Only, I kept shaking. Trembling, really. Cold sweat dripped off my eyelashes. My face felt clammy, wrong.
“Mordechai,” I blurted, before I could change my mind. “I, um, I drew something you should know about, I think. Something on my?—”
The line went dead.
Chapter
Eight
The walk to the Holy Angels Cemetery felt longer than it should have. It was six, and the heat of the day was finally beginning to wane. Still, it seemed unusually cold when I slipped into the shadows and weirdly hot every time I came out from the shade and into the full sun. For a Tuesday night, it was a fairly quiet evening. Very few sirens, the traffic fading to a dull hush.
The whole day had seemed wrapped in a cocoon like that. Even Claire had been a relief when she bounced into the deli where I’d picked up a shift at the last minute and treated me like her new bestie. There hadn’t been a lot of customers, and she’d seemed brighter than usual. Chummier. She’d offered me another card, but I told her I still had the first. That’d wound her even tighter. She asked a bunch of questions, but I couldn’t remember her words so much. Just that she kept talking and talking, raindrops on aluminum siding, clattering, chattering on.
Nosy bitch.
But I didn’t mind Claire so much. Not today. Mordechai had a new problem for us to solve. It was a big one, too, if he wasn’t going to tell me about it in his office. The little jobs came to him. He went to the big ones, like the Kleins.
And the Kleins had been fun, in their way.
A little too fun?
Was that possible?
I made it to the cemetery a few minutes before seven and admired the old brick wall surrounding it, with the large arched gates that looked like something out of a movie. They didn’t build cemeteries like this anymore, which was too bad. You needed a cemetery with a sense of grandeur sometimes.
This one was so old that it actually had a section devoted to people of Jewish descent, and I followed the signs to that section now, the odd chill coming over me again as I slipped in and out of the shade. The deeper I got into the cemetery, the older the markers became, some elaborate, some simple, but all of them steeped in an ancient solitude I felt I was breaking.
I finally came to an open space where I found Mordechai. He was in his long jacket and dark suit, his head covered by his flat-brimmed hat tonight instead of his more usual kippah. He looked like the respectable rabbi I suppose he’d been at some point, but not an outwardly flashy one. He wasn’t expecting to see anyone besides me tonight, clearly, not looking like that. I fought the disappointment that curled through me. I really needed tohelpsomeone. It was almost like a fix that I’d been deprived of too long.
“Delia.” Mordechai’s voice floated over the open space, and once again, a shiver of fear and something darker lanced through me. I found myself narrowing my eyes at him, instantly distrustful. Why had he brought me to this place if we weren’t going to perform an exorcism or even meet with a victim? Why had he wasted three hours of my life just to have a conversation with me?
I halted summarily, raising my voice, though the place was quiet. He had no problem hearing me, I was sure.
“Why here?” I asked. My voice didn’t sound quite like my own, and I frowned, hoping he wouldn’t notice. And what did it matter where we met? Mordechai had been my friend for going on fifteen years. If he wanted me to meet him in a Jewish cemetery there had to be a good reason.
Mordechai didn’t respond, but he did wave me over. He was studying a cemetery marker, and I relaxed a little. Okay, so maybe there was a reason for coming here after all. Could someone have been buried here who was haunting a living person? That would explain it.
Despite my growing freakout, I forced myself to move closer to the rabbi at the far end of the courtyard. Tension mounted inside me with every step, but I didn’t stop until I stood next to Mordechai, squinting down at the marker. It was blank.
“Who’s buried here?”
“No one, yet,” Mordechai said. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he had the demeanor of a man praying. “It was placed in this cemetery years ago but was not needed so quickly. I visit it to remind myself that sometimes, the Creator has different plans for us than we might expect.”
“Okay.” I could sense there was a reason for all of this, though it wasn’t clear to me. And I was growing more nervous, not less, now that I was in Mordechai’s presence. “Does your newest call have something to do with this cemetery? Is that why you brought me here?”
“No.” Mordechai seemed to shake off whatever he saw on the smooth surface of the gravestone. “I brought you here because it seemed the best place to warn you about what is to come.” He gestured. “Walk with me.”
I fought my irritation and impatience but fell into step with him. Mordechai thought better when he walked—he’d told me that often enough. Movement centered him, made him feel more in control. How he couldnotbe in control in the middle of afreaking Jewish cemetery, I had no idea. These were his people. If he wanted to walk, though, we’d walk.
He didn’t talk right away. I was used to that, too. I tried to keep my attention from wandering in and out and through the headstones, but I couldn’t resist for long. My gaze chased the shadows and the vines that curved over the ground, vines that seemed to gain hold on some of the older stones, pulling at the rock, grinding it to dust. A sort of curious fascination took hold of me as I marked their progress; nature destroying the edifices of man, time pulling things down, apart. It felt right. It felt good.
I didn’t understand why I was shivering.
The strangest part was the silence inside me—no whisper, no taunt, nothing at all. That quiet felt sharper than the wind in the trees, and I hated how much I noticed it.
“You’re not wearing your?—”
“I’m not, no,” I snapped, cutting Mordechai off. I’d hoped he wouldn’t ask, but of course he had. I forced my voice into a quieter, gentler tone. “I keep losing it. I’m sorry.”
