The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,85
it could be given was that nobody had ever escaped. Jesse wasn’t likely to be the first.
“Lucy Ambrose to see Jesse Arens,” she said, tipping her dark, oversized sunglasses to the guard at the check-in. She walked through the X-ray machine and endured a pat-down by a very manly looking woman. She wished they made hand-size versions of these things that you could just use to scan anyone. How cool to actually be able to see through someone instead of having to guess. Lucy was escorted to the visitors’ boxes and she waited impatiently in the harsh white lighting until Jesse was brought out in cuffs. She watched him as he shuffled into his seat, bruised eye and sickly looking. “Bail fail?”
“Nobody’s opening their wallet for me,” Jesse said languidly. “I know that.”
“You need a fucking vacation,” she said, holding the visitors’ phone about six inches from her mouth so as to not catch germs, or poverty.
“So do you,” he said, realizing that Lucy looked just as battered as he did, if not worse. “I like the raccoon eyes, but usually it’s night-before makeup.”
“Even here, I have to be judged?”
Jesse smiled. Lucy smiled back.
“I need to tell you something.”
“How about starting with what the hell you’re doing here?”
“That guy, Sebastian—”
“I know, I know,” she said, interrupting. “You think he’s a murderer. Well, I’m done with him. We all are.”
“No,” he cut her off firmly, looking from side to side warily. “I think he’s telling the truth. You know, somewhat.”
Lucy was shocked by his revelation. And suspicious.
“Why the sudden conversion?” Lucy asked, wondering if this wasn’t some sort of reverse psychology ploy by Jesse to get back in her good graces.
“You asked me a few seconds ago why I was here. It’s because I wouldn’t tell Dr. Frey where the guy was. After I found you, I confronted him about the story he told me. He didn’t like it. The cops were waiting.”
“You think he’s lying about Sebastian?” A wave of nausea and guilt nearly overwhelmed her.
“I don’t know, but something’s not right.”
“You didn’t tell them anything?” Lucy said, surprised he wouldn’t sing like a diva in a West Village lounge to save his own skin.
“No.”
“What’s your bail?” Lucy asked, reaching into her bag for her wallet. “I’m getting you out of here.”
“Thanks, but don’t bother. I’m on a seventy-two-hour hold.”
“Are you going to be okay?” It was the sincerest question she’d ever asked him.
“I’m not worried about me, Lucy.”
Jesse paused.
“What?”
“There are eyes on you.”
“Jesse, there are always eyes on me. That was our goal, right?”
“It’s not a joke. They want Sebastian.”
“It’s not my problem anymore,” Lucy said. “I just want to forget the whole thing.”
“But you can’t?”
“I feel like I’m in limbo. Not really happy with who I was and not sure of who I am now. Something definitely changed in me, even if it was all just some kind of weird fantasy I got caught up in. Like the one my mom had me believe before she left. That she loved me for who I was. That nothing mattered but me. We all know how that shit played out. But, I don’t know. . . . This, he, was different. I felt connected to something bigger than myself. Something real. I can’t explain it.”
“Well, fantasy or not, I don’t think this is going away. Not until they get him, anyway.”
“Who’s they? The cops?”
“Probably, but this whole thing is being driven by Dr. Frey. He’s afraid of Sebastian for some reason.”
“Stop with all the paranoia, Jesse.”
“I think you’re being watched, Lucy.”
“You’re scaring me.”
Jesse placed his hand on the glass to meet hers.
“Good.”
AGNES’s ECSTASY
Agnes gave in.
In the middle of the night. Out in her backyard in the garden grotto by the koi pond. It happened. She felt as if she were leaving her body.
She opened her silk chartreuse robe, slipped it off, and lay bare on the rocks under the dogwood tree. Her auburn hair in a loose braid and wrapped around her head like a crown. One foot and one hand dangling in the water as gold, white, black, and orange fish nipped at her fingers and toes.
“Sebastian,” she whispered in a delicate, vulnerable voice. Calling him. Beckoning him.
She took a deep breath and got lost in the smell of his neck and hair. Spicy, warm—sandalwood, vanilla, frankincense, patchouli. He was not like any other. He knew love. He was love.
A flurry of cross-shaped dogwood blossoms opened up on the bare tree above her as if it were springtime. Then