Desolate (Desolation) Read Free Page A

other people. To the goodness in myself. It still didn’t come easily to me, but for Lucy’s sake I tried. Every day I tried.
    So I closed my eyes and allowed myself to remember Michael. The touch of his hand against my own. The feel of his lips on mine. The way he always smelled of oranges and happiness.
    “I miss you,” I whispered to the stone angel. And with the words I pushed out the hope, pushed it away from me. It cost too much to keep.
    Beyond my closed eyelids I sensed the day growing darker. With a sigh I stood. I gazed into the angel’s eyes, one stony heart to another, before I nodded my head and walked toward the far reaches of the cemetery where a copse of trees would shield me from view.
    In the safety of their shadows, I closed my eyes, thought of Michael, and Became.
     
     

 
     
     
    chapter four
     
    Clouds overtook the sky in thick, cloying darkness. I embraced my Shadow and allowed the freezing gifts of Hell to invade my soul. I welcomed the cold—despite everything I’d learned about myself, despite the undeniable warmth that clung to me like fine flakes of gold, the cold still felt most like me. My dark, feathered wings beat against the night sky with a steady reassurance. As black as the night around me, I felt free.
    Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as I flew along the coast. I took up a post far atop the Golden Gate Bridge and sat, my knees pulled to my chest, and waited. Tugging Aaron’s coat tight around me I inhaled deeply, but the scent of him—cinnamon hots and kohl—was fading. The long black trench coat that was synonymous with Aaron smelled more and more like me, making me feel like I’d lost Aaron twice.
    I closed my eyes and sought to see with my mind’s eye. To know when, or if, Hell would arrive. But I found nothing. At one point I jerked my head up, thinking I’d heard something—but nothing seemed amiss. Still, I stayed more vigilant after that.
    Sometime around three o’clock in the morning, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who it would be. I put the phone to my ear.
    “Time to come home, princess.” James’ voice rasped into the phone, thick and laden with sleep. He probably set his alarm so he could check on me.
    “I can’t,” I said in a whisper, even though no one could possibly hear me from up here. “I haven’t found it yet.”
    “Mir told me to tell you she’s certain the horseman comes in the middle of the night—like around midnight. She thinks that if it’s closer to morning, he definitely won’t come.”
    I looked into the cloud-filled sky that was as dark as it had been before. “Still looks like the middle of the night to me.”
    “Just come home. I’ll leave the balcony door unlocked.”
    Of course he would, because James was like that. When I sighed, long and low, a whole dissertation on loss and loneliness, James said, “See you in a few.”
    I got to my feet slowly, not even wavering a little bit on my tiny perch. I stretched, working the kinks out of my back while the wind buffeted me. It scraped over my body and I imagined the grabbing hands in Hell. The desperate needing hands that never found what they were seeking.
    These fingers were just the wind, I reminded myself.
    I spread my wings and flew home.
    Alighting on the balcony, I eased open the door. My Shadow faded away as I crossed the threshold of my home—the place that used to be Lucy’s and now belonged to me and James. Without James, I wouldn’t have been allowed to stay here—not without an adult as my guardian. But James, though only eighteen, qualified and his healthy bank account (padded by years of doing Daniel’s dirty work) made it possible for both of us to get out of his step-dad’s house. And since Daniel worked for Hell, it got both of us out from under Father’s direct influence.
    Father could still talk to me if he wanted to—if he really wanted to, he could have me killed or dragged back down to