And now, left to her own devices, her anger, her sense that destiny was for shit and fate just another word for “screwed,” made her feel as though someone had their hands around her throat and was squeezing.
What was she going to do now? She had no idea where Jim or his roommate were, and no clue what she could do, if anything, to help them…
Surrounded by the colossal old mansion, with all of its decayed luxury, her mind retreated from the present and sought shelter in memory, her thoughts going back to happier days, when the week had had a reliable rhythm of work and time off, when her family had been something she’d had the luxury of taking advantage of, when her goals had been things like graduating from Union and finding a job … and maybe meeting a guy she could marry.
Sundays had been all about Vincent Price for her and Dell.
Those horror movies she and her sister had been into had been the “safe” sort of scary-scaries. Nothing gruesome, like the Saw series, but old-fashioned stalwarts like The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The House of Usher and The Innocents. It had been an arguably strange tradition, she and Dell impatiently waiting until family dinner was finished and their homework done before raiding their father’s DVD collection and snuggling up in the basement in the dark. They had watched one or two before bed every week during school.
It had been the best way to chill out and get ready for the six-thirty alarm clocks of Monday and the pressure of the M-T-W-R-F ahead.
Mom had maintained that they were sick in the head. Dad had been so proud that he was raising the next generation of movie appreciators. She and Dell had just liked being together.
Haunted by the past, Sissy walked into the parlor and turned on one of the glass lamps. Its shade was probably a single season in the sun away from total disintegration, the creamy yellow a function of age-staining rather than any decor choice.
Boy, her sister would love this place, the furniture all a mystery because it was shrouded, the faded Oriental rug big as a lawn, the dark wood molding carved so deeply it was like a horizontal statue running around the high ceiling.
From what she’d seen, the entire house just offered more of the same.
It was the kind of fancy living that people wrote books about, but this version had been distilled through the grinder of a reversal of fortunes, a case of history not translating well into the present thanks to a lack of funds.
Pity.
Crossing over, she lifted up one of the sheets. Underneath, a faded green velvet sofa with all kinds of curlicues looked orphaned.
She ripped the covering off. Went on to the wing chair next to it and did the same. Kept going around the parlor, moving faster and more violently, until dust hung thick in the air and a pile of dirty laundry took up most of the middle of the room.
At least she’d gotten to the bottom of something.
Not her issues, though. Not in the slightest.
The angel who’d escorted her here from the hospital had magically transported her across town, but it had been without explanations—he’d told her nothing about herself, her situation, or exactly how he’d pulled off the relocation. He’d also left alone things like how he was tied to Jim, and why he’d come to them, and what his role was.
Just more black holes to add to her collection.
Pacing around, she followed the oval pattern on the carpet because it seemed like the only clear path open to her. That anger that had taken root earlier was rising again, making her feel trapped in spite of the fact that the door she’d come through was not locked, the house had dozens and dozens of rooms, and unlike in her previous life, she had no one she had to answer to—no parents, no teachers, no roommates at Union.
She was free.
So why the hell did she want to scream.
Hard to know what exactly started it, but before she knew what she was doing, she was frantically searching the fireplace’s mantel, going up high on her tiptoes in those borrowed sneakers, patting the cobwebbed shelf around the candelabra and the—
The little box rattled as she brought it down, and yup, there were matches inside.
Moving in a jerky frenzy, she ripped a sheet off the pile, shoved it into the fireplace, and struck up a flame.
Holding the teardrop-shaped glow to eye level, she stared into the yellow heat, and the fury in her expanded even further, flowing through her body, changing the shape of her, growing deep within—sure as if it were cultivating in her soul, finding crevices to root among and take over from.
Dropping to her knees, the cold marble bit into her skin through the sweatpants, but she didn’t care—she brought the tiny fire to the tangled wad and held it there. Smoke rose first, a tendril forming and then quickly thickening into a rolling river.
Proper flames appeared, flaring up, licking at the sheeting, consuming the cotton fibers with increasing greed.
Unable to look away, Sissy reached behind herself, stretching out until she connected with the soft pile she had made. Dragging more forward, she fed the heat, pushing the sheets into the blaze, feeling the burn on her hands, her wrists, her arms, her face.
In her head, a string of curses was like the fire she was creating, flaring to life, consuming—
“What the fuck!”
Sissy ignored whoever it was, utterly focused on her inferno as she wondered what else she could put in it. The drapes. She could rip down the—
Hard hands grabbed onto her shoulders and yanked her back—and that was when she lost it. Just f’in lost it.
As if detonated, she went crazy, screaming, kicking, biting at whatever she could get access to. And as she attacked, her vision whited out, nothing registering except the need to hurt someone, anyone—
With the inner explosion came a freakish strength.
Which was how she ended up twisting around and kneeing her captor right in the balls.
“Fucking hell—fuck!”
For a split second, the hold on her loosened, and she took advantage of the release, bolting out from the smoke-filled parlor and tearing for the front door. Grabbing the handle, she ripped things open and launched herself off the steps, landing in a messy sprawl on the wide sidewalk. Shoving her hair out of her face, she—
Headlights.
Down the lane on the left, coming toward her.
Jumping up to her feet, she ran for the car or truck or SUV, streaking out into the road, facing off, thinking of how Jim had gotten hurt. She wanted to feel the impact, wanted to be solid enough to sustain the strike, to have at least one of the old rules of life apply to her: Don’t play in traffic because you will get hit.
“Sissy! Shit!”
“See me!” she screamed at the approaching lights. “See me!”
“Sissy, goddamn it!”
Her prayers were answered for once. Just when she thought she’d be denied, the car’s horn blared loud enough to get through the fury that was driving her. Then she had a brief impression of the driver looking right at her in terror, some inside light in the sedan illuminating his pale face with eyes stretched wide and a mouth open as if he were yelling—
She was bodily removed from the path, a far greater weight muscling her out of the way as brakes squealed and the world spun.
She landed on the grass strip on the far side of the road, her savior’s body crushing her, pain both clearing her head and scrambling it in a different way. Instantly, she was spun onto her back, her arms pinned over her head, her legs trapped in between two heavy thighs.
Above her, Jim looked as pissed off as she felt—
“Where did she go?”
Dimly, she turned her head. A man was getting out of the BMW that had almost hit her and looking around frantically. “She was right there in the middle of the road.”
A woman emerged from the other side of the sedan. “I saw her, too. She came out of nowhere.”
Just like that cat, Sissy thought numbly as her anger dissipated. The one that had jumped in front of Jim’s truck earlier.
“I’m over here,” she called out weakly. “God … I’m over here…”
The two of them focused in her direction. “Did you hear that?” the man asked.
“Hear what?” the woman said.
The man approached, but it was clear he couldn’t really see her anymore. And as she opened her mouth to yell again, Jim clamped his hand on her mouth, silencing her.
“Don’t you think we have enough problems,” he hissed.
She tried to fight against him, but without her fury, there was no contest: He was way stronger, and stilled her without any real effort. And as expected, shortly thereafter, the couple got back in their luxury car and drove off.
As their red taillights flared, her frustration rekindled.
This was it? After all the good deeds she’d done in her life, after everything she’d unfairly been through down below, her eternity was getting stuck in the halfway-house version of an afterlife? Neither here nor there, Heaven nor Hell—nothing but a shadow that could take shape on rare occasions and maybe make car drivers hit their brakes in passing?
Fucking bullshit.
“I’m going to let you up,” Jim said. “Okay?”
Sissy nodded and waited for him to pull back, giving him all the time in the world to misjudge how calm she was … and when he finally did—
She went back at him, flailing with her fists and kicking with her legs until the pair of them were rolling around on the sidewalk, the concrete scratching her forearms, her calves, her cheeks. She didn’t care—she was crazed again, her fire finding another corner of her emotions that had yet to be immolated.
And maybe Jim knew that. Because instead of sitting on her again, he let her go while still controlling her, fending off her attack with moves so practiced, it was as if he anticipated her strikes before she even thought of them.
Which naturally just pissed her off even more.
Eventually, even though she felt at her core that she could go on for ages, she ran out of gas, her body getting sloppy, her strength ebbing: The anger didn’t disappear; there was just no more physical energy left to provide an outlet for it—
Sissy ended up collapsing against his chest, breathing in ragged bursts, unable to lift her head, much less her fists.
Closing her eyes, she cursed long and hard inside her head … because, God knew, she still couldn’t get enough air down into her lungs.
When she finally found her voice, she said hoarsely, “Why me…”
And then abruptly, she shoved herself away from him. “And why do you care so much about me—I don’t know you—”
“Sissy, look, I know you’ve been through a lot—”
“Just leave me alone, okay? If I want to get hit by a car, let me do it—”
“Sorry, but I can’t.”
“Then actually help me! Tell me where I am—”
“I wish I could—”
“Whatever,” she derided. “You want to keep your day job as an angel? There’re another two hundred and fifty million people in this country—go save them. But as of this moment, I’m not your problem, and you are not mine.”
Getting to her feet and brushing herself off, Sissy stared into the street and felt cheated. But at least they had seen her; they really had—
A rough hand clamped onto her arm and snapped her around.
Her savior didn’t look like anything close to a saint. His eyes were narrowed into slits, his upper lip had curled off his teeth, and the rage radiating out of him was probably the only thing that could have gotten through to her.
His voice, when he spoke, was a snarl. “I saw you dead, how ’bout that. I broke through a door and found you bled the f**k out. I was too late to save you then, so call me stupid for trying to do right by you now.” He stuck his finger in her face. “You want to get all frustrated and shit because you don’t know who you are? Fine. But don’t burn down my f**king house, and don’t resent me because I don’t f**king know what your deal is.” He jabbed his finger at his own chest. “You think I know myself in this mess? I don’t. I don’t have a goddamn clue about so much of it all. Jesus Christ.”
With that, he was the one who spun off and went back for the house, all the while dragging that injured leg behind him like it hurt like hell.
How he was walking on that cast, she had no idea…
As she watched him go back across the road, she regretted the whole evening. And yet even as she calmed down, under her surface … the anger was still there, simmering along.
To think she’d assumed that Hell would be the worst thing that happened to her.
This … seemed so much harder.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jim locked himself in his bedroom. And it wasn’t because he was sulking.
He didn’t trust himself at the moment. He was beat to shit, partially starved, and angry as hell—not exactly a trifecta of healthy relating.
What was she going to do now? She had no idea where Jim or his roommate were, and no clue what she could do, if anything, to help them…
Surrounded by the colossal old mansion, with all of its decayed luxury, her mind retreated from the present and sought shelter in memory, her thoughts going back to happier days, when the week had had a reliable rhythm of work and time off, when her family had been something she’d had the luxury of taking advantage of, when her goals had been things like graduating from Union and finding a job … and maybe meeting a guy she could marry.
Sundays had been all about Vincent Price for her and Dell.
Those horror movies she and her sister had been into had been the “safe” sort of scary-scaries. Nothing gruesome, like the Saw series, but old-fashioned stalwarts like The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The House of Usher and The Innocents. It had been an arguably strange tradition, she and Dell impatiently waiting until family dinner was finished and their homework done before raiding their father’s DVD collection and snuggling up in the basement in the dark. They had watched one or two before bed every week during school.
It had been the best way to chill out and get ready for the six-thirty alarm clocks of Monday and the pressure of the M-T-W-R-F ahead.
Mom had maintained that they were sick in the head. Dad had been so proud that he was raising the next generation of movie appreciators. She and Dell had just liked being together.
Haunted by the past, Sissy walked into the parlor and turned on one of the glass lamps. Its shade was probably a single season in the sun away from total disintegration, the creamy yellow a function of age-staining rather than any decor choice.
Boy, her sister would love this place, the furniture all a mystery because it was shrouded, the faded Oriental rug big as a lawn, the dark wood molding carved so deeply it was like a horizontal statue running around the high ceiling.
From what she’d seen, the entire house just offered more of the same.
It was the kind of fancy living that people wrote books about, but this version had been distilled through the grinder of a reversal of fortunes, a case of history not translating well into the present thanks to a lack of funds.
Pity.
Crossing over, she lifted up one of the sheets. Underneath, a faded green velvet sofa with all kinds of curlicues looked orphaned.
She ripped the covering off. Went on to the wing chair next to it and did the same. Kept going around the parlor, moving faster and more violently, until dust hung thick in the air and a pile of dirty laundry took up most of the middle of the room.
At least she’d gotten to the bottom of something.
Not her issues, though. Not in the slightest.
The angel who’d escorted her here from the hospital had magically transported her across town, but it had been without explanations—he’d told her nothing about herself, her situation, or exactly how he’d pulled off the relocation. He’d also left alone things like how he was tied to Jim, and why he’d come to them, and what his role was.
Just more black holes to add to her collection.
Pacing around, she followed the oval pattern on the carpet because it seemed like the only clear path open to her. That anger that had taken root earlier was rising again, making her feel trapped in spite of the fact that the door she’d come through was not locked, the house had dozens and dozens of rooms, and unlike in her previous life, she had no one she had to answer to—no parents, no teachers, no roommates at Union.
She was free.
So why the hell did she want to scream.
Hard to know what exactly started it, but before she knew what she was doing, she was frantically searching the fireplace’s mantel, going up high on her tiptoes in those borrowed sneakers, patting the cobwebbed shelf around the candelabra and the—
The little box rattled as she brought it down, and yup, there were matches inside.
Moving in a jerky frenzy, she ripped a sheet off the pile, shoved it into the fireplace, and struck up a flame.
Holding the teardrop-shaped glow to eye level, she stared into the yellow heat, and the fury in her expanded even further, flowing through her body, changing the shape of her, growing deep within—sure as if it were cultivating in her soul, finding crevices to root among and take over from.
Dropping to her knees, the cold marble bit into her skin through the sweatpants, but she didn’t care—she brought the tiny fire to the tangled wad and held it there. Smoke rose first, a tendril forming and then quickly thickening into a rolling river.
Proper flames appeared, flaring up, licking at the sheeting, consuming the cotton fibers with increasing greed.
Unable to look away, Sissy reached behind herself, stretching out until she connected with the soft pile she had made. Dragging more forward, she fed the heat, pushing the sheets into the blaze, feeling the burn on her hands, her wrists, her arms, her face.
In her head, a string of curses was like the fire she was creating, flaring to life, consuming—
“What the fuck!”
Sissy ignored whoever it was, utterly focused on her inferno as she wondered what else she could put in it. The drapes. She could rip down the—
Hard hands grabbed onto her shoulders and yanked her back—and that was when she lost it. Just f’in lost it.
As if detonated, she went crazy, screaming, kicking, biting at whatever she could get access to. And as she attacked, her vision whited out, nothing registering except the need to hurt someone, anyone—
With the inner explosion came a freakish strength.
Which was how she ended up twisting around and kneeing her captor right in the balls.
“Fucking hell—fuck!”
For a split second, the hold on her loosened, and she took advantage of the release, bolting out from the smoke-filled parlor and tearing for the front door. Grabbing the handle, she ripped things open and launched herself off the steps, landing in a messy sprawl on the wide sidewalk. Shoving her hair out of her face, she—
Headlights.
Down the lane on the left, coming toward her.
Jumping up to her feet, she ran for the car or truck or SUV, streaking out into the road, facing off, thinking of how Jim had gotten hurt. She wanted to feel the impact, wanted to be solid enough to sustain the strike, to have at least one of the old rules of life apply to her: Don’t play in traffic because you will get hit.
“Sissy! Shit!”
“See me!” she screamed at the approaching lights. “See me!”
“Sissy, goddamn it!”
Her prayers were answered for once. Just when she thought she’d be denied, the car’s horn blared loud enough to get through the fury that was driving her. Then she had a brief impression of the driver looking right at her in terror, some inside light in the sedan illuminating his pale face with eyes stretched wide and a mouth open as if he were yelling—
She was bodily removed from the path, a far greater weight muscling her out of the way as brakes squealed and the world spun.
She landed on the grass strip on the far side of the road, her savior’s body crushing her, pain both clearing her head and scrambling it in a different way. Instantly, she was spun onto her back, her arms pinned over her head, her legs trapped in between two heavy thighs.
Above her, Jim looked as pissed off as she felt—
“Where did she go?”
Dimly, she turned her head. A man was getting out of the BMW that had almost hit her and looking around frantically. “She was right there in the middle of the road.”
A woman emerged from the other side of the sedan. “I saw her, too. She came out of nowhere.”
Just like that cat, Sissy thought numbly as her anger dissipated. The one that had jumped in front of Jim’s truck earlier.
“I’m over here,” she called out weakly. “God … I’m over here…”
The two of them focused in her direction. “Did you hear that?” the man asked.
“Hear what?” the woman said.
The man approached, but it was clear he couldn’t really see her anymore. And as she opened her mouth to yell again, Jim clamped his hand on her mouth, silencing her.
“Don’t you think we have enough problems,” he hissed.
She tried to fight against him, but without her fury, there was no contest: He was way stronger, and stilled her without any real effort. And as expected, shortly thereafter, the couple got back in their luxury car and drove off.
As their red taillights flared, her frustration rekindled.
This was it? After all the good deeds she’d done in her life, after everything she’d unfairly been through down below, her eternity was getting stuck in the halfway-house version of an afterlife? Neither here nor there, Heaven nor Hell—nothing but a shadow that could take shape on rare occasions and maybe make car drivers hit their brakes in passing?
Fucking bullshit.
“I’m going to let you up,” Jim said. “Okay?”
Sissy nodded and waited for him to pull back, giving him all the time in the world to misjudge how calm she was … and when he finally did—
She went back at him, flailing with her fists and kicking with her legs until the pair of them were rolling around on the sidewalk, the concrete scratching her forearms, her calves, her cheeks. She didn’t care—she was crazed again, her fire finding another corner of her emotions that had yet to be immolated.
And maybe Jim knew that. Because instead of sitting on her again, he let her go while still controlling her, fending off her attack with moves so practiced, it was as if he anticipated her strikes before she even thought of them.
Which naturally just pissed her off even more.
Eventually, even though she felt at her core that she could go on for ages, she ran out of gas, her body getting sloppy, her strength ebbing: The anger didn’t disappear; there was just no more physical energy left to provide an outlet for it—
Sissy ended up collapsing against his chest, breathing in ragged bursts, unable to lift her head, much less her fists.
Closing her eyes, she cursed long and hard inside her head … because, God knew, she still couldn’t get enough air down into her lungs.
When she finally found her voice, she said hoarsely, “Why me…”
And then abruptly, she shoved herself away from him. “And why do you care so much about me—I don’t know you—”
“Sissy, look, I know you’ve been through a lot—”
“Just leave me alone, okay? If I want to get hit by a car, let me do it—”
“Sorry, but I can’t.”
“Then actually help me! Tell me where I am—”
“I wish I could—”
“Whatever,” she derided. “You want to keep your day job as an angel? There’re another two hundred and fifty million people in this country—go save them. But as of this moment, I’m not your problem, and you are not mine.”
Getting to her feet and brushing herself off, Sissy stared into the street and felt cheated. But at least they had seen her; they really had—
A rough hand clamped onto her arm and snapped her around.
Her savior didn’t look like anything close to a saint. His eyes were narrowed into slits, his upper lip had curled off his teeth, and the rage radiating out of him was probably the only thing that could have gotten through to her.
His voice, when he spoke, was a snarl. “I saw you dead, how ’bout that. I broke through a door and found you bled the f**k out. I was too late to save you then, so call me stupid for trying to do right by you now.” He stuck his finger in her face. “You want to get all frustrated and shit because you don’t know who you are? Fine. But don’t burn down my f**king house, and don’t resent me because I don’t f**king know what your deal is.” He jabbed his finger at his own chest. “You think I know myself in this mess? I don’t. I don’t have a goddamn clue about so much of it all. Jesus Christ.”
With that, he was the one who spun off and went back for the house, all the while dragging that injured leg behind him like it hurt like hell.
How he was walking on that cast, she had no idea…
As she watched him go back across the road, she regretted the whole evening. And yet even as she calmed down, under her surface … the anger was still there, simmering along.
To think she’d assumed that Hell would be the worst thing that happened to her.
This … seemed so much harder.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jim locked himself in his bedroom. And it wasn’t because he was sulking.
He didn’t trust himself at the moment. He was beat to shit, partially starved, and angry as hell—not exactly a trifecta of healthy relating.
