Strange Angels

CHAPTER 25

As soon as I woke up the next morning, grainy-eyed and feeling like I’d been beaten with a lead pipe, I stumbled downstairs and ate some cereal standing up. Graves got up while I was doing that, took one long look at me, and headed for the living room. I heard him say something to Christophe, and they both went out the front door.

The smell of apple pies didn’t quite fill the house, but it was there, a thread under everything else. It was kind of hard to take Christophe seriously when he smelled like baked goods. I wondered if other djamphir smelled like Hostess Twinkies and sniggered to myself.

Then I remembered Christophe kneeling in the snow with a shotgun to his shoulder, facing down a streak- headed wulf and all but laughing, and the sniggers dried up.

I yawned and padded to the chipped yellow plastic phone attached to the wall. There was one number, at least, that I had memorized, because it was so easy. And, well, you don’t forget a guy who can snap a flame off his fingers while other guys could only flick boogers. Especially not when you spend a month in his apartment while he’s out with your dad, dealing with a demonic rat infestation.

And another month while your dad is off doing who-knows-what, coming back all beat-up and scary looking. August liked my omelets, and I must’ve cooked hundreds of them for him.

The phone rang five times before he picked up and cursed. August’s voice was nasal through the line, laden with Brooklyn wheeze, every vowel cut short like it personally offended him. “This better be good.”

“Hi, Augie.” I tried to sound cheerful. “It’s Dru.”

“Holy . . .” There was a sound of sliding cloth, paper, and a clatter like he’d just dropped a knife. It didn’t take him long to recover. “Hi, sweetheart. I miss your omelets.”

I’ll bet you do. You ate two of them a day because you wouldn’t bring home anything but eggs and vodka. It was an adventure getting you to buy some bread. “I miss your coffee. Hey, August —”

He was quick on the uptake. Something probably didn’t sound right to him. I probably didn’t sound right to him. I didn’t even sound right to myself, with a dry stone trying to lodge itself in the back of my throat.

“Dru, honey, where’s your dad?” And why isn’t he the one on the phone, was probably what he wanted to say.

“He came down with a bad case of reanimation.” I tried to sound flip and offhand, but I think I succeeded only in sounding scared. And tired. And like I just got up.

August actually choked, and I heard a metallic sound as if he’d dropped something else. “What? Holy fu—uh, I mean, damn. Where are you now, kid?”

Oh, no you don’t. “I want to ask you a few questions. First, are you part of the Order?”

A long ticking silence crackled in my ear. Finally, I heard the click of a lighter and a long inhale. I could see his apartment, the full ashtray on the spindly kitchen table, the window that looked at a blank brick wall, the walls loaded with protective items from different cultures—African masks, ojos de Dios, a heavy silver crucifix. I could almost hear the traffic outside his building, but that could have been because it was clearly audible through the phone. “Holy shit. Where are you?”

Like I’m going to tell you until I know what’s really going on. “Are you a part of the Order, August? Yes or no.” My dad didn’t raise an idiot. You know that.

“Of course I am, what did you think? Where are you, honey?”

I told him, and he sucked in a long harsh breath.

I knew that sound. It was an adult getting ready to Deal With Me. I never in a zillion years thought I’d be relieved to hear it.

August didn’t mess around. “Where’s Reynard? He should be there. Put him on the line.”

Oh wow. “Christophe? He’s out on the porch having a cigarette and bonding with my friends.” In other words, Graves is keeping him occupied so I can make this little phone call. “You know him?”

“He’s only one of the best the Order has. Dru, you have to get out of there. Tell Christophe it’s a red zone and you have to be gotten out of there.”

I’d never heard August sound frightened before. “Because of Sergej?” The name stung my tongue, and I wondered if it was because of the touch or because I knew it was a sucker.

It was the first sucker’s name I’d ever known. Some people who know about the Real World won’t say them. They’ll use initials or code words.

August almost choked. “Goddammit, Dru, this is serious business. Get Reynard and put him on the line.”

Finally, someone was going to deal with this. An adult. A real adult. “Fine, you don’t have to yell. Hang on.” I dropped the phone on the counter and stamped down the hall to the front door, jerked it open.

Graves’s head swung around—he had a cigarette halfway to his mouth and looked pale under his perpetual tan. He was wearing my gloves, though they were a little too small for him, and the edge of his long black coat flapped as the wind cut across the porch, rattling the bits of dead plants that hadn’t been iced down. His hair was a wind-lifted mess, but Christophe, calm and immaculate, wore the same sweater and jeans. He stood near the hole in the porch railing, his head up as if he was testing the wind. Blond highlights streaked through his hair again, and they almost seemed to move.

The cold cut right through me, and I wondered if he could teach me how to walk around in the middle of it so easily. “August wants to talk to you.” It was like carrying messages for Dad, and I didn’t have to name the feeling swelling behind my heart.

It was relief, getting stronger with every second. Here was someone more experienced than I was, even if he was my age. Just what I’d wanted, right? Someone who could tell me what to do now that the lines that kept my life on track had vanished. Between August and this guy, things would get Under Control. It would be Handled. It would be Dealt With.

Chris gave me an odd look as he passed, his blue eyes darkening and apple spice drifting in his wake, and I shivered. Graves pitched his butt out into the snow, the glow of the cherry vanishing in a gray glare caught between cloud-hazed sky and white-shrouded ground. “He checks out?”

I nodded. Something dry and hot caught in my throat. “Yeah, he checks out all right. Come in, it’s freezing.”

Graves pushed past me, and I glanced out over the street. It was so quiet, a blanket of white over everything. The snow had come down hard and pebbled, a moaning wind flinging it everywhere, and the radio said ice was coming. The morning had dawned clear and sunny, but now the sky was overcast and lowering, striations of darker cloud like ink just dropped into water billowing under the higher cloud-cover.

Huh. I stepped out onto the porch, cupping my elbows in my palms. Hugging myself. It was dead quiet except for the uneasy sound of air moving, the porch posts and the corner of the house like a ship’s prow, slicing the waves and producing a low hum of torn air.

We could have been on the moon, I realized. The house set away from the other houses like that one kid at school who’s always dressed just a little bit wrong.

No wonder nobody’d come to greet us when we moved in, or heard the gunshots and screaming.

The street was an evenly frosted expanse of white. The two driveways that didn’t lead into a garage had car-sized lumps of unbroken snow, the paint jobs peeping out from underneath—the blue mini-van at the corner, the green, wallowing Ford across the street. And in front of the garages were wide, pristine ribbons of snow leading down to the street.

Why doesn’t this feel right? I had to look a little harder before the assumptions I made started crumbling and the wrong note in the orchestra jangled hard enough for me to catch it.

No tire tracks. There wasn’t a single break in the snow. The street looked as deserted as a Western town