Page 31 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER XXXI

From the marshes, Jennifer Parker watched her father return home. With him were Angel and Louis, these men he loved and who loved him in turn. She was glad he was in their company. Sometimes, when they joined him on nights like this, they would sit around the kitchen table reminiscing, or discussing a case. Jennifer would listen by the window, less to the substance of the conversation than to the sound of their voices. The visitors would drink wine or beer from a store her father retained for their use, while he usually stuck to coffee. Often, Angel and Louis would stay the night, and when they did Jennifer would experience a sense of peace. With them, her father was safer. With them, he was no longer so alone.

Jennifer moved away—from the house, from that world. The children were calling again, demanding to be rescued and reunited. Whoever took them had decided to separate them, and they didn’t like it; they were frightened and angry. Jennifer also felt that one of the children—a girl, from her voice—might be drawing nearer. She was being brought to the Northeast, into the orbit of Jennifer’s father.

After crossing back between realms, Jennifer made her way to the lake. She was distracted by her concerns about Sharon Macy. Jennifer was convinced that her father had been unwise to share with Macy his belief that his dead daughter watched over him and communicated with his living child. Jennifer trusted Angel and Louis to keep quiet about what they knew, but she could not say the same of Macy. To whom would Macy talk? If her father and Macy were to end their relationship, might she speak of his strangeness to others? Should she decide to do so, the story would spread, and others were listening, always listening.

By now, Jennifer was once again within sight of the water and the endless torrent of the dead. So attuned was she to this environment that she sensed the change in it moments before she discovered the reason. She also noticed that the dead, who rarely paid attention to the shore, were now focused on it, even as they immersed themselves in the waters and were carried away.

Two figures were standing by the mossy rock that was Jennifer’s preferred vantage point, close to the edge of the forest. They were facing away from her, one dressed in a dark suit, the other in a plain cream dress that fell below her knees. Both had bare feet. They shimmered, like presences viewed through a heat haze, and Jennifer knew them for what they were.

Angels.