Darkangel by Christine Pope (red queen ebook TXT) 📕

Maisie, weren’t all that chatty. Even she hadn’t really approached me until I hit junior high. I think before then she’d thought I was too young to bother speaking with. True, talking to her could be entertaining, and since neither she nor any of the ghosts were gruesome in appearance — they just looked like regular people to me, albeit in wildly outdated clothes — I didn’t see much in them to be afraid of.

Not everyone had the same opinion of them, of course.

I popped a french fry in my mouth and chewed it carefully before answering Sydney’s question. “No, it really doesn’t freak me out. They’re just…a different kind of people who live in Jerome, I guess. They can’t hurt anybody. Not really,” I added, since some of them did like to play pranks on both tourists and residents. But slamming doors or stealing hammers didn’t exactly qualify as Exorcist material. No matter how many times I pointed that out to Sydney, though, she never seemed to quite grasp it.

“If you say so.” But she still looked up at the window, although it was empty now, reflecting nothing but blue sky with a few high, thin clouds.

“Anyway,” I said, since I thought staring up at Edith’s window was kind of rude, and would probably only result in the ghost moving elsewhere even less to Sydney’s liking, “I think it’s a good thing that the next big event is the dance here in Jerome, since I have a feeling my aunt isn’t going to be too thrilled about me making any solo expeditions to Cottonwood any time soon. You might have to bring the dresses here for me to look at instead of me going to your house, but let’s see how it goes.”

“No problem. Maybe on Wednesday? I should be able to pick them up by then, and I don’t work on Wednesday.” She worked part-time at a beauty supply store in town.

“Sounds great,” I replied, and we ate and talked about the dance some more. Sydney didn’t give me any flak about taking orders from Aunt Rachel, even though I was an adult and not some high school kid who could still get grounded. Even though my best friend didn’t completely understand what was at stake, she knew my aunt and liked her, and understood that Aunt Rachel wouldn’t clamp down for no reason. It had been a close call last night.

Too close.

I came back from lunch a little before one and took over at the store so my aunt could go get her own lunch. She gave me a piercing look before she left, but I didn’t get the impression that she was still angry with me…more like worried, or even afraid. Afraid of what, I wasn’t sure. After my experience with Perry the night before, I certainly wasn’t eager to go back out and test any boundaries.

She only stayed away for a half-hour, which was good, since the tourists were definitely out in force that day. Not that I minded; they kept me busy, and when I was busy I didn’t have much time to think. The money was nice, too, of course, although none of us really needed it. Our homes had been paid for long ago, and the family sat on wealth that had been carefully accumulated during the boom years and then invested just as carefully in the leaner times that followed, when the mine was shut down and most of the non-witch population of Jerome moved on to greener pastures. The clan elders watched over the investments and made quiet payments to all the clan’s members. Of course we were free to earn what we liked on top of that — and we did — but basic survival was never a worry.

As we were locking up, Aunt Rachel said, “I had planned to go over to Tobias’s tonight, but — ”

“You should go,” I told her. “I’m not going anywhere, believe me. Well, maybe up to Grapes to get a pizza if we’re not having dinner at home, but that’s it. I’ll watch some Netflix or something.”

Her brow puckered a little at that. She was not a fan of television — we didn’t even own one — but she couldn’t really keep me from streaming videos on my computer. That is, she couldn’t. The connection up here wasn’t always the best. But the weather was clear, so it should be all right. And if not, I had plenty of books to read. Books had been my companions through most of my youth, until I was finally allowed to have a computer when I entered eighth grade.

“All right,” she said at last. “But I’ll just be down at Tobias’s, so….” She trailed off and gave me an uncertain look, as if she wasn’t quite sure what sort of catastrophe might befall me but wanted to make sure I knew she’d be around to help head it off if necessary.

“And I’ve got Floyd Barnett on one side and Cousin Rosemary on the other, so unless you know something and I don’t, and Armageddon is set to happen tonight, I really think I’ll be fine.”

A smile then, albeit a weary one. “You’re right, of course. And you know how to take care of yourself, but after last night — ”

“I still took care of myself. I just did it in a way that the Cottonwood P.D. didn’t appreciate very much.” And did it while practically blind drunk, I thought, but I knew better than to say anything else.

“True.” She reached under the counter and pulled out her purse. “You can finish locking up?”

“Sure thing.” I’d done it many times, but tonight her allowing me to manage the important task of securing the store seemed to take on an extra significance, as if she was trying to show that she still did trust me, despite my foolishness at Main Stage the night before.

She nodded and headed toward the back of the shop and the rear exit. Tobias’s combination house/studio was at the extreme southern edge of the town, right before the houses petered out and the highway took over, but I knew she’d walk it anyway. Everyone walked in Jerome. Why do anything else when the place was less than half a mile from end to end?

We’d locked the front door promptly at six, so all that remained was for me to empty the cash register and put the money and credit card receipts in the safe. Twice a week we’d go down the hill to deposit the cash at the Wells Fargo in Cottonwood, but we wouldn’t be doing that again until Monday.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been left alone in the store at the end of the day, but for some reason a flicker of unease passed over me, a chill, even though I knew that, unlike many of Jerome’s buildings, the one that housed both the store and the two-story apartment where Aunt Rachel and I lived was free of any ghosts or spirits. Although the frightening memory had danced in and out of my thoughts several times during the day, I’d never had a real opportunity to mention the dark figure I’d seen in the bend in the road the night before.

To be perfectly truthful, I’d begun to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. Sydney had once told me a story about her older brother, who was attending Arizona State University, driving home slightly wasted from a party one night and hallucinating a wall stretching across the freeway. The shock had kept him awake and alert the rest of the drive home. Maybe my brain had done the same thing to me, inventing someone standing in the road to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel.

Never mind that I hadn’t felt sleepy at all, charged up as I was from the confrontation with Perry.

Well, talk it over with Aunt Rachel tomorrow, I told myself. You’re certainly safe here, so don’t worry about it. Just get that money put away so you can go get a pizza before they get too crowded.

That sounded sensible enough. I gathered up the money bag and stack of receipts, and headed back to the storeroom, which was also where we kept the safe. Even with my own no-nonsense words ringing in my head, I still made sure to flick on the lights in the back of the shop as I went. All right, so I turned them on with a quick impulse from my mind, rather than my finger. There wasn’t anyone around to see what I was doing. Besides, my hands were full. And I did the same thing with the lock to the storeroom door, opening it without a key and letting it swing inward.

The storeroom wasn’t all that large, maybe ten by fifteen feet, with boxes stacked neatly against the wall and a couple of forlorn mannequins set in one corner. In the winter we’d pull them out when it was time to display the handwoven shawls and cloaks that went over big as holiday presents, but in the meantime they’d been stuck back in here with the rest of the display items we weren’t currently using. Their blank eyes seemed to watch me as I bent down and entered the combination to the safe, then set the money bag and stack of rubber-banded receipts inside.

So now I was letting a couple of pieces of fiberglass get to me? I shook my head at myself and closed the safe, then straightened up before heading toward the open door. For a second I thought I saw a shadow moving outside in the hallway, and again a shiver traced its way down my spine. Then I realized it had to be someone walking down the sidewalk outside the shop. The sun was just beginning to go down behind Mingus Mountain, and the light was chancy, uncertain.

You’re being just a bit too jumpy for a girl who talks to ghosts, I chided myself before I exited the storeroom and closed the door behind me. It would lock automatically; we had keys, of course, but Aunt Rachel and I rarely used them — mainly if there were enough customers in the shop that they’d notice something strange if we went in the room without unlocking the door first.

I kept my purse on a shelf under the counter, so I retrieved that and double-checked to make sure the front door was locked as well. Of course it was,