Fallen Angels 05 - Possession (41 page)

Man, that demon could follow through when she wanted something.

Tenacity like a parasite. Natch.

He’d really enjoyed humiliating her—watching her work so hard and get nowhere? Short of killing her, which he couldn’t do without her precious mirror, it had been utterly satisfying.

Better than a fuckload of orgasms he wouldn’t have wanted anyway.

“What’s up, man.”

Ad looked over his shoulder and cursed. “I was hoping you were Sissy. We need breakfast and she’s a hell of a cook.”

As Jim wandered in, he was walking stiffly, too, which was a surprise. All the grim on his face was not, however.

For some reason, Ad thought of the guy staring at Sissy: It was the only time he’d ever seen the savior look alive. And not as in pissed off.

They were both dead men walking in a lot of ways.

“What happened to you last night?” Ad asked.

“We gotta talk.”

Something in that voice made Ad straighten in his chair, even though his hip didn’t appreciate the added stress. “What.”

Jim took his own goddamn time getting some of that watery coffee. And he waited until he was seated across the table to drop his bomb: “Nigel’s gone.”

Ad frowned. No way he’d heard that right. “Gone as in ‘taking a breather from the game’? As in, ‘off to the tailors’? Or…”

“He’s
gone
.”

An icy-cold mantle settled across Ad’s shoulders. “Disappeared, you mean.”

“No.” Jim shook out a cigarette from a pack of Reds and lit it with his Bic. “I found him dead in his tent last night.”

Ad’s jaw unhinged, and he let his mouth fall open. “You can’t … no, that’s not…”

Jim answered without words, just staring right into his face.

“Give me one of those,” Ad muttered, holding out his palm.

“You don’t smoke.”

“This morning I do.”

Jim popped a brow, but shared, pushing over his cigs and his lighter. And Ad made like the guy, putting a cancer stick between his teeth, bringing flame to tip, breathing in.

The sense of suffocation was not remotely pleasurable. The buzz that came shortly after the inhale? Not bad.

“I was with that demon all day long,” Ad said, shaking his head. “How did Devina—”

“Nigel’s hand was on the hilt.”

Ad felt his eyes bulge. “
He
did it?”

“Far as I can tell.”

Adrian shook his head again. “Colin. Oh, shit, Colin—did you see him?”

“We traded some words, yeah.” Jim rubbed his chest and grimaced. “He had some sharp points to make.”

Adrian scrubbed his face. He’d never particularly cared one way or the other about those archangels. At their worst, they were obstacles to work around. At best, they were so busy with their tea and crumpets, they stayed out of his way.

Well, except for that one time. At band camp.

But after losing Eddie? He felt for Colin. Best unkept secret in the universe, those two archangels had been. So that must hurt.

“This fucking war.”

“Amen to that,” Jim said, leaning back and tapping his ash into the sink.

Being immortal, Ad had never thought much about dying in the conventional “game over” sense. Lately? It was on his mind constantly—no doubt thanks to bunking in with Eddie.

Hard to lose your other half.

On that note … “Everything okay with Sissy?” As Jim glanced up in surprise, Adrian rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s still none of my business what you do with her. But … she’s okay. She’s a good girl, that one—what.”

“Ahhh, that’s just a big fat one-eighty for you. As recently as yesterday morning, you were ready to clock me about her.”

Adrian took another inhale and then stared at his cigarette’s tip, because it was easier than looking at the savior. “I don’t know, I guess I don’t really blame you for trying to find a safe haven in all this. Just be careful. No foundation is sturdy in this game.”

Jim studiously avoided all that. “Thanks for buying those clothes for her. What do I owe you?”

“It came to two hundred and eighty-seven bucks. But Devina put it on her credit card, so I think we should consider them gifts.”

“You went
shopping
with her?”

“You told me to keep her busy, and she likes clothes. Whatever. The sex shit doesn’t work anymore for me—although I have to say, it was amusing as fuck to watch her try to get me up.”

Jim winced. “I’m sorry.”

“What for? I’ve had to do worse down there. Her masturbating for hours was a vacay compared to the other shit. Just think, if I’d had a video camera, I could have Kim Kardashian’d her.”

As they fell into a silence, he knew they were both thinking about that worktable of hers. Eddie was the only one out of the three of them who hadn’t been down there in that capacity. He’d also never been with Devina in the conventional sense, either.

Another reason he should have been the last of them to go.

“So Sissy’s been doing a great job with this place,” Ad murmured.

Jim looked over again. “What do you mean?”

“You know, cleaning it up? Shit’s looking much better since she’s moved in.”

“Last time I saw, she was trying to burn it down.”

“Excuse me?”

“Long story. The transition’s just been rough.”

Ad nodded. “Nothing’s easy in this, is it.”

“So, are you going to tell me where we are? I’m ready to get back to work.”

Ad got up and went to the sink, dousing his cig, the habit still not doing it for him. Turning around, he wondered where to start. “Colin said he could only go part of the way with the intel.”

“Whatever we got, we can run with.”

“That’s what I told him…”

Across town, as the angels commiserated and Jim got his update, Cait was sitting at her desk, brushing a tear from her cheek. Clearing her throat, she prayed she didn’t completely crumble. “I’m sorry, what was that, Mrs. Barten? The connection is bad.”

Untrue. She was having trouble keeping her cell phone against her ear.

“Yes, of course,” she said into the thing. “Yes. Absolutely…”

Even though she never wrote on drawing paper, she slid a fresh sheet over. And even though she never wrote with drawing pencils, she made sure she had all the details down.

“I’m honored.” She wiped away another tear. “Yes, I have some stands—I know exactly what we need. You can count on me. See you then. Yes … God willing.”

As she ended the call, she got up slowly and went into the kitchen. Everything was tidy as always, not even dishes drying in the rack—because she had to put them away before she left the kitchen or she couldn’t sit still at her desk.

She’d had some kind of destination. But abruptly, she found herself walking around on her linoleum, making a tight little circle, eyes lighting on the hand towels that were neatly hanging off the handle of the oven, and the napkins on the table in their rack, and the two place mats she had out even though she always ate alone. If she opened any of the cupboards? Soup cans and boxes of low-fat crackers and jars of pickles were lined up by type. Same in her refrigerator, the skim milk never mixing with the yogurt or the butter or the veggies.

The first line against chaos. And to think she’d always assumed the anal retentiveness would help, a kind of talisman against the whirlpool of life, a way of taming the hard edges of fate.

Wasn’t doing anything for her at the moment. Not about her heading to see G.B. at noontime to tell him she was kind of in a relationship with someone else. Not with the desperate anticipation she had for nightfall.

Certainly not at all with what she was about to do.

“Shit.”

Bracing herself, she went over to the door that led down into the cellar. It took her a moment before she could turn the knob and pull the panels open and reach forward to flick the light switch. As the fixture came on, the rough wooden steps were illuminated, as was the dark gray concrete floor below. The scent that rose to her nose was both earthy from the fifties-era concrete walls, and sweet from her fabric softener sheets.

Long trip down. A kind of forever to reach the bottom.

She didn’t head over to her washing machine and ironing board. She went in the opposite direction, to the sealed plastic tubs that held her Christmas decorations and lights, and her Halloween things, and that sleeping bag she’d only used once or twice.

It was past all that that she kept her artwork on shelves, her tubes of drawings and flat boxes of paintings and so much more ordered chronologically by medium.

The things she had taken out of Sissy’s locker at school were right where she’d put them. Cait had had to move some of her own pastels onto the floor to make room, something she had never felt comfortable doing before—especially not in the spring, when the rains came and leaks happened.

But as important as her things were, Sissy’s were so much more so.

The hands that had made them were gone forever.

It took Cait a couple of trips to carry the folios and the box up to her kitchen table. And after a moment, she thought better about the placement and moved them away from the window. Maybe she should have left them downstairs? It wasn’t like she was going to forget to bring them to the funeral at St. Patrick’s.

Staring at it all, she stepped back in time, reversing the mental DVD of her life until she was once again twelve and living under the same roof with her parents. After her brother had died, she had been the one to pack up his things: Her mother and father had disappeared within days of the burial, going off on the first of all those mission trips, her grandmother moving in to take care of her.

She’d like her grandmother just fine, but it had felt like both she and Charlie had been deserted. And that sense had intensified when her parents had called a week later and said that they were bringing home a preacher who needed a place to stay for a month. In that small house, where else were they going to put the guy but Charlie’s room?

It had seemed an insult to let some stranger sleep in her brother’s bed or use his bureau and his closet, all while his clothes and car magazines and CDs were all over the place.

Using her own allowance money, she’d bought U-Haul boxes, and put everything in the attic … and when she had moved out east, she had taken it with her.

For all their pontificating, her parents had never really talked to her about the loss. Plenty of generic praying advice, yes, and she had to admit, the cynic in her aside, she had done some of that on her own. Still did. But she could have used some more conventional support in the form of talking, hugs, understanding, compassion.

Then again, her brother had always been her family.

It was weird, weird, weird to be thinking of all of this right now. But another funeral of another young life lost too early was likely to bring up things that were unresolved—

The knocking on her door was probably the FedEx man delivering the supply of pencils she’d ordered last week.

Wiping her cheeks on a just-in-case, she took out her scrunchie and re-pulled her hair back as she went for the door.

Not FedEx, although the box had been left on her front stoop.

Teresa was dressed in a pale blue business suit that did absolutely nothing for her coloring, and she was pissed, hands on her hips, glare on her face. “You never call, you never write. You
suck
. Now let me in—I have forty-five minutes before I have to be back to the office, and you’re going to tell me
everything
.”

Her oldest and dearest pushed past her, marching into the kitchen and sitting down next to all the artwork.

“So.” Teresa crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her high-heeled shoe. “What’s happening—”

Cait burst into tears.

“Oh, shit.” Teresa jumped up and went in for the hug. “I’m such an ass. Are you okay? What’s wrong? If he hurt you, I’ll screw his reputation twelve ways to Sunday on the Internet. And key his car. And do some other stuff that you won’t want to know about beforehand, but will certainly read of in the
CCJ
.”

Cait held on tight. It was a while before she could say anything intelligent—but that was the thing with true friends.

They didn’t necessarily need to hear the details of where you were … to be there for you.