Fallen Angel (19 page)

Cate gasped and clutched Sophie's carrier tighter, as if it offered some sort of protection.

"You don't still have your gun, do you?" Sarah asked Cate out of the side of her mouth.

"No! I did what you told me and left it at home."

Fine time to do what I tell you
, Sarah thought. "Okay. That's okay. We'll think of something," she said out loud.

She closed her eyes and sat clutching the steering wheel.
Zach
, she prayed,
we really need you right now. If you can hear me, would you please, please come?

Sarah felt Cate reach over and grasp her hand, squeezing it. She opened her eyes to see Yurkemi lounging on the hood of the car, his chin propped in one hand, his face inches from the windshield. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he crooned. "Oh!
There
you are!" He pulled back his fist and acted as if he was going to punch a hole in the windshield, and Cate screamed. "Oh, please!" he said. "You girls are just too much fun!" He laid back on the hood of the car as if he was lying in the sun, and the rain pounded down on him. He seemed not to notice, just closed his eyes and folded his hands on his chest.

Zach, please, please come
.

As if he had heard her, Yurkemi suddenly jumped off the hood of the car and said, "Zachriel won't be coming to help you this time. And
this time
, I don't need to ask you where he is, because I
know
!"

Sarah's heart sank. What could he mean? She could hardly stop herself from asking, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Cate squeezed her hand harder.

"Then why are you here?" she shouted at him. "What do you want with us?" She was shaking, and Cate was practically breaking her fingers with her grip.

"Like I said, you girls are just so much fun!" He seemed to notice the rain for the first time, and shook himself. "But I'm getting wet. I think I'll go somewhere and dry off. You take care now, okay?" And he was gone.

Sarah had been so frightened, and so focused on what was happening, that she had almost forgotten about the storm. The rain continued to fall, although "fall" was a misnomer--it was driven in an almost horizontal direction, and much of it, she knew, was salt water being blown from the ocean over the beach. A palm tree near where the car had come to rest was bent almost double, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before something--something
else
fell on the car.

Was he gone? Was he
truly
gone, or just hiding somewhere, ready to pounce on them if they left the car? The rain was so heavy, they couldn't see ten feet in front of them. Well, there was nothing for it; they had to get to shelter. She watched as the palm tree, with its shallow roots, broke free of the sand and fell with a crash.

She pried her hands off the steering wheel, dislodging Cate's grip. "We've got to get to the house," she said. She reached around into the back seat and found an old sweater she kept there. "Put this over Sophie's carrier. We're going to have to run for it."

Cate wrapped the sweater around the carrier, and braced herself to get out of the car. They both opened their doors at the same time and started running down the street toward Sarah's house. They didn't make very good progress, because the wind was so strong, and Cate wished they could have just stayed in the car and taken their chances. But they didn't have any choice. The car could just as easily been flattened by a tree or overturned and blown into the ocean. They had at least as good a chance on foot.

She bent over Sophie's carrier, now wrapped in the wet sweater, and pushed head first into the storm.

It was less than a block to Sarah's house, but it seemed like miles. By the time they reached the porch and Sarah had unlocked the door, all she wanted to do was fall on the floor and rest. But as soon as she had deposited Sophie's carrier on the kitchen table, Sarah said, "We've got to get the shutters closed! Come on!" and she raced back outside.

Cate heaved a deep sigh and followed her.
Well, I can't get any wetter
, she thought. That was some consolation, she supposed.

They ran around the house, unhooking the shutters that lay flat against the house, and closing them over the windows, then re-hooking them. At least it was a small house, and only one story--Cate had no idea what they would have done if they had had to do it on a second story, there was no way they could have climbed a ladder in this storm.

It didn't take them long to fasten all the shutters--from the battering they were taking from the wind and rain, it only
seemed
like forever. Finally,
finally
, they were standing, gasping and dripping, in the kitchen, the windows safely shuttered. Dinah was on the kitchen table sniffing at Sophie's carrier; Sophie, inside, was huddled in misery. "Okay," Sarah said. "We've got to get into dry clothes, but first we've got to get Sophie dry. Come on, old girl." She picked up the carrier and took it into the bathroom, where she shut the door before letting the poor, bedraggled cat out.

Poor Sophie looked like she'd been through a war. Her fur, usually long and sleek, was matted to her body, and she'd soiled herself from fear and stress. "Poor Sophie," Sarah said. "Let's get you cleaned up." She moistened a washcloth in warm water and cleaned Sophie's soiled fur, then wrapped her in a towel and soaked up most of the rainwater. "I don't suppose you want a bath, do you?" Sophie meowed miserably in response. "No, I didn't think so. Well, why don't you stay in here and stay warm while
I
have one, then?"

But she reconsidered. While a bath did sound wonderful, she thought of Cate out in the kitchen, soaking wet and probably shivering, and she decided to take a quick shower instead. When she got out of the shower, Sophie had curled up on the bathmat and gone to sleep, exhausted, and Sarah decided she might as well leave her there, at least for the time being. She came out of the bathroom and carefully closed the door, both so that Sophie couldn't get out and that Dinah couldn't get in. No sense in stressing either of them more than they had to.

She put on an old terrycloth robe and walked through the house rubbing her hair with a towel. "Next!" she called out to Cate, who was still standing in the kitchen, dripping, unwilling to sit down for fear of ruining a chair. "Oh, wait a second," Sarah said, and went back through to her bedroom, where she found a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt for Cate, and put them on the bathroom counter along with a couple of clean towels. She said, "It's all yours. Just don't let Sophie out. I think we'll keep her in there tonight so she and Dinah don't get into it."

While Cate was in the shower, Sarah made a pot of tea and carried it to the table in the front corner of the living room by the windows. She would have liked to have looked out the window, but with the shutters closed, all she could do was sit on the couch and listen to the wind howl. It felt odd not being able to see out, even though it was dark. She hoped the shutters would hold. She hoped the
roof
would hold.

She sat on the couch with the mug of tea warming her hands, and thought about Zach. What had Yurkemi meant, that he wouldn't be back to save her? Had he managed to kill Zach? Or to do something to him that prevented him from leaving Heaven? She knew that Zach wouldn't willingly abandon her, but there were so many things she didn't understand. She knew he would come back if he could, but if he couldn't . . . well, there wasn't anything she could do about it. Dinah jumped up on her lap, startling her. "Hey there, kiddo," she said. "
You
won't leave me, will you?" She didn't get an answer, but then, she didn't expect one.

27.

As tired as they were, Cate and Sarah sat up talking until late in the night. Sophie woke up and sat crying behind the bathroom door, with Dinah sitting on the other side, nose pressed against the crack between the door and the floor.

They finally decided to try letting Sophie out of her exile, and after an initial mild confrontation--really just a tentative growl from Dinah and a half-hearted hiss from Sophie--the two cats seemed to settle into a truce of sorts. Dinah slept with Sarah in her usual spot--on top of the extra pillow--and Sophie stretched out along the back of the sofa where Cate had fallen asleep, mug of tea in hand.

Sarah had taken the mug from Cate's hand as it drooped toward the floor, and spread an afghan on top of her, then picked up Dinah and went off into her bedroom. She laid awake for a long time, thinking, and finally fell into a deep sleep with no dreams, or at least none that she remembered.

* * *

The storm let up sometime during the night, and by the time they woke up in the morning, the sun was brilliant in the morning sky and the air was heavy with heat and humidity. The shutters (and the roof) had held, but the lawn was littered with palm fronds and one of the huge palm trees at the edge of the beach across the street had fallen and was lying half in the street, half in Sarah's yard.

While Sarah was making tea in the kitchen, she picked up the phone to call the Grahams and be sure they were okay and see if there was any damage to the store, but the phone was dead. They hadn't lost power, though, which was a blessing. Jason wasn't scheduled to work until the afternoon, so she and Cate would do what they could to clean up the yard, then go in and check on the store. She wasn't worried about the store being closed--everyone else would be cleaning up after the storm, too, rather than shopping, and since she'd had the foresight to put a sign up on the door, no one would be worried if they
did
show up.

"What did you find out?" Cate was coming out of the bathroom, still dressed in Sarah's clothes, pulling her hair up in a ponytail on top of her head. Her own clothes, as well as Sarah's from the night before, were in the washing machine.

"Nothing. The phone's dead. We'd probably better go see if we can get the car unstuck, and see what else needs to taken care of right away around here, then get over to the store and take a look."

"Okay. Let's go." Cate finished with her hair and pulled on her sneakers, which had dried on top of the heat vent all night and were subsequently dry, but weirdly stiff. "Ick," she said as she tied them. "I should have washed these, too."

"Then they'd still be wet," Sarah reminded her.

"True, true."

Sarah had gone out while Cate was in the bathroom, and opened the shutters to get some light into the house. The yard wasn't actually too bad, apart from the big tree that had fallen. There were palm fronds everywhere, and several pieces of lumber that had been blown in from somewhere. They picked up debris and piled it at the side of the house to deal with later, then took a couple of pieces of the lumber and went across the street to deal with the car.

They circled it. "Doesn't look like it's damaged at all," Cate said. "Nope," Sarah agreed. Privately, she'd expected there to be a huge dent in the top from Yurkemi landing on it, and surely there would have been if he'd been human, but there was nothing. Maybe angels had a different physiology.
Well, of course they do
! She told herself, and then laughed.

"What?"

"Nothing. Let's see if we can get this baby unstuck."

It was surprisingly easy. They slid the pieces of lumber underneath the car's wheels, and with Cate pushing and Sarah driving, it only took a few minutes to move the car off the beach and onto the street. Getting it across the street and into Sarah's driveway proved to be impossible, though, because the palm tree was blocking the route.

It didn't matter anyway--they needed to get to the store. Sarah went back into the house to grab her bag, and found both Sophie and Dinah lying on the back of the couch in front of the window, watching the street. "You guys guarding the house?" she asked. She had been going to get Sophie's carrier to take her back to the store, but since the cats were getting along, and she didn't know what condition the store was in, she decided to leave her at the house and deal with it later.

"Just keep doing what you're doing," she said. "We'll be back in awhile."

They had just turned onto the street that led to the shopping district when their way was blocked by another tree. Farther down the block they could see city maintenance crews clearing away yet another downed palm tree, so they parked the car and walked the last block. The store was fine. Some sort of flying debris had broken the front window of the deli next door, and the owners were there now patching the window with plywood. "Hey, guys," Cate called to them as they walked past. "Everything okay?"