Strange Angels

anywhere in this kind of weather, you know.”

“I thought I’d just stay with you anyway. Seeing as how you’re so interesting.” He waggled his eyebrows, but the effect was lost under his mop of hair. He rubbed at his shoulder gently, the pink traces of werwulf bite already fading. The scars would be white and star-shaped before long, little puckers where the teeth had punctured the skin. “Besides, I can’t get back into the mall just yet. Or anywhere else.”

The quick healing was eerie, and the wounds just looked wrong, the way all wounds from the Real World do.

I’m sorry. I didn’t say it. Instead I pushed myself to my sock feet and shivered, staring out the front window. The snowflakes were amazing, thick and cottony. “How often does it snow like this?”

“About four or five times every winter. School will be back open tomorrow; they’ll have the snowplows going all night. You should think about going.”

Yeah. I’ll get right on that. I rubbed at my temple, where the zit was gone. It still hurt a little, though, deep under the skin. I hate those zits that burrow underground. You think they’ve vanished, but no, they just barricade themselves right next to the bone and hurt.

And my back twinged as I stretched carefully. “I don’t have any big dreams to keep me in school. What are you, a guidance counselor?”

“You have to think about the rest of your life.” He sounded serious, just like an ABC After School Special, pushing his dead-black hair away from his forehead. “Seriously. High school isn’t forever. If it was, I’d kill myself.”

That makes two of us. “High school doesn’t even matter. When I turn eighteen I’ll be able to smoke and vote, not to mention get a decent job.”

“Not if you keep skipping. The way to get a decent job is to play the game well enough in high school, so you can get into college on a good GPA. That way you don’t end up poor and sucking on forties out in the Circle K parking lot, like my stupid stepdad.” Graves stretched. His eyes had turned a sleepy moss green. “Can I have another sandwich?”

“You know where the kitchen is.” I need to find the truck. Then I need to find out who did that to Dad. And who this number belongs to. My left hand curled into a fist, shoved inside my pocket to touch the paper. It was the only lead I had for now.

I thought Graves would keep bugging me, but apparently he was really smart. He left me alone in the silent living room with its faint horrible smell that lasted even after I got the ancient vacuum cleaner out and sucked every last trace of ash into a fresh bag.

It was the only way I had to keep some piece of Dad. He deserved a funeral. He deserved to be buried with Mom.

That was the wrong thought, and it made everything even worse. Something inside my chest was tearing open, and it was hard work to try to keep it closed over. That’s the funny thing about old hurts—they just wait for a new heartache to come along and then show up, just as sharp and horrible as the first day you woke up with the world changed all around you.

I taped the bag shut and tucked it in the fireproof box; then I had to lean over the top of the box for a while, shaking and keeping the sobs muffled in my throat while Graves clinked around in the kitchen, listening to the weather report on the radio and occasionally bursting into snatches of song.

I was glad he was in a good mood.

CHAPTER 16

The bad part of the storm lasted not a week but three days, and Graves turned out to be a halfway decent cook. I’m no slouch in the kitchen—Gran took care of that—but Goth Boy was better. He made me omelets and was a fair hand with coffee, even though he did it too weak like most civilians. He slept in Dad’s cot, dragged into my room and neatly made each morning.

I got the idea he was on his best behavior. It was kind of nice to half-wake in the middle of the night and hear someone breathing, though. Like I was in a hotel room with Dad. I would half-smile and roll over, and I slept pretty okay.

By the third day I was sick of the house and in a state of nervous tension that had me working the heavy bag in the garage, shivering as sweat steamed on my skin and I popped punches like a boxer, shuffling, and did my katas. It hurt, but I was used to that, working through the flinches as my muscles reminded me I’d mistreated them.

The tai chi helped a little bit. The breathing and the quiet movements—full moon rising over the water, single whip, play the guitar—cleared out the inside of my head. It was the only time I wasn’t chewing myself into little mental bits. The problem was, as soon as I stopped, listening to the broken garage door bend and flex as the wind plucked at it, all the problems started crowding back inside my skull again.

At least while I worked out I could sometimes hear Dad’s voice in my head. Better than nothing. But I didn’t touch the weight bench in the corner. Dad was always picking up cheap barbells at garage sales, since it didn’t make sense to tote them around the entire continent with us. The bench itself was a remnant from two cities ago, and one of the first things I’d pitch if I was packing to leave.

Except I kept thinking Dad would stamp out into the garage, growl a greeting, and expect me to spot him for a set or two.

I worried about the truck outside in this kind of weather, I worried about finding the damn truck so I could get out of town, and I most especially worried about whatever had turned Dad into a zombie.

The snow had blown itself out, and the weather report said it would be clear and chilly the next few days. School was set to open up, and Graves had a bad case of cabin fever as well. He was getting tired of wearing Dad’s clothes, since they were all pretty much too baggy for him. I washed his jeans and he even condescended to compliment my long-sleeve Disco Duck T-shirt. We watched cable until I could hum along with all the advertising jingles again. We could agree on old sci-fi B movies, but he didn’t want to watch the horror flicks.

I didn’t blame him. So we stuck mostly to cartoons.

The fourth day turned over into the quiet cold before dawn, and I woke up in my bed with Graves leaning over me in only his tighty-whities, shaking me with a clammy-cold hand. “Someone’s at the door,” he whispered, and I bolted out of bed so fast we almost cracked skulls.

“Who is it?” I grabbed a sweater and struggled into it, hearing the knocking—dull thuds muffled by the acoustics of snow—that hadn’t managed to dent my dreamless sleep.

Or had I dreamed? I couldn’t be sure.

I made it halfway downstairs just as the thudding stopped. Graves bumbled along behind me until I turned around and gave him a glare, putting a finger to my lips. He froze in the act of opening his mouth, scratching at the lower curve of his ribs on the right.

Three more thuds, each very distinct. I froze, my skin going cold and prickling, every hair on my body standing straight up and doing its best to escape my skin.

I knew that feeling. Gran had called it the singing willies. Dad called it the tingles.

I called it something nasty on the other side of that door.

And me without a gun or anything.

It tasted like old sludge and rust, the tang of iron against the back of my palate in that special place ordinary people don’t have. Dad said he always knew when I was getting the tingles by the look on my face, and it must have been true, because Graves went white as milk under his coloring, his nostrils flaring and his messy hair quivering as he shook like a dog caught between cowardice and outright peeing itself with fear.

I caught something shifting over the surface of the door, a ripple like blue lines, just caught out of peripheral vision. The bolt of pain searing through my head caught me unaware, and I let out a hard, whistling breath.

I snapped a quick glance at the entrance to the living room. Stopped myself—the blinds were up, I hadn’t pulled them before bed. No cover. There were weapons up in my room. I’d have grabbed one on the way out, but if