Diving for Pearls: The Complete Collection (The Pearl Makers) Read online

Poof!

  Peter appeared beside Elizabeth, his usually somber face looking even grimmer than usual.

  “You’re kind of ruining the moment here,” Elizabeth said, but Peter’s expression remained unchanged.

  “Well, what is it?”

  He placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her away from Daisy’s bedroom. “Come, we need to talk about the next part of the plan.”

  Part IV

  Peter stood before Elizabeth, his stiff, sullen expression a stark contrast to the warmth of the scene that had just unfolded in Daisy’s room. “It’s time we discussed the next part of the plan,” he said, ushering Elizabeth outside.

  “Did you see that? Daisy admitted she was wrong, apologized even. It was wonderful.” Elizabeth smiled wide, hoping Peter would do the same.

  He did not.

  “Yes, that’s all very well. But—the plan. We need to discuss it, so that you’re prepared for what happens next.”

  “What is it, Peter? I want to get back in there, and enjoy what just happened, tell Daisy what a good thing she’s done, build her conscience up—basically, finish doing my job.”

  “Sit,” Peter instructed. “It will be better if you sit.”

  Elizabeth gulped. Something was wrong, and she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to know what. She remained silent as Peter went through the next part of the plan step by step.

  Peter’s voice remained deadpan despite the horrors he foretold.

  “And you expect me to just accept this?” Elizabeth shouted. “To let all this happen to my daughter without fighting every step of the way?”

  Peter sighed. “I’m sorry, truly sorry, but it’s not our place to question the plan. You know that.”

  Elizabeth wanted to scream loud enough for the heavens to hear her, to demand the plan be changed, but suddenly she had no energy left to argue. Instead, she sank to the ground and wept. For how long, she couldn’t be sure, but when she pushed herself back to her feet, the sky was dark and Peter had gone.

  * * *

  Daniel and Duke found her later that day, their normally sunny dispositions clouded.

  “He finally told you, huh?” Duke asked.

  “He did, but I’m going to fight it, fight it with everything I’ve got.” Elizabeth hated that the other angels all knew of this turn before she did. She also hated that they could find her whenever they wanted, but she had no way of initiating contact with any of them. But her hatred for both these things fell short in comparison to the overwhelming rage she felt for the plan.

  Well, plans could change, and in this case plans would change.

  “What do you mean you’re going to fight it? That’s not how things work.” Duke scratched his head and looked to Daniel.

  “He’s right. You see that don’t you, lady? The plan is not to be messed with.”

  “Well, I’m messing with it. Who’s going to stop me? You?”

  “No one’s going to stop you, because you’re not going to be able to start. Don’t you understand? The plan is set in stone. There’s nothing you can do to break it.” Daniel laid a conciliatory hand on her shoulder, and tense energy shot off him in spirals.

  “So you expect me to just sit back and watch as my daughter suffers? To stand idly by as she goes through hell on earth?”

  Daniel and Duke exchanged a worried look.

  “Unfortunately, yeah. You can’t stop her suffering, but you can comfort her as she goes through it.”

  “No, that’s not going to be good enough. I’m going to fight this. I’m going to fight however and whomever it takes, even if it means challenging God himself.”

  “Whoa!” Duke raised his palms and backed slowly away. “She went there! She actually went there.”

  “Listen, lady. We like you, so we’re going to pretend you didn’t just go there. Yeah, it’s hard. No one’s saying it isn’t, but what you just said… well, it’s going too far, way too far. This conversation never happened, you hear me? It never happened.”

  “I meant every word,” Elizabeth said, biting off the end of each syllable as it left her mouth. “I will stop this, no matter what it takes, even if it means losing my wings.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth kept even closer watch over Daisy than usual. It could happen at any moment, and she had to be ready. She needed to figure out how she could keep him away, and she needed to do it fast. If Daisy never met him, then he wouldn’t be able to…

  God, she couldn’t even think it.

  For days, Elizabeth viewed all new people with suspicion and fear—especially those of the male persuasion.

  When a chatty clerk at the grocery store asked Daisy how her day was going, Elizabeth used her dodge to knock the bag of groceries out of Daisy’s arms, spilling them on the floor. The clerk had to rush back to get a mop, which meant he didn’t have a chance to talk to Daisy.

  A few days later, a handsome barista asked for her number, and Elizabeth toppled Daisy’s latte over, singeing him with hot coffee before the girl could dole out her digits.

  It went on like this for weeks—months—and while Elizabeth grew weary from this hyper-vigilance, she also refused to let her guard down. She knew it would happen eventually, although she didn’t know the exact time or place. And she also knew she wouldn’t be able to stop the plan until it at least had the chance to get started.

  The waiting was the worst part.

  Pure anguish.

  And Elizabeth’s jumpiness had started to affect her charge as well. Now Daisy shuddered whenever anyone tried to shake her hand. She started turning down invitations to parties and spending more time at home, locked in her bedroom, scribbling away in her journal. Well, it was safer that way. Her daughter’s sudden introversion was a small price to pay for keeping the plan at bay.

  Daisy now clung to her journal like some teen version of a security blanket. She’d often wedge it into the spine of an open textbook and scribble away during lectures. The journal, like everything else Daisy owned, was adorned with a gold-winged butterfly.

  She ran her fingertips over the embossed edges of the design as her teacher read aloud from a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson. She rarely found herself distracted during English class. It was, after all, her favorite subject. Midway through a particularly lovely poem, a sharp knock sounded on the classroom door. A moment later a tall, gangly boy loped in and cleared his throat.

  “I’m, uhh, Victor Larsen. I’m new.”

  “Right, right. Welcome, Victor. You can take a seat in the back there next to Daisy.” The teacher waited for Victor to take a seat and then carried on with his reading.

  Daisy smiled as the new student sat down, and he smiled right back. After class, he asked Daisy if she wouldn’t mind helping him locate his next classroom.

  Warning sirens blared in Elizabeth’s head.

  “Daisy, no. Don’t do it. He’s not as nice as he seems. He will hurt you. He will ruin you,” she screamed as Daisy’s conscience.

  Daisy shuddered, but forced a smiled. “Sure, I’d be happy to help.”

  “No. NO. NO!” Elizabeth screamed as loud as she could. Why wasn’t the girl listening to her? This was it, the one Peter had warned her about. She was sure of it. This boy. She needed to reveal the plan if she were to have any hope of stopping it.

  “Daisy, stay away from him. He’s going to hurt you very badly. He will ruin your life, and eventually…” She took a deep breath. “End it. Get away while you still can, before it’s too late.”

  Elizabeth waited for her words to take effect, only they didn’t.

  Daisy and Victor chatted away about music, school lunch, and the local mall. Why wasn’t Daisy tripping over her feet trying to run away from him? Why wouldn’t she listen?

  Peter appeared and fell into step beside her as she chased the pair through the high school hallways.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” Elizabeth hissed, unable to tear her eyes away.

  “It is.”

  “I knew it! I knew it! D
aisy, get away from him. He’s a killer!”

  Daisy didn’t react in the slightest.

  “She can’t hear you,” Peter said.

  “What? Why not? This sure is a hell of a time for my powers to stop working.”

  “Elizabeth, stop. I already told you. You can’t change the plan, and you can’t reveal it either. That’s why she didn’t hear you when you tried to tell her about it.”

  She paused and looked to Peter whose face was arranged into a scowl. “But… I know we have the power to stop this from happening. We must. We just have to figure out how, and—”

  “There’s nothing we can do. I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not!” Elizabeth spat. “You’re not sorry at all. If you were, you’d help me find a way to keep her safe. You probably have no idea what it’s like, do you? Being forced to watch as the person you love most in this world walks into a terrible trap? You never loved anyone. You just don’t—”

  Peter cut her off with a string of shaky words she could barely make out. “That’s… not… true.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  Peter had stopped walking, so she fell back with him, still keeping her eyes on Daisy and the monster beside her.

  “I know exactly what it’s like. Even better than you do as a matter of fact, because it’s already happened to me. I watched as she died a sudden, painful death. I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t. It’s not our place. So please would you stop accusing me of not caring?”

  Peter rubbed at the beginnings of tears, which made Elizabeth very uncomfortable. He was supposed to be the strong one, the one who presented facts instead of feelings. Had he once been just like her?

  She risked another quick glance away from Daisy to fix her eyes on him. “Peter, were you once a protector?”

  He held his hands up as if to indicate the matter was not up for discussion. “Please,” he repeated and that single word provided more insight into his humanity than anything he’d said before.

  “Okay. But if you truly understand, can you help me see it too? Why does this have to happen? Daisy hasn’t done anything wrong, certainly not wrong enough to deserve this. Why should she have to suffer when there are terrible people out there living without a worry in the world?”

  “You want to know why bad things happen to good people.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “And why good things happen to bad people. Why can’t it be more fair?”

  “In time, everyone gets their due. Don’t worry about those who do evil. They will be dealt with, just not by you.” Peter shifted to focus his gaze on Daisy, and they watched her together for a few moments. Elizabeth had assumed he’d forgotten to answer the other part of her question when suddenly he spoke again.

  “Bad things—especially when they happen to good people—accelerate the soul’s journey. They mean less waiting to get to the Gates. And those ‘bad things’ are a blessing, whether or not they seem that way at first. I know it’s hard to understand, especially when someone you love is hurting, but it’s the truth.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent.

  “Your job will be to ease her suffering, and I know you’ll do well. Godspeed, Elizabeth,” Peter vanished.

  * * *

  She’d gone out on dates with Victor a few times now, and nothing bad had happened. So far. Elizabeth knew deep within her heart that Victor was the one she had been warned about—warned and then told she could do nothing to stop him. As it turned out, the afterlife was every bit as unfair as mortal life had been. Even more so, perhaps.

  Daisy spritzed vanilla body spray on the inside of each wrist and then rubbed it behind her ears, a trick Tina had taught her. She placed butterfly studs into each ear lobe, and then eased on a pair of stiletto heels her father still had no idea she owned. As she worked to create a smoky eye, Elizabeth used her dodge to knock a picture from the dresser. It fell and shattered on the hardwood floor below.

  “Shoot!” Daisy mumbled under her breath as she bent to sweep the glass fragments into her hands.

  Elizabeth realized only after it fell that the picture was of her and Theo on their wedding day. How much had changed since that day nearly twenty years ago. Maybe it was poetic, the picture falling to its doom only moments before Elizabeth would fail as a protector, the fate of her charge splintering into a million broken pieces.

  You can only ease her suffering, both Daniel and Peter had said. It’s your job to make the fallout easier.

  Daisy was fighting back tears as she stroked the aged portrait of her mother’s face. Elizabeth wanted to cry too. Everything was ruined, or it soon would be. She made one final half-hearted attempt to fling Daisy’s hand from the doorknob as she pulled it open and strolled outside to meet Victor.

  He took her to the movies, some action flick. Elizabeth didn’t pay much attention, and neither did they instead choosing to make out in the darkened theater as if they could suck life-giving oxygen from each other’s lungs.

  They reluctantly pulled apart when the film ended and the lights snapped back on. The credits were now over too, and everyone else had already cleared out of the theater.

  “Come home with me,” Victor said, a demand not a request.

  Daisy giggled. “I don’t think your parents will like that very much.”

  He bit her earlobe then whispered the next part into her hair. “They’re out for the night, some charity ball. We’ll have the place all to ourselves.”

  “NO!” Elizabeth yelled, also leaning into Daisy’s hair so she could speak directly into her conscience. She hated how close she was to Victor in that moment, but it was a necessary evil.

  Daisy bit her lip and then mumbled, “Okay.”

  Elizabeth shouted into her head the entire drive from the theater to Victor’s sprawling suburban mansion. Even though Peter had explained that all attempts to reveal the plan before its time would fall on deaf ears, Elizabeth tried anyway.

  “This is bad, Daisy. Really, really bad. He will hurt you. This one decision will ruin your entire life. Run away from him. Run far, far away.”

  But Daisy didn’t hear—or at least she didn’t listen. Instead she accepted a tumbler full of red wine Victor had filched from his parents’ collection.

  “Why so tense? It’s only me.” He flashed a serpentine smile and then pulled her onto his lap while he worked at massaging the knots from Daisy’s shoulders.

  “Mmm. That feels so good,” Daisy moaned.

  “You think that feels good?” Victor laughed and flipped her around on his lap. “Try this.”

  And they were kissing even hotter and heavier than before.

  He slipped his hand up her shirt, and she pulled away as if she’d been burned.

  “Hey, hey,” he whispered sweet like poison. “It’s okay.”

  Daisy nodded and allowed him to pull her shirt over her head. A few moments later he unhooked her bra and threw it onto the floor.

  Elizabeth wanted to puke, but instead she wept. Her voice had abandoned her, which meant she could only watch in fear as she waited for it to happen. She clamped her eyes shut but stayed close by in case Daisy needed her.

  Now Victor pushed down the waistband of her pants.

  She drew in a deep breath but didn’t protest as he helped her out of her pants and underwear and then guided her hands to his belt.

  Elizabeth knew everything that was happening despite her best efforts to tune it out. And she knew the exact moment when new life bloomed within her daughter’s womb, an innocent new life hitching itself to Daisy’s, and Daisy’s lifeline tying itself forever to her captor’s, to a boy whose potential for evil was far from met.

  Part V

  Daisy’s baby didn’t have its own angel yet, which meant Elizabeth was hopelessly alone. When she’d asked where Victor’s protector was, Peter murmured something about wardens before snapping his fingers and fading back into the ether.

  It had all happened so fast: Daisy missing her pe
riod and deciding to take an at-home pregnancy test; learning of the baby and confiding her secret to Tina; the two of them then telling Theo together; Victor showing up at the house unannounced and asking for Daisy’s hand in marriage, along with the chance to prove himself. These events, while separate, hung together in Elizabeth’s memory in one giant swirl of time that had passed far too quickly.

  One moment that stood out clear and sharp against the rest was the courthouse where they had all stood together in the judge’s chambers. The simple ceremony couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes. Victor said, I do. Daisy said, I do. They exchanged cheap gold bands, and—just like that—Daisy shed her father’s name and assumed that of her captor.

  Why did this particular end have so many beginnings? Elizabeth wondered. She watched in silence as her daughter hugged first Tina and then Mrs. Larsen. The unfamiliar woman remained stiff throughout the proceedings and didn’t even raise her arms to reciprocate Daisy’s hug. As if it were Daisy’s fault the woman’s son was such a careless Casanova; as if it were his life that had been ruined by Daisy and not the other way around.

  But Elizabeth knew better. She’d seen the plan, and even though she knew she couldn’t stop it, she still tried, like a movie-goer shouting at the screen to warn the hero not to enter the darkened room. Daisy had already placed both feet firmly into the dark and eerie future. The killer lay in wait, ready to end his unassuming victim.

  But nobody else knew the future, not yet anyway. They all continued to hug—except stodgy Mrs. Larsen—and exchange well-wishes.

  If only, if only…

  Elizabeth could no longer watch, so she focused her vision on Theo, the husband she had lost. It wasn’t just Daisy who’d be leaving home, after all; Elizabeth, too, had to say goodbye to all she’d ever known.

  * * *

  They moved in together later that same day. Victor’s parents had purchased a tiny trailer on the edge of town, which Elizabeth feared was their way of maintaining control without having to actually move the young couple and their future infant into their own home.