Free My Soul to Take by Tananarive Due Page A

clearer.
    “Maybe,” Carlos said, muffling his words with his wrist. “And maybe they drugged us.”
    “Drugged us?”
    “Shhhh.”
His eyes darted toward the corridor.
    “Eight hundred people?”
    “Think about it. Something in the water. Or the Kool-Aid, morelike it. I showed you those articles. Don’t forget Clarion could be a cult.”
    Carlos’s theory didn’t explain the woman who’d risen from her wheelchair to dance, but Carlos would probably say she was a plant. Phoenix might have believed the cult story once, but not anymore. Something special had happened.
    “You’re too young to be so cynical, Carlos.”
    “I’m too old not to be,” he said, looking at his watch. “Jesus—it’s after midnight. Why are we letting them keep us waiting like this? This is insane.” He swore in Spanish.
    That was when she emerged from the hallway.
    She was dressed differently, in jeans and a faded Phoenix concert T-shirt, but the girl looked the way Phoenix remembered from her earlier glimpse on the porch: brown-red skin like smooth clay, a lithe, willowy figure, and a mane of long dreadlocks. She was slightly taller than Phoenix, about five ten, but she was a teenager. A child, almost. Awkward in her limbs.
    Fana came into the room alone, but Caitlin hovered close-by, leaning over the kitchen-bar counter. Two of the white-clad men stood sentry in the hall.
    The girl entered the room so quietly that Carlos didn’t see her until Phoenix gestured, and then Carlos jumped to his feet, flustered, sweeping an imaginary hat from his head. How had Carlos missed the floating sensation again? The room felt wired with high voltage.
    “Hey, I’m really sorry,” the girl said, her voice too small and soft for her presence. Her brown eyes were filled with a fan’s bright glimmer as she held her hand out to Phoenix. “My name is Fana, and I’m so happy to meet you. I’ve been listening to you since I was ten years old. ‘Gotta Fly’ saved me once. That song was in my head when I changed my life.”
    Phoenix clasped the girl’s hand and couldn’t let go at first. Fana’s hand felt magnetized. Phoenix tried to study the sensation before she slipped her hand away. Strange.
    Phoenix watched Carlos’s face as he shook Fana’s hand next. He felt it, too. Once his hand was free, he glanced down at his palm as if he thought she’d left a mark on him.
    “You made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives tonight,” Fana said. “Not everyone understands Clarion’s work. We needed you to bring them here. You helped us give them something to believe in. And now they’ll help us convince others.”
    “Glad to come,” Phoenix said.
    Phoenix had questions, but most words had fled her mind. Years ago, she’d met Nelson Mandela and the Obamas and encountered the same tongue paralysis, but that hadn’t prepared her for the sensation when she met Fana, as if the girl were an eight-foot giant.
    “The plague is real,” Fana said. “It’s worse than anyone has admitted. A whole village has been wiped out in Nigeria. And in North Korea. It’s been to Puerto Rico. It’s airborne. People have been infected through very casual contact. It kills almost everyone it touches.”
    “Yes,”
Carlos said, stepping closer to her, as if awaiting a command. Finally, someone willing to admit what he’d seen in Puerto Rico.
    “But we aren’t helpless,” Fana said. “Thank you for helping us heal the world. With your music. With your story.”
    “What … story?” Phoenix said.
    Fana was no longer standing five feet in front of her. Somehow, Fana had climbed between her ears, into her mind, filling her:
PLEASE TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOURSELF, PHOENIX
, Fana’s voice whispered inside her thoughts.
YOU WERE AFRAID, SO YOU LET IT GROW TO YOUR BONES. THE WORLD NEEDS YOU. I NEED YOU
.
    Her heart sailing, Phoenix brought her hands to her chest, wrapping herself as if she were cold. She patted herself, already knowing, but needing to be