planting my feet on either side of the windowsill, feeling oddly ridiculous. And quite ready for a pelvic exam. I’d been kicked out of asylums before, but never by Rocket. “I just got here,” I protested, pushing against the sill. But holy mother of crap, Rocket was strong.
“Miss Charlotte has to go,” he repeated, not struggling in the least.
I grunted under his weight. “Miss Charlotte doesn’t have to go, Rocket. She promises.”
When he didn’t budge, just pushed me closer and closer to the window, I lost my footing. Before I knew it, my right leg slipped and I found myself being crammed against the tiny window.
That was when I heard the crack, the chilling sound of glass splintering beneath the force. Damn it. If I had to get stitches, Rocket was so going to pay. Well, not literally, but …
I was doing my darnedest to twist and maneuver away from the decades-old glass when Rocket disappeared. In an instant, I dropped to the cement floor, landing mostly on my left shoulder and a little on my head. Pain burst and spread like napalm throughout my nerve endings. Then I realized I couldn’t breathe. I hated when that happened.
Rocket reappeared, picked me up off the ground, and stood me up. “Are you okay, Miss Charlotte?” he asked. Now, he was worried.
All I could do was fan my face, trying to get air to my burning lungs. The fall had knocked the breath out of me. The fact that it was a non-life-threatening condition did little to lessen the state of panic I was slipping into.
When I didn’t answer, Rocket shook me, waited a moment, then shook me again for good measure. I watched the world blur, refocus, then blur again, wondering if the knock to my head had me seizing.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said as I gulped tiny rations of air, none quite large enough to fill the void of imminent suffocation, “why did you do that?”
“What? Me?” I asked, sticking to monosyllabic utterances. I’d work my way up to bigger words in a few.
“Why did you fall?”
“I can’t imagine.” Unfortunately, sarcasm rarely translated into Rocket language.
“New names. I have new names,” he said, dragging me up the stairs. He patted the crumbling walls like they were made of precious metals. That was what Rocket did. Carved name upon name of those who had passed, and while the asylum was huge, I knew he would eventually scrape through the cement-covered walls. He would eventually run out of space. I wondered if the building would fall, if it would crumble to Earth like the people who had been memorialized by Rocket’s hand. If so, what would that do to him? Where would he go? I’d invite him to my place, but I didn’t know how Mr. Wong would take to an oversized kid with a scraping fetish.
“I thought I had to leave,” I said, my lungs relaxing at last.
He stopped on the top step and looked up in thought. “No, you don’t have to go now. Just don’t break the rules.”
I tried not to laugh. He was such a stickler for the rules, though I had no idea what they were. Still, I had to wonder what all that stuffing-me-out-the-window business was about. He’d never tried to bounce me before.
“Rocket, I have to talk to you,” I said, following behind him. He patted the wall on his right as we walked through the crumbling building.
“I have new names. They should not be here. No, ma’am.”
“I know, sweetheart, and I’ll get to them, but I have to ask you something.”
Before I could get hold of his shirt to slow him down, he disappeared again, and it took everything in me not to drop my head into my hands in frustration. Rocket took ADHD to a whole new level.
“Miss Charlotte,” I heard him call from down the same hall. “You need to keep up.”
I took off toward his voice, hoping the crumbling floors would hold and wishing I’d brought a flashlight. “I’m coming. Stay there.”
“All of these,” he said when I reached him. “All of these. They should not be here. They have to follow the rules just like everybody else.” And Rocket knew it was my job to help them cross. I looked at the wall he’d referenced. It held hundreds of names from dozens of countries. It amazed me how he knew this stuff.
I decided to test him, to see what would pour out of him at the mention of Reyes’s otherworldly — for lack of a better term — name. But first I would ask about Mimi Jacobs. I needed to make sure she was still alive. “Okay, but I have some names for you now.”
He stopped and turned to me. Nothing on Earth got Rocket’s attention faster than the mentioning of a name. His eyes shone eagerly, almost hungrily.
I stepped closer, not wanting to lose him if he took off on one of his quests through the haunted halls of the asylum. “Mimi Anne Jacobs. Her maiden name was Marshal.”
He bowed his head, his lids fluttering as if he were a search engine scouring the recesses of his own mind for information. He stopped and looked back at me. “No. Not her time yet.”
Relief washed over me, and I braced myself for the next name. I knew it was fruitless to ask Rocket anything else about Mimi, though I suspected he knew more. Now Reyes. After placing a hand on his arm for good measure, I asked, “Rocket, what do you know about Rey’aziel?”
His lips pressed together and he stood motionless for a heartbeat, two, then leaned into me and said quietly, “It shouldn’t be here, Miss Charlotte.”
Rocket had said that before when I asked about Reyes Farrow. Apparently, he knew they were one and the same.
I squeezed his arm reassuringly and whispered, “Why?”
His face transformed. “Miss Charlotte, I told you.” He chastised me with a scowl that looked more like a pout. “He should never have been a boy named Reyes. He’s Rey’aziel. He should never have been born at all.”
I’d also heard that before. “Rocket, is his corporeal body still alive?”
He bit his lower lip in thought before answering. “The boy Reyes is still here, but he broke the rules, Miss Charlotte. No breaking rules,” he said, wagging a finger in warning.
Once again, I breathed a little easier. I was terrified Reyes’s body would pass before I could find him. The thought of losing him petrified me.
“Martians can’t become human just because they want to drink our water,” he continued.
“So, Rey’aziel wanted our water?” I was trying so hard to understand his metaphors, but it wasn’t easy. Nothing about Rocket was easy.
His boyish eyes focused on mine. He stared a long moment before answering. “He still does,” he said, his fingers brushing over my cheek. “He wants it more than air.”
I breathed in softly. Rocket rarely seemed so lucid, so rational. So poetic. “Reyes said once he was born for me, to be with me. Is that what scares you, Rocket? Are you afraid for me?”
“It’s Rey’aziel, Miss Charlotte. Of course, I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for everyone.”
Oh. That was probably bad. I squared my shoulders and faced him head-on. “Rocket, do you know where his body is?”
He shook his head with a
“What rules, Rocket?” Maybe the clues were in the rules Reyes had apparently broken. I knew I was grasping at straws, but without Angel’s help, I had nothing.
“No playing hide-and-seek in the house.”
“Which house?” I asked, a little surprised by his answer. Reyes was hiding his body. Was that the hide-and- seek Rocket was referring to?
He stilled and looked down for a moment as if sensing something. Without warning, he slammed a hand over my mouth and shoved me against the wall. Leaning into me, he glanced around the room, his eyes wide with fear. “Shhhh,” he whispered. “It’s here.”
And in that moment, I felt him. The room became charged with heat and static, like an electrical storm was brewing within its walls. With the fluttering of wings, a darkness exploded in on us, swirled like obsidian clouds in the midst of Armageddon. When he materialized, he stayed ensconced inside his robe, his face shadowed, hidden from view.
