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Their time in Springfield was done. By himself in the vestry, Eli zipped his robe and Rachel’s into a hanging bag. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he walked into the empty sanctuary and stood for a moment, facing the altar. Without speaking, he asked the Lord for guidance in the coming days, and to watch over Rachel, whatever she was going through.
He had not heard from her since she had left so abruptly three days before. He kept replaying that last day over in his head.
It started with the service on the night before, when she had finally agreed to try the experiment that he had been begging her to try, of letting the healing come from the Lord. “He will take care of you,” Eli had told her. The service had been a disaster. Although there had been a long line for healing, she had taken just three people before she had stumbled out of the sanctuary, her face pale and her hands trembling. Eli had finished the service, calling on the Lord to look out for her and for the congregation. He had found curled up in the corner of the vestry, her knees pulled to her chest, her whole body shaking.
He had put her arm over his shoulder and had gotten her to her feet. He had helped her out of her robe. Then, he had walked with her out to the street where they had hailed a cab to their hotel. Once she was settled in bed, he had gone to the hotel bar, and drank.
Hours later, he had returned to their room. She had been as he had left her, wrapped in blankets, curled up in the bed. She had opened her eyes when he came in. He could see her body trembling under the blankets.
“How are you feeling?” he had asked.
”Cold,” she had replied in his mind.
He had walked over and touched her forehead. It had been warm and damp with sweat. “You have a fever,” he had said. She had glared at him. “But I guess you know that,” he had added.
”It didn’t work,” she had said.
“You didn’t have faith,” he had replied.
The next day, she was still sick. He had left her in bed and gone to run the service himself, until she had showed up, halfway through, her eyes hooded and hungry, and she had taken control of the service.
Eli had been angry with her for succumbing to weakness, for playing God, but he had stepped aside, as he always did, and he had fallen in love with her again, as he always did. He was entranced by everything: her smooth contralto, the way her robe swirled around her ankles, the way she reached to the heavens calling on divine intervention even though he knew that call was false, her gentle touch as she laid hands on the infirm.
And then, when she had been working on an old woman in a wheelchair, she had stumbled. With a mental wordless command to finish the service, she had walked away. He had wondered if this was the hand of the Lord. He had finished the service, for the second time in two days, with a prayer for Sister Davidson.
Later, he had found her in an empty classroom, leaning against a poster of the 23rd Psalm that decorated the wall. “I have to leave,” she had said.
“Where are we going?” he had asked.
She had shaken her head, “Not you, just me. California.”
“Carson City? Bakersfield? We had some really good shows in…” his voice had faded off as he noticed her shaking her head. Quietly, he had asked, “Can I come?”
“No,” she had said. And then he had understood. He was to continue to do the good work of the Lord, to bring the message to new places and new people. He could not abandon that work. This is what he was born to do.
“Get me a cab to the airport?” she had asked.
“Now?”
“Please.”
For the next three nights, he had led the services. The crowds were smaller, and their fervor was less, but he was doing the Good Work, and that is what mattered.
It was time to move on. With a sigh, he turned from the altar and walked down the aisle, unsure if the Lord would hear a prayer for Rachel.
***
The hotel in Greenville was much like the one in Franklin, and the one in Springfield, and the one before that in Washington. He dropped his bag on the bed. He put Rachel’s bag on the suitcase stand. He started to unzip it, to set up her things as he had done for years, thinking that at any moment she would come in and want her stuff, but then he remembered that she was gone. Gritting his teeth, he re-zipped her bag and flopped on the bed, rubbing his temples, trying to massage away the headache that just would not quit. It would help if he could get a decent night’s sleep. Now that he was sleeping alone, he woke up a dozen times a night, gasping, sweaty, struggling to tear himself away from someone else’s nightmare.
He had taken to wearing gloves, even in the summer’s heat. People snickered and asked if he was cold, while sweat beaded on his face, but he ignored him. His gloves were leather gloves that had been handmade on a dairy farm, by a young woman who had lovingly suckled the calf whose skin was the gloves, and who had tanned the leather with her own hands, making it soft and supple. The calf had become veal, but he had died suddenly, not knowing pain or fear. The gloves were calming, insulating him from the noise of fear and anger and desperation that impregnated people and the things they touched.
He rolled over on his back and pulled his right hand from the glove, wiggling free one finger at a time. Cautiously, he closed his eyes and laid his hand on the bedspread. After a moment, he let out a sigh of relief. The hotel in Franklin had given him a room where a girl had been raped. Hotel security had come busted through the door of his room at 2 AM, to find him screaming and raving. They had thrown him out and he had spent the night in his car, before he found another room the next day. This room seemed okay. The room felt lonely, and bored, and sad, but he got no glimpses of violence.
Rachel used to help with the headaches. He was never quite sure what she did, but when he was near her, they weren’t so bad. Touching things had not flooded him with a barrage of violence. Sleeping next to her, he had always slept through the night, and not just because they shared a bit of exercise before sleeping. When the headaches did get bad, she would lay her hands on his head and they would be gone. Now that she had left him, they were incessant and debilitating.
After an hour, the headache had not abated, but Eli had work to do. Grimly he forced himself to his feet, pulled his gloves back on, and went out for the local papers. He had a sermon to prepare for the next day. But first, he stopped at the hotel bar for some liquid analgesic.
***
Eli was not sure what town he was in. Bristol? Clinton? Fairview? Springfield again? It did not matter. He huddled in a box that had only ever had a refrigerator in it. He had lost Rachel’s bag, and she was going to be angry about that. He had lost his own bag, which contained the bible his parents had given him and that made him sad. He had liked holding the bible, because sometimes it would help him remember and relive happier times.
Sometimes he stood in the train station with a shoebox at his feet and tried to preach. He still had the cadence, the voice, finesse, but he would get lost. He’d be in the middle of a thought, and he’d look at a passerby, and he’d be caught in the fight they had with their wife that morning. When he came back to himself, the little crowd he may have gathered would be gone, or maybe a transit cop might be at his side, trying to hurry him along with the rest of the commuters. If he were lucky, there’d be a dollar or two in his box, which meant he still had something, though he was not sure what.
From time to time he thought about Doro, and he wondered if he’d ever see him again. Probably not, Eli decided. Doro had only ever been interested in Rachel. Unless, of course, Doro was looking for a new body, and then, Eli figured, he might see him one last time.
Rachel, on the other hand, he thought about constantly. He wondered where she was and how she was doing. He wondered if she had forgotten him. He wondered if she was still preaching. Before he had wound up on the street, he had gone to a library and tried to find out if there were any news stories of a healer in California, but he could not find any. He hated the way she used the worshippers at a service, but oh, he missed the vibrancy of her work, the passion of the congregants, the power of her healing. Even if she did not believe, he believed that her gifts were given by God, that her healing was God’s work. When he was lucid, he prayed she had not lost her way.
***
Eli’s cheek was pressed against a tree, and he felt the heat of flames licked at his skin, but it did not hurt. Startled, he opened his eyes, squinting in the brightness of day. His head hurt. There was no fire. Not now. It must have been long ago, and the tree was sharing with him. He closed his eyes again. The warmth of the fire felt good.
Sometime later, Eli heard a man’s voice. “Why are you on this loop?” he said.
“This one’s kin,” came the reply. The voice was feminine and husky and warm and familiar, but Eli could not place it.
That man snorted. “They are all kin,” he said.
Eli heard them crunching through the leaves, coming closer. He had hitched a ride with someone, sitting in the back of some man’s pickup truck. When the pickup truck had slowed to roll through a stop sign, he had jumped off and just started walking away from the road. He walked for a while until he tripped over a root and fell down. He had not gotten up.
“He’s my brother,” she said. “Well, I grew up with him. Doro placed me with his parents.” Then she said, “There he is!”
”Rachel?” he realized. The sense of warmth the tree had shared with him abruptly vanished, replaced by her long, cool fingers on his cheek. “Oh, Eli,” she said. “What have you done to yourself?”
”I lost your bag,” he thought.
”I don’t care,” she replied. “Now shut up, so I can work.”
***
Sometime later, Eli came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a robe, toweling his shaggy hair off after the best shower he had ever had in his life. It felt good to be clean again.
Everything about this place was soft. The robe, the bathmat, the beds, even the carpet had a pad under it and his feet sunk in. Rachel had usually arranged for them to stay in nice places when they had traveled together on the road, he had never been in a hotel quite as classy as this one.
Rachel was sitting cross legged on the bed, cupping a mug of coffee in her hands. A silver coffee service sat on the dresser, along with a couple domed plates, which Eli desperately hoped had food for him. Right after Rachel had completed her ministrations, he had wolfed down whatever food had been handed to him. That had been hours ago and he was hungry again. He looked from the tray to Rachel and then back to the tray. “Go ahead,” she said. “They didn’t have pastrami so I ordered you a couple of burgers.”
He hesitated before touching the lid, considering what impressions he may pick up. “It’s okay,” Rachel said. “I’ve got you shielded.” He looked at her and she shrugged at him. He lifted one of the domed lids to find a burger and fries. The burger was the size of his hand and easily as thick. A pile of lettuce leaves and tomato slices were next to the burger, along with a spear of a pickle so pungent he smelled it as soon as he lifted the lid. His stomach grumbled.
“Go ahead,” Rachel said again. He picked up the plate and sat down on the edge of the bed, a few feet from her. He looked at her. She looked good. Her eyes had lost that eerie, hollow look that made her look like Doro, no matter what body Doro wore. He picked up a fry. “I don’t know what to say,” he said, before put it in his mouth. Chewing, he spoke, “At first, I expected you to just walk into the hotel room some night. After a while, when that didn’t happen, every night I prayed you would just walk in. And when that didn’t happen, things started to get pretty bad. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I am sorry it took me so long to find you,” she said. “Mary has been bringing in latents left and right.”
“Who is Mary?”
Rachel smiled, a tight smile, with a little shake of her head. “In time,” she said. “Many things have changed. For now, let me tell you the important part. You are not going to be a latent anymore.”
Confused, he looked at her. “I’m too old,” he said. “And Doro told me once that it would never happen to me.”
Rachel shook her head again. “As I said, many things have changed. In a month or two, you will go through transition. If you survive, and most do, we have gotten pretty good at bringing latents through, you won’t need me anymore.”
Eli looked down at his plate, surprised to find that he had eaten all of the fries and half the burger in just a minute. He thought of the years he and Rachel had had together, as children on the road with their parents, and again later, when it was just the two of them. “I doubt that,” he said softly, not looking up.
Rachel set her coffee mug aside, and then picked up his empty plate and also set it aside. She touched his chin and lifted his face. He met her eyes and was surprised to see the sad smile there. “One last time,” she said softly, leaning forward to kiss him tenderly.
***
Eli woke with sun in his eyes, his mind blessedly quiet. He was aware of Trevor, gorgeous Trevor, who had been by his side through the whole ordeal, sprawled in a chair. Trevor had scratches on his chest and a black eye, and Eli remembered that he had done that. Sleepily, Trevor opened his eyes and smiled at Eli. “Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” Eli said back, speaking automatically. He was distracted by his shield. He was amazed at how simple it was to make it solid, like a wall, or to thin it, like a window, or just let it go. He tried touching the lamp by his bedside, and he thinned his shield and got the impression of a little girl who had delighted in turning the lamp on and off and on and off, until her mother would come in and unplug it, and then he thickened the shield and the girl and her mother were gone. Trevor was watching him with a half smile and he looked back, sheepish. “How did I not figure this out, years ago?” he said and Trevor laughed. “I asked myself the same question. Are you hungry?”
Eli suddenly realized he was famished, “Dear lord,” he said. “Yes.”
After breakfast and a shower, after he re-met the members of Trevor’s household, this time as a telepath in is own right, he felt a pressure on this shield and, he thinned it to see what it was. He felt Rachel’s mental voice, this time clearer than it had ever been, ”May I see you? I’m outside.”
Eli went to the front door and opened it. Trevor’s house was three down and across the street from the First Family’s. Rachel stood on the sidewalk.
He hadn’t seen her since that night in the hotel. When he had woken up, she was gone. One of the other Patternist had knocked on the door. Once he was dressed and had driven him back to Forsyth. Truth be told, he hadn’t thought about her much at all in the intervening month, before he went into transition. He had been housed with other pre-transition latents while they wanted for an assignment to a second. And then, he was assigned to Trevor and, well, he had become a bit infatuated. He blushed at the thought. Rachel was watching him.
“You made it,” Rachel said. “How does it feel?”
Eli closed his eyes for a moment to think about it, “Quiet,” he said.
“Good,” she said. She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “You are not angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry with you?” Eli said.
Rachel took a step forward and reached out to him. “May I touch you?”
Eli blinked. “Uh, sure,” he said.
“Lower your shield, close your eyes, follow me,” she said.
Eli closed his eyes and felt Rachel’s hand on his cheek, but then he felt something more. She was in his mind and he followed her. It felt like he was walking through beaded curtains, with strands that brushed past him and then swung back into shape. After a few minutes of what felt like walking in circles, she found a hard, tangled knot deep in the middle of his being. He felt it should not be there, he felt that the cords that made it should be free to swing. ”What is it?” he asked her.
”This is what I did to you, all those years.”
”I don’t understand,” he replied.
”Eli,” she said. ”Eli, you were my slave.”
”No,” he said. ”No, we were partners. I…” he paused. “I love…”
”Stop,” she ordered, and the force of the command made him take a step back, breaking contact. ”I am not sure if this knot can be undone, but I am releasing you from all the compulsions I put on you over the years. Pick and pull at it as you will. You are free, Eli.”
Eli looked at her. “I don’t understand,” he said aloud.
“You will,” Rachel said as she turned to leave. “You will.”