Darkangel by Christine Pope (red queen ebook TXT) 📕

usually end up with someone in the hospital and the Cottonwood P.D. paying you a visit.”

“He got a little handsy, okay? Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“I guess so.” He grinned, and I really wished it was permissible for the future prima to sock someone in the jaw.

That wouldn’t be dignified, though — and would definitely bring down Aunt Rachel’s wrath — so I settled for asking in acid tones, “Is that the only reason you’ve invaded my space, or did you have some other reason for dropping in without an invitation?”

He shrugged. “It’s a public place.”

“The restaurant, yeah. Not the booth I just happen to be sitting in.”

“Okay, you got me.” He opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something else, but Tina arrived with his Corona and set it down in front of him.

“Ready to order?” she asked.

“Prosciutto and mozzarella for me,” I told her.

“Italian meat,” Adam said with a grin.

She shook her head slightly and headed back to the kitchen. I would have been even more annoyed by him ordering something besides just the beer, but I’d known I was doomed from the minute he sat down in my booth.

“So you were saying,” I prompted.

He was in the middle of taking a swig from his Corona, and so I had to wait until he swallowed the beer. “I went by the shop first, but you’d already closed up.”

“You did?” Despite my better instincts, I couldn’t help asking. “Did you…notice…anything?”

“What was I supposed to notice? You weren’t there. I’d already thought about getting a pizza to go, so I came up here and saw you through the window. And here we are.”

Yes…unfortunately. In a way it was funny, because a lot of girls back in high school had had their crushes on Adam, and yet all he cared about was pursuing me, even though it was hopeless. We had no connection. It didn’t matter that he was good-looking, with his thick brown hair and gray-blue eyes and nice strong chin. He wasn’t my match, my soulmate, my other half. And I really wished he would figure that out once and for all, and leave me the heck alone.

More importantly, though, he’d gone by the shop and hadn’t sensed anything, seen anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t an overly strong warlock, but normally he was sensitive to places, air currents, weather. If a weather spell needed to be cast, he was often the one to do it. Wouldn’t he have been able to feel something terribly not right about the store if there really was some malignant presence lurking around the place?

I couldn’t think of the right way to ask him, though. If I told him what had really happened, then he’d probably try to get all manly and protective, and that would almost be worse than the ghostly figure I’d seen.

No, scratch that. A guy trying to protect you when you really didn’t want to be protected wasn’t exactly on a par with some vaporous apparition reaching toward you and saying that it wanted you.

Maybe I shivered. Adam set down his beer and stared at me, eyes narrowing. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen — ” He broke off, but I knew what he’d meant to say.

You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

Well, hey, that was nothing new. That was just something Angela McAllister did. I wished that was all I had seen. A ghost was fine. But this?

Not fine at all.

I took a few more swallows of wine. “It’s nothing.”

Adam was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. His gaze sharpened. “You don’t look like it’s nothing. What’s going on?”

It would probably get out sooner or later anyway. We McAllisters didn’t keep a lot from one another. “I saw…something.”

“Saw what?”

“I don’t know what it was. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen my share of strange things.”

“True.” He shifted in his seat, and for a second or two I was worried he would try to reach out and touch my hand where it rested on the tabletop. He appeared to resist that impulse, though, and said, “But it scared you.”

I didn’t like to admit it, least of all to Adam, but he’d already seen the truth in my face. “It did. I had to get out of there. So I came here.”

“What did you see?”

For a few seconds I didn’t say anything, only ran a finger along the wood grain of the table. Even thinking about that shadowy apparition made a wave of cold move over me, a chill that had nothing to do with the warm, friendly surroundings in which I sat. “A shadow. It was standing in front of the door to the shop. I could feel it watching me. I thought it had to be some sort of spirit, even though I’d never met one like that before. I asked it who it was, and it didn’t say anything. Then I asked what it wanted, and…” I paused again, and swallowed. “…And it told me, ‘you.’”

Even Adam seemed shocked by that revelation. “Damn, Angela, you need to tell someone. Someone besides me, I mean.”

“I know. I will. It’s just that my aunt is over at Tobias’s place, and I didn’t want to bother her….”

“I don’t think she’ll mind being bothered.” He hesitated. “I’ll walk you over there, if you want.”

Never did I think I would be so relieved by Adam McAllister offering to accompany me somewhere. But there were lots of dark and shadowy places between here and Tobias’s house, and I forced myself to admit that I’d feel a whole lot better about the whole thing if I didn’t have to walk it alone. “Okay,” I replied. “I’d like that.”

He grinned, and for a second I wished I hadn’t agreed to him coming along after all. But then Tina showed up with our pizzas, and for a minute or two everything seemed normal and prosaic, just Adam and me dishing ourselves a slice, doling out the parmesan and the red pepper flakes. I knew better, though. There wasn’t anything normal about any of this.

Still, now that I knew what I was doing after this, I felt a little better. I had no idea what Aunt Rachel was going to say, and it seemed as if my plan for talking to Maisie would have to be shelved for a while. She wasn’t going anywhere, though, and I could always try to scare her up — so to speak — the next day.

Whether she’d have anything useful to contribute, I couldn’t begin to guess.

The sun had long disappeared by the time Adam and I emerged from the restaurant. I pulled my wrap around my shoulders in a futile attempt to stave off some of the brisk wind blowing outside. At least it was coming from the south. Although I knew the Wilcoxes had little to do with it, a north wind, the kind that blew down from Flagstaff, always put me on edge. An ill wind, as Great-Aunt Ruby liked to say.

Adam noticed the somewhat flimsy pashmina, and I worried that he might try to make the gallant gesture of offering me his jacket. Something in my expression must have warned him off, though, and so he kept silent, walking next to me as we headed down Main Street. It was too early for that night’s band to have started up at the Spirit Room, but the street in front of the bar was already lined with Harleys, and people hung around outside, chatting and smoking. Their presence comforted me, although I knew the crowds would thin out as we wended our way down the hill.

As they did. By the time we passed the Ghost City Inn, Adam and I were the only people on the sidewalk. Down here I could feel the wind even more strongly. The stars glittered against the black sky, and a thin moon had just begun to rise above the mesas to the east. It would be full on Halloween, I realized.

All around me were buildings and trees and cars I’d seen hundreds of times, and yet somehow now seemed foreign, unfamiliar. Part of me wanted to draw closer to Adam. I told myself that was foolish, for several reasons. I certainly didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, and of the two of us, I was the far stronger witch. Having him come along had been sort of silly, in that respect, although of course the two of us working together would be more effective than even me casting a spell of protection alone.

He was silent, as if realizing I really didn’t want to talk, and I felt a rush of warmth toward him then, that despite his usually irritating ways he understood my need for silence, my need to have someone walk with me through the darkness. For a second or two I found myself wishing things could be different. I was so very tired of having to look for someone who seemed to not even exist.

Tobias shared studio and living space with three other artists in a renovated commercial building on the edge of town. Each flat had its own entrance and kitchen and studio, so although they shared common walls, they were still very private. His was the one on the south side of the building — “I like the light” — and faced out over the lights of Cottonwood. In the daytime you could see the line of the Verde River from here, but now of course all was dark.

From the other side of the building I heard music and the sound of people talking. Susan Callery lived over there, and I’d heard her mention a small opening she was having, if I wanted to stop by. Between the mess at Main Stage the night before and my latest spectral