Fallen Angels 05 - Possession (10 page)

As Cait started to laugh, some of the tension bled out of her—but not all of it. In the back of her mind … that man lingered.

And not the singer…

… the other one.

Talk about shock and awe.

As Devina poofed out with her prize, Jim stared down at Sissy, his brain totally and completely blank. The girl was shaking as she held on to herself, her eyes wide and terrified as she looked between him and Adrian.

Poor goddamn girl.

Christ, now what.

“Go inside,” Jim said softly to Adrian, “and find Dog.”

Ad beat feet once again, disappearing in that uneven gait of his.

Left alone with the girl, Jim crouched down, both his knees popping. Putting his palms forward, he tried to make his voice nonthreatening. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Is she gone?”

The three words were so rough, he wasn’t sure what he’d heard. But then it computed. “Yeah. She—”

Sissy lunged for him, her body flopping forward in spastic discombobulation, tripping all over itself. He barely had time to catch her as she flailed in his direction, his hands slipping on her torso before finding purchase, his arms easily holding her up off the porch’s cold floorboards.

Up against him, she was soft and painfully light—although she held on to his shoulders like a cat trying with every claw to stay out of a deluge.

“I got you,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve got you…”

For a brief moment, he dipped his head, putting his face into that blond hair. Then he felt her shivering, and knew he had to get her somewhere warm. As he stood up, he had the clear sense that he could have let go of her completely and she would have remained Velcroed to his chest.

“I know you …” she said into his neck. “You came … you told me…”

“I would get you out.”

Going in through the front door, he kicked the thing shut—and ran out of gas. He wanted something clean and fresh for her, a hotel room with sheets that smelled like lemon, and room service that would bring her a hamburger, or a piece of chicken … or frickin’ nachos with melted cheese if that’s what she was into. His options?

Bedrooms that were out of a
Hoarders
episode, a limp-along kitchen, and a whole lot of draft and dust.

After glaring at the stairs, like maybe that would change the composition of the second story, he picked the sofa in the parlor. For whatever reason, maybe because that room was over the boiler in the basement, it was always warmest in there. Except … when he got to the couch, he took one look at the white sheeting that covered the damn thing and thought, Nope. He wasn’t about to put her on that filthy mess—and removing the draping would only create a dust bowl.

“I’m going to …” Shit. “Take you upstairs.”

“Where am I?”

“Out,” he said as he backtracked and went for the barely carpeted steps. “You’re out of there, and you’re never going back.”

“Promise?”

He stopped and pulled her away from him. Staring down into her eyes, he said, “Never. I don’t care what I have to do or where I have to go, she’s never getting her hands on you again.”

Sissy blinked. And then she nodded, the agreement rendered upon nothing more substantial than breath and voice, and yet forged in stone between them.

As she collapsed back into his chest, he took the staircase two at a time, and snarled at the grandfather clock as he passed it by—if that thing let out even one gong, he was going to take a chain saw to it and light the pieces on fire in the back-fucking-yard.

It would be the single most satisfying way to blow a security deposit.

When he got to the second-story foyer, he carried her right into his bedroom—the sheets were tangled, but at least they’d been laundered in the last two days.

The instant he put her on the mattress, he went to step back—and found himself locked in.

“You can let go now,” he told her.

In the end, he had to reach up and gently pry her hands free, her nails scratching at his skin even through his shirt.

He made sure he went way back, not stopping until his shoulders hit some kind of plaster. Across the room, she tucked into herself again, looking minuscule on the king-size bed, her wide eyes jumping around like she expected the walls to give way and reveal where she really was.

“You’re out,” he repeated—and wondered which of the two of them he was talking to. “And you’re never going back there.”

“Where was I.”

Jim exhaled, and unconsciously went for his pack of cigarettes. Except he wasn’t going to smoke around her. “Not a good place.”

“Was it really…”

The idea that she’d been thrown in with Devina’s tormented masses made his chest burn. “Yeah. It was Hell.”

Sissy’s eyes locked on him. “How many years was I there?”

“Ah … it wasn’t years. Not by a long shot.”

She shuddered, and seemed to brace herself. “So how many … decades. Or … was it centuries?”

Jim recoiled. “It was only a matter of weeks.”

She shook her head. “No, that can’t be right. I was there for … an eternity.”

Some kind of warning tickled its way up the back of his neck, and he followed an instinct that told him not to argue with her. Fucking Devina.

“You know I’m never going to hurt you,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me like that.”

Sissy refocused on him, her eyes seeming so old, he wondered if maybe she was right. Maybe it had been forever for her in that wall.

“I know,” she said.

Such simple words, but the relief they gave him was worth a million cigarette drags—

The clipping of little feet across bare floors brought his head around to the open doorway. As Dog made his appearance, Jim vowed to give the little guy roast turkey for the next month and a half.

“Your dog!” Sissy cried out.

Dog took that as the cue to do what he did best: get in someone’s lap and stay there. As he jumped awkwardly up onto the bed, Sissy opened her arms and the two became one, the girl holding all that scruffy fur to her heart, the animal burrowing in as if she were a living, breathing quilt whose sole purpose was to make him warm and comfortable.

“Actually—” Jim had to clear his throat. “He’s everybody’s.”

She didn’t hear him, though, and that was okay. She was murmuring to Dog, soothing him—and likely, by extension, herself.

Jim scrubbed his face. In his negotiating with Devina, he’d never thought beyond the deal—hadn’t considered what would happen if Sissy actually was sent back.

“Do you want some food?” he asked.

She didn’t answer him, her attention solely on the animal.

“I’ll go get you some …” Well, probably not eggs, no. But maybe he could get something delivered—it was before midnight. “I’ll be right back.”

Ducking out, he—

Ran right into Adrian. The other angel was standing in the second-story foyer, his face grim, his eyes sharp.

The rise of one of his brows was all the comment that had to be made:
Your bedroom. Really.

“It’s not that,” Jim growled. “For fuck’s sake, she’s a goddamn child.”

All that got him was the second brow hitting that dark hairline:
Uh-huh. Right.

“Fuck you, Adrian, for real.”

If that angel wanted to make up shit in his head, there was nothing Jim could do about it. He knew where he stood with Sissy—he’d rescued her, and now he was going to take care of her until the war was over. After that? Hopefully he won, and she could go live in the Manse of Souls, where she belonged.

That was all there was to it. He might have murdered for a living, might have violated a thousand different laws in the process, might have had sex with whores and prostitutes and women who were capable of cracking skulls and killing blindfolded … but he’d never been with a virgin, and he sure as hell was not starting now.

And certainly not ever with Sissy.

God knew, she had already been through enough—

Dimly, he wondered why he was lecturing himself on the topic. Like any of that sort of thing could ever be a reality.

“Do you want food?” Jim asked the other angel. When all Ad did was shake his head, Jim shrugged and headed down for the kitchen, where he’d left his phone.

As he jogged along, it dawned on him that Sissy was going to have a lot of questions.

If he were smart, he’d start working on the answers now.

Shit. This was going to be another long night.

Mornings were always the best for working.

As Cait sat in the sunshine, the light fell across her drafting table from over on the left, the illumination so much better than anything that came from a lamp. In its crystal-clear glow, the red of the little chocolate Lab’s collar was ruby brilliant, and his brown coat seemed made of velvet, and the happy green of the blades of grass under his paws was bright as an emerald.

No more seasonal affective disorder for her—no matter how bad or long the upstate winter got, since she’d moved in here, she’d been free of the January blues.

And the light meant warmth, too. Although it was just before seven a.m., and the morning temperature itself was in the mid-forties, the all-season porch she worked out of was tropical-toasty, the three sides of floor-to-ceiling windows giving her a nice view of her shallow backyard with its bushes and budding trees.

Reaching out blindly, her palm found her stainless-steel mug, and she took yet another deep drink of her coffee. She hadn’t slept much over the course of the night, those two men circling in her head, images of what they’d looked like, and sound bites of what they’d spoken, and close-ups of the way they’d stared at her, going around and around and around. She’d finally given up hope of anything REM-ish at five, and had gotten out of bed to make the first of two pots of coffee. Fortunately, solace had come as soon as she had sat in her padded chair.

Leaning back into the paper, she completed the finishing, colored ink touches on the puppy’s eye, giving him a lift to his cocoa brow, and tiny dark lashes that flared, and a little flash of silvery white around the edge of his iris.

Done.

But she double-checked anyway, capping the pen and returning it to its set before reviewing every inch of the two-foot-by-one-foot drawing. The puppy was in the process of sniffing at a bird, his tail in the air, his triangle ears pricked, his chubby legs ready to rear backward if the robin in front of him turned out to be foe rather than friend. The text was going to be mounted above his back, so she’d left a six-inch square blank space in the pale blue sky for the words.

“Good,” she said, as if she were her own student.

Unfastening the four corners, she carefully took the sheet and carried it over to the six-foot-long portable tables she’d set up on the solid-wall side of the room. This was page twelve of the book, and she put it at the end of the lineup.

Yup, this layout thing was a critical part of her process, she thought. It gave her a far more complete vision of the work—inevitably, she unconsciously reverted back to certain poses, spatial orientations, expressions, nuances. This way of measuring the project as a whole, all at once, helped her avoid repetitions that probably only she noticed, but which were defects nonetheless.

God … she loved children’s books. The simplicity of the lessons, the clarity of the colors, the rhythms of the words … there was something to be said for a child’s binary grasp of the world. Good was good. Bad was bad. Things that were dangerous were stoves, open flames, and light sockets—all easily avoided. And the bogeyman in your closet was always your summer camp sleeping bag wedged into a corner—never, ever something that could really hurt you.

From out of the corner of her eye, the messed-up copy of today’s
Caldwell Courier Journal
loomed even though it was lying flat on her coffee table. She hadn’t gone very far into it to find the information she’d been looking for—the article on Sissy Barten’s funeral was below the fold on the first page. Services were at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with burial at Pine Grove Cemetery immediately following.

She’d be there at the mass, of course.

Pushing her hair behind her ears, she turned back to her workspace … and took a moment to mourn the fact that Sissy would never enjoy another morning like this—and if her parents and family ever did again? It was a good decade away. At least.

She’d met the mother and father at parents’ weekend back in the fall, when Sissy had brought them to the art department’s facility and showed them her wonderful pencil drawings.

It was so eerie to think back to when Cait had shaken those hands and smiled and offered sincere praise. In that moment, if someone had told her the girl would be dead six months later? Inconceivable.

But it had happened.

When she’d gotten the call, it had been from the department head. He’d told her that Sissy had gone missing the night before, not returning from a quick errand out. Her parents had called her roommates on campus in case she’d gone there instead, and then the police had been brought in. They’d found the car she’d taken to the supermarket, but no trace of her.

Vanished.

Until she’d been found in the quarry.

Cait had been the one to clean out her things from the locker and storage compartments Sissy had used in the art building. The duty had been done after hours, when the only people in the department had been the cleaners and the security guard.

She had cried so hard that she’d needed to go to the bathroom for paper towels.

After packing up all the supplies, drawings, and paintings, and then boxing up the sculptural pieces, Cait had taken everything to her own house and called the emergency contact number listed in Sissy’s files—but she’d gotten voice mail and, after leaving a message, had never heard back.

Then again, that family had so much more to worry about.

She supposed at some point she was going to have to mail everything to the home address. She’d prefer to hand-deliver it all, but she didn’t want to intrude—and knew for sure she wouldn’t be able to hold herself together if she saw those parents again.

She couldn’t imagine what they were feeling. Having lost her brother at an early age, she knew something of the pain, but she had to imagine if it was your own child, it would be so much worse.