Child, page 27
part #6 of Sam and Sam Series
“Okay.”
“Okay. What if I told you I spent a lifetime in heaven, after that, and then I came back?”
No need to mention that she’d been dead for fifteen minutes, at that point, or that God himself sent her back with specific, if vague, instructions.
“How would that make you not belong?” he asked. “I would think that you would find it comforting to be in God’s house.”
She shook her head.
“But I know.”
He smiled.
“Ever had someone try to tell you that you had a mental break, or that you imagined all of it, or that what you really saw was the EMT checking your pupils?”
“You mean, I don’t actually know, I just have a pretty good guess,” she said flatly. She had paradise in her head. This was not really something that she debated in good faith with anyone.
She hunted demons for a living.
And she was talking to a man who didn’t believe in magic. She shifted to stand again.
“Okay,” he said, putting out a hand. “You have no doubt. Maybe that’s something I might find inspiring. But you also have no home and no family if you’ve walked away from the rest of the faith because of that. You’re punishing yourself for not having doubt.”
“I’m saving you,” she said. He grinned.
“And you think I’d take your word for it?” The friendly teasing disarmed her a fraction, and he waved a flat hand at her. “You banish the dark and you heal the sick. I’m not going to ask you to sit here and argue doctrine with me. That’s not what you need. But you do need something, because you’re here.” He reached into his desk. “Look. Just give it some thought. If you want to talk, call me, e-mail me, stop by.” He handed her a business card.
“We travel a lot,” she said. He shrugged and stood.
“Okay. Well, you have a phone, though, right?”
“No.”
“Oh.” He grinned. “I thought everyone your age did. Can you e-mail?”
She looked at the card.
“I’ll think about it.”
He nodded and held out his hand.
“Do.”
She smiled, intending to fake it, but letting sincerity slip in by mistake. She shook his hand. They stood, clasping hands for a moment, then she noticed Sam standing in the hallway. He had something. What did he have? There was a moment of silent communication, and then she got it.
“Oh.” She frowned. “So…” Peter’s eyebrows went up. “There are some bad things out there.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. She shook her head.
“No, like things that you need a sign on a door to keep them out.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said. This made her smile again.
“No, I expect you aren’t. But… Look, if you ever need us.” She went to the door and opened it, taking the card from Sam, then turning back to face Peter. “If you ever need us, this is how you can get in touch with someone who can help you.”
She handed him Jason’s business card and he looked at it for a moment.
“Which one is Jason?”
“The one with the major rib damage.”
“You aren’t going to tell me what happened to him, are you?”
“If you’re conning me and you already know, I don’t want to give you any details that you didn’t already have, and if you don’t already know…” Samantha licked her lips. “I’m glad you don’t believe in magic. And that you aren’t going to argue doctrine with me. No. I’m not going to tell you.”
“Bad stuff, huh?” he asked. She nodded.
“Jason’s up,” Sam said quietly from the hallway. Samantha glanced at him and nodded quickly, then looked at Peter.
“I did need this,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been away from home for a long time.” She shrugged. “Maybe I will e-mail you.”
“I’ll see you off,” he said, walking around his desk and following her back down the hallway.
<><><>
Jason struggled to sit up, feeling as though someone had wrapped a length of rope around and around his chest and then pulled it too tight.
“Easy, killer,” Kara said, coming to help him. “Heard you got the bastard.”
“Sam got him.” He let her lift him until he could rest his elbows on his knees, then he sat with his head hanging for a minute. “How long was I out?”
“Few hours,” she said. “Probably won’t make it back to Chicago tonight.”
He nodded, thinking to himself that he wouldn’t be up for Chicago tonight.
He heard footsteps coming from around a corner in front of him, and he lifted his head. Sam, Samantha, and a stranger came to stand near him. Sam had told him that this was the pastor at the little church where he was presently sitting.
“He’s a good guy?” Jason had asked as they’d waited for Samantha.
“Sam doesn’t trust him, but she wants to,” Sam had answered, twisting his head in that odd way he did when he was listening to Samantha off somewhere else. “I think he’s what he seems like.”
Jason nodded to himself again, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Hey, man,” he said to the black pastor. The other man smiled widely.
“I’d heard you were awake. I’m glad to see it.”
They shook hands, and Samantha made a quick show of checking Jason out, then patted him on the back and went to speak with Kelly in a corner of the sanctuary. Jason put out a hand to shake with the pastor.
“Pastor Pete,” the man said.
“Jason,” Jason answered. The man squatted.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like a sorcerer tried to peel me open like an orange,” Jason answered. Pastor Pete gave him a strange look and Jason shrugged. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything,” Peter answered.
“They’re going to find a little girl,” Jason started, “well, a whole family, really.” He saw the look of doubt cross Peter’s face and Jason shook his head. “They’ve been dead a while. We just found out about it and came today. I can prove it, if you want, but when they talk to the neighbors, they’re going to describe an old guy. That’s who we came for.”
“Okay,” Peter said hesitantly.
“It’s the kid next door. CJ. He needs someone to check in on him. His dad beats on him, I think.”
Peter gave him a quiet, dour look.
“More common around here than you’d like to think,” he said. Jason nodded, looking over at Sam, who was waiting off to the side with Kara.
“He’s a tough kid,” Jason said. “I think if he had someone looking out for him…”
Peter nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Jason nodded and shifted and Sam came to help him. Samantha returned from talking to Kelly and knelt down next to him, motioning to Kelly.
“You said Kelly wouldn’t attack humans. I wanted to get the rest of the story from him while I still remembered.”
“Okay.”
“He can’t,” she said. “Not when they’re innocents and he’s not on a specific mission. He’s on some really tricky ground, here, Jason. You need to understand that. Without being gray or having a specific task, he’s taking a lot of risks that he’s going to make a bad decision and break a rule.”
“You’re kidding me,” Jason said, rubbing his eyes with his palms. “The kid is complicated, too?”
“He is.”
“He’s a kid.”
She looked at him strangely.
“You forget that he is as old as time. He may not look like it, but he remembers the creation.”
Jason looked over where Kelly was throwing an invisible ball in the air and, with his mouth wide in rapt entertainment, snatching it as it came back down.
“That kid.”
“Your own dumb fault for giving him an invisible ball,” Samantha said, motioning to Sam. “We should get some food into him and then find him a place to sleep tonight.”
Sam started to help Jason up, and Kara came over to get his other arm.
“I never did ask,” she said to Samantha. “What were you guys doing here, anyway? Did Kerk get in touch with you?”
Samantha bit her lip.
“No. My psychic best friend told us that we needed to be here.”
Kara gave her a little mouth shrug and shook her head.
“Full of surprises, aren’t you?”
<><><>
“So what have you guys been up to?” Kara asked as they settled in at a table at a pizza joint Jason had been to once before.
Samantha and Sam held a quick mental conference. She was uncertain, protective, and he gently dismissive. What secrets were really left, if there were demons watching, hellside? She waited a moment, seeing if an argument occurred to her, then, finding none, looked up at Kara.
“They’re on a mission from God,” Jason said as Samantha held her mouth open to speak. She closed it. Opened it again. Closed it.
“What?”
He shrugged.
“What?” she asked again.
“You are, aren’t you?”
“How did you know that?”
He grinned.
“Because I know the two of you well enough to know that you couldn’t amuse yourselves for that long in the sack. If you didn’t have something specific you were doing, you’d have turned up a long time ago.”
Samantha tried to hide the scourge of shame she felt from Sam, and it, as always, confused him. She brushed past it, trying to find where she had been going before Jason had short-circuited her story.
“Who are you supposed to save?” Kelly asked.
She closed her mouth again. Opened it. Closed it.
Frowned at Kelly.
“Why would you ask that?”
Apparently the angel had started eating. She wondered how long he’d been doing that. He chewed on his buffet-pizza for a moment, swallowing and smacking his mouth with toddler-like relish, then looked at her transparently.
“Because you didn’t come for help.”
She frowned, looking at Sam, who wasn’t any better prepared for this. She looked back at Kelly and shook her head.
“What?”
“If it were something big and complicated, or if you already knew what was going on, you’d have come looking for help. But if you’re just trying to save one person, and you’ve got a good handle on it, you’d keep working on your own because…” he looked bashful. “What he said.”
Jason looked pointedly at Kelly.
“Because it’s a lot more fun screwing your brains out when you don’t have a third wheel along.”
Kara snorted.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Each other,” Kelly said, confused.
“Everyone at the table knows that,” Jason said. “Go get me more pizza.”
He passed his plate down the table and Kelly looked conflicted.
“Don’t say anything interesting until I get back.”
Samantha, stunned, embarrassed, and flustered, spent the moments the angel took loading up a new plate of pizza trying to get her thoughts reorganized. Kara looked amused, and that was distracting. Sam sent Samantha a gentle good humor, just seeing if it helped.
It didn’t.
Kara was watching Samantha oddly.
“You okay, Sammycat?”
The look from Jason said he knew.
They all knew.
She turned her head away, wanting to run for the bathroom, the car, to be somewhere else. Sam was bewildered.
“So who are you saving?” Kelly asked, sliding the plate of food down the table to Jason. Samantha blinked, trying to recover her train of thought again.
“Ashley,” Sam said quietly, turning slightly protective.
“Who’s that?” Kara asked.
“Don’t know,” Sam said, straightening in his chair and leaning out over the table. “We keep finding Ashleys, but none of them are the right one.”
“She must be important,” Kelly said.
“Everyone is,” Samantha said softly. She shook it off. Just don’t think about it. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an Ashley involved in this thing. We just keep finding them.”
“How do you know when you’re done?” Jason asked.
“What he wants to know is when you’re coming back,” Kara said with a wide grin. “He’s pined for you guys like I would have never believed.”
“Have not.”
“Have, too.”
“Is pining bad?” Kelly asked.
“Pining is for lovesick girls who send scented stationary,” Jason said dourly. Kara grinned wider.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“You’re going to pay for that,” Jason said, turning in his chair.
“Hope so,” she answered, her voice turning deep.
“Seriously?” Samantha asked, as Jason leaned in to bury his nose under Kara’s ear. She looked at Sam, who raised an eyebrow at her and shook his head.
“Seriously?” she asked louder. Kara’s head tipped back. “At a fast-food pizza joint in the middle of nowhere?”
“South Bend is not nowhere,” Jason said, pausing as he worked his way down to Kara’s shoulder. “They have Notre Dame here.”
“Your chest came in three pieces, not four hours ago,” Samantha said as Jason tried to pull Kara across into his lap. He grunted, falling still for a moment.
“You know.” Kara turned her face down to watch him as he rested his forehead against her collar bone. “She may have a point.”
Samantha raised both eyebrows at them, exasperated.
“If I weren’t so bloody good at what I do, you’d be stuck in a bed for three months. Do I really have to tell you to keep your mitts off each other for a few days?”
“And even then, we might not,” Jason said, returning to his pizza. “So what have you been up to, other than this search for the elusive Ashley?”
So much to tell.
She tried.
It was hard to find words.
Sam stepped in again.
“A witch in Seattle got me with a trap, and I ended up laid up at Doris’ for a couple weeks. Just about went out of my mind.”
She wondered how much of that was a joke and how much of it was true.
“There are worse ways to pass the time,” Kara said.
“She kept working,” Sam said with a small smile.
“That’s… Well, it’s messed up, but that’s pretty much what I would have expected,” Jason said.
“How did you end up here?” Kelly asked.
“Abby sent us.”
“Yeah, Sam tried to explain that one to me. Gonna take a few more tries,” Kara said.
“Where is your next Ashley?” Kelly asked. “Can I come with you?”
“Don’t have one,” Samantha said.
“No,” Sam added. Jason snickered.
“Why don’t you have one?” Kelly asked.
“Haven’t asked Sam to find her, yet,” Samantha said.
“Why not?”
She shrugged.
“I’m tired.”
Kelly looked confused.
“But you know what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Samantha sighed. “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
There was silence.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Look, I dig cheerleaders,” Jason offered. She shook her head.
“Reruns, guys. You never…”
“You really don’t sleep as much as we think you do, do you?” Jason asked. She looked up and down the table, then shook her head.
“No. I guess not.”
<><><>
They found a little hotel and stayed there overnight, and then Jason and Kara said at breakfast that they were going back to Chicago. Samantha pulled Jason aside before they left.
“Look, take it easy for a little while, okay?”
“Aw, Sam, are you worried about me?”
“We’re still off-grid. You pop your ribs back apart and Kara takes you to a hospital, it means open-chest surgery and like a year of physical therapy.”
He hugged her.
“You’re sweet.”
She hugged him back, giving him one malicious squeeze for good measure. He coughed for dramatic effect.
“You taking good care of Sam?” he asked.
“Trying,” she said. “It’s a dangerous world out there.”
“And is he taking good care of you?”
She waited.
“That was a euphemism, wasn’t it?” she finally asked.
“If you like.”
She shook her head.
“You’re evil.”
He laughed.
“Let him, Sam,” he said after a minute. She shuddered.
“Not talking about this,” she said.
“That’s not what I meant,” he told her. “He’s the only one who’s going to be able to do anything to help you.”
“Jason,” she said, half warning, half desperate.
“I remember what you told me. I won’t say I get it, but I respect it. You’ve gotta let him.”
She closed her eyes and pushed her face against his chest.
“There’s too much… that’s come before.”
He shook his head.
“Never.”
He took hold of her shoulders and pulled her a step back, where he could look her in the face.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, and that you really don’t even want to hear it, but you’re going to hear it anyway. And then you can run away and hide and you don’t have to see me again for as long as you want. He’ll make you happy if you let him. It’s just sex. You guys work fine, without it, I get that. Don’t understand it, but I get it. But it’s not bad, Sweetheart. It is what it is, and it is what you make out of it.”
He winked.
“I’m going, now. Going to go say goodbye to Sam. If you want to avoid eye contact until I leave, I know Kara wants to say goodbye, too.”
She gave him a thirty second head start, then went to find Kara.
Kelly made one last entreaty to go with her and Sam, but she wasn’t ready to be the whole crew, again, yet, so she sent him with Jason and Kara again. She found herself standing with Sam in front of the parking lot, watching the Cruiser roll away.
“Where to?” Sam asked. He knew pretty conclusively that Jason had said something to her, but he had the tact to keep any thoughts to himself. Samantha chewed her lip as the Cruiser made a turn at a light and went out of sight.
