Damn Him to Hell Read Free Page A

give us a hand here. Tim’s fading out.”
    “Am not,” Tim argued—faintly.
    I spun around to see Andre and Julius holding up the corners of one of those shiny, colorful comforters they sell in fancy department stores. Sure enough, Tim had disappeared, and his corner was sagging.
    On the comforter lay Sleeping Beauty.

2

    “C olor, Tim,” I scolded, grabbing the sagging duvet at Beauty’s feet. “Concentrate.”
    Tim had been only five when the first chemical flood had spilled through the home of his drug-addicted mother. Small, bullied, and neglected, he’d grown into a terrified gay adolescent who loved plants—and turned invisible when frightened. Made sense in a completely Zonish way, but he’s one of the reasons we don’t like strangers around.
    He colored in enough for me to see his hands and feet so I didn’t step on him. I nodded at Julius, whose face was lined with weariness and worry.
    Still dressed with flawless elegance, Andre held up the opposite side of the blanket all by himself. Thismysterious Sleeping Beauty was sufficient argument to keep my distance from my former boss. Who the hell was she and where had they been hiding her? A few months back, I’d lived in this building for days and hadn’t seen or heard another woman. And how could anyone sleep through this commotion?
    That was, assuming we weren’t carting a dead body around. The Zone was paranormal enough—I didn’t need to read fantasies about zombies and vampires. I was probably living with them. I’d left normal far behind with Max’s death.
    Andre backed through the doorway of the hospital room and maneuvered the duvet over the naked cot with a skill born of experience. Anywhere else, and I’d worry about the cleanliness of a bare mattress in a damp cellar, but I was pretty sure Andre would have ionic air cleaners and space shuttle technology to prevent anything resembling so much as a mote of dust.
    Andre wasn’t poor, just weird, in a controlling kind of way. He always knew what was needed and where. Maybe it was his Special Ops training.
    I’d learned enough not to demand explanations if there was any chance I wouldn’t like the answer, so I didn’t ask any. Yet.
    Now that I had time to look, I could see that Beauty was breathing. The wrinkles in the corners of her eyes framed a face too old for her to be Andre’s wife and a little too young for her to be Julius’s. Like her fabled namesake, she appeared lovely and healthy, but also as in the fairy tale, she didn’t wake up, despitethe jostling acrobatics of the clumsy men and Andre’s irritated growls.
    I’d have said something witty about kissing her awake, except Julius’s mouth sagged with sadness as he tenderly arranged her nightgown and used the long end of the duvet to cover her bare feet. I liked Julius, even if he was Andre’s father. Besides being kind, he had aristocratically chiseled features, distinguished silver streaks in his hair, and an elegant mien Andre might someday aspire to.
    Come to think of it, so did Beauty.
    “Linens in the cabinet,” Andre stated tersely, punching up numbers on his cell phone. Cell phones worked down here?
    I don’t know who he had meant to order about, but Tim was the one who obeyed, not me. After being deemed a Saturn’s daughter, I’d checked out Saturn, and sure enough, Capricorn is ruled by the planet Saturn. If you want to believe astrology, my late-December birthday means I’m goal-oriented, pessimistic, and cautious. And I don’t do orders.
    Still suspended between drunken disbelief and fear, I whipped out my phone, too, intending to warn my friends not to come to work in the Zone for the next few days.
    I verified that Milo was still with me. From my bag, he batted my hand with his head. Reassured, I ignored a rattle on the stairs.
    As I punched buttons, a space suit clattered into sight. My eyebrows probably met my hairline, but I had a sleepy Cora on the other end of the line andcouldn’t manage to