Earthbound Bones Read online

  “You move here with your family?”

  “No, there’s only me.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “In a cabin up the road.” Adriel gestured in the general direction of the cabin. “Pam was kind enough to offer me sanctuary.”

  “You don’t say.“ The woman yelled toward the rear of the bakery, “You finally found someone gullible enough to take on that nightmare and she actually thinks you’re doing her a favor? Where did you find her? Rubes R Us?”

  Pam never looked up from the notes she was making in a spiral bound notebook. Adriel thought her lack of response quite odd.

  “It won’t be a bad little house once it’s cleaned up.”

  “House,” she snorted. “That place is a hole and you can’t deny it, Pamela Allen. Are you listening to me?”

  Pam kept writing.

  “That building should be condemned. It’s not a fit place for anyone to live,” the newcomer argued hotly. When her head swiveled back toward Adriel, she finally realized where she had seen that face before. It looked entirely different now, animated by strong emotion, than when Adriel had found its owner lying unconscious in the field. How could the woman have recovered so quickly?

  The answer slapped Adriel in the face: she hadn’t. Lydia Keough was not here in the flesh, only in spirit, and not only could Pam not see the ghost, the entire conversation was going unheard.

  “I’m someone in this town, so you’d do best not to ignore me.” Lydia wound up for a longer pitch.

  Head swiveling like a spectator at a ping pong tournament, Adriel watched Lydia rail at Pam, who remained completely oblivious. The diatribe looked like it could go on awhile, and so when Hamlin stepped from the kitchen to call Adriel in for a break, she followed him while keeping an ear on Lydia. She didn’t know what else to do.

  “You want this?”

  Adriel accepted the sandwich Hamlin held out to her. Keeping a straight face while Lydia resorted to a bout of colorful name calling, she plunked down on one of the stools Hamlin kept handy.

  “Stinking dishrag, dirty son of a deer tick’s cousin.” Individually the words Lydia screamed made sense, together they sounded like nonsense.

  Sweet relief for her tired feet was the only thing stopping Adriel from marching back out front and putting a stop to the yelling no one else could hear. Well, that and whatever magic substance Hamlin had put in the sandwich. She recognized bacon, tomato, and lettuce, but not the creamy condiment tasting of salt and a smoky spice to complement the bacon.

  “What’s in this?”

  Hamlin grinned, “I make my own aioli. Eggs, oil, a little salt, and some smoked paprika.”

  “It’s really good.” Adriel closed her eyes in appreciation for the food.

  ***

  Hamlin watched Adriel for a long moment before looking away. The way she ate mesmerized him. Chewing slowly and savoring each bite, she made him want to cook a hundred meals with exotic spices and flavors just to watch her eyes flutter closed in an ecstasy of gastronomic delight. His desire bordered on the prurient even though his motive was innocent. Or almost innocent, anyway. He wanted to feed her more than he wanted to touch her. What did that say about him?

  Was the way she ate what attracted him to her the most? He wondered. Or was it her undeniable beauty? No, it was more than just looks. It was an electric grace running through her like water seeking a level place to lie.

  If he had known there were occasions just like this one, when his thoughts were so precisely focused she could hear them clearly, he would have been mortified.

  ***

  Today the poetry of his musings carried them clearly from his mind to hers, and Adriel felt like a voyeur. Why was it only Hamlin she could read without even trying? Had their near-miss experience opened up some weird channel, or was he just a natural at projecting? Since there was no solid information to work from, she decided to let it go for the time being. Chasing the rabbit down that particular hole would probably only lead to more questions than answers.

  Shutting down the connection left Adriel feeling bereft. Though the last thing she wanted was to peek into his mind uninvited, those times when she was able to do so allowed her to feel more like her normal self. Still, being selfish was not fair to him. Forcing her mind away, she refocused her attention on the single-minded enjoyment of the last two bites of her sandwich.

  As a result, Adriel never noticed the silence—or the tinkling of the bell as Lydia passed through the door—or Pam entering the room. Consequently, both she and Hamlin jumped when a throat cleared loudly behind them.

  Pam gave Hamlin’s shoulder a squeeze. He quickly took the hint, grabbed his plate, and vacated the chair. In a minute, he was back with a second sandwich for his boss. Pam slid into his place at the table and began to eat. There was something odd in her manner. Something Adriel couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Maybe it had to do with Lydia. “Could you tell me about the woman I found?”

  “Lydia lived just up past your place. The big house on the left with all the windows.”

  Adriel knew the one: red brick with a pitched roof and circular driveway.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” There was no need to ask, given Adriel’s experience with the woman not half an hour ago, but making it a question rather than a statement of fact seemed the right thing to do.

  “Yes. Word travels fast in this town; I got the call about her a few minutes ago.” Despite all evidence to the contrary, Pam would miss their verbal sparring sessions. “Her husband, Ed, is a wonderful man. He was the backbone of the community until his heart attack last year. He took to his bed, and she jumped at the chance to usurp his place. She says he asked her to be his eyes and ears, but there’s no way he would ever have authorized the ditch work they’re doing. That’s the dry side of the road, and he has always been very careful not to waste taxpayer dollars. Her death is going to have a huge impact on him. And on our town.” She fiddled with a paper napkin lying next to her plate—folding and unfolding it while she waited for Adriel to say something.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Adriel sensed Pam felt more sadness than she let on.

  “Yes, well, I didn’t like her and I never made any secret of the fact. But someone killed her. It’s official; Zack Roman is calling it murder and bringing in the Staties—State Police,” Pam clarified. “Word is he is going to start questioning persons of interest in the case.”

  “And you’re afraid you are going to be one of them.”

  “No doubt about it. We’ve had some spectacular fights over the years, most of them in public.”

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a flurry of patrons speaking in hushed, but excited tones about Lydia and the ramifications of her untimely passing.

  Half an hour after stalking out the first time, Lydia herself returned to take up a seat in the corner of the room where she listened with growing horror to the inevitable escalation of fantasy in the rumors swirling around her death.

  She was still there at the end of shift, and spoke only one sentence to Adriel’s back as she walked out the door, “I know what you are, and now I’m yours.”

  ***

  How was she supposed to help Lydia with blocked powers? All the signs were there: feeling sorry for herself, descending into a pit of why-me thinking, and petulance—Adriel was in the midst of a pity party. Any one of her former charges would testify to her lack of patience with those types of soirées, and yet, she couldn’t seem to shake it.

  In all the hullabaloo, she had forgotten about her charges. Little Beatrice, who lived in foster care and despaired of ever finding a family to call her own. Who would the collective send to help Beatrice? Surely not Calamiel. His gruff manner and deep voice erred on the side of too stern. Maybe Hamith? No, she was good with kids, but something of a pushover. Beatrice needed a strong hand to keep her in line. Three sets of prospective parents had already caught her on bad days, and missed seeing the bright spirit bubbling
under the prickly armor of her exterior.

  And what about Amethyst? Her transformation to full reader had not come with an instruction manual. She would need guidance to use her elevated abilities, or they could backfire and cause repercussions in the future.

  Winston’s soft purr couldn’t pull Adriel out of the funk she was in. If she could only go home; even a short visit would recharge her batteries. Never had she felt so depleted.

  “Estelle. I need you,” Adriel called out into the silence. “Please, I need to go home.” Winston, now only feigning sleep, watched through slitted eyes as Adriel sank to her knees on the floor—pounding against it with sharp blows until she was spent, her hands bruised and torn.

  Adriel huddled there on the weathered wood, amid the smell of her own blood mixed with the dry powdery dust, and tried to recapture the sense of rightness she had felt in the past. No matter how hard she tried to find it, peace remained as distant as a purple mountain horizon.

  Estelle couldn’t tell an outright lie. So, she must have been wrong. There was no such thing as an earthbound angel—a divine being in fleshly form. It was impossible.

  Don’t be so sure about that, a voice whispered over the silence. The sound of Adriel’s heartbeat rushing through her ears reminded her of the soft rustle her wings once made. Instead of comfort, the memory brought more pain.

  Thinking sleep would be her best form of escape, Adriel levered up off the floor, her body moving like it had aged a hundred years. She threaded her way through the wall of boxes to settle down on the bed, where her head was still sinking into the pillow’s softness as she fell into dreaming. A rapid-fire series of images rolled past—highlights of time spent in service to both man and the divine.

  A million lifetimes passed by before dreamtime slowed to a crawl to show her the moments when the food truck bore down with certain death. Her perspective doubled until she was both experiencing the near miss and watching it from the outside. From the distant vantage point she saw the truck start to slide. Simple physics predicted there was no way that many tons of rolling metal could stop in time. So what had happened?

  Closer and closer the truck skidded. Adriel watched her own hands lift in what should have been a futile effort to stave off the collision. When the subtle wave of power flowed from the dream Adriel to alter the bounds of reality and bring the truck to a stop, the sleeping Adriel saw what Hamlin and Pam had seen in that moment. Not adrenaline-fueled wishful thinking, but a true vision of a beam of light and the shadow of wings.

  The same beam and shadow hovered when she watched her dream self lay hands on Lydia.

  It was enough of a shock to startle Adriel fully awake.

  Adriel raised both hands, turned them over to search them intently. She had no idea what to look for, since angel powers left no trace. All she saw were smears of dried blood.

  Closing her eyes, she reached for the power that once pooled at the seat of her grace. She pictured her hands clean and unbroken; all traces of her emotional upheaval wiped away. She imagined the familiar feeling of connecting to the energy flowing through the universe—the sensation of shaping that energy, directing it to suit the need.

  Like a radio station incorrectly tuned, a short burst of energetic static proved her connection was tenuous, but still present. Maybe all was not lost.

  Hope snapped Adriel’s eyes open, lifted her hands slowly to where she could see what, if any, healing effect had occurred. The smears of dried blood still decorated her milky skin.

  She growled in frustration, because the way to the bathroom was blocked again by a stack of boxes moved there during a recent bout of sorting. When she finally reached the sink to run trembling hands under the water, her breath caught and held while the blood sluiced down the drain to reveal pink skin and days-old scabs where freshly torn wounds had been.

  A prayer of thanks arrowed homeward, elation flooded through every molecule of her being until she felt filled to the brim with hope. If she could bend energy to stop a truck, and at least partially heal her own skin, this earthbound angel thing might not be so bad after all.

  Maybe there was a way she could go home.

  ***

  “You cheated,” Estelle accused Julius. “She didn’t do that all on her own.”

  “Best way to push through a block is to believe you can. She fails, we fail—they made that point quite clear, as you well know. All I did was give her a nudge.”

  “I’m surrounded by renegades.”

  ***

  Right in the middle of deciding what the next test of her powers would be, Adriel was interrupted by the persistent sound of someone kicking at the door.

  “Adriel, open up. Hurry.” Pam’s voice sounded muffled and strange.

  When the door swung open, it was easy to see why. A single eye skewered Adriel from behind an armload of paper grocery bags filled to overflowing. Pam staggered toward the kitchen area, only to find the passage too narrow to fit through. From too far away, Adriel watched one of the bags tilt, a carton of eggs sliding toward the edge of no return. She lunged but would have come up an inch short if, without a second thought, she hadn’t bent energy enough to pull the bag toward her through the air.

  Even with the second bag partially obscuring her vision, Pam felt something odd. After dumping the bag on the table, she rested hands on her hips, tilted her head back, and eyed Adriel with suspicion.

  “Close call.” Adriel turned her face away and called over her shoulder as she set the bag on the counter. Because it seemed prudent, she busied herself with sorting through its contents in order to avoid meeting Pam’s curious gaze. She was just putting a carton of eggs into the cabinet when Pam snatched it from her hand and deposited it in the refrigerator.

  “Not had much experience in the kitchen?” There was a sardonic edge to the question, and Adriel had no defense.

  “It shows?”

  “A bit.” Pam nudged Adriel aside to rescue several other perishables from the cabinet shelf before relegating them to cold storage. “Good way to contract food poisoning. How did you get to be an adult and not know milk has to be kept cold?”

  “I might have led a sheltered life, but that doesn’t make me a pampered twit.”

  Embarrassment flamed Pam’s cheeks a vivid red. “I never said any such thing.”

  “Well, you were thinking it,” Adriel snapped.

  “So what? You read people’s thoughts now?”

  Had she? Hamlin’s thoughts occasionally made it past the block, but only at random. Adriel paled and slapped a hand over her mouth. Above her hand, wide eyes turned to meet Pam’s openly curious gaze.

  “All right, “ Pam said. “Out with it. Whatever it is you’re hiding, it can’t be worse than what I’ll imagine if you don’t tell me.”

  “Oh, I think it can.” An intensely vivid image of being fitted for one of those lovely white coats with the sleeves that fastened in the back played through Adriel’s mind. “Trust me, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”

  “Try me.” Voice colder than a mud puddle in January, Pam deadpanned, “You might be surprised.”

  Burdening Pam with such an enormous secret without counting the possible cost would be extremely irresponsible. Still, her history of telling alternate versions of the truth—okay, fine, outright lies if you want to be picky about it—had met with mixed success. Who knew what might come out of her mouth if she opened it.

  Winston saved her from the attempt by choosing that precise moment to launch from his perch on top of the refrigerator to the counter and then, by way of Pam’s shoulder, to the table. His claws dug in long enough to leave angry red marks on tender flesh while she hurled several imaginative names at him. Being a typical cat, he ignored Pam as thoroughly as he groomed the back of his leg, and with the same amount of concentration.

  By the time her ire was spent, Pam had forgotten all about whatever secret Adriel might be hiding, and Winston did not wink at Adriel. Probably not.

&nb
sp; Chapter 6

  Muscles bunching under sleek black fur, Winston leapt straight up to land heavily on the tallest stack of boxes. Adriel sucked in a breath when she saw the tower wobble. “Nooo,” her voice sounded loud in the room. “No. No. No.” Bad enough she had signed on to sort through this mess, she didn’t fancy cleaning up some domino pile of trash because of a crazy cat with no respect for the laws of gravity.

  She wagged a finger in the cat’s face, “Cute will only get you so far with me, mister.” His sarcastic answer was to send his sandpaper tongue rasping across fur as he shot a hind leg into the air to clean it of dirt particles invisible to the naked eye. Once or twice, he paused to give her a look of disdain. “Just remember, I control the kibble.” Relenting, Adriel gave him a scratch under the chin.

  Talking to animals was a pleasure Adriel missed. Their bright chatter charmed her every time. Either Winston was unnaturally quiet, or her ability to hear animals had gone the way of her wings. Sad thought.

  “This one?” Adriel pointed to a medium-sized box and cocked her head toward Winston, who soundly ignored the question. “Fine, this one it is.” A steak knife made short work of the tape holding the box closed. “I hope there are no body parts in here.” Still talking to the cat, Adriel flipped the flaps open to sneak a peek inside. With a languid stretch, Winston slithered over to peer down from his perch and satisfy his own curiosity.

  Dirty socks.

  At least six months' worth. Their fragrance perfumed the air with a musty funk nasty enough to bring tears to her eyes. Not a dead body, though it smelled nearly as bad. Why in the world would someone fill a box with their filthy laundry? It defied logic.

  Dumping them in the washer sounded like a good idea. Unless adding water might intensify the stench. Instead, Adriel rifled through the cupboards for tape to seal the box back up, and a pen to mark the contents on the outside. Pam’s instructions did not cover this particular contingency, and there was only so far Adriel was willing to go to ensure a roof over her head. Handling foul footwear went way over the line.