Read Murder of Angels for Free Online Page B

even he could see it.
    “Maybe you should cut it out,” said the boy standing at the foot of the bed, and when she looked up at him he smiled and his teeth were the color of polished hematite. He must have been there all along, watching her, waiting; his thin, solemn face was dirty, dirty face and dirtier hands, black grime beneath his nails. He held his head at an odd angle, like it was too heavy or his neck too weak to support it properly, and there was a ring of bruises circling his throat. The boy was dead.
    “It might start to fester,” he said. “You should find a razor and cut it out before it does.”
    “Maybe. I’ll ask Marvin about it in the morning,” Niki said, talking to a dead boy with a crooked neck, a dead boy standing there in her bedroom, and she knew she wasn’t that crazy, so she was still dreaming, same act, different scene, that’s all.
    “You shouldn’t wait that long, Niki. It might be too late by then. It might eat in too deep and you’ll never get it back out.”
    “How do you know my name?” she asked him, and the boy smiled at her again, a cold, secretive kind of smile, she thought. A smile because she didn’t understand and he did, that sort of a smile.
    “You take too many pills,” he said, his dark, iron-ore teeth moving up and down, something nestled at the corner of his mouth that might have been a scab or an insect. “You don’t remember things you should. You don’t remember me.”
    And then she does, and Niki closes her eyes, lies down hoping that she can force the dream to change again, some less tangible nightmare, some lesser regret or failure looking to settle the score with her.
    “You never even told that fucking shrink of yours about me, Nicolan,” Danny Boudreaux said. “Daria pays someone a hundred and fifty dollars an hour just to listen to you whine, and you don’t even have the guts to start at the beginning.”
    “Go away,” Niki whispered. “Leave me alone,” and she reached for Daria’s pillow and put it over her head, dim hope that he would go away if he couldn’t see her face anymore.
    “You’re never going to be able to run that fast,” he sneered, and Niki felt all the sheets and blankets yanked suddenly away, the violent flutter of cloth like a fleeing ghost, and a damp gust of air washed over her. Heavy, smothering air too dank even for a San Francisco autumn morning, the stench of mold and mushrooms, stagnant water and vegetable rot, and she would drown in half the time it took to scream.
    “Yeah, you should definitely cut it out now,” the dead boy said, and when she opened her eyes, Niki was standing at the center of the bed, naked and shivering, staring down at the discarded bedclothes strewn across the floor; polished hardwood and clean white sheets, the purple wool blanket they’d had since Colorado lying in a rumpled wad near the closet door, and there was no one in the room but her.
    “Wake up,” she said, but nothing changed, not the shadows or the cloying, mildew stink that still hung thick around her, the frigid, syrup-thick air that seemed to cling to her bare arms and legs, her exposed belly and breasts, and she couldn’t even remember taking off her T-shirt. But there it was on the floor, tangled up with the sheets, and her panties almost all the way over by the bedroom door.
    Her hand throbbed, and when she called for Marvin her breath fogged in the freezing air.
    He can’t hear me, she thought. Marvin isn’t anywhere in this dream and he can’t hear me and he’ll never come to wake me up.
    There was a high, scraping noise at the window, then, and Niki turned too slowly, caught only the very briefest glimpse between and through the curtains, mercifully brief sight of whatever had been looking in at her, whatever had seen her scared and naked and talking to herself or Danny Boudreaux. A lingering, animate pool of night mashing itself flat against the glass, and then it was gone, and she could see the sloping