Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

We drove back to the docks. Tawny and Franz had arrived, and Maggie and the other ladies had told them what they’d seen, the demolished crypt, the empty casket, the vision of Torstein who told them he would find us later today.

“Not a vision,” Angel said. “He was there. We touched him.”

“Yah,” Sully said. “Van thought he was a ghost.”

“I did not,” Van said.

“But he wasn’t. He was real.”

Pete confirmed the scene at the cemetery, but said, “We didn’t see him. We didn’t see anything.”

Our new friend, Mateo, was following along with us like someone in a dream. I could see that he wanted Torstein to be alive, of all the murders he’d done or ordered done, I knew this was the one he would most like to undo. But how could it be possible? How could they have seen Torstein today after the devastation in the red jacket we'd seen on Friday?

“He’s alive,” Maggie said. “You will see.”

Franz shook his head. Clearly he didn’t believe it.

“Let’s go fishing,” he said.

Jack powered up the engines. Jazz cast off the lines. We set out to sea.

The sun was rising over the city behind us as we chugged out into the open water. We were facing gray seas just beginning to color pale pink and orange where the first rays of morning lit them up. But that sunrise was behind us, and we were looking, and heading, west and slightly south — the girls, Van and Sully were standing at the rail on the bow, smiling and laughing, Mari and the boys still dancing, the chilly wind causing them not so much as a goose bump, so contented and happy they seemed. Jack had joined them, making them tell him again and again what they had seen.

Mateo, Pete and I were with Phyllis and Bruiser in the wheelhouse, Jazz was in the captain’s chair.

Maggie worked her way back to the wheelhouse and said, “The funny thing was his jacket.”

None of us were going to bite. We didn’t believe it, couldn’t bear to believe it, and then have our outlandish hopes dashed.

“His jacket wasn’t green. It was sort of tan, golden you could say. Somehow, it was even more becoming ...”

“Did he tell you, did he really tell you to find me, Pete?” Pete asked. “Or did he just say, ‘Go tell the guys’?”

I tried to keep my jaw from dropping. Could Pete really think there was some possibility it wasn’t just Maggie’s imagination? Did he really think she had talked to Torstein, alive?

“I told you!” Maggie said. “He said go tell Pete and the guys. He wanted you to know, specifically, Pete, that he was coming.”

Pete had been looking gray ever since those thugs beat us up in the parking garage, but now he positively blanched. I couldn’t figure it — on the wild, wacky chance that what Maggie said could possibly be true in this world, it would be good news! It would be the best possible news. And yet Pete looked like he was scared to death that it might, in fact, be so.

“Dear God,” he murmured, and sat down on one of benches that ran around the inside of the wheelhouse. Mateo was already seated on one, slumped a little bit, staring straight ahead, clearly dazed by the notion that perhaps Torstein wasn’t dead.

“Pete, it won’t matter,” Phyllis said. “Don’t you see, if he’s alive, then everything is all right! Nothing else matters as long as he’s alive.”

Pete leaned over and put his head in his hands. Phyllis sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulder. I still couldn’t figure what was happening. I didn’t think what Maggie was telling us could be true, but even if somehow Pete thought it was, his reaction was off.

Jazz said, “We were all there, Pete, Jack and me, and Andy. None of us stopped them. None of us saved him. If he told Maggie he’s coming to find us, he’s not going to blame us.”

 “None of you swore you’d protect him, either,” Pete muttered into his hands. “None of you told that stinking Waverling that you didn’t even know him!”

“Pete, it doesn’t matter,” said a strange, new voice in the wheelhouse. We’d been joined by a gorgeous guy in a shining golden coat. Where he came from, I can’t say. How long he’d been there, I don’t know. He was not very tall and built like Torstein, sort of muscular, but lithe — he even had Torstein’s straight, black hair and hooked nose. Come to think of it, he had the shining blue eyes and dazzling smile, too.

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