Turned out that was just the first of three impacts.
Airborne meant only one thing, and she had a terrifying impression of him hitting the pavement hard. And then she had her own problems. Trajectory carried her off course, her car popping the curb, the brakes slowing her momentum, but not fast enough—and then not at all as her sedan was briefly airborne itself.
The oak tree spotlit in her headlights caused her brain to do a split-second calculation: She was going to hit the goddamn thing, and it was going to hurt.
The collision was part crunch, part thud, a dull sound that she didn’t pay a lot of attention to—she was too busy catching the air bag solidly in the face, her lack of a seat belt coming back to bite her on the ass. Or the puss, as the case was.
Snapping forward and ricocheting back, powder from the SRS got into her eyes, nose, and lungs, stinging and making her choke. Then everything went quiet.
In the aftermath, all she could do was stay where she’d ended up, much like poor, old Fi-Fi. Curled over the deflating air bag, she coughed weakly—
Someone was whistling….
No, it was the engine, releasing steam from something that should have been sealed.
She turned her head carefully and looked out the driver’s-side window. The man was down in the middle of the street, lying so still, too still.
“Oh…God—”
The car radio flared to life, scratchy at first, then gaining electrical traction from whatever short had occurred. A song…what was it?
From out of nowhere, light flared in the center of the road, illuminating the pile of rags that she knew to be a human being. Blinking, she wondered if this was the moment where she learned the answers about the afterlife.
Not exactly the scoop she’d been looking for, but she’d take it—
It wasn’t some kind of holy arrival. Just headlights—
The sedan screeched to a halt and two people jumped out from the front, the man going to the victim, the woman jogging over to her. Mels’s Good Samaritan had to fight to wrench open the door, but after a couple of pulls, fresh air replaced the sharp, plasticky smell of the air bags.
“Are you okay?”
The woman was in her forties and looked rich, her hair done up in a thing on her head, her gold earrings flashing, her sleek, coordinated clothes not matching an accident scene in the slightest.
She held up an iPhone. “I’ve called nine-one-one—no, no, don’t move. You could have a neck injury.”
Mels yielded to the subtle pressure on her shoulder, staying draped over the steering wheel. “Is he okay? I didn’t see him at all—came from out of nowhere.”
At least, that was what she’d meant to say. What her ears heard were mumbles that made no sense.
Screw a neck injury; she was worried about her brain.
“My husband’s a doctor,” the woman said. “He knows what to do with the man. You just worry about yourself—”
“Didn’t see him. Didn’t see him.” Oh, good, that came out more clearly. “Coming home from work. Didn’t…”
“Of course you didn’t.” The woman knelt down. Yeah, she looked like a doctor’s wife—had the expensive smell of one, too. “You just stay still. The paramedics are coming—”
“Is he even alive?” Tears rushed to Mels’s eyes, replacing one sting with another. “Oh, my God, did I kill him?”
As she began to shake, she realized what song was playing. “Blinded by the Light…”
“Why is my radio still working?” she mumbled through tears.
“I’m sorry?” the woman said. “What radio?”
“Can’t you hear it?”
The reassuring pat that followed was somehow alarming. “You just breathe easy, and stay with me.”
“My radio is playing….”
3
“Is it hot in here? I mean, do you think it’s hot in here?”
As the demon crossed and recrossed her mile-long, Gisele Bündchen legs, she pulled at the low neckline of her dress.
“No, Devina, I don’t.” The therapist across the way was just like the cozy couch she was sitting on, heavily padded and comfortable-looking. Even her face was a chintz throw pillow, the features all stuffed in tight and slipcovered with concern and compassion. “But I can crack a window if it would make you feel more comfortable?”
Devina shook her head and shoved her hand back into her Prada bag. In addition to her wallet, some spearmint gum, a bottle of smartwater, and a bar of Green & Black’s Organic dark, there was a shitload of YSL Rouge pur Couture lipstick. At least…there should have been.
As she dug around, she tried to make casual, like maybe she was double-checking that she hadn’t lost her keys.
In reality, she was counting to make sure there were still thirteen tubes of that lipstick: Starting from the left in the bottom of the bag, she moved each one to the right. Thirteen was the correct number. One, two, three—
“Devina?”
—four, five, six—
“Devina.”
As she lost count, she closed her eyes and fought the temptation to strangle the interrupter—
Her therapist cleared her throat. Coughed. Made a choking noise.
Devina popped her lids and found the woman with her hands around her own neck, looking like she’d swallowed a Happy Meal in a bad way. The pain and the confusion were good to see, a little hit off the pipe that had Devina curling her toes for more.
But the fun couldn’t go any further. If this therapist bit it, what was she going to do? They were making progress, and finding another one she clicked with could take time she didn’t have.
With a curse, the demon called back her mental dogs, relinquishing the invisible hold she hadn’t been aware she’d thrown out.
The therapist took a deep, relieved breath and looked around. “I…ah, I think I will open that window.”
As the woman did the honors, she was unaware that her shrink skills had just saved her life. The two of them had been meeting five times a week for the past couple of months, talking for fifty minutes at the cost of one hundred seventy-five dollars each time. Thanks to the sessions of emoting and crap, Devina’s OCD symptoms were getting slightly easier to bear—and considering how things were going in the war with that angel Jim Heron, counseling was so going to be needed for this next round.
She couldn’t believe she was losing.
In the final contest for supremacy over the earth, that angel had won twice, and she just once. There were only four more souls to battle over. If she lost two more? There was going to be nothing left of her or all her collections: Everything would disappear, those precious objects that she had gathered over the millennia, each an invaluable memento of her work, gone, gone, gone. And that wasn’t the worst part. Her children, those glorious, tortured souls trapped in her wall, would be subsumed by the good, the beatific, the untainted.