Read Murder of Angels for Free Online Page A

me.
    But when she opened her hand again the welt was still there, the swelling a little more pronounced than before, and her palm had begun to throb slightly. The patient, faithful Xanax, as well, and four half-moon dimples left by her fingernails; any harder and she might have drawn blood, and that would have freaked Marvin out for sure.
    Don’t you lock up. Keep moving, and so she pressed her lips to her hand; the small welt felt hot when the tip of her tongue brushed over it, and Niki dry-swallowed the pills. She snapped the cap back on the Xanax bottle, took the Elavil next, then the Klonopin last of all, this routine methodical as counting rosary beads, and she drank all the water Marvin had brought her, even though it was warm and tasted faintly of dishwashing liquid. If she hadn’t he might have asked why, and one question could have led to another, and another. She set the prescription bottles back on the speaker, pressed the OFF button on the CD player, and “I think I’ll go to bed now,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning, Marvin.”
    “Good night, dear,” Marvin replied, not bothering to look up at her. “Sweet dreams.”
    “Yeah. You too,” she whispered, and then Niki took a deep breath and climbed the stairs alone.

     

    Awaking from a dream of something she should have done differently, something lost, and Niki Ky stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes before she rolled over and looked at the alarm clock. LED numbers and letters that glowed the same murky yellow-green as cartoon toxic waste, 6:07 A.M ., and the darkness outside the bedroom window in case she needed a second opinion. Niki watched the window, wondering what woke her so suddenly, so completely, and if she was going to be able to get to sleep again. Her dreams, especially the very bad ones, usually left her disoriented for hours, uncertain if this world was real or if the other might have been. She’d once argued with Dr. Dalby for an hour over whether or not anyone could ever know the difference, could ever be sure.
    And then Niki realized that her right hand was still hurting, so maybe that was what had pulled her out of the dream place; she held it up and examined her palm in the darkness, the pale, reflected glow of the city coming in through the curtains, and so she could make out the welt, swollen as fat and dark as a red-wasp sting. Something she’d hoped had only been part of the dream, the white spider pill and her injured hand; she touched it gently, tentatively, with the fingers of her left hand, pressed the soft pad of her index finger against the swelling, and it felt hard and feverish. Niki winced and sat up, switched on the lamp beside the bed, a Tiffany-shaded reading lamp Daria had given her as a gift on her twenty-sixth birthday, blue and green and violet kaleidoscope glass and the bronze mermaid rising graceful from the base, the whole sea caught in her outstretched arms.
    Niki leaned back against the tall oak headboard and squinted at her hand; the lamplight hurt her eyes and she closed them for a second or two, opened them and blinked as her stubborn pupils began to adjust. The swelling was almost as big around as a quarter now, a purple-red hill disrupting the familiar topography of her hand, an ugly new obstacle for her troubled lifeline, and Niki touched it again. The solid center of the bump seemed to roll very slightly, as though a steel bead had been inserted just underneath the skin. She pushed at it a little harder, stopped when the pain made her eyes begin to water, tried to close her hand so she wouldn’t have to look at it anymore, but the muscles ached too much to make a fist.
    “Shit,” she whispered, thinking that she should go to the bathroom down the hall and put something on the swelling, Bactine or Neosporin cream, maybe a Band-Aid, too. That she should probably show it to Marvin in the morning; no need to tell him about the tiny white spider, but surely this was real enough that