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

In that moment, I wondered how much I really had to be thankful for after all.

Clean-up seemed to take forever, but finally around nine o’clock I headed home with that night’s bodyguards in tow. No one spoke, probably because we were all feeling sleepy and stuffed after the enormous meal we’d eaten earlier. By that point pretty much everyone had done a rotation watching over me, so I didn’t see the need to show anyone where the snacks and sodas were. Or the coffeemaker; more than once I’d awoken in the middle of the night and smelled the rich scent of coffee drifting up the stairs, beating out the lingering paint fumes.

I just said goodnight to them and went upstairs, thinking I’d read in bed for a while or watch a show on my laptop. Something normal, prosaic. It felt way too early to go to bed, even though I was wiped out from the long day and all the heavy food I’d eaten.

But after I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth and climbed into the flannel pajama bottoms and long-sleeved thermal shirt I wore to bed — it was a magnificent house, but drafty — I found that the book I was partway through really didn’t interest me, and neither did any of the shows I had queued up on Netflix. So I shut my laptop and wandered down the hall to the library to see if I could find anything more enticing there.

I say “library” because that was what everyone called it, but it was really more of a combination study and library. A big rolltop desk stood against one wall, and two of the other walls were covered in bookshelves. This was a room I hadn’t touched yet, mainly because I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do with it. Sydney thought I should turn it into a media room, sort of a home theater, but I thought it felt sacrilegious to tear out those lovely dark oak bookshelves.

Not that what they contained looked all that intriguing. An old out-of-date set of World Book encyclopedias, probably from when Great-Aunt Ruby’s sons were young. Books of fairytales. Some tattered paperbacks looking out of place amongst the more dignified hard-bound books, mysteries and some science fiction and a few more sensational titles like Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls.

Wow, Ruby…who knew?

Fighting back a smile, I pulled out what looked like a first edition Wizard of Oz and shook my head. How much must that be worth? It still wasn’t really what I was looking for, though, so I put it back. As I did so, my gaze fell on a slim book bound in dark red leather. It had no lettering on the spine, but I didn’t know whether that was because it never did or because it had worn off over the years.

Intrigued, I opened it up and saw that, instead of being filled with type, it was hand-written. I flipped over to the flyleaf and saw inscribed on the yellowed paper there, Ruby Lee McAllister, 1947. I did some quick mental math. This was her diary, and from her twenty-first year.

My heart started to beat a little faster. Now, maybe I shouldn’t read her diary at all, since it was private. Then again, how private could it be if she’d just left it out on the shelf in plain view of everyone? And there could be things she’d written down that would help me now. A lot had happened to her that year. If there was anything in that diary that could be of use, it would be silly of me to ignore it. For all I knew, she’d put it there precisely so I would find it once the house came to me.

With that rationalization to buoy me, I tucked the book under my arm, and slipped out of the library and down the hall to my room. After closing the door behind me, I climbed back into bed, plumped up my pillows so they’d give me good support while reading, then opened the book to its first page.

Mama took me into Cottonwood today to go shopping as part of my birthday treat. Yesterday was my real birthday, and everyone came over for cake and ice cream. How nice to have a birthday in June when ice cream is appropriate. While we were in Cottonwood, she bought me this book. She said twenty-one is special for any girl, but especially for the next clan prima. It’s in this year that I’ll meet my consort, and everything will change.

I stopped for a moment, thinking of pretty young Ruby with the Rita Hayworth waves and the red lipstick. She hadn’t been afraid of her future — she’d had no reason to be. She had her parents and the members of her clan, and seemed to look forward to being prima. Of course, back then she couldn’t have had any idea how long she would have to hold that post. The prima of her youth, Abigail McAllister, had died early. Rheumatic fever, I thought, but I couldn’t remember for sure. What I did recall was that Ruby had barely a year after meeting her consort before she had to take over as prima. There was no comfortable overlap period for her, either.

Frowning, I looked back down at the book and began to read again. A lot of what I saw really was just commonplaces — descriptions of some new dresses she’d bought, comments about the weather, write-ups of various clan parties and gatherings. Here and there she’d mention working magic, but it wasn’t something she particularly dwelled on, as if it was taken far more for granted than a pretty new pair of shoes.

Then, The first candidate came today. I didn’t like his looks much, but I knew I had to kiss him, just in case he turned out to be the consort. To my relief, he wasn’t. It’s funny to think that if any other girl were discovered to have kissed so many boys, people would think she was fast, but in my case it’s expected.

That entry was dated July 12, 1947. I flipped through a few more entries, until I came to a page dated a few weeks later where she wrote of meeting another candidate. This one didn’t work out, either, and I was disappointed, because he was handsome enough to be a movie star. My mother warned me that sometimes it can take a while to find the right one. I hope not, because right now I can’t decide which is worse, having to kiss someone you don’t like, or kissing someone you think you might like, only to find out he’s not the one, either.

I could definitely relate to that. But at least she didn’t have one of her cousins bugging her to marry him if the whole consort thing didn’t work out.

There was a gap of a week or so after that. She didn’t make any mention of why she’d skipped so much time, but I supposed she had decided to write an entry only when something really notable occurred. I could relate — I’d started a diary when I was around eleven, thinking I should get down all the fabulous details about my life. Only most of the details weren’t that fabulous, except for the whole talking to ghosts thing, and after a few weeks I’d given up and shoved the diary into a drawer, never to be looked at again.

Then, in late August, There were three candidates this week. None of them suited me, not one bit. I complained to Mother that this was turning out to be no fun at all. She only smiled at me and said the fun would begin once I found my consort. Maybe so, but whoever he is, I wish he would show up soon.

On the twenty-first of September, there was an entry about the town’s celebration of the autumn equinox, the second harvest. We still had these observances as well, and it didn’t sound as if they’d changed much in the last sixty-odd years — everyone gathered for large feasts, although back then it seemed those were spread out among individual households. These days we use Spook Hall for that, and of course back then wine-growing hadn’t yet taken hold in the area. She described drinking beer as if it were a delicious, semi-forbidden thing, with no mention of wine at all.

All this was an interesting slice of local history, I supposed, but I’d been hoping to find something more. All during October there were entries about more candidates, more kisses that went nowhere. I could commiserate with her predicament, but at least I knew her story had a happy ending — fifty years of marriage, two children, five grandchildren.

There was an entry on October thirtieth about her looking forward to the Samhain celebration, but she didn’t write anything again until November fifth. And on that one, her handwriting looked shaky and almost messy, whereas before it had been clean and neat. That was back when they cared about penmanship, I supposed, feeling slightly ashamed. My own handwriting was so bad that I block-printed anything that someone else would have to read.

I am safe.

I am safe.

I am safe.

There’s an old saying Mother told me once: “What I tell you three times is true.” So I imagine I wrote that down three times so I could give the notion a power of its own. Everyone is watching over me, and I know such a thing couldn’t possibly happen again. But I imagine I am getting ahead of myself.

I was so happy on Samhain eve. I put on a pretty dress, even though I knew my robes would cover it up. It was a warm day, almost too warm for late October, but I was determined to enjoy it, since I knew it would get cold soon enough.

I decided to walk down to Hull Avenue and look at the view from the little park there, since I was done with my chores for the day and didn’t have much else to occupy me. And it seemed fitting to go enjoy the sunshine on this last day before we went into the dark time between Samhain and Yule.

No one took much note of my going. I walked along in the sunshine and enjoyed the feel of the wind in my hair, even though I knew I’d have to give it a good brushing