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Trine
The waiter arrives with my food, and I sit back to eat and listen. Rei seems nervous. He wipes his glasses a few times, even though I can tell they’re immaculately clean from where I’m sitting.
He’s nervous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him nervous before. I’m not sure I like it.
He takes a sip of his water, closing his eyes tightly and pushing his glasses up his nose before he starts to talk. "Misha was the one who got the call," he says. "And since his number can only be obtained through word of mouth, he knew it was someone with a legitimate need."
"But it wasn’t me. I’ve never had Misha’s number."
"I know," he says, dropping his voice to a whisper. "That’s my point. People rarely do."
"So who was it?"
"We don’t know," he says. "Misha tried to find out for a little while, but then he wrote it off."
"So I’m still in your debt."
"Not really," he says, tapping his fingernails against his lemon water glass. "The person who called left a deposit, mostly to prove that they were serious. We came down to Florida on good will, to see if there was anything to the case."
"And there was."
"Yes," he says. "We were given your address, and you were…I mean, you were barely responsive. Do you remember that?"
I close my eyes, trying my best to remember anything. But no. There’s nothing I can recall at all; absolutely nothing after my cat jumping on my bed. There’s a big gap in my memory after that. When I open my eyes, I can see that Rei is staring at me. "No," I say. "I don’t remember anything."
"Well, okay," he says. He grabs his phone, puts it on the table in front of him and sighs. "I’m not going to read off this, but I always take thorough notes. This is going to help me give you a detailed recounting, but it might not be pretty. Are you ready for that?"
I nod, my mouth dry. I’m eating automatically, but I’m not hungry anymore, and the food doesn’t seem to taste like anything anymore. "Yes," I say. "I need to know the truth."
"Okay," he says. He’s grabbing his stylus and tapping it along. From the corner of my eye, I can see capital letters, something about a possessed punk girl in all caps. I suppose that’s me. He sighs as he watches me read the title of the case. "We should really change how we do this."
I wrinkle my nose. "It’s fine," I say. "Descriptive."
"You’re not wrong," he says. "So my first notes when I walked into your home were that the place looked lived in but not particularly messy, and that you were almost entirely unresponsive though all your neurological responses were normal."
"What does that mean?" I ask.
"I shone a light in your eyes to make sure your pupils reacted, checked your reflexes and spoke to you when you felt like speaking," he replies. "You weren’t unresponsive because you couldn’t understand speech, but you didn’t want to talk. And when I touched you, you were so cold…it was weird. Unnatural. I took your temperature, but you were fine."
"What else?"
"Your hair was cut short," he says. He reaches forward, as if he’s going to twirl a strand of hair around his fingers, but he thinks better of it, and decides not to. "Very short. And you looked nothing like how you look now."
"How did I look?"
"Sickly, honestly. You looked like you were on the brink of death."
"And then you brought me back."
He shrugs. "I don’t know. I don’t like taking credit for things that are outside my control. It was a lot of work, but by the time we were done, you seemed back to…I don’t know. You seemed normal."
"How can you tell?"
"Well, I don’t determine whether someone’s possessed or not," he says simply. "I leave that up to Luke."
"How did he decide I was possessed?"
He takes another sip of his water, but it’s almost gone. All he does is move the ice in his glass, which has melted only a little bit. "I guess the same way he decides anyone’s possessed. Prayed over you, sprinkled a bit of holy water on you, saw how you reacted to religious artifacts."
