Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(57)

She turned away from me.

“I was awake,” she said. “I was more awake than I have ever been! Oh my Lord, it was—it was right here, it was, it was—”

She moved her hands over the covers, she pulled the fabric, squeezed it in her fists.

“You could hear it,” I said. “No one else. Just you.”

“It was like—it was a whole new system, a whole kind of music—here, right here, I didn’t need a piano, I didn’t need anything, I could—”

“Angel.” I took her shoulders. I tried to look her in the eyes but she was too distracted, she kept looking away. Searching the bed, the room, for what she’d lost. “You got close to a god,” I said. “Sometimes, there’s aftereffects. They stimulate the brain. It’s different for everyone. But whatever you heard, you’ve got to understand, it’s yours. It came from you. The gods don’t play music. What you heard, it comes from you, right? Nowhere else. Just you.”

Her face creased up. Her hands squeezed into fists.

“Where did it go?”

“It didn’t go anywhere.”

“Stop saying that! Stop it!” She wrenched herself from the bed, strode across the room.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s not my fault.”

“Did I say it was? Did I?”

Neither of us slept again that night. I rocked her in my arms, slowly, and her hand took hold of mine, gripping it as if I were a lifebelt in a rough sea; and I didn’t tell her just how fragile my own hold on the world could be, for so much of the time.

“Beautiful music,” she said. “So, so beautiful.” She was crying now, not loudly, just snuffling, her face against my chest. “And I can’t hear it anymore.”





Chapter 48

Ghosts at Evening




There was a woman at the airport. Her hair was long and blond. She wore a poncho and she clutched a small black diamante purse, pressing it against her belly. She could not stay still. She paced, circling the rows of chairs, stepping over luggage, now taking the aisle—but walking, all the time. Her face was set, her shoulders hunched. She never looked out of the window, never checked the flight boards. The only pause she made was when she went to check up on the boy that she was travelling with, a dandelion-clock blond of eight or nine, who sat beside their luggage, playing his little handheld game with that same obsessive dedication, as if it were a family trait. It wasn’t hard to guess that they were leaving something bad. I only hoped that they were going somewhere better, and I watched them, almost unaware that I was doing so, the way you watch a car wreck or a house burning down. Thinking, on some level, at least it isn’t me.

Then thinking, yet . . .

To Angel, I said, “You OK?”

“I’m fine.”

“You want more coffee? Breakfast?”

“No.” A pause. Then, “I want the fricking Muzak off. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

She put her head back, shut her eyes. I watched her: the soft curve of her lips, the little streaks of pink skin under the brown . . . dark freckles on her nose, gold studs in her ears . . .

There was a look of strain about her, though, and I could see her eyes moving behind the lids, unable to relax.

“With Ballington,” she said. “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“He had a god in him. How did you know that?”

“Instinct, mostly. Experience. Seen it before. Or something like it, anyway.”

A baggage truck drove by, honked its horn.

She frowned. She kept her eyes shut.

“All my life,” she said, “since I was small, I’ve heard things. Music. In my head, I mean. It’s not unusual, is it? Really?”

“I don’t know. Does it bother you?”

“Didn’t used to. Now, though—yeah. Sometimes. Last night.” She was talking very quietly. I had to lean close, conscious of the bustle all around, the chatter and the TV news, the PA calling flights; the distant, tinkly Muzak that she hated so much. “I think it’s the god,” she said. “Big Hollow. I think . . . I think maybe I did it wrong, and now . . .”

“You were good. You were fine.”

“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of training. It’s not your fault. But I spent years in school. Always getting ready, always trying to prepare. I want to know when my life’s gonna start. I mean, how long’s it gonna take, you know?” She rolled her head, stretched her neck. She looked at me. “Maybe I rushed it? Too darn eager—”

I took the reader from my pocket.

“Oh,” she said. “I tried that. Soon as I realized there was something wrong. Days ago.” She shrugged. “Normal, by the way. All normal.”

“Good.”

“The music—see. I keep hoping it’ll just go back how it was. If I shut up, ride it out . . . but when I hear it—it’s incredible. It’s beautiful. It’s like, the most amazing thing—and then it’s gone. I don’t remember it. I maybe get a feeling of it, after, but . . . Like when you hear a fish jump and you look up quick and see the ripples but you never see the fish. Uh-huh? The fish is gone. That’s how it feels. Just out of reach . . .”