Midnight Marked

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your cooperation and acknowledge it. I can assist you in momentarily revisiting this plane, which will allow me to hear your claim or your confession. Do you acknowledge?”

Consent, it seemed, was important for all sorts of supernatural creatures. Mr. Leeds consented with another concussion, this one different from the others. It wasn’t made in anger by a pounded fist. It was more like a desperate bellow, the plea of a man who needed to be heard. Pity spilled in to replace my fear, and I unclenched the fingers I’d wrapped around Ethan’s.

Thank you, Sentinel. I was hoping to use those fingers again.

Magic began to shimmer through the air.

“Very well,” Annabelle said as the magic grew around us. It wasn’t painful, but it was unnerving. It was different from Mallory’s or Catcher’s magic—and it didn’t escape my notice that it was also different from the tinny magic I’d felt in Wrigleyville. This magic felt tangible and real, as if our skin were being brushed by hanks of silk. Instinctively, I reached out to touch it, but my fingers grasped nothing more than air.

Electricity popped around Annabelle, magic sparking through the air like forks of lightning. The power grew fiercer, stronger, until the magic seemed to coalesce atop the grass into the outline of a man lying on his back, arms at his sides. His figure seemed built solely of light and shadow, like an X-ray in three dimensions.

I was actually looking at a ghost, and despite my deep-seated horror, I couldn’t look away.

And then he sat straight up, opened his mouth, and screamed.

I clamped my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. The sound pounded through my head like it had mass, like it was beating through my skull and filling my body with noise. My eyes watered against the sudden pain and pressure, and still I couldn’t look away.

Apparently used to the noise, or maybe immune to it, Annabelle held out a hand, utterly calm and composed. “I’m here, Mr. Leeds.”

When the screaming didn’t stop, Annabelle stamped a sneakered foot atop his grave, sending a wave rippling through grass and dirt as if she’d skipped a pebble across a glassy lake.

“Mr. Leeds.”

Her words sliced through his anger like a honed katana, and the world fell suddenly silent. Slowly, I removed my hands again, my ears still buzzing from the magic or noise or whatever had assaulted them.

“Thank you, Mr. Leeds. I’m here for you, to hear whatever you’d like to tell me. You don’t need to raise your voice. I can hear you. That’s my particular gift.”

The ghost seemed to stare at her, his expression unreadable. And then he clasped his hands together prayerfully and began to speak. The words were fuzzy, garbled, like a distant station on a radio, albeit with the volume maxed out. But the earnestness in his eyes, the pleading in his expression, was clear enough.

“I understand,” Annabelle said. “I can provide a message to them, if you’d like. You only need to tell me what you’d like to say, and I will do my best to find them and see that they hear it.”

He spoke again. This time he was calmer, which made his magic less chaotic . . . and some of his words understandable. “Wife . . . Wrong . . . Unfaithful . . . Wasn’t . . . Wasn’t . . . Design . . . Please tell her . . .”

Tears gathered at Annabelle’s lashes, slipped down her cheeks. But she didn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her.

“I’ll tell her, Mr. Leeds,” she said, voice quiet but earnest. “I’ll make sure she understands. That’s my solemn oath to you.”

And then she reached forward and held out a hand, grasping his translucent one in hers, small sparks of lightning traveling between them. If the sensation hurt, she didn’t show it.

“Let your soul rest, Mr. Leeds. Let your mind and heart calm. Your message has been heard, and will be delivered, and you can depart from his earth and seek your rest. You can sleep now.”

The magic shifted, softened. By listening to this man, by doing that simplest and most important of favors, she’d changed him. Even as he drew his hand away, his image began to fade, the hazy magic diffusing into the darkness. He lay down on the grass again, and drifted away.

Silence fell, and we honored it long enough that crickets began to chirp nearby.

After a moment, Annabelle wiped her cheeks and turned back to us.

“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Ethan said, breaking the silence. “It was . . .” He seemed to struggle for words. “Quite a thing to see.”

“You’re welcome. They aren’t often as visible. He was trying really, really hard to talk.”

“Can we ask what he told you?”

She started to speak, but stopped and pressed her lips together, working to control her emotions. “He died after a car accident. Earlier that day, his wife had seen him with another woman. When he was in the hospital, before he passed, he heard her say she believed he was having an affair. But he wasn’t. The woman was a jewelry designer. Her name was Rosa de Santos, and he was having a special necklace made for his wife. He asked me to tell her all that. To tell her that Rosa has her necklace.”

“Oh, damn,” I said quietly, tears threatening me as well. We worried about our own, our Novitiates, our House, when there were a million tiny tragedies every day. And as Annabelle’s work tonight had proven, a million tiny miracles.

“Yeah,” she said. “I have a lot of nights like this. But I’ll call Mrs. Leeds, and tell her about Rosa and the necklace. She’ll grieve again; it’s inevitable. But now the fog across her memories, the fear of infidelity, will be gone.”

“We’ll let you get to that,” Ethan said. “And we’ll get back to our search.”

“You know,” she said, glancing toward the south, “if there are any maverick supernaturals around here, you might find them in Hellriver. The chemicals shouldn’t hurt immortals, and there are plenty of sups who just don’t care about that kind of thing. Where better to wheel and deal than in a neighborhood like Hellriver?”

“And since the CPD doesn’t risk its officers’ health by sending them into Hellriver,” Ethan said, “there’s protection for them.”

Annabelle nodded. “They do sweeps once a year or so. Usually around Christmas. Charitable types will come around, shuffle any remaining humans into shelters, and the cops will follow, round up any stragglers. But when the holidays pass, there’s not so much goodwill, and temps get cold again, people find their way back into the houses.”