The Departed

She’d been such a fool, letting herself touch him. That one day hadn’t been enough. All it had done was make her long for more.
    “Just leave me alone, Taylor,” she said quietly. That was what she needed. She needed him to leave her alone—desperately. “Go do your job and leave me alone. I’m not your concern.”
    “Not my concern?” He caught her arm, his fingers burning hot, even through her jacket. “That’s where you’re wrong. You called for help. That makes you my concern.”
    She tried to pull away, but he wasn’t letting go and unless she wanted to get into a wrestling match—and actually, that idea held too much appeal—she wasn’t going to get away until he decided to let go. Because she didn’t like the idea of just jerking against his hold, she settled for glaring at him.
    “ Wrong , Jones. I’m not your concern. Haven’t been for over a year. I quit, remember?”
    “As if I could forget,” he muttered. “Come on. You don’t need to be here right now. You’re already on edge.”
    On edge . Talk about an understatement.
    As he started to walk out of the cemetery, she reluctantly fell into step next to him, steaming mentally and debating on whether or not she wanted to go along with his imperiousness.
    “Whether you’re one of my people or not, you brought me here and you need to give me something to go on. You also could probably talk to that girl and help her a hell of a lot more than these people here can.”
    She could refuse. She knew that. She didn’t need to go anywhere with him. But the cold shivers running down her spine, the echoes of the departed, the strange, disturbing whispers…no, she didn’t need to be here.
    And she wanted to be out of here.
    Badly.
    If there was something or somebody here for her, she’d figure it out soon. Preferably after she’d had some rest, a few hot meals. She was so damn tired—too many jobs, too close together. She all but ached with exhaustion. Maybe fate and God would be kind, though, and this would turn out to be nothing.
    She could use a break. Really.
    Following Taylor out of the cemetery, she resisted the urge to look back. If she had, she might have seen it as the moon came out from behind a heavy bank of clouds at just that moment.
    The silvery stream of light fell across one of the monuments along the far border of the cemetery. There was an angel there, her face upturned to the sky, her wings spread.
    A sigh drifted through the cemetery, followed by a sound that was almost a sob.
    * * *
     
    HOSPITALS were all the same in some aspects. Too brightly lit, smelling of antiseptic and faintly of illness and death. The stink of illness and death weren’t necessarily something the average person might pick up, Dez knew, but she’d been in too many of these places. She couldn’t miss it.
    Then again, maybe it was her imagination. Maybe she knew the death and the illness lingered and that lingering stink was some manifestation of her mind. And what did it matter…even though, logically, she knew why she was thinking about it. It was a way to distract herself, just another mind game, something to keep from thinking about the fact that she was walking down the long, overly bright hallway next to Taylor.
    A way to think about something other than the low, cold whispers she felt in the hall.
    They were there. Some of the departed…not all of them rested, not all of them called for help. Some of them just lingered, their cold, dry touch like a skeletal hand on the nape of her neck. She could feel their presence and now that she’d allowed herself to think about them, to focus, her mind reached out and tried to lock on one of those whispers. Tried to grasp something real…a voice, something, somebody she could help.
    But their voices, they were so indistinct, like listening to dry leaves skittering down a street. There were no words, hardly any feeling left to connect to those disconnected souls.
    She jumped as Taylor curled his hand over her nape, his fingers digging lightly into her skin. “Stop it,” he murmured, leaning in and speaking almost directly into her skin.
    “Stop what?” she asked sourly. She would have glared at him, but the firm hold he had on her skin kept her from doing that, and she was reluctant to break that contact. Just like always, his touch made everything else fade away.
    “You know what. You’re not shielding. I can see it. Shield up or you’ll be a mess before I even get you to her