Kissed by an Angel Read online

  "You couldn't see," prompted Gregory.

  "There were other images on the glass, reflections that made it confusing. I got closer. My face was almost against the glass. Suddenly it exploded! The shadow turned into a deer. It crashed through the window and raced away."

  She fell silent. Gregory cupped her chin in his hand and pulled it up toward him, gazing deeply into her eyes.

  From across the room, Tristan called to her. "Ivy! Ivy, look at me," he begged.

  But she looked back at Gregory, her mouth quivering.

  "Is that the end of the dream?" Gregory asked.

  She nodded.

  With the back of his hand he gently stroked her cheek.

  Tristan wanted her to be comforted, but-"You don't remember anything else?" Gregory said.

  Ivy shook her head.

  "Open your eyes, Ivy! Look at me!" Tristan called to her.

  Then he noticed Philip, who was staring at the angel collection-or perhaps at him; he wasn't sure. Tristan put his hand around the statue of the water angel. If only he could find a way to give it to Ivy. If he could send her some sign-"Come here, Philip," Tristan said. "Come get the statue. Carry it to Ivy."

  Philip walked toward the shelves as if drawn by a magnet. Reaching up, he put his hand over Tristan's.

  "Look!" Philip cried. "Look!"

  "At what?" asked Ivy.

  "Your angel. It's glowing."

  "Philip, not now," said Gregory.

  Philip took the angel down from the shelf and carried it over to her.

  "Do you want her by your bed, Ivy?"

  "No."

  "Maybe she'll keep away bad dreams," he persisted.

  "It's just a statue," she said wearily.

  "But we can say our prayer, and the real angel will hear it."

  "There are no real angels, Philip! Don't you understand? If there were, they would have saved Tristan!"

  Philip fingered the wings of the statue. He said in a stubborn, little voice, "Angel of light, angel above, take care of me tonight, take care of everyone I love."

  "Tell her I'm here, Philip," Tristan said. "Tell her I'm here."

  "Look, Ivy!" Philip pointed toward the statues, where Tristan stood. "They're shining!"

  "That's enough, Philip!" Gregory said sternly. "Go to bed."

  "But-" "Now!"

  When Philip passed by, Tristan held out his hand, but the little boy did not reach back to him. He stared with wonder, not recognition.

  What did Philip see? Tristan wondered. Maybe what the old woman had seen: light, some kind of shimmering, but not a shape.

  Then he felt the darkness coming on once more. Tristan fought it. He wanted to stay with Ivy. He could not stand to lose her now. He could not stand to leave her before Gregory did.

  What if this was his last time with her? What if he was losing Ivy forever? He struggled desperately to keep back the darkness, but it was rising on all sides now, like a black mist, before him, behind him, closing over his head, and he succumbed.

  Chapter 14

  When Tristan awoke from his dreamless dark, the sun was shining brilliantly through Ivy's windows. Her sheets were pulled up and smoothed over with a light comforter. Ivy was gone.

  It was the first time Tristan had seen daylight since the accident. He went to the window and marveled at the details of summer, the intricate designs of leaves, the way the wind could run a finger through the grass and send a green wave over the top of the ridge. The wind. Though the curtains were moving, Tristan couldn't feel its cool touch. Though the room was streaked with sun, he couldn't feel its warmth.

  Ella could. The cat was lying on a T-shirt of Ivy's tucked in a bright corner. She greeted Tristan by opening one eye and purring a little.

  "Not much dirty laundry lying around here for you, is there?" he asked, thinking of the cat's fondness for his smelliest socks and sweats. The stillness of the house made him speak quietly, though he knew he could shout loud enough to-well, loud enough to wake the dead, and only he would hear.

  The loneliness was intense. Tristan feared that he would always be alone this way, wandering and never seen, never heard, never known as Tristan. Why hadn't he seen the old lady from the hospital after she died? Where had she gone?

  Dead people went to cemeteries, he thought as he crossed the hallway to the stairs. Then he stopped in his tracks. He had a grave somewhere! Probably next to his grandparents. He hurried down the steps, curious to see what they had done with him. Perhaps he'd also find the old woman or someone else recently dead who could make sense of all this.

  Tristan had visited Riverstone Rise Cemetery several times when he was a little boy. It had never seemed a sad place to him, perhaps because the sites of his grandparents' graves had always inspired his father to tell Tristan interesting and funny stories about them. His mother had spent the time trimming and planting. Tristan had run and climbed stones and broad-jumped the graves, using the cemetery as a kind of playground and obstacle course.

  But that seemed centuries ago.

  It was strange now to slip through the tall iron gates-gates he had swung on like a little monkey, his mother always said-in search of his own grave. Whether he moved from memory or instinct, he wasn't sure, but he found his way quickly to the lower path and around the bend marked by three pines. He knew it was fifteen feet farther and prepared himself for the shock of reading his own name on the stone next to his grandparents'.

  But he didn't even glance at it. He was too astonished by the presence of a girl who had stretched out and made herself quite at home on the freshly upturned dirt.

  "Excuse me," he said, knowing full well that people didn't hear him. "You're lying on my grave."

  She glanced upward then, which made him wonder if he was shimmering again. The girl was about his age and looked vaguely familiar to him.

  "You must be Tristan," she said. "I knew you'd show up sooner or later."

  Tristan stared at her.

  "You're him, right?" she said, sitting up, indicating his name with a jab of her thumb. "Recently dead, right?"

  "Recently alive," he said. There was something about her attitude that made him want to argue with her.

  She shrugged. "Everybody has his own point of view."

  He couldn't get over the fact that she could hear him. "And you," he said, studying her rather unusual looks, "what are you?"

  "Not so recently."

  "I see. Is that why your hair is that color?".

  Her hand flew up to her head. "Excuse me?"

  The hair was short, dark, and spiky, and had a strange magenta tinge, a purplish hue, as if the henna rinse had gone wrong.

  "That's what color it was when I died."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "Have a seat," she said, patting the newly mounded earth. "After all, it's your resting place. I was just crashing for a while."

  "So you're a… a ghost," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  He wished she'd stop using that annoying tone.

  "Did you say 'ghost'? You are recent. We're not ghosts, sweetie." She tapped his arm several times with a long, pointed, purplish black nail.

  Again he wondered if this was from being "not recently" dead but was afraid she'd puncture him if he asked.

  Then he realized that her hand did not pass through his. They were indeed made of the same stuff.

  "We're angels, sweetie. That's right. Heaven's little helpers."

  Her tone and tendency to exaggerate certain words were starting to grate on his nerves.

  She pointed toward the sky. "Someone's got a wicked sense of humor. Always chooses the least likely."

  "I don't believe it," Tristan said. "I don't believe it."

  "So this is the first time you've seen your new digs. Missed your own funeral, huh? That" she said, "was a very big mistake. I enjoyed every minute of mine."

  "Where are you buried?" Tristan asked, looking around. The stone on one side of his family plot had a carving of a lamb, which hardl
y seemed right for her, and on the other side, a serene-looking woman with hands folded over her breasts and eyes lifted toward heaven- an equally bad choice.

  "I'm not buried. That's why I'm subletting from you."

  "I don't understand," said Tristan.

  "Don't you recognize me?"

  "Uh, no," he said, afraid she was going to tell him she was related to him somehow, or maybe that he had chased her in sixth grade.

  "Look at me from this side." She showed him her profile.

  Tristan looked at her blankly.

  "Boy, you didn't have much of a life, did you, when you had a life," she remarked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You didn't go out much."

  "All the time," Tristan replied.

  "Didn't go to the movies."

  "I went all the time," Tristan argued.

  "But you never saw any of Lacey Lovitt's films."

  "Sure I did. Everybody did, before she- You're Lacey Lovitt?"

  She rolled her eyes upward. "I hope you're faster at figuring out your mission."

  "I guess it's just that your hair color is different."

  "We've already talked about my hair," she said, scrambling up from the grave. It was odd to see her standing against the background of trees. The willows waved ropes of leaves in the breeze, but her hair lay as still as a girl's in a photograph.

  "I remember now," Tristan said. "Your plane went down over the ocean. They never found you."

  "Imagine how pleased I was to find myself climbing out of New York Harbor."

  "The accident was two years ago, wasn't it?" At that, she ducked her head. "Yeah, well…" "I remember reading about your funeral," Tristan said. "Lots of famous people went."

  "And lots of almost-famous. People are always looking for publicity." There was a bitter edge to her voice. "I wish you could have seen my mother, weeping and wailing." Lacey struck a pose like the marble figure of a woman weeping in the next row over. "You would have thought she had lost someone she loved." "Well, she did if you're her daughter." "You are naive, aren't you."

  It was a statement rather than a question. "You could have learned something about people if you had gone to your own funeral. Maybe you still can learn. There's a burial on the east side this morning. Let's go," she said.

  "Go to a burial? Isn't that kind of morbid?" She laughed at him over her shoulder. "Nothing can be morbid, Tristan, once you're dead. Besides, I find them highly entertaining. And when they're not, I make them so, and you look like you could use some cheering up. Come on."

  "I think I'll pass."

  She turned and studied him for a minute, perplexed. "All right. How about this: I saw a group of girls come in earlier, headed for the ritzy side of town. Maybe you'd enjoy that more. Good audiences, you know, are hard to come by, especially when you're dead and most of them can't see you."

  She began pacing around in a circle.

  "Yeah, that'll be much better." She seemed to be talking to herself as much as him. "It will score me some points." She glanced over at Tristan. "You see, fooling around with funeral parties doesn't really meet with approval. But with this, I'll be performing a service. Next time those girls will think twice about respect for the dead."

  Tristan had hoped that another person like him would clear things up a bit, but-"Oh, cheer up, Dumps!" She started down the road.

  Tristan followed slowly and tried to remember if he had ever read that Lacey Lovitt was crazy.

  She led him to an older section of the cemetery where there were family plots owned by longtime, wealthier residents of Stonehill. On one side of the road, mausoleums with facades like miniature temples sank their backs into the hill. On the other side were gardenlike squares with tall, polished monuments and a variety of marble statues. Tristan had been there before. At Maggie's request, Caroline had been buried in the Baines family plot.

  "Swanky, huh?"

  "I'm surprised you sublet from me," Tristan remarked.

  "Oh, I made millions in my time," said Lacey. "Millions. But at heart I'm a simple girl from New York's Lower East Side. I started with the soaps, remember, and then-but no need to go into all that. I'm sure, now that you recognize me, you know all about me."

  Tristan didn't bother to correct her.

  "So, what do you think those girls had in mind?" she asked, stopping to look around. There was no one in sight, just smooth stones, bright flowers, and a sea of lush grass.

  "I was wondering the same thing about you," he replied.

  "Oh, I'll just improvise. I doubt you'll be much help. You couldn't have any real skills yet.

  Probably all you can do is stand there and shimmer, like some kind of freakin' Christmas ornament-meaning only a believer or two will see you."

  "Only a believer?"

  "You mean you still haven't figured out that?" She shook her head in disbelief.

  But he had figured it out; he just didn't want to admit it, just didn't want it to be true. The old lady had been a believer. So was Philip. Both of them had seen him shimmering. But Ivy had not. Ivy had stopped believing.

  "You can do something more than shimmer?" Tristan asked hopefully.

  She looked at him as if he were utterly stupid. "What on earth do you think I've been doing for the last two years?"

  "I have no idea," Tristan said.

  "Don't tell me, puh-lease don't tell me I'm going to have to explain to you about missions."

  He ignored the melodramatics. "You mentioned that before. What missions?"

  "Your mission, my mission," she replied quickly. "We each have a mission. And we have to fulfill it if we want to get on to where everyone else has gone." She started walking again, rather quickly, and he had to hurry to catch up.

  "But what is my mission?"

  "How should I know?"

  "Well, somebody has to tell me. How can I fulfill it if I have no idea what it is?" he said, frustrated.

  "Don't complain to me about it!" she snapped. "It's your job to find out." In a quieter voice she added, "It's usually some kind of unfinished business. Sometimes it's someone you know who needs your help."

  "So I have at least two years to-" "Well, no, that's not exactly how it works," she said, making that funny ducking motion with her head that he had seen before. She moved ahead of him, then passed through a black iron fence whose curled and rusted spikes made odd designs against the walls of an old stone chapel. "Let's find the kids."

  "Wait a minute," he said, reaching for her arm. She was the one thing that he could grab hold of.

  "You've got to tell me. How exactly does this mission thing work?"

  "Well… well, you're supposed to find out and complete your mission as soon as possible. Some angels take a few days, some angels take a few months."

  "And you've been at it for two years," he said. "How close are you to completing yours?"

  She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Don't know."

  "Great," he said. "Great! I don't know what I'm doing, and I've finally found myself a guide, only she's taking eight times as long as everybody else."

  "Twice as long!" she said. "Once I met an angel who took a year. You see, Tristan, I get a little distracted. I'm going about my business, and I see these opportunities that are just too good to pass by. Some of them don't really meet with approval."

  "Some of them? Like what?" Tristan asked suspiciously.

  She shrugged. "Once I dropped a stage chandelier on my jerky ex-director's head-just missing, of course. He always was a big fan of Phantom of the Opera- that's what I mean by an opportunity just too good to pass by. And that's how it usually goes for me. I'm two points closer, then something comes up, and I'm three points back and never quite getting to figuring out my mission.

  "But don't worry-you probably have more discipline than me. For you, it'll be a snap."

  I'm going to wake up, Tristan thought, and this nightmare will be over. Ivy will be lying in my arms-"How much do you want to bet that those girls are in the ch
apel?"

  Tristan eyed the gray stone building. Its doors had been bound with heavy chains since he was a little boy.

  "Is there a way in?"

  "For us, there is always a way in. For them, a broken window in the back. Any special requests?"

  "What?"

  "Anything you'd like to see me do?"

  Wake me up, thought Tristan. "Uh, no."

  "You know, I don't know what's on your mind, Trist, but you're acting deader than dead."

  Then she slipped through the wall. Tristan followed.

  The chapel was dark except for one square of luminescent green where the window was broken in the back. Dry leaves and crumbling plaster were scattered over its floor, along with broken bottles and cigarettes. Wooden benches were carved over with initials and blackened with symbols that Tristan couldn't decipher.

  The girls, whom he judged to be about eleven or twelve, were seated in a circle in the altar area and giggling with nervousness.

  "Okay, who are we going to call back?" one of them asked. They glanced at one another, then over their shoulders.

  "Jackie Onassis," said a girl with a brown ponytail.

  "Kurt Cobain," another suggested.

  "My grandmother."

  "My great-uncle Lennie."

  "I know!" said a tiny, freckle-faced blonde. "How about Tristan Carruthers?"

  Tristan blinked.

  "Too bloody," said the leader.

  "Yeah," said the brunette, pulling her pony-tail up into two long pieces. "He'd probably have antlers coming out of the back of his head."

  "Ew, gross!"

  Lacey snickered.

  "My sister had the biggest crush on him," the freckled blonde said.

  Lacey batted her eyelashes at Tristan.

  "One time, like, when we were fooling around at the pool, he, like, blew the whistle at us. It was cool."

  "He was a hunk!"

  Lacey stuck her finger down her throat and rolled her eyes.

  "Still, he might be bloody," said a redhead. "Who else can we call for?"

  "Lacey Lovitt."

  The girls looked around at each other. Which one of them had said it?