A Flicker to a Flame (Mosley Coven)

Thirteen

THIRTEEN

XAVIER

My soul is yours

T he last thing I remember clearly is standing on the Golden Gate Bridge looking up at the sky, staring at the moon.

I don’t remember making the decision to go there or where I left my car or the long, narrow walkway. I remember the moon and the moment when I was finally free.

If I try very hard, I can remember snapshots of the weeks before, and they were the same as ever. I went to work. I went home. I cried myself to sleep. I dreamed of a peaceful clearing in dark woods. I woke up and started it all over again. I’m sure there were a few visits to the clinic, but I refuse to dwell on the feelings those stir up now that I’m free.

For four months, I felt like I was just existing, floating through a world that fit me like a too-tight suit. And maybe it had always been like that, but now that I’d changed, I didn’t have the capacity to suffer through it anymore. And there was suffering. So much suffering. The only reprieve I had was in my dreams.

For four months, I let myself waste away in my apartment alone, at peace only when I was asleep. I couldn’t remember my dreams for a while, but the peace they gave me was enough to get me through the day at first. And when that wasn’t enough, I wracked my brain to remember every scrap I could.

It was just the trees at first.

Then a soft wind that rustled the leaves.

My palms tingled with the feeling of rough bark and then soft skin.

But then one morning, in that in-between place between slumber and consciousness, I remembered the only thing that mattered. The thing that eventually set me on a path that led to the side of that bridge, staring at the moon.

Cato.

And here he is.

* * *

CATO

M y heart thrums a happy beat against my chest when I see Xavier in my reflection. I’m smiling so hard my eyes are almost closed. Almost, but not fully, ‘cause I don’t wanna look away.

“Xavier?”

A smile spreads across his mouth, bigger and brighter than I saw the night we met. “Cato.”

As soon as I hear his voice — coming to me as if from thousands of miles away — my own smile falters. I know what he is.

The first ghost I saw was my Uncle Ernest.

I was fourteen, and he’d promised to take me fishing in a creek set deep in the woods north of Fiba’s Hollow. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks and woke up early on the day. I remember being so excited I wasn’t even hungry. I got myself ready and went straight out to the front porch, sitting in the pre-dawn darkness to wait for him. And he was right on time.

I’d known Uncle Ernest my entire life and he looked as he always had. I was too eager to notice he didn’t have a tackle box or fishing rods slung over his shoulders. Or maybe I did notice, but simply rationalized it through my own excitement. This fishing trip was supposed to be the highlight of my spring and I was ready. I remember hopping down from the porch swing and gathering up my own fishing rod, waving at Uncle Ernest to let him know I was on the way. He waved back.

I was rushing toward the steps, nearly tripping over my own two feet, when mama opened the front door looking for me. I think I said I was heading out when she told me Uncle Ernest had passed on. I was looking straight at him when her words registered. He was waving and smiling. I was waving back. But he was gone.

The power to see ghosts is rare. Some say it’s a blessing. Can you imagine walking through the world and seeing all the people buried where they shouldn’t be, all the people lost, not knowing if the ones they loved were searching for them, or seeing your loved ones waving at you from across the field when they’re really miles and miles beyond the veil? It’s an old, old gift that can easily feel like a curse, but mama reassured me that it wasn’t strong. It hadn’t been strong in our blood in generations.

But it’s strong enough to bring Xavier to me. And maybe that’s because it’s not only my power binding us, there’s also his.

“Junior? Junior!”

I step away from the mirror and feel something hot and cool at my back, right where Xavier’s ghost stood. I turn toward the door to find Billie stomping into the living room and blink rapidly, trying to make sense of this moment.

“Why are you yelling?” I ask in a tight voice.

Billie rolls her eyes and shrugs. “Mama said she sent you on an errand, and I know that’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie.”

She crosses her arms and shifts her weight onto her left leg. “What’s the errand?”

“None of your business.”

She purses her lips and stares at me, waiting for an answer. I wrack my brain for a response that’ll get Billie off my back — if there is one — but I’m coming up empty.

But then I feel that tingling at the back of my neck, that feeling I now know is Xavier. It brings a smile to my lips, and that’s the wrong response. Billie squints her eyes at me before looking around the room, searching for something. Anything.

“I remember her,” Xavier laughs into my ear. “I forgot it all, but I remember everything, I think. I remember you.” He sighs happily and I feel it traveling across my skin and down my spine. I wipe at my forehead.

“Me and Fredi forgot the lavender.”

“Huh?”

I take a breath and settle into the story. “When we were in the garden earlier, we forgot to pick some lavender.”

“We don’t need lavender. What does she need lavender for?”

“For the lemonade. Mama wanted lavender lemonade for the supper and she asked me to stay back and make it.”

I make sure not to break eye contact; it’ll only pique Billie’s interest more. She stares at me for a few moments before looking around the room again. “Fine, don’t tell me,” she said. “I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“There’s nothing to figure out, Billie,” I say, rolling my eyes. How I manage to keep my voice steady and calm while Xavier’s presence caresses my spine — like soft kisses under all my clothes and along my skin — I’ll never know.

“We’ll see,” she says and then turns back toward the door. She stops in the doorway and looks back at me again.

I try not to move even though I can feel a full-body shiver ready to tear me apart.

“I’ll come up with a better lie to cover for you,” she says before pulling the door closed.

I let out a long, shuddering breath and count to five before rushing from the room, up the stairs, and into my bedroom. Every mirror is a portal. You don’t need strong magic to see another world — another version of you, an alternate life you could have lived. But strong magic can show you so much more if you know what to ask. And I do.

There’s a mirror in the corner of the room, and I pull it out, resting it against the back of my bedroom door so I can see myself clearly. And then I wait until my heart has slowed and my mind is clear.

I set my intention, calling him back. “Xavier,” I breathe, inviting him home.

It starts as that uncomfortable tingle of breath on skin. A dry heat at my back, kissing the sensitive spot behind my right ear, stroking up and down my spine, caressing me like he couldn’t the night we met.

He appears in pieces, dust particles in the air framed in the dying sunlight from the window. I watch my magic gently ease his reflection into the man I remember. The man I haven’t stopped thinking about.

He takes a deep breath once he’s whole and opens his mouth. “I missed you,” Xavier says, his voice closer than before.

“What happened to you?”

“Have you missed me?” he breathes, joy smoothing the features of his face.

Yes. The answer is yes, but this isn’t the time for that. To do what’s required of me, I need to know everything, even the things he might want to forget.

I focus every ounce of my attention on his mouth. “Tell me what happened to you,” I say in the hard tone mama taught me to cajole the dead.

Xavier’s smile falters and his eyes begin filling with tears. It takes a second for my magic to work on him, and by the time it does, I wish I could take back my command.

* * *

XAVIER

“T hey said it was the flu at first. They said it would pass in time. But then it was a cough I couldn’t shake and I was aching everywhere. I felt cold in the morning and bone-tired at night, every night. And then I got a bruise out of nowhere and it didn’t go away either. And then another. I went to a local clinic hoping for a different answer than the one I’d conjured in my terrified brain.”

Cato’s perfectly smooth face is etched with pain now. Pain and confusion. “What was it?” he asks. A painful spike of jealousy shoots through my consciousness at his na?veté. What it must be like not to know. But the sour mood is fleeting, gone as quickly as my life.

I shake my head and press my lips shut, but my body feels far away, and I laugh, realizing that’s because it is.

“This isn’t funny,” Cato whispers.

I hadn’t realized I was laughing. “I gotta laugh to keep from crying.”

“You’re already crying,” he says, and I see trails of tears down his face.

“Where are we?”

“My home.”

“Where’s that?”

He laughs drily, wiping at his wet cheeks. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I remember saying your name,” I admit because that’s easy — the easiest thing in my life.

He smiles sadly. “Did you remember me?”

“Not at first, but I did when it mattered.”

“I didn’t think that could happen,” he says softly.

When I start laughing again, I can’t hear it, but I can feel it. And when Cato laughs with me, I know it’s real.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“When?” I ask eagerly.

Cato licks his lips slowly. “At the end.”

“Not…exactly,” I say hesitantly. “But I remember the moon and a bright star and the way your name tasted on my lips.”

“And then?” he asks, his voice breaking.

I feel light at these next words. “And then I was here.”

He nods and wipes at the rivers of tears falling down his face. I don’t want to make him cry. I’ve done enough of that for the both of us.

“Someone once told me that life is full of choices that only matter if you let them. We make meaning where we can, but the big decisions, the ones that matter, are mostly out of our hands. We don’t get to choose when we come into this world. One second, our souls are somewhere, and the next, we’re crying in somebody’s hospital room, a whole life of pain ahead of us. My life, at least. But we can choose when we leave.”

“I didn’t want that for you,” he says gently. “You deserved better.”

I sigh in relief, happy someone else thinks as I did. “Thank you, but you don’t have to cry.”

He shakes his head quickly. “Someone should cry for you. Someone should remember you.”

I feel the tears now. “And you will,” I tell him. “And so will our tree.”

He laughs through his tears. “You’re right. I will.”