Darkangel(24)

“What?” came in unison from both my aunt and Adam, and then they stared at one another in confusion.

Might as well come clean. The only way to attempt to figure out what was going on was to use all the available facts. “I saw it last night as I was driving home. It was standing in the last bend before the road curves up to town. Since it was so dark, I thought it was a person. I thought I’d hit somebody. But when I got out, no one was there. And then today….” I trailed off, and swallowed.

“Today?” my aunt prompted.

“It was after you’d left, right after I put the money and the receipts away. I think maybe it was waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For me to be alone.”

She watched me carefully, gaze fixed on me, as if we were the only two people in the room, as if Tobias and Adam didn’t exist. “Go on.”

“It was standing in front of the window. It was shaped like a man, but it had no detail…only shadow. And when I asked it what it wanted, it said it wanted…me.”

Silence then, as she watched me, and Tobias watched her, and Adam stood beside me, not saying anything, either. I think he knew he’d done what I’d asked of him, and now it was time for the more important players to step in.

At last she said, “This is not good.”

“I didn’t think it was,” I replied.

“Tobias, would you come up there with us?” she asked him, and he nodded grimly.

“I wouldn’t let you go back without me.”

After that he went and got his coat, and Rachel’s as well, and we all went back outside. He didn’t bother to lock his door. Jerome was sort of like that; the only reason we locked up the shop was all the merchandise inside, and the fact that it was right on the main drag.

Tobias and Aunt Rachel took the lead, with Adam and me bringing up the rear. Maybe I should have volunteered to go first, but I wasn’t feeling very brave at the moment. They wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway — their duty, as they saw it, was to protect the next prima.

We came up the back way, along Hull Avenue. As the three-story building loomed over us, black against black in the night, I swallowed. No, I didn’t really feel anything back here, except the heebie-jeebies I was giving myself, but it was so very dark. We had a light we usually kept on at the back entrance, but of course I’d run away so quickly that turning it on had been about the last thing on my mind.

Aunt Rachel fished her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. As she did so, I heard her murmuring under her breath, a spell of protection, of light. I guessed that was why she used her key — she wanted to save her energy for the protection spell. And the hallway lights did blaze forth as the door opened before us, showing the same short hallway I’d walked down thousands of times, with its scuffed tile and the warm sienna paint we’d applied two summers ago.

“Do you feel anything?” she asked Tobias.

He put his hand against the doorframe. Solid, natural materials were his strength — wood and stone, clay and tile. He shook his head. “No.”

Apparently heartened by this reply, she stepped inside, with him following so closely they appeared joined at the hip. Adam and I followed. I put forth a mental plea for strength and vision, and sent my own questing tendril of thought down the corridor, out into the main shop space. I felt nothing, sensed nothing.

Then again, I hadn’t sensed much until I’d seen that…thing…standing right in front of me.

The lights in the store turned themselves on at my aunt’s silent request. Everything looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly normal, from the display of windchimes in one corner to the table loaded with books on local history in the other.

Aunt Rachel stopped in the middle of the space, eyes shut, and turned slowly with her arms outstretched. This was something I could sense — the ripples of power moving out from her, the glow of her spirit as it attempted to find something wrong with the very fabric of the world. Her talent had always been order, knowing when the peace and calm of the community were somehow being disrupted. It was a quiet strength, but an important one.

At last she opened her eyes, but I saw no relief in them. She was frowning, and I saw her teeth worry at her bottom lip. “I felt it…very faint, but something…wrong. Distorted, cold. Hungry.”

That last word sent another shiver through me. Hunger. Yes, that was something I’d sensed from the apparition, although at the time I’d been too scared silly to stop and really identify it.

“What now?” Tobias asked briskly, as if he realized I didn’t know what to do next. I might be the next prima, but I had no experience with this sort of thing.