Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow - By L.L. Muir Page 0,47
broken rule number one, again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jamison was getting loopy. He'd think something had been slipped into his water bottle if he hadn't opened it himself.
Was he really buying the idea that Skye was an angel? Did he even believe in God? Of course he’d caught himself praying all the time, just in case, but did he buy it?
When he'd laid his head on his granddad's bed that day, the old man had said it. “She's an angel.” Had she confessed? Had she told Granddad she was there to answer his prayer?
He was positive he didn't want to ask what that prayer was. What if he'd prayed for death? She’d been around for three years. What if he'd been depressed and asked to join Grandma, to get out of a world in which his own daughter returned his unopened letters and treated him like...a monster?
“Skye?”
“Yeah?”
“I'm sorry I called you a monster, before.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“So, tell me. Where are these friends I can’t remember seeing since I came back to Flat Springs?”
She leaned forward and looked him in the eye and willed him to believe her.
“They're getting help. They'll be back.”
“Help?”
“Rehab.”
“Or are their memories getting adjusted?”
“That, too. But they are in rehab.”
“Better than dead, I guess.”
She laughed and leaned back against the wall again. “That's probably a good slogan for any rehab—Better than dead.”
“And Marcus? What happened to him?”
“His assignment was over. He went back. He'll get another assignment.” She was careful to keep her tone unemotional.
“And the explosion?”
“That was just our version of a dust to dust bit. His, um—”
“Body?”
“More like...container—it wasn't needed anymore. We can't just leave them lying around or bury them for someone to dig up and dissect decades from now.”
“Oh. Right.” He eyed her clothes. “What about all the Somerled farms. Why farms?”
“We may as well be productive. There are Somerleds in cities, too. They're just productive in other ways.”
“So, Somerled means the Final Host guys?”
“Well, no. It means ‘called of God,’ actually.”
“But you guys all know each other.”
“Not really, but it wouldn’t be hard to find each other, like if one of us needed help.”
He looked at the power bar on the floor. “You don't eat?”
“Just for show, baby.” She smiled, but he only glanced at her when she answered, like he was judging her honesty, then he’d stare at the floor until he had another question.
“So you don't need the food you produce.”
“Right. We send it all over the place. Disaster zones, that kind of thing. You have no idea how much food gets prayed for.”
“Well, that's cool, then.”
“It's always cool. It's not as if we'd be answering prayers for bad things. Like when someone prays someone else would die or something.”
“Well, if someone's praying for that, they probably don't expect to get what they prayed for.”
“Right.”
He was eyeing her funny again. She couldn't read his mind. How had he so quickly learned how to block her?
“So, how old are you?” He blushed, a darker shade of shadow in the eerie candle light. “I mean, I was kissing you, and you're probably... Oh, man. I don't know.”
“Old like a vampire? Hah! Get real.”
“So old you don't like to admit your age, then.” He looked like he was going to be sick.
He looked around until he found a bucket sitting in the corner, though he didn’t go get it. What a relief. She hated seeing people retch, although it always made her appreciate the fact she’d never need to purge herself that way.
“Age. Right. Well, I don't have a body, so I don't age. All souls are immortal, so there is no accounting.”
“So, how many assignments have you had?”
“Oh, well, that's a better question. Let's see.” She looked into the candle for a minute, counting. “Fourteen.”
“Fourteen lives? You're kidding.” He glanced at the bucket again. She wanted to put it over his head and pound on it.
“Fourteen assignments, not lives. I’m not a cat. Some assignments take more than a year. This assignment’s lasted three. And some took less than a week. So if you ask how long I've been around, I really can't say how many days, total, I've been in this state.”
“This state. You mean, in a container.”
“Yes. Contained.”
“Do you look the same every time?”
She wished. She also wished she didn’t have to answer the question, but she did.
“No.”
Stupid boy. He looked intrigued. Maybe he wasn’t too bright; he was buying her story without any proof. She could be an alien, or a vampire, or any kind of monster a boy his age could imagine.