Darkangel, Christine Pope [ebook reader screen .txt] 📗
- Author: Christine Pope
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I should have been relieved at a chance to clear up the mystery. Somehow, though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she had to say. “So you know what it was?”
“Now, I didn’t say that. I just said I felt something strange.”
“What did you feel?”
“Cold. I shouldn’t feel cold…I don’t feel anything at all, most days, although every once in a while I fancy I can feel the wind on my face. My imagination, I s’pose, but there it is.” A frown pulled at her fair eyebrows, at skin that would never see a line or wrinkle. I always had to remind myself that Maisie had been younger than I was now when she died.
“I felt it, too,” I told her, and tried to repress a shiver, not all that successfully.
She shot me a curious glance. “And you don’t know what it was, neither?”
“That’s why I was asking you. I thought you might know something more because you’re a, well — ”
“’Cause I’m a ghost.”
“Well, yes.”
Her shoulders lifted. “Never felt nothing like it before, that’s true. It wasn’t one of us.”
By “us” I knew she meant the thirty-odd spirits who’d made Jerome their permanent abode. I’d already guessed that much, since I knew all of them as well as I knew the members of my own family, or the residents of the town who weren’t McAllisters but were trusted with our secret.
“But do you — do you think it was a spirit who used to be someone?”
“I am still someone.” — Somewhat indignantly.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I sighed, and ran a hand through my hair. Or rather, I attempted to and was stopped by a tangle. My hair tended to drive me nuts, since it was halfway between wavy and curly, and could never make up its mind what it wanted to be. “I just meant the spirit of someone who died.”
“Not like any I’ve ever met, that’s for certain.” I’d never thought I’d see a ghost looking scared, but at the very least she looked troubled, if not downright frightened. “I didn’t like it. See, we all know each other here, the good and the bad. We rub along. But this — ” Another shake of her head. “I’m glad you made it go away.”
“So it is gone.”
“Far’s I can tell. And I think I’d feel it if it was still here.”
That was something. Not much, but better than nothing.
“Thanks, Maisie.” I pulled my cell out of my jeans pocket to check the time. Six-ten. Aunt Rachel would want me back home to help put the finishing touches on dinner. “You’ll tell me if you feel anything else strange, won’t you?”
“If you come and ask,” she said.
That was ghosts for you. Always wanting it done their way.
“Sure,” I replied. “You take care of yourself.”
“Bit late for that, I think,” she said tartly, and disappeared.
Since there wasn’t anything left for me to do, I began to walk up Hull Avenue toward the back entrance of my building. Even as I went, my mind worried at the problem. So it wasn’t a ghost. Other types of spirits existed, dark entities whose purpose was anything but benign. They had their counterparts on the light side, but of course what I’d felt was definitely not good. And if one of those dark, inhuman presences had somehow decided to make me its prey, it might require more than a cleansing ritual and a charmed pentacle on the door.
Suddenly the shadows of the buildings around me felt too black, and I found myself hurrying home, hurrying toward the safety, however spurious, of my aunt’s house.
He came to me in my dreams that night. Another change, because this time he stood beside me, although for some reason I still couldn’t look up into his face. But he held my hand in his, the two of us standing there in the soft twilight as snow began to fall all around us. I wasn’t cold, even though I was wearing only a flannel shirt and jeans and boots, no jacket or gloves or hat. His fingers were warm in mine, strong and welcome, and I squeezed them slightly, as if even in my dream I had to reassure myself that he was real.
Something in the air seemed filled with anticipation, as if I knew at any moment he would pull me into him, would cup my face in his hands and bring my lips to his, so I’d know at last I’d found him, found the one I’d been waiting for all these years. He shifted, and in my dream I smiled, knowing what was going to come next.
Only as he moved, he became shadowed, as if his whole body had turned to black, had turned as featureless and frightening as the figure that had stared at me in the shop the day before, and the fingers holding mine were no longer warm, but deathly cold. In my dream I tried to wrench my hand away, but he was too strong, and not only held on to that hand but grasped the other, pulling me against him, the chill of his body leaching into mine. Then we were falling to the snow, a weight as cold and heavy and black as the depths of the ocean on top of me, holding me down, smothering my heat with his ice, and though I pushed and pushed, I couldn’t get away, couldn’t take a breath, couldn’t force one scream….
“Angela! Angela!”
My aunt’s voice, and her hands on my shoulders, shaking me awake. I blinked, and saw her worried face peering down into mine, outlined by a yellow rectangle of light — the open doorway to the hall, with the overhead fixture bringing welcome illumination to my dark room.
“What was it?” she asked, voice urgent. “A nightmare?”
I wanted to say it was only a nightmare, but I couldn’t say for sure. Mine was not the gift of seeing visions, or the future, but all witches had flashes of precognition from time to time. I didn’t want that to be the case here. I wanted it to be only a nightmare, only a horrible dream put together from my worries and fears and the frightening experiences of the past few days.
“I…don’t know,” I said at last.
“Tell me,” she said, and I knew from her tone that she wouldn’t let me get away with any evasion.
So I told her everything I remembered, no embellishment, no speculation, just the bare bones of the dream. That was enough; her face, pale already without its daytime makeup, went even whiter.
“It got through,” she murmured. “Even through all the wards we set up….”
“It was only a dream,” I said, but the protest sounded halfhearted even to me.
“We don’t know that for sure.” She reached out and touched my hand where it lay on top of the embroidered bedspread. “You’re like ice.”
That was true enough; shivers still wracked my body. “What should we do?”
“Bring in reinforcements,” she said immediately. “You’ll have to be watched around the clock.”
As much as the dream had bothered me, that idea upset me even more. Wasn’t my life circumscribed enough? Was I now going to have some kind of McAllister version of the Secret Service dogging my every step?
Yep, that was about the size of it.
Margot Emory, one of the clan elders, and Boyd Willis, a warlock noted for his strong spells of protection, and Henry Lynch, one of Great-Aunt Ruby’s grandsons, all set up camp in the living room that night, watching over me, watching over the house, making sure that no trace of evil or ill will could enter. And the next morning another group of three took over, only to be replaced by yet another trio the following evening. They attempted to stay out of the way — well, as much as they could with my aunt worrying about what she should cook for them all — but it was trying, to say the least.
I retreated to my studio and tried to concentrate on twisting wire and setting stones and choosing gems for the next round of pendants and earrings and talismans after the ones I was working on were done, but I had a hard time focusing. More than once I clipped a wire in the wrong place, or placed a stone crooked so I had to pry it out and start all over again, but I supposed it was good I had something to occupy myself. And in an odd way the very presence of the stones reassured me, the quiet strength of garnet, the gentle warmth of rose quartz, the serene coolness of jade. I took solace in their touch, and thanked them for their beauty as I set them in shimmering silver and vibrant, glowing copper.
Late on Tuesday afternoon, Sydney texted me. R U coming 2 try on dresses tomorrow?
I really, really hated text-speak, even though I supposed it made sense in a twisted sort of way when you were trying to save time and effort. Even so, I always replied using proper sentences. I’m under house arrest. Can you come up here?
Her reply came back almost at once. No
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