Come inside. I won’t hurt you. Come, Nora.
The urgency in his words frightened me. I clawed at the window, trying to locate the latch, desperately needing to throw my arms around him and stop him from leaving again. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I thought about running around to the back door, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave him, even for a few seconds. I couldn’t lose him again.
I splayed my hand on the window, harder this time. “I’m right here, Dad!”
This time, the glass frosted at my touch. Tiny fibers of ice branched across the glass with a brittle, crackling noise. I jerked away at the sudden cold that shot up my arm, but my skin was stuck to the glass. Frozen. Crying out, I tried to free myself using my other hand. My dad’s hand melted through the windowpane and closed around mine, holding me so I couldn’t run. He jerked me roughly forward, the bricks snagging my clothes, my arm impossibly vanishing into the window. My terrified reflection stared back, my mouth open in a startled scream. The only thought pounding through my head was that this couldn’t be my dad.
“Help!” I yelled. “Vee! Can you hear me? Help! ” Thrashing my body side to side, I tried to use my weight to break free. A piercing pain sliced into the forearm he held captive, and an image of a knife burst into my mind with such intensity that I thought my head had split in two. Fire licked my forearm— he was cutting me open.
“Stop!” I shrieked. “You’re hurting me!”
I felt his presence flex across my mind, his own sight eclipsing mine. There was blood everywhere. Black and slippery … and mine. Bile rose in my throat.
“Patch!” I screamed into the night with nothing short of terror and absolute desperation.
The hand dissolved from around mine, and I dropped backward to the ground. Instinctively I clutched my wounded arm against my shirt to stop the bleeding, but to my amazement, there was no blood. No cut.
Gulping air, I stared up at the window. Perfectly intact, it reflected the tree behind me, which swung back and forth in the night air. I scurried to my feet and stumbled out to the sidewalk. I ran in the direction of the Devil’s Handbag, turning to glance over my shoulder every few steps. I expected to see my dad
—or his doppelgänger—appear from one of the townhouses, holding a knife, but the sidewalk stayed empty.
I faced forward to cross the street and saw the person a half blink before I slammed into her.
“There you are,” Vee said, reaching out to steady me as I choked back a scream. “I think we missed each other. I made it to the Devil’s Handbag and backtracked to find you. Are you okay? You look ready to throw up.”
I didn’t want to stand on the street corner any longer.
Reflecting on what had just happened at the townhouse, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time I’d hit Chauncey with the Neon. Moments later, the car had returned to normal, leaving no evidence of an accident. But this time it was personal. This time it was my dad. My eyes burned, and my jaw quivered as I spoke. “I—I thought I saw my dad again.” Vee folded her arms around me. “Babe.”
“I know. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real,” I repeated, trying to reassure myself. I blinked several times in succession, tears staining my vision. But it had felt real. So very real …
“Do you want to talk about it?”
What was there to talk about? I was being haunted.
Someone was messing with my mind. Toying with me. A fall en angel? A Nephil? My dad’s ghost? Or was it my own mind betraying me? It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d imagined seeing my dad. I’d thought he was trying to communicate with me, but maybe this was a self-defense mechanism. Maybe my mind was making me see things I refused to accept were gone forever. It was filling the void, because that was easier than letting go.
Whatever had happened back there, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t my dad. He would never hurt me. He loved me.
“Let’s go back to the Devil’s Handbag,” I said, exhaling shakily. I wanted to distance myself from the townhouse as quickly as possible. Once more I told myself that whoever I’d seen back there, he wasn’t my dad.
The echoing clash, clang, and whine of drums and guitars warming up for the show grew louder, and while my panic was slow to subside, I felt my heartbeat slowing down. There was something reassuring about the idea of losing myself inside the swarm of hundreds of bodies packed inside the warehouse.
Despite what had happened, I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t want to be alone; I wanted to slip into the center of the crowd. There was strength in numbers.
Vee grabbed my wrist and brought me to a halt. “Is that who I think it is?”
Half a block up, Marcie Mill ar was climbing into a car. Her body looked poured into a little black scrap of fabric that was short enough to show off her black lace thigh-highs and garter belt. Tall, over-the-knee black boots and a black fedora completed the outfit. But it wasn’t her outfit that had caught my attention. It was the car. A shiny black Jeep Commander. The engine caught, and the Jeep pulled around the corner and out of sight.
CHAPTER 9
“HOLY FREAK SHOW,” VEE WHISPERED. “DID I JUST SEE that? Did I really just see Marcie climb into Patch’s Jeep?” I opened my mouth to say something, but it felt like someone had stuffed nails down my throat.
“Was it just me,” Vee said, “or could you see her red thong peeking out from under her dress?”
“That wasn’t a dress,” I said, leaning back against a building for support.
“I was trying to be optimistic, but you’re right. That wasn’t a dress. That was a tube top stretched down around her bony booty. The only thing keeping it from springing up around her waist is gravity.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, the nails-in-the-throat sensation spreading to my stomach.
Vee pushed down on my shoulders, forcing me to sit on a square of sidewalk. “Deep breaths.”
“He’s going out with Marcie.” It was almost too horrific to believe.
“Marcie puts out,” said Vee. “That’s the only reason. She’s a pig. A rat.”