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

would show up in the next few weeks, or I’d be marrying Adam just to keep myself…and the clan…safe. More or less.

At least now I had a face to put to my enemy. Maybe it had been risky to come here. But Damon Wilcox had taken a risk, too. Before he was a stranger. Now he’d revealed himself. What was it Great-Aunt Ruby had written?

So handsome…so evil.

Obviously those traits had been carried down to the current generation. I shivered, and told myself it was just that Phil had the A/C turned up too high. Phoenix felt shockingly warm after the chilly early December winds up in our part of the world. Above Jerome, Mingus Mountain still had a faint dusting of snow from the last storm that had passed through.

As we turned onto Camelback Road and headed toward the freeway, my phone rang. Puzzled, I dug it out of my purse. Maybe Sydney was calling in a last-minute shopping request. Too bad, since we were already on the road.

But the number on the screen was from the 602 area code, not 928. I frowned at it for a second, then guessed who it must be. “Hello?” I said.

“Angela.” Chris’s voice. “I am so sorry — I let my phone run down last night while I was in the studio working on my latest painting, and I was up so late that I just crashed without even checking it. So are you in Phoenix?”

He hadn’t blown me off, or forgotten about me. The warmth that flooded me was short-lived, though. “We’re here, but we’re already on the way home.”

“You are?” he asked, sounding confused. “I thought you said you’d be spending most of the day here. It’s only a little after three.”

“I know.” I really hated that my aunt was sitting next to me in the back seat. Not exactly the best conditions for a private conversation. “Something came up.”

His tone sharpened a little. “Everything okay?”

Not really, I thought. “It’s sort of a family thing.” I didn’t trust myself to say anything more than that.

A pause, maybe while he tried to decide what would be appropriate to ask and what wouldn’t. “I’m sorry to hear that. Things are busy right now, since all my projects are due at the end of this week.”

“No finals?” I asked.

“Not in the studio art program. Just projects. Lots and lots of projects.”

There was such a rueful note in his voice that I had to chuckle a little, even though I was not all that happy about missing this one chance to see him. I had a feeling there wouldn’t be any more.

“Well, maybe we can try again once you’re out for the semester.”

The slightest of hesitations, one I probably wouldn’t have even noticed in person but which seemed more obvious over the phone. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll give you a call when I unearth myself from these piles of paint and canvas.”

“Sounds great,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“’Bye.”

The call ended, and I frowned as I shoved my phone back in my purse. I might not have been the most experienced girl around, but even I knew what “I’ll give you a call” meant, i.e, “it might have been fun, but you’re not really worth the effort.”

I stared out the window at the endless succession of cookie-cutter housing tracts and shopping malls and industrial parks that flashed by as we cruised down the freeway. Maybe once I would have been fascinated, or wondered what it was like to live in such a vast sprawl, to have everything you needed right at your fingertips instead of having to drive miles to get it or order it by mail.

Right then, though, I just wanted to get home. Back to Jerome, where it was more or less safe.

Back home, where my Aunt Rachel and I had some unfinished business.

She seemed to sense that I wanted to talk to her…and was trying to do whatever she could to put off the confrontation for as long as possible.

“Tobias and I had discussed going to the Vaquero Grill for dinner, since I don’t really have time to put anything together,” she said as she got out of the van. “Do you want to come?”

Obviously I was not going to start a blowout in a restaurant, especially in front of Tobias. I shook my head. “I’m kind of tired. I think I’ll stop in at Grapes and get a pizza, then go on home.” I said this last bit with my voice slightly raised, so the bodyguards could know what I was planning.

They all looked worn-out and like they wanted nothing more to go home and crash. Amazing how tiring driving could be when all you did was sit for hours. “I’ll send word to tonight’s watchers and let them know,” Allegra said.

Well, at least the day crew was getting a break. “Thanks,” I told her, then waved to everyone and headed across the street to Grapes, which was busy but not heinously so. I waited at the bar until my pizza was ready, then went on up the hill to the house, juggling the pizza box in one hand and my shopping bags in the other. My house, I reminded myself, although it still didn’t feel exactly like mine.

I shoved the bags under one arm and put my hand on the knob, sending out the little feelers with my mind to have the tumblers fall where they needed to. The lock clicked, and I began to open the door.

“Hey, Angela.”

Adam’s voice. I half turned to see him standing on the garden path, in front of the bottom step. Pushing back my irritation — I really just wanted to sit down and eat my pizza in peace — I said, “Hi, Adam.”

“I heard about what happened today.”

Great. So this wasn’t merely a social call. Still balancing the pizza box in one hand, I told him, “You’d better come on inside. Have you eaten yet?”

He shook his head. There went my plan for leftovers tomorrow night. But since it would be rude to do anything else, I added, “Then you can help me with this pizza.”

Face brightening, he hurried up the steps and then finished opening the door for me. I was happy to be inside; a cold wind was blowing, and I still had on only a light top and no jacket.

I went into the dining room and set the pizza down on the table, then dropped my shopping bags on one of the chairs. The house was mostly dark, with only a light on in the hall, so I hoped Adam couldn’t really see where the bags were from. I wanted his present to be a surprise.

It seemed a little silly to be eating pizza in that grand space, with seating for ten and the heavy wrought-iron chandelier I’d picked out hanging overhead, so I turned to him and asked, “Do you mind if we go into the family room instead? It’s a little cozier.”

“Sure,” he said, and came over and picked up the pizza before I could retrieve it. He didn’t appear to notice the shopping bags at all, and I let out a little mental sigh of relief.

We needed napkins and plates, so I went in the kitchen and fetched some. Then my gaze fell on the wine rack sitting on the chipped tile counter. It had been a hell of a day. Maybe sitting down and drinking with Adam wasn’t the greatest idea, but he was seeming more and more…inevitable. It might be time to stop fighting the whole idea.

“Wine?” I asked, and moved toward the wine rack. “I think I’ve got some chianti in here.”

“Sure,” he said, trying to act nonchalant, but I could see how he perked up at the suggestion.

Nothing for it, then. I extracted the bottle of chianti and fetched some glasses from the cabinet, then got out the corkscrew.

“Can you manage this?” I asked. “I never was very good at it.”

“Some witch you are,” he returned with a grin, then came over to pick up the bottle and the corkscrew.

“I did unlock the door without a key, you know.”

“I guess that’s handy, too.”

He struggled a little with the wine as well, but I didn’t offer to help. I had a feeling he spent more time opening beer bottles than wine bottles. At least he got the cork out, though, and I took the plates and napkins and pizza box while he brought the wine and our glasses to the family room.

It had been the sitting room when this was Ruby’s house, but a family room seemed a lot more practical. There was another fireplace here, on the wall opposite the flat-screen TV. Logs had already been piled there, awaiting a cold evening.

Well, it was cold now. Adam must have noticed my glance toward the hearth as I set the pizza and plates down on the heavy coffee table, which was one large piece of polished juniper with glass on top. “Want a fire?” he asked.

“That would be great.”

He grinned. “Watch this — I’ve been practicing.” And he turned and focused his attention on the pile of logs, muttering something I couldn’t quite catch under his breath.

Almost at once, I saw a lick of flame start at the end of one log, and then quickly spread along its length. Soon the whole pile was crackling away happily, warming the room.

“Hey, Angela!” I heard Kirby’s voice echo down the hall. “The night crew