Page 54 of The Angel Maker

“Ow!”

Leland releases his grip on Eleanor, and the two of them come to a halt in the middle of the room. The sea of dancers continues to swirl around them, obscuring his view of Charlotte and Alan. But Leland cansensethe two of them over there, and for a moment he feels as powerless as he did as a child, watching Alan disobey their father and disappear down that corridor.

Eleanor is looking at him.

“I apologize,” he says.

“It’s all right.” She hesitates. “Maybe we should get a drink?”

Leland considers it. He can feel fury building in him.

“Yes,” he says. “I think so.”

He takes Eleanor home with him that night but feels absent during the sex and then lies awake in the darkness afterward. She snores gently. It feels out of place having her beside him in the bed, to the point that he has to keep reminding himself of her name. It is as though he has woken up in a place he doesn’t recognize and which he has no recollection of arriving at.

Something has gone wrong.

For a while, the sight of Alan—rich, successful, and dressed to the nines in finery—is impossible for him to process. It makes no sense. Alan was destined for nothing; Edward for everything. The world has tilted off its axis somehow, and now everything is crooked and sliding. Alan had no business being there at all—and especially no right to be talking to the woman who belonged to Leland. And yet there he had been. And there had been Charlotte, laughing with pleasure at his joke.

Leland rolls onto his side.

It is unacceptable.

It iswrong.

And it is in the early hours of the next morning that the only possible explanation for this wrongness occurs to him. The understanding makes him shiver. He remembers the last time he saw his brother.

You can’t do this.

It’s not allowed.

And yet Alan had. He had gone into their father’s study and taken his sacred notebook. In doing so, he had stolen teachings and revelations that belonged to Leland by right. And while the thought is almost too abhorrent to comprehend, he realizes now that a man prepared to transgress so shamelessly in one way is surely capable of doing so in others too.

First against his father.

And then against God himself.

It is October 6, 2017, again.

Leland turned and stopped.

Lost in his memories, he had not noticed the slight change in thelight. The door at the far end of the room was open now, and Banyard was standing there, waiting patiently. The man’s face was illuminated by the images flashing across the screen on the wall. The footage was an old black-and-white recording, plagued by static, but that was standard for the quality of home video available when it had been filmed, and the quality was still good enough to see what was happening to the woman there.

Leland maintained his frame, his arms extended.

“Yes?”

Banyard remained impassive. “He has just left, sir.”

One of Leland’s lawyers.

“And what did he have to say?”

“He can arrange the withdrawal of the funds you requested, but for such an amount, it will be tomorrow afternoon.”

It never ceased to surprise Leland how cautious these people could be. They had their checks and their procedures to follow, of course, but the money was such a small amount—next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

In fact, he had almost felt embarrassed for Christopher Shaw when the boy had named his price for the book. On the other hand, he supposed that made Shaw clever. A reasonable offer was likely to be accepted quickly. And, of course, money had volume. Leland knew from experience that the amount Shaw had requested was the approximate limit of what could be packed into a large briefcase. Bank transfers left tracks and traces, after all; Shaw wanted to be able to sell the book and disappear.

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