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God, I was going to break an axle out here. But for some reason I kept on going – and after about five minutes, I saw the house. It was set well back, with a paved drive that ended abruptly where it touched the road.
I stopped the car and took in a sprawling brick ranch house with a three-car garage; a twiggy tree in the front yard looked as if it hadn’t had a chance to grow yet. I did a quick scan. No one.
Making up my mind, I got out of the Toyota and checked my pistol, then stuck it in the pocket of my parka. As I shut the car door, it sounded like a bomb going off. I walked up the drive, my footsteps the only noise. Why am I here? I thought.
I studied the grassless front yard: the tangled, untamed lot across the road. And then I stopped, frowning.
For a second, it had felt as if the earth’s energy was reaching towards me – as if everything in the whole world was straining towards me, without even realizing. It was a bizarre sensation; then it was gone.
I stood very still, waiting – almost holding my breath – but nothing else happened. Finally I shook my head and turned back to the house. Right. Obviously I was lonelier than I’d thought.
Though I could have just sent my angel in to open up the place from the inside, I didn’t – it felt like an intrusion somehow. Instead I tried the front door, and when that was predictably locked, walked around the side of the house, testing windows. Finally one slid open.
I don’t know why climbing in through a window seemed less like breaking in, but it did – as if the house itself had granted me entry. I ducked past gold-coloured curtains and stepped down onto a hardwood floor. Then I stood staring as I tapped the snow from my shoes.
I was in a study, with a computer on a desk and a soft-looking leather sofa in one corner. I gazed at a pair of reading glasses. It felt as if I’d entered Tutankhamen’s tomb. Dust lay thickly on all surfaces, and everything was undisturbed, as if whoever had lived here had just stepped out and not come back.
What had happened to them? Had soldiers taken them to an Eden?
I shivered and made my way down the shadowy, carpeted hallway until I found the kitchen: a room with a bay window looking out to a large backyard. On the counter was a coffee machine, half-full and green with mould – there was even a mug with a red lipstick print. I didn’t go near it; instead I found the pantry and swung open the door.
Food. Suddenly I was ravenous – I’d only eaten odds and ends for days. Cans of soup faced me; spaghetti, stew, peanut butter, crackers. I found some plastic bags in a drawer and helped myself, plucking everything still edible off the shelves. There were whole shrink-wrapped cartons of bottled water. And Cokes – I could chill them in snow.
As I placed my “groceries” by what I assumed was the garage door, my heart skipped: there was a set of car keys hanging from a wooden pegboard.
I rose slowly, staring at them. Hardly daring to hope, I opened the door to the garage…and there, like a present for a lucky high school graduate, stood a midnight-blue Ford 4 × 4.
I swallowed, positive that this was all about to go spectacularly wrong. But when I pressed the button on the keys, the truck’s locks snicked obediently open.
Yes! My worries about the snow vanished. There were even snow chains on the wall and a real fuel can sitting on a counter. Grinning like a loon, I loaded up the truck; it still had that new-car smell. But hanging from the rear-view mirror was a laminated school photo of a boy with a brown cowlick…along with a tiny plastic angel.
“You can stay, Timmy,” I said to the boy. He looked like a “Timmy”, as if Lassie were lurking just out of view. “Not you, though,” I went on, detaching the angel – and wondering if this was the answer to what had happened here.
I went back in and set the angel gently on the table. I was just about to leave when I glanced down the hallway. Wait, the bathroom – I hadn’t seen so much as a box of Band-Aids in the abandoned stores.
I found a lot more than that. New packets of toothbrushes, toothpaste – oh, yes; I’d hadn’t brushed my teeth in days. Suddenly very aware of the silence in the house, I quickly bagged up everything that might be useful. Then I glanced under the sink, and found a glossy cardboard box.
My pulse started pounding. It was even the right colour. Maybe I shouldn’t; maybe it was a stupid, dangerous idea. Yet I knew there was no way I was leaving the box behind.
Definitely, I thought, adding it to my bag. But not here.
On my way out, I checked a hall closet and was rewarded with a sleeping bag in a nylon case; I tucked it gratefully under one arm. Okay, time to go. If I were smart I’d probably start looting through all the closets for warmer clothes, but that seemed way too personal – and I had enough.
The garage door swung open when I tugged at it, and the 4 × 4 started on the first try. I backed it down the drive and grabbed what I needed from the Toyota. “Thank you, whoever you were,” I murmured once I was back in the truck. The house gave no response.
I let out a breath and glanced at the boy in the photo. “Ready, Timmy?”
And Timmy said he was.
When the snow came an hour later it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; the 4 × 4 took the inch or so of white easily. It was a relief to feel how solid and reliable it was as I travelled down the main street of the next dark town: Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
A Payless ShoeSource gaped vacantly. Festive Flowers had pots of dead plants in the window. I couldn’t sense any people – this time of year, they’d probably headed south, or given up and gone to Omaha Eden.
I knew exactly what I was looking for. When I saw it, I smiled and turned right onto First, and then right again. There was a small parking lot at the back; I pulled in.
Stray snowflakes fell softly in my hair as I swung open the truck’s rear door. I got out the cardboard box and one of the cartons of bottled water – and then, with my pistol safe in the pocket of my parka, I locked the truck and walked up the short flight of concrete steps to the back door.
The fading gold letters read: IMAGES SALON.
The door was locked, but this time I had no compunction about sending my angel in. In seconds, I was standing inside a supply room; through an open door was a room filled with mirrors and black curving sinks.
I found a bottle on one of the shelves: Peroxide for hair. The memory of Alex’s reaction when I’d dressed his gunshot wound came back, and I almost smiled. “Different peroxide,” I told his ghost in my head. “And it was the right thing to do, you know. ”
I stripped off my parka and V-necked top, and put on a black plastic cape. Then I settled into one of the swivelling chairs and started applying peroxide to my long, dyed brown hair, combing it through. My angel hovered overhead, casting a gentle light.
Twenty minutes, the bottle said. I watched in the mirror, observing with satisfaction as my hair grew lighter by the second. I’d hated the brown so much – it had never felt like me. When the timer went off, I rinsed out the peroxide with bottled water in one of the sinks, and then opened up the box of Clairol Summer Blonde.
Less than an hour later, I was a blonde again.
I smiled at myself in the mirror as I combed my hair out. A little darker than my natural shade, but only slightly. Oh god, the relief – I felt like myself again. This was how I wanted to be when I faced Raziel: exactly who I really was. No more hiding.
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