Shattered Souls (32 page)

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Authors: Mary Lindsey

BOOK: Shattered Souls
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Alden buried his face in his hands.
The old man spoke for the first time—his voice was familiar too. “How interesting. Please ask her to wait. We will hear her in fifteen minutes.”
Paul nodded and closed the door behind him.
Race and I jerked away from the monitor, but it was obvious we’d been eavesdropping. Paul stared at us and then at the monitor.
He cleared his throat. “I think it’s best we wait upstairs,” he said.
 
I fidgeted in a wicker love seat on the terrace of the hotel. Soft tones of jazz floated in from where a pianist and guitarist entertained guests in the entry foyer. I couldn’t find any paper, so I tried to finger the guitar chords along with the musicians. Paul paced up and down the corridor, which was lined with French windows. Light slanted through the glass, illuminating the pattern in the carpet, which resembled Persian rug inlays. Race had tossed back a few drinks at the bar and was leaning against the wall opposite me.
The hotel felt haunted. Race had told me it was built in defiance of the Great Storm of 1900. When another storm passed over the island in 1915, a huge party was thrown in the Hotel Galvez. People danced while the wind and rain howled. The citizens of Galveston had won, but the island never recovered completely from the Great Storm. Many of the shipping businesses moved inland to the Port of Houston, but Galveston stood. The Hotel Galvez stood to prove it.
“Can you feel anything, Race?” I asked.
He sat next to me. “No. Your fear is blocking everything else out. The Speakers on the panel are really old and have practiced hiding their transmissions. Your rebirth, or whatever you’d call it, makes your signal pretty intense. You’re like a live wire. Keep cool, Lenzi. The young guy’s a Protector and you’re pretty transparent. Fear won’t get you anywhere. Fear is too basic to warrant merit. And, Lenzi, if I were you, I wouldn’t let on there is anything different about you. The shit’s hitting the fan, and your amnesia might not help.”
“Miss, they will see you now.” Paul gestured for me to come with him.
Race followed, but remained outside the door. I stopped in the doorway. Alden’s eyes met mine. There was no emotion in them, just hollow grayness. He stood and placed his USB drive on the table.
“I defer to the Speaker,” Alden said as he brushed by me.
The bald man stood. “Protector 438, you have not been dismissed.”
Alden took his cell phone from Race as he passed him outside the door of the conference room.
“We need to stop him,” the woman said.
The old man held up his hand. “No. Let him go. He won’t go far. He’s not running away from us. He’s running from her.”
All eyes turned to me.
THIRTY
 
“
P
lease be seated, Speaker 102,” the old man said, gesturing to the place at the foot of the table, catching my eyes as if he were looking for something. Where did I know him from?
I slipped into the chair, running Race’s words through my head like a mantra.
Fear is too basic to warrant merit
. I stared at the heading on the sheet of paper on the table in front of me.
Discontinuance Hearing: Protector 436
Unlawful entrance of human vessel—
 
“What can we do for you today?” the balding man asked, before I could read further.
His casual question caused my anger to flare, trumping my fear. “You can let my Protector go.”
“You, of all people, know that is impossible,” the woman responded.
I gripped the edge of the table. “I know nothing of the kind.”
The old man sat forward in his chair and clasped his hands together on the table. “What is she transmitting, Paul?”
“She’s angry, sir,” the Protector said.
The old man tilted his head. “Isn’t that interesting. Why are you mad, 102?”
I leaned forward. “Why would I
not
be?”
The balding man spoke. “Speaker 102, we understand that you are troubled by this. You have been in a partnership with Protector 438 for many cycles. Being as experienced as you are, you understand the necessity for justice.”
“Justice? This isn’t justice. This is murder!” I stared at their astonished faces. Faces with no names. People with no hearts. Only the older man at the head of the table seemed unsurprised by my outburst.
I continued. “You can’t just take an act out of context like that, any more than you can take a sentence out of context. It loses its meaning entirely, just like this bogus hearing has.”
The old man smiled at me, which threw me off balance. “What is the context, 102?”
“I have a name. Do you?”
“Of course I do. We all do. This is Ophelia, and on my right is Robert. My name is Charles. My last name is MacAllen this cycle. I am the elder of this Panel. In fact, I am the director for the IC Coastal Region. Why don’t you tell us
your
name now?” His smile broadened.
He knew. Somehow this man named Charles knew about my memory loss. From the confused looks on Ophelia and Robert’s faces, it was clear they didn’t.
“What is she transmitting now, Paul?” Charles asked.
Paul was standing just inside the closed conference room door. “Fear, sir.”
“Help me,”
the disembodied voice of a woman called to me.
“Help me, please.”
“Not now. Go away,” I said.
A male voice came from over my shoulder.
“You must help us.”
“Beat it, bogeyman!”
Charles laughed. It was an amused laugh. No malice. “You have always had such a strong pull for the Hindered. It is your emotion that draws them. You and I have rarely had a conversation that was not interrupted by them, have we?”
He had me, and I knew it. Fine. I had nothing to lose anyway. “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I have no recollection of my past lives.”
Charles leaned back in his seat. “So what is it exactly you would have us do, Lenzi?”
He knew my name. I wanted to scream.
A chorus of Hindered voices began calling out to me.
“There you are.”
The deep, gravelly voice behind me was familiar.
I jumped to my feet so fast my chair fell over. I spun around to find no one.
“We’ve gotta talk, babe.”
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse.
“Zak.” I slumped against the wood-paneled wall.
Charles turned his chair to face me. “Is this Hindered the boy from last night? Is this the same Zak?”
I nodded and slid down the wall to sit on the floor, heart shattering into a million pieces. Zak was a Hindered—he was dead. Just like Dad. Just like Alden was going to be. It was too much. I closed my eyes, wishing I could just evaporate into nothingness and make all this madness stop. My body convulsed with sobs, but no cries came out—only gasps. Zak was dead.
“Would you like one of us to resolve it? Your emotion will make you less efficient,” Ophelia said.
Her words were like a cup of ice water thrown in my face, wrenching me from my grief-induced stupor. “Less effective?” I pushed to my feet. “Well, maybe a little less efficiency is preferable to unfeeling rigidity. Come on, Zak. I’ll help you. What do you need me to do?”
Zak’s voice came from directly in front of me as if we were having a normal conversation. He sounded confused and agitated
. I just . . . hell, I guess I just wanted to see you again . . . you know?
The members of the panel studied me, and I realized that being Speakers, they could hear Zak too. I wasn’t quite sure what to say.
Zak was dead.
My chest ached so bad it was hard to concentrate
. Focus, Lenzi. You owe him this.
“So, is that why you’re here? Why you haven’t moved on?”
“I don’t know why I’m here. I just felt like I was supposed to find you. To let you know I wasn’t mad anymore, I think. But I am. I’m pissed. Am I supposed to tell you I’m sorry? ’Cause I’m not going to. Is that why I’m here?”
I closed my eyes in an effort to not cry. “I’ve no idea, Zak. All I know is it’s my job to help you find resolution. Tell me how to do that.”
“Let us take over from here,” Ophelia said. “He is borderline Malevolent.”
“Not a chance.” I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt. Adrenaline raged through me like flames. They thought I couldn’t handle it—that I was incompetent. Well, I’d prove them wrong. They planned to kill Alden; there was no way I’d let them screw Zak over too. He wasn’t a Malevolent, and my last act as Speaker would be to prove it and get him to heaven
. It’s never too late,
Alden had said.
I grabbed my overturned chair and placed it upright. “Zak, please let me help you. If you feel compelled to apologize, maybe that will make it right and you can move on.”
“Why should I apologize? You cheated on me. You never even gave me a chance. You chose that punk from the cemetery over me.”
“Zak, calm down.” Maybe his agitation was because he didn’t know what was going on. I sat in the chair. “You know you’re dead, right?”
“Of course I know I’m dead! I wrapped my car around a tree last night. I didn’t even make it back home.”
My heart pinched painfully. “Do you remember what happened right before you . . . before you wrecked the car?”
“
Yeah, I was partying at a friend’s apartment.”
I folded the paper in front of me into quarters. “Was that before or after you came to my house?”
There was a beat before he answered
. “I didn’t go by your house.”
“You did.” Maybe that was it. Maybe he didn’t know what had happened and that was holding him back.
“Stop screwing with my head, Lenzi.”
“I’m not, Zak. I’m trying to help you.” If only I had Alden’s ability to transfer memories, but I didn’t. “I wish I could show you what happened.”
“You’re lying, just like you lied about the guy at the cemetery. I never went to your house.”
“You did, Zak.”
“Bullshit,”
Zak yelled
. “This is some mind game you’re playing with me. Why am I here?”
“You are losing him.” Ophelia again.
“I can handle it.”
What was I supposed to do? Zak was getting angrier. Ophelia was right—I was losing him. I could resolve Zak; I was certain of it. I folded the quartered paper into quarters again, feeling the tension ebb through my fingers.
That was it! Folding paper soothed me. If I could get Zak calm, I could pull him away from this Malevolent edge.
“Why the hell am I here, Lenzi?”
I had to resolve Zak successfully so that Alden’s death wasn’t for nothing. I turned to Charles, who was watching my hands with interest as I pressed the creases tighter on the paper. “I need something,” I said to him. “I need a guitar. There was a guy playing one in the foyer upstairs.” He lifted a white eyebrow. “Could Paul get it for me? It’s really important.”
He looked at the glass bubble on the ceiling that no doubt contained the camera feeding to the monitor in the hall and nodded.
“Zak, I want you to enter the vessel so I can help you. Do you know what I’m talking about? You can put your soul in with mine.”
“Yeah, I know what to do. I don’t know how I know, but whatever.”
I suppressed a scream when Zak entered. It hurt, maybe because he was so close to being a Malevolent. I felt his emotions, which hadn’t happened with the other souls I had allowed in other than Smith.
I dug my nails into the arm of the chair as I experienced a wave of darkness coursing through me. It was awful. Poor Zak. “Why can I feel his emotions, Charles?”
Charles’s voice was calm. “Because you knew him in real life.”

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