Page 59 of Calm Waters

18

EVA

Only the bluenight lights running the length of the ceiling are lit in the task force office, and together with the headlights of the cars passing downstairs, the room looks like it’s underwater. All the glass-walled offices lining the main office are dark, including Simon’s and the smell of coffee is so faint, I doubt anyone’s been in here since the meeting this morning. A black parka is hanging on the rack by the door, and I think it belongs to Rok, so maybe I’m not quite as alone here as I feel. Then again, I think this jacket might be hanging here permanently.

A knock on the glass door of the office startles me and I turn so fast I get lightheaded. A tall woman in a long dark coat is standing on the other side of the door, smiling at me. Her sandy blonde hair is mostly hidden under an oversized silvery grey cap and her large blue eyes are big and spaced far apart on her face. It’s Hana.

I buzz her in and smile wide. “Wow, Hana. You haven’t changed a bit.”

She smiles too, another piece of my memory of her falling into place. That was quite a wild summer we spent together. Working all day and partying all night.

“And you look like you’re about to pop,” she says and chuckles. “When is she due? Or he?”

She walks in and a smell I can only describe as that of rotten fruit envelops her as she pulls off her hat. She shakes out her long, straight blonde hair, making the scent worse, then starts unbuttoning her coat while smiling at me.

“She. And it’s not for another four weeks at least.” I run my hand across my belly automatically. My daughter is being very active, moving like she’s doing actual backflips in there.

“I can’t have children myself,” she says as she hangs up her coat next to the puffy jacket.

“I’m sorry about that,” I say and she waves her hand through the air dismissively.

“It’s not a big deal. Kids are a lot of work for not a lot of reward, I find.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just shrug and lead the way to the big glass desk.

“So what kind of email did you get?”

I’m sensing the same sort of guardedness from her as I felt when we were speaking on the phone. Like she knows something I don’t and is really smug about it.

I’m also trying to decide if she’s the woman I saw outside the gift shop while I was interviewing Tina Ceh’s sister. All I saw were that woman’s eyes, and only for a second, but the look in them was very similar to what I’m seeing in Hana’s now. But that woman’s eyes were closer together. Weren’t they?

“The message is messed up, I can tell you that much right away,” she says as she lays her backpack on the table and pulls out her laptop—a thin black one, covered in scuffs and scratches.

“You need to read it for yourself,” she says and pulls out one of the chairs for me, while sitting down in the other one. I should be the one inviting her to sit down, I suppose, but Hana was always a very forceful and take-charge type of person. So I just sit and wait for her to power up the computer.

“Here,” she says and turns it so I can see the screen, which is accompanied by a screeching noise of plastic against glass and has probably resulted in yet another scuff on the bottom of her laptop.

She’s put the letter on full screen. It’s written in green and red font, seven paragraphs long, with several words in bold. Those are the ones in read and they’re what I notice first.

I lean in closer to read the rest. “This is a photo of a letter, right? It was sent as an attachment?”

“Yes,” she says. “I’ll show you everything later. Just read it now. It’s insane.”

I seek lost souls and show them the way home. On the day of the dead I find them and show them the way toeternal peace.

Their diseasedbloodflows to theriveras their souls leave this imperfect, flawed world.

I am the night that brings everlasting dawn.

I am the rain that brings eternal sunshine.

I am the flood that brings calm waters.

Do not try to stop me. I will not be stopped.

My work is not done.

I am theSavior of Lost Souls.

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