Page 57 of Price of Angels

Holly looked toward the entrance and heard the panicked, strangled sound that tried to leave her throat.

Dewey was standing just inside the air lock, shivering and chafing at his arms through the sleeves of his thin canvas jacket. He looked so out of place: too thin inside his ill-fitting clothes, his feet turned at awkward duck angles, his ears casting shadows down onto his shoulders, like extendable side mirrors on a big truck.

Michael didn’t have to turn. “He came inside,” he said, voice sharp-edged.

“Yes.”

He spoke quickly, words clipped. “What will he do if he sees you?”

“Probably try to talk to me. He was always the one who tried to…reason with me.” She gulped down the bile that pressed at the back of her tongue.

“What if he sees you, and you walk away?”

“He’ll come after me.”

“Good. Get up, go in back, and let him follow you. Lead him somewhere out of the way, and keep him there.”

She gripped the edge of the table and felt the tendons leaping in her wrists. Her gaze was fixed on the man who’d pledged to be her husband just before her hands were bound to the bedposts. She’d known dread back then, as his clammy hands had stroked her naked skin and he’d professed that his rape was something divine and loving. But now, after she’d been part of the world beyond that farmhouse, dread wasn’t a strong enough word anymore.

“I can’t go back,” she whispered. “Michael, I can’t go back, I can’t!”

“Holly.” He thumped his fist down onto the table, drawing her attention. “Do what I said. Go in back, lead him away from here. I can’t do anything in the middle of all these people.”

She stared at the tightness of the bones in his face, at his pale skin like quartz in the lamplight, the fire in his eyes. He looked evil and awful. And beautiful. As beautiful as St. Michael as he’d stood above Lucifer.

“You won’t go back,” he said. “Hol, I promise you, sweetheart, that you won’t go back.”

He said, “Trust me. Lead him away.”

She studied him a long moment, drawing as much strength and grace from his burning eyes as she could, and then she got to her feet, sliding from the booth in a deliberate way, bending over to retrieve her empty tray. If Dewey didn’t glance at the way her white silk shorts rode up as she leaned forward, then there was nothing masculine inside him. And if he didn’t recognize her face when she straightened…

There, his gaze, fixed to her, his mouth slightly open, his small chest heaving as he drew in a deep breath. He’d seen her.

Holly made eye contact for one terrible moment, one in which she tumbled unwillingly into the past, remembering all those times he’d told her how special she was, as the ropes bit into her and he heaved his skinny body against hers while her father watched.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw her tray at him like an Olympic discus and sever his head with it.

Instead she whirled, and ducked between the two registers beside the fountain drink station, and headed down the dark, narrow back hall toward the restrooms.

She heard her shallow, frantic breathing echoing against the close walls, her sneakers scuffing at the boards.

Somewhere private, Michael had said. The restrooms wouldn’t do. Anyone could walk in on them. She thought about the alley, and then she thought about Carly and dismissed it. She didn’t want to leave the building. She wanted Michael to be able to find her.

She was rounding the corner at the back of the hall, turning away from the exterior exit, headed for the locker room when she heard Dewey’s voice behind her.

“Holly! Holly, wait!”

She broke into a jog.

Not the locker room – it was empty now, but who knew if it would stay that way. The girls were always going back to reapply lipstick.

The hall took another sharp right-hand turn and she reached the staircase that led up to the closed second story. Like so many of the downtown businesses, Bell Bar had residential and office space up above, but it hadn’t been used for years, and had been deemed unsafe by the city. The owner, Jeff went up sometimes, using the extra square footage for storage. But now there was a plastic chain stretched across the bottom of the stairwell, a Keep Out sign fixed at its center.

Holly clambered over the chain and started up the dark, dark passage, footsteps too loud on the old wooden stairs.

“Holly!” Dewey called again. He was catching up.

There was a hall at the top of the stairs, one she could only detect by feel, hands skimming along the dusty plaster on either side of her as she stumbled forward through the dark. There was a light ahead of her, something dim and yellowish, and she moved toward it.

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