Darkangel by Christine Pope (red queen ebook TXT) 📕

briefest second I saw not the withered shell she’d become, but a vibrant, beautiful young woman. “I’m here, Pat!” she cried out, her voice strong and full. “I’m here!”

Then her head fell back against the pillows, and the fingers dropped away from mine. A warm rush, as if I could feel her life energy moving over me and through me, like the gentle winds of a summer long gone.

And deep inside me I felt a new stirring, a glow of power, of strength. As she’d gone, she’d passed her powers on to me. The powers of the prima.

Slowly I lifted her lifeless hand and pressed my lips against it. Thank you, Ruby. I will be strong…for you.

They were waiting when I descended the stairs — Dora, and Aunt Rachel, and Tobias, and Adam and so many others, including the clan elders, Margot Emory, and Allegra Moss, and Bryce McAllister. Not all, of course. To have every single member of the clan just up and leave the dance would attract far too much notice. But enough.

“She’s gone,” I said clearly, pausing on the bottom step. My eyes burned with unshed tears, but I didn’t want to weep in front of them. I had to be strong. I was the prima. “It was a good passing. She called out to him, at the end. I think he was waiting for her.”

Her two sons, Lionel and Joseph, stepped forward. “Can we go to her?” asked Lionel.

“Of course.” I moved aside so they could go upstairs and make their own farewells. It was probably hard for them, to think that she’d asked for me at the end, and not her own sons, but allowances had to be made for the passage of power from prima to prima.

I hoped it would be enough that they could spend this small bit of time with her before we had to let the outside world in, call the funeral home in Cottonwood, make arrangements for her burial in the McAllister plot in the town cemetery. There’d once been a “Boot Hill” up in Jerome, but the hill was far too unstable; no one had been buried there for generations.

Aunt Rachel stepped forward, Tobias just a pace behind her. “How are you, sweetie?”

The endearment almost made my tears burst forth. Somehow I held them in check and managed a weak smile. “I’m okay. Tired. I just want to go home.”

At the word “home,” the clan elders exchanged a significant glance. Tradition held that this should be my home now. But I had no consort. True, as Aunt Ruby had said, there had been primas without consorts before me. None from the McAllister clan, however, and probably not many in as vulnerable a position as I currently was. And frankly, the thought of having to live in this big old house, with its antiques and portraits of former McAllisters, was not very enticing.

Rachel must have caught the unspoken dialogue amongst the elders, because she frowned slightly and said, “Nothing needs to be decided tonight. We all need our time to grieve. Let me take Angela home.”

Margot Emory nodded. She was a striking woman with gray-streaked dark hair and clear gray eyes under strongly arched brows. Ruby had been her aunt as well, but her expression was serene and calm, with no evidence of the sorrow she must be feeling. “Yes, she needs her rest. There is much that will have to be done.”

Those words were more than a little ominous, but my aunt just reached out and took me by the hand, led me through the watching crowd. As I passed him, I felt Adam’s worried gaze on me, and wished I could stop to ask him what had happened with Sydney and Anthony, whether they knew why I’d had to leave so precipitously. But I couldn’t think of a way to do so without making it seem as if my friends’ concerns were more important than those of the clan, so I only shot him an uncertain smile as I passed by and then went on out the front door.

A cold wind washed over me, but of course Aunt Rachel had thought of everything. She pulled an embroidered wool shawl from where she’d had it draped over one arm and handed it to me so I could cover up my exposed chest and shoulders. I murmured a thank-you, and we went down the front steps and to the quiet street, then down the steeply sloping hill back to the store. Tobias followed us the whole way, not speaking, but keeping watch over the two of us. At least he’d left the scythe behind, and had dropped the hood of his black robes. Now he looked more like a burly bear of a friar, although he had a full head of hair and not one of those silly-looking tonsures.

Maybe it was foolish of me to even be thinking of such things, but it kept me from brooding on what had just happened. Great-Aunt Ruby was dead. I was the new prima.

I didn’t want to believe it. There had always been this small part of me that had thought they must all be wrong, that there had been some sort of mistake. Yes, I could talk to ghosts, but I didn’t possess any great power. Or so I had thought.

Now, though, with the gift that Ruby had passed on to me coiled like a glowing snake somewhere in my belly, I thought I began to understand. It wasn’t simply the gifts one was born with, but whether a given person had the predisposition within them to accept the prima energy and make it their own. What precisely I was supposed to do with it, I didn’t quite know, but I guessed the clan elders would have some insight on that.

The main thing, though, was that I be kept safe until my consort came to me. Until we were joined, I would not be able to fully use these powers. They were powers meant for a grown woman, not the girl I still was. The girl I would remain until I met the one who would take that girlhood from me.

We went inside, Rachel closing but not locking the door behind us. As we’d approached the building, I’d seen out of the corner of my eye the approaching forms of three of the “bodyguards,” and I knew they would come in and secure the place once I was upstairs.

Never before had the stairs up to my room felt as steep, but eventually I got there, my aunt and Tobias pausing out in the hallway.

“If there’s anything you need — ” she began, and I shook my head.

“I just want to sleep,” I told her. “There’ll be — well, I know there’ll be a lot that has to be done over the next few days, so I might as well get my rest now.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. “That’s right, sweetheart. You sleep, and we’ll work everything out tomorrow.”

I doubted everything would be worked out. However, I knew she was just trying to reassure me, to let me know this wasn’t all as horrible and awful as I thought it was. So I nodded, murmured “goodnight,” and closed the door.

My room looked just as it always did, the embroidered bedspread cheerful with its primary colors and background of soft ecru, the walls painted a bold turquoise and covered with folk art and candle sconces and an assortment of symbols: crosses, a carved “om” symbol, the leafy face of the Green Man. That familiarity should have comforted me, but instead it sent a painful pang through my chest. Would this still be my room, my home? Or would I be forced to take my place as prima in the cluttered Victorian mansion on the hill?

I didn’t want to think about that now. I didn’t want to think about anything. I walked over to the bed, kicked off my borrowed shoes, and then collapsed, sobs finally wracking my body.

Even then I wasn’t sure whether I wept for my great-aunt, or the life I knew was about to change forever.

“Of course you must go up to the house,” Bryce McAllister said calmly. “It’s yours now. You’ve seen the will.”

My head ached. I’d cried most of the night, slept fitfully for a few hours just before dawn, then went downstairs and brewed myself a strong pot of tea. It hadn’t helped my head much, but at least now I didn’t feel as if I were going to fall asleep standing up.

The other two elders, Margot Emory and Allegra Moss, nodded. We all sat at the long dining room table in the apartment, with Aunt Rachel on my right and the three of them facing us. Tobias had spent the night, I thought, but he was gone now. This was business between the prima and the elders, and he was not needed…or that seemed to be their view on things, anyway. Rachel they’d grudgingly allowed to stay, since I still lived under her roof.

And yes, I had seen the will; they’d brought it with them so I would know my rights and responsibilities going forward. The big house was mine, as well as a far larger share of the money that came to everyone in the clan every month. Ruby’s individual wealth, as well as a number of personal items, was to be divided between her two sons, with them deciding which pieces should go on to their own children, who numbered five altogether.

Even so, I realized tiredly that my great-aunt’s bequest had made me a very wealthy young woman. Too bad I really didn’t care about that.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” I argued. “Down here I’m surrounded by people. Aunt Ruby’s house only has neighbors on one side.” I didn’t bother to mention that those neighbors were Adam’s parents, which would only make things that much more awkward. True, he’d moved out, but I got the feeling he’d find excuses to go visit if I were right there, too. “That is, I think we can all