Darkangel, Christine Pope [ebook reader screen .txt] 📗

“Holy crap,” Sydney said as she stood in the foyer of my new home and looked up at the brass and crystal hanging from the ceiling, two stories up. “What are you going to do with this place?”

“I have no idea,” I said wearily. The day before, Tobias had come over with his truck and moved my meager belongings into Great-Aunt Ruby’s house. Okay, my house. I was staying in one of the spare bedrooms at the moment, because no way was I sleeping in the bed she’d died in. Her spirit certainly wasn’t hanging around the place, I could tell that already, but even so I had my limits.

“How big is it?” Sydney had moved from the foyer into the dining room and was gawking at the long table with its accompanying twelve chairs and matching sideboard.

“A little over three thousand square feet.”

“That’s kind of a lot of house for one person, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t agree more. Then again, I did have the “bodyguards” lurking around, so technically I supposed there would be at least four people there at all times. I didn’t feel like explaining that to Sydney, especially since they’d made themselves scarce and were upstairs in the library-slash-study, ostensibly cataloguing the books there but really just trying to stay out from underfoot.

“Yes, but it’s tradition for the prima to live here, so….” I shrugged. “And normally I would’ve been moving in with my consort, but since he has yet to materialize, it’s just me.”

“Maybe you should get a dog.”

There was an idea. I was horribly allergic to cats — not a good allergy for a witch to have, I know — and Aunt Rachel hadn’t wanted the responsibility of a dog in a house with no yard, so I’d been pet-less my entire life. But this house had a small yard off the side, where there was an even tinier plot of grass and a few flowerbeds. It wasn’t big enough to keep a German shepherd happy, but maybe a smaller dog, one I could adopt from the Humane Society or something.

“Maybe,” I said. “Although I’ve probably got enough on my plate right now without adding a dog to the mix.”

“I suppose.” Sydney had walked back into the foyer and crossed over into what Great-Aunt Ruby had always called the parlor, although really it was just the living room. It had a massive fireplace with a mahogany mantel and furniture that looked as if it should be in a museum. The floral wallpaper was positively eye-crossing. “So can you…I don’t know…change it at all?”

“Um, I’m not sure.” Actually, I hadn’t even stopped to consider that. I’d gotten the impression that when Ruby inherited the house, she and Patrick basically moved in and didn’t alter much of anything, except to update the kitchen appliances. Of course, now those “updates” looked like museum pieces themselves. “I guess so…I mean, it’s mine now, right?”

“You should.” Planting her hands on her hips, she looked up at the ten-foot ceilings with their crown moldings. “I bet you could do a lot with it. That is….” She trailed off, looking hesitant…for her. “It would probably be kind of expensive.”

“That really isn’t an issue.” I’d already had a fairly substantial chunk in the bank, just because living at Aunt Rachel’s hadn’t cost me anything (well, besides chipping in for groceries, which I’d insisted on after I turned eighteen). So my monthly McAllister dividend and the money I earned from my jewelry mostly went into my savings account, since I wasn’t spending it on clothes or cars or going out to clubs, or any of the other things a girl my age might conceivably spend her money on.

“So you inherited more than just the house?” Her tone sounded envious. If only she knew that being prima wasn’t just living in a big house and having apparently unlimited funds.

“Some,” I said cautiously. “Enough that I could do a few things to this place if I wanted to.”

“Good. Because that wallpaper has got to go.”

I laughed at that, and we went on from room to room as I gave her the grand tour of the place. By then Lionel and Joseph had already removed all of Great-Aunt Ruby’s personal effects, so her clothes and jewelry and family photos and all that were gone. It didn’t feel quite so intrusive to walk through the house with those personal touches taken away, but even so I couldn’t help feeling like a trespasser. I hoped that sooner or later I’d be able to wrap my head around the fact that this was now my home.

Even so, I had a feeling Sydney was right. I really should be doing something to make it feel like mine, and not just a place where I was camping out.

“Change it?” Aunt Rachel said blankly at dinner that night. She’d insisted that I come back to the apartment to eat, and I wasn’t about to argue. The transition didn’t feel so abrupt when I could still indulge in the familiar ritual of sitting down to eat at her dining room table. “I guess I never thought about it.”

“Place could do with an update,” Tobias said around a bite of cornbread. My aunt had made chili verde that night.

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, shooting him a grateful smile. “I mean, I’m not going to make it totally modern or anything, but all that floral wallpaper and all those fussy antiques are just not my style.”

She was silent for a moment, pushing the chili around in her bowl. “Well, I suppose you could. You probably should speak to the elders first, just to make certain.”

“I will,” I said, although I wasn’t looking forward to that discussion. What was I supposed to do if they said no? All those florals and chintz would probably make my head explode.

To my surprise, though, they seemed mostly uninterested in the subject. “It’s your house now — all we ask is that you not alter the exterior,” Margot Emory informed me, and that seemed to be the end of the matter.

Well, almost. I was walking back up to the house when Jocelyn Riggs, the clan’s strongest medium, came hurrying after me. I turned to her, surprised, wondering if she was going to tell me that the elders had changed their minds and that I was going to drown in chintz to the end of my days.

But she only fixed me with a steady gaze and said, “I have a message for you from Great-Aunt Ruby.”

“You do?” I wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or not.

Normally Jocelyn was a rather pinch-faced woman. She was a few years older than my Aunt Rachel, but she looked more like a decade separated them. Now, though, she shot me an incongruous smile and said, “Yes. She wants me to let you know that you can do whatever you want with that house. Her exact words were, ‘Tell Angela that I’ve no more use for that house now than I do those old bones they buried in the Cottonwood cemetery. So tell her to stop fretting and get on with it.’” Jocelyn’s pale gray eyes glinted. “I get the impression that she’s rather curious to see what you do with the place. Good afternoon.”

And she turned and went back down the hill, heading for the far more modest cottage she called home. I stared after her for a minute, then grinned and shook my head.

I of all people was not someone to disregard messages from beyond the grave.

The distraction of redoing the house was a welcome one. Still no sign of that mysterious dark being, no more assaults in my dreams…no nothing. I hadn’t even dreamed of him lately, which I wasn’t sure was entirely a good thing. Better that, though, than another visitation from the unwelcome shade that had visited my aunt’s store.

I hired a decorator from Sedona and told her that I wanted to keep something of an antique feel but with less fussy furniture…and no wallpaper. She swept through the house with swatches and paint chips, made suggestions, and generally took over. I was okay with that, though. She was a professional, and I was just a girl who up until that point had never had to decorate anything bigger than a ten by twelve room. She used her own crew, for