Chapter 14: Ex Parte Communication

Saint Raymond's Cemetery slept in lonely silence beneath a blanket of clouds as Christine passed through the gates and headed southward over the rolling grounds. She missed her father's guidance, missed his reassuring presence. Hadn't he promised her a guardian angel? Yet her life was a mess, her career a wreck. Not since his death had she felt so alone and unsure.

Leaves made papery rustlings in the chill wind as they died on their branches. The breeze carried the dusty scent of funeral roses.

Like Erik.

Despite the chill, her face grew warm. She wandered through the sea of graves to the cemetery's southern edge, where the Whitestone Bridge towered over the horizon like a misty path to the Pearly Gates. Last year, she'd buried her father somewhere in the middle of this section, in the thirty-first row.

Her footsteps froze.

The closer she came to her father, the more distinctly she heard a familiar voice on the wind, whispering Spanish with a subdued and solemn resonance. Time stood still, and her heart began to pound.

Was it only her imagination, excited by her talk with Khan?

She spun around, searched among the monuments and stone angels and hardly dared to hope. Her throat went dry as she saw, far to the west, a man in a suit sitting with his legs tucked under him and his right temple pressed against a weathered headstone as though he'd fallen asleep. His face was in shadow; on his lapel was a red rose corsage. An oak's branches trembled in the wind and sprinkled shade over Erik's motionless form. His eyes were closed, and his thin lips moved as though he were talking to someone, but no other living soul was in the yard.

She made no attempt to hide her approach, and at the crunch of her footsteps his eyes sprung open. He leapt to his feet and straightened his tie. "Christine!... Miss Dale."

Her name, in his quiet tenor, sounded like a prayer.

Overwhelmed by her own joy, she forgot what she'd wanted to say. She realized she was smiling.

He stared at her wide-eyed as though she were an apparition. "How did you know where to find me?"

"I didn't. I'm visiting my father." She looked back across the sea of graves as she collected her thoughts. They were alone in the cemetery. "The CJC subpoenaed me to testify in an investigation of your conduct."

"I know."

"But if you recuse from the Albrizzio case, they might close the investigation. I won't have to testify."

"You do what you have to," he said softly.

She pulled back. "You mean you won't recuse? Erik, I'll have to tell everything."

"We only kissed." He lowered his eyes, slid his hands into his pockets. "There was no 'arrangement.' Your testimony will contradict the Post's accusations."

"But this isn't about whether the Post was right! This is about whether you… whether you have feelings for me."

He smiled and shook his head. "There's no question about my feelings: The issue is whether those feelings affect my objectivity."

"They don't?" Leaning against the headstone had given his silver hair a macabre cowlick that she longed to smooth with her fingers. She crossed her arms against her chest instead.

"Of course not. I'm always fair. Anyway," he added when he saw her frown, "it's hardly relevant now, since you've terminated the relationship."

"I was wrong! I wasn't prepared for that—your circle, I mean—and I jumped to conclusions. I fell for you so fast, I thought you hypnotized me. All the rumors got to me, I guess. I'm sorry, I should have let you explain it to me the other night. I don't know what came over me. I met Nasr Khan on my way here, and he told me about… about your past."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Torturing dead souls wasn't as bad as what you thought?"

"I'm sorry." The words were too small for the gravity of her feeling. Her toe poked at the grass as she tried for the apology he deserved.

"Torturing dead souls isn't as bad as what you thought?" he repeated angrily. "You'd feel differently if you'd ever been burned alive, or crushed by a horse, or crucified! Imagine the worst pain of your life, and now imagine that I, Erik Delgado… that I—that I force you to suffer again, for as long as it pleases me. Their pain was my entertainment, Christine—I am damned!"

"But you only did it because Mr. Khan made you!"

"Is that what he told you? Then why would I still have a circle of power in my house? You haven't thought this through."

The wind blew colder. The sky grew darker.

"What are you saying?"

"Look, Christine. Come look here." He gestured at the headstone beside him.

She was afraid to look. Her mind screamed for her to turn and flee. His dark and furious expression told her that nothing good could be on that headstone. But she swallowed her terror and stepped closer. Chiseled in lichen-crusted stone was the name:

Alma Delgado
November 11, 1944
October 13, 1988

"My mother," he explained. He tore one of the last white blossoms from a rosebush beside the grave and crushed it in his hand, letting the petals fall around the headstone.

Christine let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Mr. Khan said you were just a freshman when she passed away. Losing my dad last year was hard enough; I can't imagine being on my own as young as you were."

"Being 'on my own' was less of a problem. Everyone gets lonely. But my mother… She… she always smiled when she looked at me. I was planning to summon her."

Christine gasped. The blood in her veins turned to cold, heavy lead.

"But I never went through with it. I mean, I made the circle, the one you saw in my house, but it wasn't the right time yet." His face broke in a terrifying, ironic grin. "Saturn wasn't in Scorpio. It wouldn't be there for another ten years. I had time to prepare. Perform little rituals to rouse her. Hang her picture, burn the incense, grow her favorite flowers, recite the chants, all building up towards the traditional finale..."

He lifted his eyes to Heaven, and his smoky irises seemed illuminated with divine light.

A sudden thought struck Christine. "She's the bride in the large photograph in front of your circle."

"Yes…" His glance swept across the cemetery and finally rested on Christine. "Why? Who did you think that was?"

"I thought… maybe… your wife."

"You thought I was married! Did you think I kept my wife locked in the attic?... Or did you suspect me in her murder?"

"No, I just thought she'd died, and that you still missed her."

"And that upset you."

Actually, she'd been heartbroken to think that he was already married. It was part of why she'd flipped out when she'd found the room with his Circle of Power.

"No, Christine, I never married. There was never anyone besides you. Only my mother—and I intended to disturb that good woman's rest. Now do you understand the sinner with whom you've been associating?"

"Then fix it, Erik! Make this right. Dismiss the souls you summoned and recuse from the Albrizzio case."

"I can't. You flatter me a very capable man. Honestly, I don't know how to dismiss the spirits, and I've already told you why I can't recuse."

"Because you don't feel enough for me."

"That's not what I—"

"But that's what it means! There's nothing objective about love. When you love someone, they're more important than anyone else. You'd lie for them, if you had to. You'd die for them. You'd change the rules."

He said nothing.

"You can't arbitrate my cases fairly; because love means you have a preference."

"Then I don't love you, if that's how you define it," he replied gravely. "I'm always fair."

Infuriating man! She would have left him standing there, but for her training as an attorney. She'd convinced judges who'd been against her at the start, had won cases on little more than her own persistence, and knew better than to concede. This judge hadn't kissed her like one who was "fair," and she suspected he hadn't handled the Albrizzio hearing very objectively, either. Was he trying to hide his partiality, or was he innocently unaware of her power over him?

"If you don't love me," she asked aloud, "then why are you following me?"

"I didn't follow you. You came to me, remember?"

"Why are you here, then, in the middle of the work day?"

"For solace." He was far too distraught to discuss recusal. "Didn't Nasr tell you about the sign? How the veil between worlds thins when Saturn passes into the constellation of Scorpius?"

She nodded.

"In such times, the dead can sense us, and I sense them. But the lost souls from the Masonic Temple don't dare disturb me on hallowed ground. I rest almost as good as the dead, here. But the dead can hear us, they know when we're near, and even here I can sense their feelings—even my mother."

Christine eyed the gravestone wearily. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say or do. Meeting your lover's parents for the first time is awkward enough; meeting a dead one is even less comfortable. "A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Delgado," she finally whispered at the weathered grave.

He smiled, his eyes shining with tears. "You don't know how happy she is to finally meet you."

"Well, now that I've met your mother, can I introduce you to my father?"

"Your father?" He raked his wild hair. "But I… Well, yes!"

He kissed his fingers and pressed them to the top of his mother's headstone with more whispered Spanish. Then he motioned for Christine to lead the way. They passed silently through the garden of graves and stopped before a double headstone. The first name was nearly as worn as Erik's mother's had been:

Joyce Dale
May 27, 1965
February 19, 1998

The second name was so freshly carved into the stone, tears stung Christine's eyes:

George Dale
March 4, 1964
October 26, 2018

Side-by-side, they stared at the simple graves. Christine wondered whether Erik felt as strangely as she'd felt talking to his mother.

"Your father recognizes me," he said with some surprise.

She turned to him in amazement. "Yes, he knew you. He used to testify in arson cases. He was a fire marshal." She turned back to the graves, half hoping to see George and Joyce Dale watching her.

Of course, no one was there. Only the lifeless headstone.

"How do you do it?" she asked Erik. "How can you sense him? Is it necromancy?"

"I don't know… Maybe I'm just naturally receptive."

"Oh. So you couldn't teach me, then."

"It's a dangerous practice, Christine."

"I just want to know he's here. All I see is that stone. I mean, I saw them bury him, he's down there in his coffin somewhere, but it doesn't feel like it anymore. Just once, I wish I could really feel like he's nearby."

Erik frowned at the gravestone. "I've never tried it with someone else before... Give me your hand, and close your eyes. This might not work, though. I don't know."

She did as he instructed, and felt his strong fingers tighten over hers. After a deep breath, he gently lifted her hand and placed it on top of the headstone such that she was grasping it as he'd held his mother's headstone. His large hand pressed down on hers. At first, all she felt was the cold, abrasive stone. Maybe he couldn't share his gift after all—but then she gasped as sensations engulfed her as though she sank into a warm bath.

There had been many times, after Joyce Dale had passed away when Christine was just a pre-teen, that Christine would stay awake late at night, waiting for her father to come home. She knew his work was dangerous, that there might be a day when his shift ended and she'd still be waiting all night except that he wasn't coming home. That he might leave her as her mother had done. Worrying for him, she couldn't sleep. But at last the door always opened and her father came home. The click of his key in the latch always melted her tight nerves into relief and comfort and safety and happiness. The same sensations she now felt washing over her, filling her, relaxing her, with her hand on his grave.

Her father was home. Everything would be all right.

"Daddy…" she whispered. The tears she'd forgotten spilled down her cheeks.

She hadn't realized that Erik no longer held her hand, until the distant slam of a car door woke her from a trance. She opened her eyes. Erik was gone. Wind shook the branches overhead, sending dead leaves spinning to the ground like her falling tears. Over the shushing sound of the shaking leaves, a car engine roared to life and slowly faded away.

At her feet, over her father's grave, lay a single, white rose.