Avenging Angels Read Free Page B

burly guys held a brocaded settee over their heads and rotated it in unison so that bidders could see it from all sides. There wasn’t a tendril of fake ivy in sight.
    Bree drifted into a light doze. She’d settled her last case several days before, but it had required some heavy-duty nights, and she hadn’t caught up on her sleep. Beside her, Antonia slumped down in her chair and brooded. She roused when Antonia elbowed her in the side and hissed, “Wake up!”
    Bree sat up and suppressed a yawn. “What’s the matter?”
    “I’ve been thinking,” Antonia said gloomily.
    Bree glanced at her. The last time her sister sounded this depressed, she’d gone to work as a pizza delivery person and gained thirteen pounds in three weeks.
    Antonia bit her thumbnail and stared unseeingly into the distance. “Maybe I wasn’t cut out for the Savannah Rep. Or Tully O’Rourke’s Shakespeare company. You’re right. Maybe we should just go home and I should go back to delivering pizzas.”
    Bree set her plastic cup carefully on the floor at her feet. Her sister was volatile—always had been. This self-doubt wasn’t new. There was nothing their parents wanted more than to see Antonia settled happily into a secure, rewarding life. The theater was at the bottom of their list, and her mother, especially, would have seen this fit of the glums as an opportunity to get Antonia back into school. Bree herself just wanted to see her sister happy and she didn’t think a career of unsuccessful auditions would make anybody happy. If Antonia was serious about giving up the theater, she had to be careful. “You were perfect for the part,” Bree said. “John Allen must have been insane to cast somebody else.”
    “Which part?” Antonia asked skeptically.
    “Eliza,” Bree said promptly. “And Irene Adler, before that.” She waved her arm in a grand gesture. “All of them.”
    Antonia shook her head. But she smiled.
    “You’re gorgeous. You’re talented. You’re superb. But!”
    “But?”
    “But maybe you want to think about finishing your degree before you commit to the stage full-time.” Bree held her hand up. “Just wait. Have you thought about ageism?”
    “Ageism?”
    “Sure. You know what I think? I think you’re a victim of ageism. John Allen Cavendish knows you’re twenty-two, and these parts you’ve been auditioning for are for much older— Ow! ” Bree rubbed her arm. “I’ve warned you about pinching. Haven’t I warned you about pinching?”
    “Look who just walked in!”
    “I don’t care if it’s the pope,” Bree said crossly. “Where do you get off pinching me like that?”
    “That’s Tully O’Rourke! She’s here!” Antonia looked rattled. “Gosh. I didn’t actually think she’d show up. And—I don’t believe it! Do you see who’s with her?!” This time she pinched Bree really hard, just above the elbow. Bree hated being pinched.
    “It’s Aunt Cissy!”
    “Oh?” This was not enough to justify battery, in Bree’s opinion. “And my opinion is worth something,” she said aloud, “given my law degree and all.”
    “Hush up.” Antonia’s fit of depression was gone, melted like snow in July. She quivered with excitement. “Of course Cissy’s going to come through for me! She’s always smack in the middle of anything that really matters in this town.”
    Bree left off rubbing her arm—Hell would freeze over before Antonia apologized, and it’d freeze over twice before she promised never to do it again—and turned in her chair and watched Tully O’Rourke pick her way down the aisle to the front row seats.
    Like a lot of celebrities, she was smaller in person than on the TV news channels. But she was unmistakable. Her hair had gone completely white in her midtwenties, and it cupped her cheeks in a severe bob in a look that hadn’t changed for thirty years. Her eyebrows were dark, her eyes darker, and she wore her signature gold choker close around her throat. She was thin, too,