Darkangel by Christine Pope (red queen ebook TXT) 📕

Adam and I made our way down the winding path that led to Tobias’s front door. Wind chimes jingled in the darkness, and I saw the prayer flags hanging from the trees outside his windows fluttering in the night wind. Out here, though, it seemed less oppressive, instead wild and free, and I felt my spirits lift a little.

As we approached the door — a massive thing of local twisted juniper, lovingly polished — I could hear laughter from within, and a pang went through me. I wished I didn’t have to disturb my aunt on her night out, but I certainly didn’t want to go back to the apartment without reinforcements that were somewhat more substantial than what Adam could offer.

So I raised my hand and knocked, then waited for a minute until Tobias opened the door. He held a wine glass in one hand and blinked down at me, his gaze traveling over to Adam and then back as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was more strange — that I should be there at all, or that I was standing there with Adam McAllister next to me.

“Angela?” Tobias said at last.

“Hi, Tobias,” I replied, attempting to sound breezy and probably failing miserably. “I need to talk to Aunt Rachel. Is that okay?”

He blinked again, then seemed to recover himself. “Of course, of course. The two of you come on in.”

We both went inside, and waited as Tobias shut the door. The place was laid out with a small entryway, and then opened into a large combined living room/dining room/kitchen. The remains of dinner seemed to still occupy the dining room table, and off to my right I saw Aunt Rachel sitting on Tobias’s large leather couch. A fire flickered in the freestanding fireplace near the far wall.

As soon as she saw us, she set down her own wine glass on the coffee table and got to her feet, her expression understandably puzzled. “Angela?” Her gaze flickered to Adam, and she frowned. She knew I wouldn’t have dragged him down here without a very good reason. “What’s the matter?”

“I — ” Now that the time had come to explain what had happened, words seemed to fail me.

“She saw something, Rachel,” Adam supplied.

Her hazel eyes widened. “Saw what?”

Tobias moved past us to stand near Aunt Rachel. “It couldn’t have been good, to have you come walking all the way down here.”

I found my voice. “No, it wasn’t. It — there was something in the store, something…evil. Dark.”

The lighting wasn’t all that good in there, since the only real light on was the overhead fixture in the kitchen. Candles flickered on the dining room table and on the coffee table in the living room, and by their uncertain light I thought I saw her turn pale. But her tone was firm enough as she asked, “Do you know what it was?”

“No.” I pulled the pashmina a little more closely around my shoulders, as if it could do anything to rid me of the pervasive sensation of cold that seemed to take over whenever I thought of the dark shape I’d seen in the store. “But…it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it.”

“What?” came in unison from both my aunt and Adam, and then they stared at one another in confusion.

Might as well come clean. The only way to attempt to figure out what was going on was to use all the available facts. “I saw it last night as I was driving home. It was standing in the last bend before the road curves up to town. Since it was so dark, I thought it was a person. I thought I’d hit somebody. But when I got out, no one was there. And then today….” I trailed off, and swallowed.

“Today?” my aunt prompted.

“It was after you’d left, right after I put the money and the receipts away. I think maybe it was waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For me to be alone.”

She watched me carefully, gaze fixed on me, as if we were the only two people in the room, as if Tobias and Adam didn’t exist. “Go on.”

“It was standing in front of the window. It was shaped like a man, but it had no detail…only shadow. And when I asked it what it wanted, it said it wanted…me.”

Silence then, as she watched me, and Tobias watched her, and Adam stood beside me, not saying anything, either. I think he knew he’d done what I’d asked of him, and now it was time for the more important players to step in.

At last she said, “This is not good.”

“I didn’t think it was,” I replied.

“Tobias, would you come up there with us?” she asked him, and he nodded grimly.

“I wouldn’t let you go back without me.”

After that he went and got his coat, and Rachel’s as well, and we all went back outside. He didn’t bother to lock his door. Jerome was sort of like that; the only reason we locked up the shop was all the merchandise inside, and the fact that it was right on the main drag.

Tobias and Aunt Rachel took the lead, with Adam and me bringing up the rear. Maybe I should have volunteered to go first, but I wasn’t feeling very brave at the moment. They wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway — their duty, as they saw it, was to protect the next prima.

We came up the back way, along Hull Avenue. As the three-story building loomed over us, black against black in the night, I swallowed. No, I didn’t really feel anything back here, except the heebie-jeebies I was giving myself, but it was so very dark. We had a light we usually kept on at the back entrance, but of course I’d run away so quickly that turning it on had been about the last thing on my mind.

Aunt Rachel fished her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. As she did so, I heard her murmuring under her breath, a spell of protection, of light. I guessed that was why she used her key — she wanted to save her energy for the protection spell. And the hallway lights did blaze forth as the door opened before us, showing the same short hallway I’d walked down thousands of times, with its scuffed tile and the warm sienna paint we’d applied two summers ago.

“Do you feel anything?” she asked Tobias.

He put his hand against the doorframe. Solid, natural materials were his strength — wood and stone, clay and tile. He shook his head. “No.”

Apparently heartened by this reply, she stepped inside, with him following so closely they appeared joined at the hip. Adam and I followed. I put forth a mental plea for strength and vision, and sent my own questing tendril of thought down the corridor, out into the main shop space. I felt nothing, sensed nothing.

Then again, I hadn’t sensed much until I’d seen that…thing…standing right in front of me.

The lights in the store turned themselves on at my aunt’s silent request. Everything looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly normal, from the display of windchimes in one corner to the table loaded with books on local history in the other.

Aunt Rachel stopped in the middle of the space, eyes shut, and turned slowly with her arms outstretched. This was something I could sense — the ripples of power moving out from her, the glow of her spirit as it attempted to find something wrong with the very fabric of the world. Her talent had always been order, knowing when the peace and calm of the community were somehow being disrupted. It was a quiet strength, but an important one.

At last she opened her eyes, but I saw no relief in them. She was frowning, and I saw her teeth worry at her bottom lip. “I felt it…very faint, but something…wrong. Distorted, cold. Hungry.”

That last word sent another shiver through me. Hunger. Yes, that was something I’d sensed from the apparition, although at the time I’d been too scared silly to stop and really identify it.

“What now?” Tobias asked briskly, as if he realized I didn’t know what to do next. I might be the next prima, but I had no experience with this sort of thing.

“We’ll check the apartment, just to make sure, but we need to have the coven here to cleanse the place, to lay down the spells of protection again. Something got through, although I’m not sure what and not sure how.”

“All right,” he said. “Let’s send out the call, then.”

This was something we could all do together. In unspoken accord, Tobias, Aunt Rachel, Adam, and I all stepped closer to one another and joined hands, Adam’s strong and cool in my right, my aunt’s fingers warm and reassuring in my left. The energy surged up and out, calling to the coven, broadcasting our need.

Brothers and sisters, come to us now. Come for the circle — your strength is needed!

There were just shy of 450 people living in Jerome, and a little more than half of them were part of the McAllister clan. Of those we only needed a fraction, of course. Many rituals were performed with as few as three or seven. For the greater workings, we would need to combine the powers of twenty-one. That, I knew, was how many would answer tonight’s call, and I also knew they would be the strongest, the best suited for this sort of ritual.

Cousin Rosemary was there almost at once, since she lived in the apartment over the tea shop next door. Aunt Rachel had just pulled the white candles out from underneath one of the counters when there was a knock at the back door. Tobias went to get it, since I could tell my aunt didn’t want me out of her sight, and Adam sort of shifted from one foot to the next as if not sure exactly what he should be doing. I wondered if