Strange Angels

“This doesn’t seem like math.” He spread his free hand, looked at it. Tendons stood out on the back, his fingers blunt and nail-bitten, his knuckles chapped a bit but getting better. “And a lot of this is a direct violation of physics. Conservation of energy should make some of this stuff impossible.”

“I don’t know about that. I just know what I see.” I took another sip. I’m not one for a lot of caffeine, but I felt fuzzy-headed. Slow and stupid.

“Yeah. That’s the trouble with theories; the real world is always kicking the shit out of them.” He settled down, stripping his hair back from his face. “Doesn’t this sort of shit, well, bother you?”

I thought about it. “You mean, like it shouldn’t exist?” I couldn’t express it better than that.

But he understood, or I’d understood him. “Yeah. Exactly. It’s . . . well, it’s kind of obscene.”

That’s one way of putting it. “So’s a lot of other stuff we take for granted. Burning down rain forests. Serial killers. Rush-hour traffic. Life is pretty obscene whatever way you slice it, Graves.” I looked back down at the Coilfer. Having your dad turned into a zombie kind of takes a cake, though. I’m not sure which cake it takes, but it definitely takes one of them. “This sort of stuff is just icing, you know. On the cake.”

“Some icing.” He flipped immediately to the indexes, I noticed. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath, another sip, and pulled my attention back to the page.

The djamphir can use a variety of means to kill a wampyr, of which the most popular in folklore is a hawthorn stake. . . .

* * *

It was a productive afternoon, even though I took down enough coffee to feel jittery by four o’clock. I closed the last book with a sigh. We were as ready as our small collection of texts could make us.

“So we’re fairly sure?” Graves kept repeating “fairly” as if it were an exotic foreign word. “I’m not going to get all hairy, like that thing we saw?”

“Nope. According to this, the loup-garou’s a skinchanger, not actually a werwulf. Congratulations, you bucked the odds. About all you’ll have is a hunger for raw meat.” I shuddered. “Which you might even be able to eat, with the boost to your immune system.”

The way he squinched up his face made me smile.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that dietary change. But nothing about girl . . . djamphir?” He tasted the word, rolling it around on his tongue, and bolted the last swallow of his coffee. It had to be cold by now.

I looked out the front window at the mess of the front yard, bits of brown grass showing through like mange wherever he and Christophe had scuffed the snow all the way down. The sky was lowering, threatening still more as sundown approached, and the radio gave faint squawks about a weather advisory. Why they would bother now, after days of this stuff, was beyond me.

Bits of wood were thrown in an arc, the porch railing completely shattered and flung out in an oddly perfect line. They’d hit it hard.

“Nope. Nothing on that.” I didn’t mention anything about my mother. It was nobody’s business, even with Christophe’s dark hints. I always thought I’d got the touch from Gran, along the Anderson side.

Now that I thought about it, nobody ever mentioned Mom’s family. It just wasn’t talked about. I didn’t even know her maiden name, though I could probably dig up their marriage certificate. It was probably in the fireproof box.

But I wondered, and it wasn’t a comfortable wondering. It was like having one of the legs your world rests on whomped away, and I wasn’t too steady already.

All the legs of the table were getting chopped out from under me. Mom. Whomp. Gran. Whomp. Dad. Whomp.

If this was a cartoon, I’d be teetering on just one leg with my face twisted up in a picture of dismay.

It was late. Evening was gathering in the bluish shadows, even the reflection of light off the snow fading. Under the coffee jitter, exhaustion and sleeplessness plucked at my eyelids. My arms and legs were heavy, my shoulder hurt, and I knew I should probably take something for the way my back was twitching and sore.

“You hungry?” Graves asked, and I came back from staring at the front yard and realized I was. But given the choice between going to the store and getting some information under my belt, the information was probably the better bet. You had to be alive to eat, after all. I could always go tomorrow.

Which reminded me, there was the money situation to think about. And—

There was a flurry of taps at the door. Light, mocking taps.

I jumped, letting out a thin little cry, and Graves flinched, knocking over his empty coffee cup. The door swept open, and I dove for a gun, my right leg prickling because it had gone to sleep. I rolled, my aching back fetching up against the ammo crate, and clicked the safety off.

I didn’t even think about it. Graves stupidly crouched right where he was, his eyes as big and green as a kid’s, flicking nervously between me and the doorway. The air around him shimmered faintly, stilled.

“Easy, little birdie,” Christophe called down the hall. “I can smell your adrenaline, you know. Come help me carry this in. I hope there’s some coffee left.”

Graves looked at me. We hadn’t even seen him approach, I’d just been staring out at the front yard. You could see the walk and the driveway, for Christ’s sake. Did he just show up out of thin air? Even in the daytime?

Yeah. Pretty obscene. I clicked the safety back on and let out a breath I hadn’t been aware of holding. Dad would have kicked my ass for it, of course—holding your breath while under fire is a bad idea. You can pass out or just not think clearly if you’re starving your brain of oxygen. There were even stories about people passing out because they were holding their breath in combat.

I was lying there on the floor, feeling a cold draft tiptoe down the hall and into the living room, and all of a sudden I felt very, very lonely.

“Come on out, little rabbits,” Christophe called cheerfully. I could just see him grinning. “Come see what Dyado Koleda brought you, eh?”

What the hell is he talking about?

Graves pushed himself up. “Jesus,” he whispered. He edged through the doorway into the hall, and I realized that he was trying to stay out of my field of fire.

Smart kid.

“There you are.” There was the crinkle of plastic bags. “Help me with this. I stopped at the grocery store. The air smells of snow again, and not just a little bit, either.”

“How’d you come up to the door without us seeing you?” Graves wanted to know. I swallowed drily and put the gun back on top of the ammo crate, pushed myself to my feet. My leg ran with waking-up tingles, like fork tines jammed into the muscles.

“I’m very sly.” Christophe sounded in a hell of a jolly mood. “Now come on, beast of burden. Carry some of this. Where’s Ksiniczka? The princess?”

“Dru’s finishing her coffee,” Graves informed him, sarcasm dripping from every word. He came stumping down the hall with his hands loaded with shopping bags. I saw something green poking out of one. “We’ve been doing research.”

“Oh, good. Stretching your minds like good little children. Your guardian angel is pleased.” The front door closed, and there was more plastic rustling. “And?”

Graves didn’t reply, just stamped past the stairs and into the kitchen. I stepped out into the hall and was greeted with the sight of Christophe in a fresh sweater, navy blue this time, with white stripes on the sleeves. It made his shoulders look a little broader, and his jeans were clean and dry. His hair all but glowed with blond streaks, and his eyes burned with sheer good cheer.

The smell of fresh apple pies filled the hall. I felt even more frizzy and hopeless.

“I brought weapons. But you can help carry these.” He indicated the six shopping bags clustered around his booted feet. A backpack dangled off his shoulder, and a wide leather band crossed his chest. The blunt end of a shotgun poked up over his shoulder.

“You went grocery shopping with a shotgun?” I folded my arms, my stomach twisting with hunger.

He spread his hands, still grinning, teeth white in the shadow of the hall. “People see what they want to see,