As Seth drove her to New Vibe to retrieve her car, he filled her in on the discovery of the professor's body the previous night. “No one had heard from him all day Monday. He hadn't shown up for work and hadn't called in. Apparently he called his family every weekend and when they hadn't heard from him and found out he hadn't gone to work either, they requested that the police send someone to his house to check on him. They found him in his bed. They say he probably had a heart attack. But I think they're going to do an autopsy.”
They were silent for a while, listening to the sounds of everyday traffic and people going about the business of their lives. Then Seth said, “I thought he looked a little out of it all last week, but I didn't think all that much about it. But on Friday, when I saw him heading to his car, he looked a little better. You know, happy that it's Friday sort of thing. I figured he probably just needed to rest. I had no idea that would be the last time I'd see him alive.”
The last time she'd seen the professor alive he'd been leaning over her, grabbing at his pecker. Understandably, she didn't share that memory with Seth.
Seth pulled into the church's parking lot and alongside her Honda. She started to get out, but he gently touched her leg, stopping her. “Wait. What's going on?”
She continued staring out the window at her car, reluctant to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Something's happening between us. Something's different. You're distant.”
Still staring out the car window, she shook her head slowly. “Nothing's changed, really. It's just… I'm busy. You're busy.”
“We're too busy for each other?”
She turned and faced him. “Let's not do this now. With the professor and all, this is not the right time.”
“I disagree. This is the perfect time. You're here. I'm here. I don't have to talk to your voicemail. I don't have to send messages through your friends.”
“Is that what this is about? You're not getting enough time with me?”
He leaned back, throwing his hands up mockingly. “Aren't we mighty full of ourselves? I hate that this relationship is such a freaking burden on you and that your time is oh, so precious.”
She turned back to the door again, grabbing hold of the door handle. “I don't have time for this.”
“Yeah, I know. So why don't you go ahead and leave.”
She paused and looked over her shoulder at him. “This is not working.”
He poked his tongue on the inside of his jaw. “I know,” he said wearingly.
“So, this is it,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed and looked away.
She got out of his car and walked quickly to hers.
She didn't look back.
* * *
Veronica wasn't expecting to see her uncle outside her door. But there he was, standing there after insistently ringing her doorbell for several minutes. She'd fallen asleep as soon as she'd gotten home. Evidently, her hectic school and part-time work schedule had finally caught up to her. Sleep had come way too easily. Before the relentless ringing of the doorbell had invaded her slumber, she'd been cast ashore on some nameless island after a three-hour cruise was blown terribly off course. This time there were only two survivors of the mishap, she and the professor. And somehow, they’d both managed to swim ashore to the uninhabited island that was surprisingly well stocked with her favorite seafood and wine. Lots of wine. It was just she and the professor and lots of sun and wine. No Ginger, no Mary-Ann, no books, no goals, just she and the professor with nothing between them but desire and opportunity. Oh, this had better be good, she thought bitterly as she glared through the peephole at her uncle. The dream had been her first shot at a good time in months.
She snatched the door open, barely able to contain her contempt.
Seeing the expression on her face and the haphazard way her clothes draped her body, her uncle immediately launched into apologies. “I'm sorry, Roni. You have company. I caught you at a bad time.”
It was insult added to injury, being busted for having a good dream. “No, Uncle Den. Come in. I'm just dog-tired. I'd just fallen asleep.”
“Well, I'm sorry to have awakened you.”
“Me too,” she said and meant it.
“I wouldn't have barged over here unannounced if it wasn't important. I need your help.”
She regarded him warily. “Don't tell me it involves Kallie Hunt again.”
He shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
* * *
Josh sat alone at a table in the back left corner of the campus library, a thick book open before him. It was seven o'clock, Tuesday night. He was running on fumes and barely able to keep his eyes opened. In addition to his heavy graduate workload, heading Dr. Frost's memory project, and the two undergraduate religion classes he taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he'd been unable to tear himself away from his research on eternal return, life-cycles, and demons. He tried to convince himself that the extra research work would pay dividends for a possible topic for his next year's dissertation. But he'd already done significant legwork on his original topic, the one with the working title, “The Effects of Religion on the Financial Futures of Urban Youth”.
His current research uncovered the tenebrous connection between eternal return, time-cycles, and demons. But one had to be meticulous in order to find it. He found relevant material related to each in various venues, including the Bible and other religious books, manifestoes written throughout history supposedly by religious nuts (which he found buried in the links of some obscure websites); surprisingly, even some gothic comics and horror B-movies contained very accurate data. It was as if different bodies of thought had each been given a piece of valuable information about time and origin and then were sent to their respective corners of existence, never for their trains of thought to meet. It was like an existential jigsaw puzzle.
He'd called Madame Isabel's business line several times the past couple of weeks. Initially, he got the same business greeting with her hours of operation. But eventually the greeting was removed and the phone just rang before eventually peeling off into the intermittent buzzing of a dead line. He knew from newspaper accounts that she was still missing. He'd hoped that her husband would pick up the phone anyway, although he knew they most likely had a private home line, which he, of course, didn't have the number to.
He'd been able to put the various pieces of the puzzle together and the developing picture was quite disturbing. Yet, the picture was incomplete. A piece of the puzzle was missing. He strongly feared the missing piece involved Madame Isabel's Book of Origins, and, quite possibly, his friend, Kallie.
* * *
At ten o'clock that same night, Johnny Swag finally answered his cell phone.
“Johnny, why haven't you called me?” An irritated Father McCarthy bellowed into the phone.
“These weekly calls are no longer conducive to me,” Swag said calmly.
“Conducive! Now listen here, you….”
The line went dead.
So mad he could see red, McCarthy angrily hit the redial button. The call went straight to voicemail as it would the next few times he called, until McCarthy, pissed off and fed up, and clued to the reality that he was helpless to do anything about it at the moment, finally gave up and went storming off to bed.
* * *
“I'll get it,” Kallie called out to her housemates. She'd left her room and was standing in the middle of the upstairs hallway. The doors to all the other bedrooms were closed, so it was likely that none of the others gave a rat's butt as to who was at the door anyway. She could hear Maggie talking on the phone, probably with Cedric. When the two of them weren't stepping on each other's shadow, they were going at it nonstop on the phone. New love, Kallie thought with a touch of jealousy, and bounded down the stairs.
She'd hoped it was Seth. They'd only been broken up since the morning, but she missed him terribly. She would apologize first and hope he wouldn't act manly and stubborn, as if he hadn't missed her as much as she missed him. She'd been wrong to get so upset with him in the first place. All he'd wanted was to be with her. He'd been patient. The past couple of weeks she'd been unfair to him and the relationship. Sure, she'd had her reasons, but he didn't know any of them. She'd told herself that she wouldn't allow them to break up without all their cards being placed face-up on the table. She owed him that. She owed their relationship that. And that was what she was going to tell him as soon as she opened the door.
“Who is it?” she asked when she reached the door, her heart thumping with anticipation and hope for reconciliation.
“It's me.”
Kallie's heart dropped. The soft voice was not Seth's. She opened the door to find Veronica standing there. “May I come in?” Veronica asked, glancing around nervously.
“Sure,” Kallie said, and stepped back, allowing her in. “What's wrong? You look as if you've seen a ghost.”
“Can we talk?”
“Yeah sure,” Kallie said. She led Veronica into the front room and flipped on a light. She went to the couch and sat down, indicating for Veronica to join her. “What's wrong?” Kallie asked again.
Veronica turned and faced her, folding one leg under her other. “You remember the vision you had at Piedmont Imaging?”
“Yeah,” Kallie said uneasily. “What about it?”
“Homeland Security has subpoenaed Josh and my notes on that vision.”
Kallie's eyes widened. “What?”
“And they believe that the vision was of the UCB Center bombing.”
“That's ridiculous,” Kallie said.
“Maybe,” Veronica said. “But, on the night of the bombing, a girl called in to the fire department to warn them about it.”
Kallie stood up.
Veronica said, “They've traced that call to your cell phone. They also have video of a person matching your physical dimensions walking with a man in the building where that terrorist guy supposedly jumped to his death.”
Kallie backed slowly toward the entrance to the living room. “Why are you telling me this?”
“They want you to answer some questions, Kallie. They want you to go with them.”
“You're saying I'm under arrest?”
Veronica stood up and walked toward Kallie. “No, you're not under arrest. I'm not law enforcement. It's like I said, they just want you to go with them and answer some questions. No scene, no big deal. But it's going to take a few days. So you should probably pack a change of clothes.”
“Who are they?”
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they're a division of Homeland Security.”
“But, I'm in school. I have classes.”
Veronica reached her, softly touching her shoulder. “They'll take care of that. They'll work it out with your professors. And I'll tell your housemates that you're participating in another phrase of our memory project and will be back in a couple of days. No one has to know anything about this. And when it's over, you'll come back here and it'll be just like before.”
Kallie heard someone stepping up behind her. She turned around and saw Veronica's uncle flanked by three or four other black-suited men. She turned back and faced Veronica. Veronica slowly nodded her head, and indicated upstairs. Then, she escorted Kallie upstairs and to her bedroom.
Kallie pulled her suitcase from beneath the bed and absently pulled things from her closet and drawers, throwing them into it. She had no idea what to pack. She had no idea where she was going or how long she would be there. All kinds of thoughts flooded her mind. Was she being kidnapped? Was this even legal? Did she need a lawyer? Then her thoughts turned to her family and friends, the living and the dead. She thought about her grandmother, Seth, her grandfather, her mother, and finally, for some reason, Professor Sampson. She would make this as painless as possible. She'd answer their questions and then she'd come back here. And things would be like they were before. She'd remember all the things that happened in a previous lifetime and in between classes and dates; she'd kill demons. She looked weakly at Veronica who stood in the doorway. “I should tell Maggie. She'll worry.”
“No, write her a note,” Veronica said. “Tell her to call me and that I'll explain everything.”
A note, Kallie thought. Yeah, that was probably best. Tonight Maggie would have questions that Kallie wouldn't have answers to. She walked over to her desk and took out a sheet of paper from the middle drawer. The note was simple: I'm participating in an onsite memory project for a few days, call Veronica if questions, 919-555-5555. Talk to you soon, Kallie. She placed the note on her pillow. She entered the hallway, closed her bedroom door, and then followed Veronica to the stairs. She looked at Maggie's closed bedroom door and heard her friend's cackling voice, “Boy, you so crazy!”