Justine Davis - Errant Angel

I understand, she sent.

The connection faded. Quickly. Maybe they were tired, she thought. Of her, she added glumly. As if it was her fault people sometimes didn’t react the way she thought they would. Well, if they didn’t like the way she did her job, then they could fire her. After all, she hadn’t asked for this, they’d come to her. Of course, she hadn’t had many options at the time....

Now that the communications link was gone, the pain came rushing back. It seemed to roll over her from her left, and instinctively she looked in that direction. And saw again the single light glowing in the window over the repair garage.

She had taken several steps before the stern order she’d been given brought her up short. She stood there in the dampness, not really feeling the chill. It didn’t take her long—it never did—to rationalize it out. She obviously couldn’t function through this haze of pain, so she had to find the source, didn’t she? Maybe it was something she could fix quickly, and then get on with her work, as ordered.

She started off again, then hesitated again. They had been angry with her, the last time. She’d half expected them to pull her after that one. Not that it had been her fault that dying little girl’s brother had been so awful. And she’d thought the punishment she’d doled out to him moderate enough—why shouldn’t he spend a week hearing in his head what everyone was thinking about him? Besides, it had all come out right in the end.

And she couldn’t bear this. She truly couldn’t. Besides, she hadn’t really said she’d give it up. She’d said only that she understood they wanted her to. She started toward the light.

Three Oaks Garage.

She stood looking up at the faded lettering over the high, roll-up door. The place looked old, as did most of the buildings of this small business district that was centered around the plaza where the three spreading old trees the town had been named for stood. She had no doubts now that she was in the right place; whoever was sending off those waves of anguish was here, close by. No doubt in the room with the light; no one who was feeling like this would be sleeping much.

She tilted her head back, staring up at the rectangle of light. She spared a second to hope that the bosses weren’t monitoring her power usage, then closed her eyes and concentrated.

The darkness behind her eyelids seemed to swirl, then lessen, fading to gray. Slowly the image formed, wavered, then settled.

It was a small room, teetering on the edge of shabby. There were few furnishings; a narrow, neatly made bed against a far wall, a single armchair in front of a small television, on top of which was the only new touch in the room, an inexpensive VCR. Across a side wall was a sink, a small two-burner stove, and a waist-high refrigerator. Next to that was a door that led to a tiny, pocket bathroom.

The carpeting was worn to the threads in spots, and the curtains that hung at the single bank of windows were old and faded by the sun. Yet the room was painfully clean and tidy, with none of the clutter of day-to-day living. No dishes, no glasses, no newspaper casually tossed after reading. The atmosphere of the room was beyond austere, it was almost Spartan.

This visualizing was the hardest of her powers to maintain, and she knew she would be drained if she kept it up much longer. Still she concentrated, raising her fingers to her temples and pressing in a way she’d found helped her sharpen the images.

She sensed him then, sitting at a plain wooden table against the wall beneath the windowsill, and she shifted her concentration. She saw his hands first, strong, work-roughened hands with long, supple-looking fingers curled around the pen he held, an end gripped in each clenched fist. Gripped so tightly, as he stared at the sheet of paper in front of him, that his knuckles were white with tension.

Even as she watched, the plastic of the pen gave under his fierce grasp, snapping in two with a sharp, cracking sound. His head came up then, and he stared at the ruined pen in his hands with eyes that were full of rage, pain and, oddly, resignation. It was a combination so powerful she had to suspend the vision for a moment, for fear the pain would swamp her.

Resignation. The thought came to her suddenly: as if he’d expected nothing less from his own hands than destruction. And for the first time in longer than she could remember, she couldn’t tell if the flash of intuition had come from the outside, as usual, or from within her. It had seemed different, but she hadn’t had to rely on her own instincts for so long, she wasn’t certain she would recognize them anymore.

Just as she wasn’t certain about the odd feeling that flooded her as she looked at the man whose suffering had drawn her here. His hair was dark, long enough to brush over his shoulders, and somewhat shaggy. It gleamed in the light of the single lamp, as meticulously clean as the room he sat in. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and he looked a bit too thin for his size, although there was no lack of muscle in the arms bared below the rolled-up sleeves of a faded chambray work shirt.

She looked again at his face, at the lean, strong jaw, the high, almost aristocratic cheekbones, the straight line of his nose. And she saw the scar, although it was nearly concealed by the thick fall of his hair over his forehead. It was a jagged, wicked mark, running from his right temple up into the hairline above his right eye.

Those eyes. She made herself look at them again, bracing herself for a flood of that incapacitating pain. There was so much darkness around this man that it almost startled her to realize his thickly lashed eyes were green, shadowed now, but a vivid green nevertheless.

The image shifted, wavered, and she knew she was going to lose it. She saw him throw down the broken pieces of the pen, saw them roll across the paper on the desk, coming to a stop below the scrawled salutation that was the only thing written on the page. He reached out and crumpled the paper into a shroud for the destroyed pen, and tossed them both into a metal can on the floor.

And the pain faded away. As if he’d tossed it into the can, as well.

With the loss of the pain, her focus shattered and she was once more out on the rainy street, staring up at the rectangle of light.

And she was exhausted. She always was, when she tried to use that particular talent for too long. She’d heard that some of the others found it easy, and she envied them. Nothing seemed to come easily for her.

But at least she could think now, of something other than that awful pain. She could go on and, as the bosses had said, “tend to business.” Yet she stood still, heedless of the rain that was becoming heavy again.

Who was Linda? That had been the name he’d written at the top of the page. “Dear Linda.” Then he’d stopped. Because the pain had started? Was she a lover, lost to him, this Linda who caused him such agony?

She felt an odd pang at the thought, a faint echo of the ache she’d sensed before. But again, she couldn’t be sure of its origin, if it had indeed been his pain, or her own.

She nearly laughed at herself. Of course it wasn’t her own pain; she never felt pain. But she did get tired, and she was tired now. That had to explain why she was suffering from this odd confusion. A little rest and she’d be fine. She’d better be, she had a lot to do tomorrow. In fact, she had more to do tonight, if the people whose lives she was about to drop into were going to accept the persona she was to present to them. It was time to get started.

But as she turned away, she couldn’t help but look back at the window above her.

It was dark now.

* * *

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think this textbook is as dull as dishwater.”