Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(25)

“Because I’m a nerd?”

“There are worse things to be,” he said, giving her a big smile. “Besides, you do yoga and jujutsu. You can be our token cool girl.”

They walked out together and stopped in the hall. The gym was to the left and her art class was to the right.

“You really think Maisie was murdered?” asked Dana, trying to fit the idea into her head.

“I hope I’m wrong,” said Ethan, and left it there. She watched him walk away.

*

As soon as her last class was finished, Dana found Melissa and all but dragged her over to Beyond Beyond. They found their favorite table, and Dana told her sister about what Ethan had said. Everything, including the fact that Ethan’s uncle, an actual detective, thought that the deaths might be suspicious. When she was done, Melissa stared at her with huge eyes. Then she blinked and looked at her watch.

“Crap, I have to do my meditation class,” she said. “Don’t. Go. Anywhere. We really need to talk.”

“I have yoga in an hour,” said Dana. “Let’s talk after.”

“I have advanced yoga after that.” Melissa growled. “Doesn’t matter. Wait for me. I want all the details.”

“But … I just told you everything.”

Melissa stood up and grinned at Dana. “I want all the details about you and Ethan.”

“What? No, I—”

But Melissa left. Behind Dana, the cash register went cha-ching and the speakers overhead played strange music, and the day, already strange, continued to spin and spin.





CHAPTER 24

The Observation Room 2:37 P.M.

Agent Gerlach took a call on the car phone.

“He wasn’t just messing with kids’ minds last night,” said the caller. “He went out for some fun and games, too. We only just now found out about it.”

“Of course,” said Gerlach, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his tired eyes shut. “What did he do this time?”

There was a heavy silence on the other end of the line.

“You still there?” said Gerlach. “Tell me what he did.”

“You’d better come see for yourself.”

“Is it bad?”

“No, sir,” said the caller. “I’m afraid it’s a good deal worse than that.”





CHAPTER 25

Beyond Beyond

3:44 P.M.

“It’s important to focus on a still point inside your mind,” said the teacher. “Yoga is about health and peace and a calm mind.”

Yeah, thought Dana as she fought to keep her body aligned in the warrior pose, good luck with that.

Her mind was anything but calm, and peace seemed to be nothing more than an illusion. Less real in every important way than what she’d seen in the locker room. Less real than the angel in her dreams.

She stumbled through half a dozen poses, lagging behind the class, drawing the teacher’s attention so often that some of the other “peaceful” participants began heaving audible sighs of frustration and annoyance. Luckily, the class ended with a long, seated meditation. That was good. It allowed Dana the chance to try to piece everything together, to step back and take a look at everything that was happening the way people did when they wanted to see the message of a painting rather than peer closely at the brushstrokes.

She assumed the cross-legged posture, leaning slightly forward, hands palm upward on her knees, eyes closed, breathing slowly in through the nose and out through her mouth.

Ethan wanted to be a kind of cop, a forensic science officer. That had some appeal to Dana, though she’d never considered it before. Not that she really wanted to go in that direction, exactly, but it helped her organize her thinking about everything that was going on. For the past two days she’d felt like she’d been floating from one weird moment to another.

Maisie was dead. That was how it had started.

Except … No, she corrected herself. It started with the dreams. It started with the angel in them. And the strange things he whispered. Most of what he said melted away when she woke up, but some bits and pieces were starting to float back, to tickle her memory. Odd things, though. Ominous and weird.

Despite what had happened in the locker room and the apparent reality of the angel in her dreams, Dana wasn’t sure any of this was real. Or, if it was real, how much of it was true? Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting stronger. Or, perhaps worse was a better word. She’d always had strange dreams, but within days of moving here to Craiger, she’d had the first dream of the dark angel. Was it a kind of clairvoyance? Or maybe telepathy? She didn’t know and would have to ask someone. Melissa, maybe. Or Corinda. In any case, that was where it had started. That was Point One.

Point Two was what happened in the locker room. Hallucination, visitation, whatever it was. Dana didn’t have a vocabulary that included words for something like that. Maisie talked about the “Red Age.” What was the “Red Age”? There was no context, no key to unlocking what that meant, if it meant anything at all.

Point Three was the dark angel. What was he? Sometimes she thought of him as a devil, or the devil; at other times she thought he was an angel. In earlier dreams, the angel had not been violent, and he hadn’t been anywhere near as scary. Even though Dana thought he might be Lucifer, he hadn’t been all that frightening. That was weird enough in its own way, but why had her feelings changed? Was it because of Maisie? Maybe, but Dana didn’t think so. Not entirely.