Devil's Advocate Page 2

  Not by the clock, though it was late enough there, too, she had no doubt.

  No. It was too late for anything.

  The angel squatted down in front of her, reached out, took her hands. He pressed her palms together and held them in front of her chest as if she were praying. Then he bent and kissed her fingertips. Very lightly, his eyelids fluttering closed.

  “Thank you,” he said in the softest of voices.

  “Please,” she begged.

  It was her last word.

  Then all she could do was scream.

  CHAPTER 5

  Scully Residence

  April 2, 12:01 A.M.

  Dana woke with a scream.

  Small, strangled, painful. It punched its way out of her chest and past the stricture in her throat and then died in the dark, still air of her room.

  It had not been a random, meaningless scream.

  It had been a word.

  “Please!”

  Cried out with all the need and horror and desperation that any single word could bear to carry.

  She sat up, panting, bathed in sweat, watching fireworks burst like magic in the shadows around her as the sound of her own cry faded, faded, faded …

  … and was gone.

  It took the memory of the dream with it.

  Most of it. Not all.

  She saw a flash of light on metal. She felt a burn in her own skin. Not one, but several, but when she dug and probed at her wrists and side and head, there was nothing. No cut, no lingering bruise, no trace of the warm wetness of blood.

  Nothing.

  Except the memory of the knife.

  Except the feeling of dying.

  Except the feeling of being dead.

  And something else. A face. A teenager or young man. Tall, she thought, though he was squatting down. Broad-shouldered. Strong. But his face was unclear. Not hidden by shadows, not exactly. It was more that it was shadows. That he had no real face. That there was only darkness where a face should have been.

  Please …

  She tried to recapture the word and listen to it again, because she was absolutely certain it had not been spoken in her own voice, even though it had come from her own mouth.

  The night grew quiet. The flashing lights faded, taking with them the shapes and sounds and strangeness, leaving only her room. She swung her feet out of bed and studied the darkness, trying to feel it, but it was like trying to coax a spark from a dead battery.

  As the dream faded, so did her belief that it had ever happened.

  Dana sat on the edge of her bed for a long time, wondering if it was a dream or a nightmare. Wondering if it was a vision.

  Wondering if maybe she was just a little bit crazy.

  CHAPTER 6

  Scully Residence

  6:29 A.M.

  “Jeez,” said Melissa as she shrugged into her denim book bag, “what’s with you this bright and sunny Monday morning?”

  Dana stuffed her math and science textbooks into her backpack, which was pink with blue piping, and avoided her sister’s eyes. “Nothing. Why?”

  “Um … have you looked in a mirror lately? You don’t just have bags under your eyes; you have matching luggage. Didn’t you get any sleep at all?”

  Dana zipped the bag shut and pulled it on. The backpack was heavy, filled with schoolbooks, the white gi she used in jujutsu class, and some stuff she knew she probably did not need. She adjusted the straps, but it still weighed a ton. Melissa’s looked like it was nearly empty, because she almost never brought her textbooks home unless she had to cram for a test the next day. Dana liked to read ahead and get ready for whatever the teachers were going to throw at her. One of her greatest fears was being unprepared for a pop quiz. The thought of it gave her actual cold sweats. Not that the teachers here in Craiger bothered much with them, not like the nuns back in San Diego.

  That hadn’t been what kept her tossing and turning all night, but she didn’t want to talk about her dreams.

  “The thunder kept waking me up,” Dana lied. She flicked a glance at her sister out of the corner of her eye, saw the skepticism.

  “Uh-huh. Thunder.”

  “It was loud.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There was a sound like a motorboat revving in high gear, and a blur came shooting past them. Dana had a quick glimpse of the reddest hair in the family, freckled cheeks, a striped shirt, and well-worn sneakers as the youngest Scully blew past her, burst through the door, jumped off the porch, and vanished. Ten-year-old Charlie was like that. He was almost a ghost in the family, rarely interacting with anyone, constantly in his own head and lost in whatever solo fantasy he was playing out. He added sound effects and even occasionally hummed a music score to his internal adventures. Dad disapproved of Charlie’s daydreaming and deep devotion to comics and science fiction movies. Mom tolerated him with loving exasperation but no real understanding. Melissa and Dana loved him, but almost never actually had conversations with him. And their older brother, Bill Jr., treated Charlie like a frisky pet puppy.

  Life was complicated at the Scully house.

  Dana went out on the porch and saw Charlie leap into the school bus. He never walked anywhere. He ran, leaped, jumped, hopped, dived, and tumbled. As the bus passed, she caught a brief glimpse of his pale face grinning at her from one of the windows. He held two fingers up in a peace sign, which she dutifully returned.

  She stood on the top step and looked at the big church across the street. It was an awkward blend of red brick, gray stone, and faded black tar-paper shingles. Tall, weathered, Gothic, and empty. It creeped her out and made the post-storm morning chill feel colder.

  And not what she wanted to see after dreaming of fallen angels.

  It was unnerving to see a place of worship standing purposeless, filled only with shadows. The neighbor, Mrs. Cowley, had said that it used to be St. Joan’s, a Catholic church, but there had been a bad fire two years ago. Several people had died there, including two nuns, the priest, and five people from the congregation. The building had been partly restored, but Mrs. Cowley said that it wasn’t going to be St. Joan’s anymore. Another group was moving in. That was how she put it. Another “group.” No one in the neighborhood seemed to know whether they were Catholic or Protestant, though Mrs. Carmody down the street said she heard it was some kind of nondenominational group.

  Dana’s father had sneered at that idea and dismissed it as probably one of those “Jesus freak” hippie things, and when Mom had pointed out that the hippie days had been over for years, Dad only grunted. That was how a lot of conversations went at the Scully house.

  Dana adjusted the straps of her backpack and thought about what it meant for a church to be empty. If the Catholics weren’t coming back, then the church would have been officially deconsecrated, which meant that it was no longer a house of God. The thought frightened Dana, and it made the building look not just empty but abandoned. By people and God. She never saw the construction workers who were supposed to be restoring it. Sometimes she heard hammering and electric saws, but never people. So weird. So scary.

  You’re an idiot, she told herself. Stop it.

  Melissa came out on the porch. She wore an electric-blue sweater that made her red hair catch fire. “Bus?”

  “Not today, Missy,” said Dana. She wore a heavy cream-colored Irish cable-knit sweater she’d gotten for Christmas. Even though it was the beginning of spring, she felt cold. She always felt cold, but this morning there was a deeper chill she couldn’t seem to shake. “We have time.”

  It was about a mile to school, and although there was a bus, they both liked walking.

  Craiger was an odd town. The total population was small, but it covered a large area because of vast farms. It was crowded during the day and a ghost town at night. Field hands who worked the farms came by the hundreds in buses every morning from Baltimore and other cities and then left at sunset. The high school and middle schools were magnets that drew in students from all
over the county, but most of the students vanished in fleets of yellow buses every afternoon. The small “center” of town was moderately busy, but at night and on weekends, Craiger might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.

  It was, however, a very pretty little town. Very green. San Diego had been all succulents and palm trees but not much grass, and very few leafy plants. April in Craiger was lush with ten thousand shades of green, from the purplish Bahia grass to the vibrant bluegrass to the dark green ryegrass. Dana had read a book on the flora and fauna of Maryland when her dad announced that he was being transferred all the way across the country. Identifying plants, flowers, trees, birds, and insects was fun for her. Anything that was orderly and precise kept her steady, helped her find solid footing no matter how weird her dreams got.

  She wondered how Melissa managed it, because floating above the grass and drifting on the breeze seemed to be how her sister coped with everything. With the constant changes of towns and schools and friends, with being navy brats, with the fights at home and the long, silent meals. With never being able to put down roots.

  “You had another dream, didn’t you?” asked Melissa as they crossed Elk Street, past a ranch-style house whose garden was an explosion of columbines and bluebells.

  “It was the storm—” began Dana, but Melissa cut her off.

  “You. Had. Another. Dream,” said Melissa, punctuating each word with a poke to her sister’s arm. Hard, too.

  “Ow,” complained Dana. They walked half a block. “So, okay, I had a dream. Big deal.”

  “So, tell me what it was.”

  It really annoyed Dana that her sister seemed to think this was all something delicious and wonderful. As if it were fun.

  Dana did not want to talk about her dream. She looked over her shoulder and could see the steeple of the empty church silhouetted against the morning sky.

  “Come onnnnn,” wheedled Melissa. “You know I’m just going to badger you until you tell me everything.”

  They crossed the street and walked around a pair of grade-school kids trudging toward the bus stop.

  “If I tell you,” said Dana carefully, “you’re going to have to promise not to make a big thing out of it.”

  “When do I ever?”

  Dana gave her a frank stare.

  “Okay,” said Melissa, “fair enough. But I won’t now, okay?”

  “You promise?”

  Melissa actually crossed her heart and held up a hand. “May lightning strike me.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Melissa shook her head. “You are weird this morning.”

  “I know.”

  Melissa took a lollipop out of her backpack, put it in her mouth, and began to suck very loudly. “Tell me.”

  Dana did. And she surprised herself by telling her sister all of it. Every single detail. Melissa did not laugh. She didn’t make fun of Dana. Nor did she make a big thing out of it. Instead, two small vertical lines formed between her eyebrows, and she lapsed into a thoughtful silence. They walked for three blocks without saying a word.

  When the silence went on a few moments longer than Dana thought it should, she turned to Melissa and asked, “Missy … do you think I’m losing it?”

  “No,” Melissa said at once. “I really don’t.”

  “Then … what do you think it means?”

  Melissa crunched the lollipop, attacking it with enthusiasm. She did that when she was happy and she did it when she was nervous. She wasn’t happy now.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s—”

  Before she could finish, someone yelled, “Hey, Red and Redder!”

  They turned as two other students from school came trotting across the street. The one who’d spoken was Dave Minderjahn, a junior who was one of the legion of guys who wanted to go out with Melissa. He was with his sister, Eileen, who was a sophomore and in a few of Dana’s classes. They were both trim, athletic, with dark hair and brown eyes. Eileen was a very pretty cheerleader, but not one of the nasty stuck-up ones. She was a bookworm who also did sports. Dave was on the school’s soccer team. They wore identical FSK High sweatshirts. Dave wore his over green corduroys, and Eileen wore hers over new and very tight designer jeans. Dana had no idea why Melissa never went out with Dave. He was cute, and she didn’t mind his nickname for the Scully sisters—Red and Redder.

  “Wow,” said Dave, “that’s so messed up, isn’t it?”

  “Huh?” said Dana.

  “About Maisie.”

  “Who?”

  He gave her a funny look. “Maisie, from school? She was killed last night.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Craiger, Maryland

  6:42 A.M.

  “What?”

  Dana almost yelled it.

  Dave and Eileen stopped walking for a moment and stared at her in surprise.

  “Was she a friend of yours?” asked Eileen, suddenly looking concerned, and then she shot her brother a stern look. “That’s your problem, you goon. You drop stuff like that on people with no warning.”

  Dave put his hands up as if trying to back away from her rebuke. “Whoa! How did I know Dana and Maisie were friends? Jeez, Red, I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” said Dana, “it’s all right. I … it just caught me off guard.”

  Eileen touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Dave quickly. “Were you guys close?”

  “No,” said Dana. “I … I didn’t know her at all. It’s just…”

  Melissa stepped in. “It’s fine. I doubt Dana ever met her.”

  “No,” said Dana. “I don’t know who she is.”

  “Maisie was a senior,” explained Melissa. “I have—had—gym and social studies with her. It’s just such a shock, you know? Someone in our school being—”

  “How did it happen?” demanded Dana. “Where? Did they catch who did it?”

  “Wait … what?” said Dave, still off balance. “Catch who? For what?”

  “Did they catch the guy who killed her?”

  Eileen shook her head. “Oh … no, it wasn’t like that. Goon squad here said it wrong. Maisie wasn’t killed killed. Not like you mean. God! It wasn’t like that. She was killed in a car accident.”

  “Oh…”

  Dana wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not. It didn’t feel like one. Then she realized everyone was staring at her.

  “Oh,” she said again, changing the emphasis. “That’s awful, I mean. What happened?”

  They began walking together, Eileen on her side, Dave over next to Melissa.

  “From what I heard,” said Eileen in a confidential tone, “she was high.”

  “High?” said Melissa. “Maisie Bell? No way.”

  “You knew her?” asked Dave.

  “Not very well, just saw her in class. But she didn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d be out doing drugs.”

  “Well, that’s what I heard,” said Eileen primly. “That she was at some party outside town and had her mom’s car. She left late and smashed into a tree.”

  “Single-car accident,” said Dave, nodding. “No one else to blame. Just her and a bunch of bad choices.”

  Dana wondered if he was quoting someone. Probably. It sounded like the sort of thing a parent would say over breakfast at home.

  “It’s so sad,” said Melissa. “She must have had a karmic debt to pay off, and once she was done, she lifted off the planet.”

  No one commented. Few people ever did when Melissa said things like that. Dave and Eileen nodded soberly as if they agreed with the substance of what Melissa said, but Dana caught the brief look that flashed between the siblings. Amused, tolerant, affectionate, and a little exasperated, and clearly disbelieving. Dana could relate to a degree. While she shared some of her sister’s new age beliefs, Melissa seemed to go further and further out, talking a lot about spirit journeys, channeling ancient entities, astral guides, and that sort of thing, all of which made it hard to keep up.


  “It’s so weird,” said Dave.

  “What?” asked Dana. “Her dying like that?”

  Dave shook his head. “Not just her. Seems like a lot of people are checking out lately. Maisie’s, like, the fifth this year.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Dana, shocked.

  “You and Melissa are pretty new here, Dana,” said Eileen. “You moved here, what, around Christmas?”

  “After Thanksgiving, but we didn’t start school until after the Christmas break. Mom homeschooled us for a while and—”

  “And so you don’t know what’s been going on,” interrupted Dave. “See, Maisie wasn’t the first teenager from Craiger killed in a car accident. Maisie makes five.”

  “What?” Melissa and Dana gasped at the same time.

  “Yup,” said Dave, nodding. “Five teens since the school year started. Two from FSK and three from Oak Valley High right over the county line.”

  “What? That’s horrible!” whispered Melissa.

  “Think about how we feel,” Eileen said.

  “I only knew Maisie and Chuck Riley, ’cause they both went to FSK,” said Dave.

  “I’m so sorry,” Dana said, not knowing what else she could say.

  Eileen said, “They said that all of them were high. Drunk or high, whatever.”

  Dana frowned. “You sound like you don’t believe that.”

  “Maybe with Chuck,” said Eileen, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “He hung out with his older brother and some frat guys, but Maisie? No way. I’m not saying she was Miss Goody Two-Shoes, but when it came to that sort of stuff, she was straight. No one is ever going to tell me different. And I’ve heard people say the same about the others. No one else believes they were stoned, either. At least, none of us do. It’s just what the cops say. And the teachers.” She sighed. “Which means we’re going to get another of those stupid assemblies about the danger of drugs, blah, blah, blah, but it’s all crap. Maisie definitely didn’t get high. No way on earth.”