Darkangel by Christine Pope (red queen ebook TXT) 📕

Okay, I texted back. I had to hope that the restaurant was close enough to home that I could go out to eat with a friend without having to drag my bodyguards along.

She showed up around four-thirty the next day, a garment bag slung over one shoulder. I’d given up on my jewelry for the day and was pretending to make myself useful by dusting some of the more obscure corners of the shop, but I had a feeling Aunt Rachel saw right through that tactic.

When Sydney came in, I gladly abandoned the feather duster. “We’re going upstairs to try on our stuff for the Halloween dance,” I told my aunt.

That day’s “bodyguards” were sitting at a table off to one side, pretending to browse through books on local history. They’d all looked up as soon as Sydney came in, but since she was clearly not a threat, they turned back to their books, ignoring us. Well, ignoring her, anyway.

Aunt Rachel smiled at Sydney and said hello, but couldn’t spare much more than that, as she was in the middle of showing a turquoise cuff to a husband and wife at the time. Taking advantage of her distraction, I all but dragged Sydney upstairs.

“Who were those dorks?” she asked, jerking her chin over her shoulder as we climbed the stairs. “And what’s this about house arrest?”

I really didn’t want to go into the whole thing. “Let’s just say things get a little weirder the closer I get to my birthday without a consort.”

“O-kay,” she replied, drawing out the second syllable as a means of registering her disapproval. “You’re not going to have to drag them along to the dance, are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not. But I have a feeling they’ll be there, only not so obvious. Kind of like Secret Service guys in black tie at a White House function or something.”

“Are they going to wear those little earpieces?” she asked with a giggle.

I didn’t want to explain that witches really didn’t need that sort of thing. “Probably not. Anyway,” I added, hoping to distract her, “let’s take a look at these dresses.”

That did the trick. She went over to my bed and laid down the garment bag as I shut the door, glad that the watchdogs didn’t insist on being as close to me as Secret Service agents were to the President. It was enough for them to be in the building, keeping the wards strong, continually checking for any whiff of something that didn’t belong. So far they hadn’t sensed anything at all. Whatever was trying to come after me seemed to have backed off for the time being. Or maybe it was just playing with us, waiting to see if we’d get lax after a while.

If that was its game, it obviously didn’t know the McAllisters very well.

“Okay, so, here’s the one I brought for you,” Sydney said, pulling out a long red dress with intricate flounces along the bottom, all edged in black sequins, and with red and black beading on the bodice. It was low-cut, but I’d already resigned myself to that. “Please tell me you found some decent shoes.”

In silence I went to my closet and produced a pretty pair of black leather Mary Jane–style pumps. They were my aunt’s, but she and I wore the same size, and she was all too happy to let me borrow them. Actually, I think she was just as tired of the cowboy boots as Sydney was.

“Oh, those are pretty good,” she said, eyeing them critically. “Go ahead and try it on, then.”

I took the dress from her and used the standing mirror in the corner as a sort of screen as I pulled off my jeans and flannel shirt. One look at the bodice of the dress told me I couldn’t wear a bra with it — there were cups sewn into the gown itself — and so I reluctantly unhooked my bra as well before climbing into the dress and sliding it over my hips and all the way up. The zipper would’ve been impossible to manage by myself…if I weren’t a witch. It glided up smoothly, pulling the gown closely against me. It was snug but not too tight. Even so, I knew it showed off a whole hell of a lot more than I was used to.

After taking a breath to fortify myself — and realizing that those cups in the bodice were a lot more padded than I’d expected — I emerged from behind the mirror. “Is it okay?”

Sydney’s eyes widened. “Okay? It’s…way more than okay.” She got up from the bed, where she’d been fussing with her own short, sparkly dress, and came to stand next to me. “That’s spectacular.” Then her eyes lit up, and she hurried back over to her purse, rummaged through it, and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “Put this on.”

I took the lipstick from her and spread a thin coat over my lips. It was dark red, almost a perfect match to the dress. With it on, and with the bodice of the gown cut low over my breasts, I almost didn’t recognize myself. My eyes glowed green in contrast to the red of the gown and the ruby of my lips.

“See?” she demanded in triumph. “I always knew you could be beautiful if you just put a little effort into it.”

At any other time I would have protested, but now, with that familiar-yet-strange face looking back at me from the mirror, I thought Sydney might have a point. I put the cap on the lipstick and started to hand it back to her, but she shook her head.

“No, you keep it. I have a feeling you don’t have anything that color, right?”

That was a joke. My entire lip collection consisted of my Burt’s Bees balm and a single tube of peach lipgloss that got worn maybe twice a month, if that. “Thanks,” I said.

She looked over my reflection, then gathered up my unruly hair and twisted it into a quick knot low on the nape of my neck. “We’ll do your hair like this, and then a red flower….”

“Aunt Rachel has some dangly gold earrings I can borrow, too.”

“Perfect! No one’s going to recognize you.”

“Well, especially with a mask on,” I pointed out.

Her face fell. “Are we really going to wear masks? I hate those things. It always feels as if my lashes are jamming into the eye holes.”

“It is a Halloween party, you know.” Then again, I didn’t know for sure if everyone wore masks to the dance or not. Maybe I’d bring one along and see what other people were doing. I mentioned this to Sydney, and she brightened a little.

“Okay, that I can work with.” She turned away from me and held up the shimmering gold dress she planned to wear. “What do you think? Not as spectacular as yours, but….”

“It’s gorgeous,” I said truthfully. “And it’ll look perfect with your hair.”

She ran a hand over the beaded fringe and nodded. “I found this awesome pair of gold heels to go with it, too. I just have to hope that I won’t break my neck walking down the street in them. I swear, I don’t think there’s one level sidewalk in this town of yours.”

“Probably not.” There didn’t seem much point to staying in the red dress any longer, now that we’d determined it fit, and so I moved back behind the mirror to take it off. “I still can’t believe Madison was okay with just giving these away.”

“Well, I might have offered to give her free highlights for the next couple of months in exchange….”

I stuck my head out from behind the mirror. “That was generous. What can I do to chip in?”

“Nothing,” she said blithely. “It’s good practice for me. I don’t mind.”

Past experience had taught me that it was no use insisting, so I only said, “Okay, but let me get dinner at least,” before going back to getting the dress off and putting it back on its hanger. As quickly as I could, I slipped my bra back on and pulled on my shirt and jeans.

“Deal.” I heard the bed creak a little as she shifted on it. “Hey, Anthony has next Saturday off, and he and a couple of friends — not Perry — are taking their four-wheelers up to Crown King. Want to come?”

Crown King was a ghost town about seventy miles south of Jerome. Well, not completely a ghost town. A few people still lived there, and even more had summer homes on the mountaintop, but the place’s biggest claim to fame was its saloon…and the bragging rights of driving over more than twenty-five miles of dirt road to get there. I knew a few people who’d made the trip, and it always sounded like a lot of fun, but it would’ve been a stretch at the best of times, and I knew it sure wasn’t going to happen now, not with the whole McAllister clan watching my every move.

“I don’t think so,” I said slowly, and came out from behind the mirror, dangling my boots from one hand. “But you guys have fun.”

For a minute Sydney didn’t say anything, only watched me carefully, blue eyes scanning my face, looking for what, I didn’t know. Then she said, “Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?”

I gave her as guileless a look as possible. “Nothing is going on.”

She crossed her arms. “How long have we been friends?”

“About seven years now, I think.”

“And have I ever let slip any secrets about you? Told anyone the truth about your family?”

“Well, no,” I replied, not sure where she was going with this.