Apocalypse to Go Read Online Free Page A

halfway up before I mentally registered the news. I was tempted to follow his example. Instead, I squared my shoulders and walked on into the living room. Why hide? Mom had already figured out that I was in the house.
    “Oh, there you are,” she said. “Condescending to say hello to me, are you?”
    Deirdre O’Brien O’Grady, five foot two, slender, hergraying hair dyed a tasteful auburn, set her beringed hands on her hips and glared at me with cold blue eyes. Yet she was smiling with the little twist of the upper lip, the flare of one nostril, that we all called her sneer. She was wearing a boxy pants suit in powder blue, with matched pearls at her throat.
    “Hi, Mom,” I said. “I thought you never wanted to see me again. Just trying to do what you asked.”
    “The one time you ever did.” She made a girlish giggling sound—I wouldn’t call it a laugh—and went on looking me over with the cold stare, her usual minute assessment of my hair, clothes, body. “At least you’ve finally lost all that weight,” she said eventually. “But you could get some better clothes now that you can fit into them.”
    Aunt Eileen was hovering, watching her sister, glancing now and then at me. I was determined to avoid a screaming fight in front of her, and in front of Ari, too, who was standing on the other side of the room, his eyes narrow, his mouth slack in disbelief. I noticed that he’d put on his jacket, probably to hide the shoulder holster.
    “I was just introduced to your boyfriend,” Mom continued. “The latest one, I suppose.” Her eyes flicked his way, then back to me. “How many does that make, anyway? Five? Six? Or do you even bother to keep count anymore?”
    My good intentions vanished. “What’s wrong?” I said and smiled. “Envy’s a sin, you know.”
    Mom caught her breath. From somewhere upstairs a sharp cracking noise rattled through the living room. The windows trembled and boomed, but the glass held unbroken.
    “Oh, come on!” I said. “Why can’t you just say it instead of sounding off in the aura field?”
    “What? Do you honestly think I did—it must be Michael and his damn firecrackers again.”
    One section of the brocade sofa lifted about three inches off the floor, then dropped with a groan.
    “He’s not hiding under there,” I said. “Why the hell can’t you just admit you’re as talented as the rest of us? This stupid charade—ever so middle class, are we? And for the wife of a man in the building trades! Crap, look at you! Theway you’re dressed! Do you think you’re the bloody Queen of England?”
    Mom stared at me openmouthed. I realized that I’d just hurled all the insults Dad used when they were fighting on the same theme. I squelched a temptation to apologize. Mom turned to Aunt Eileen.
    “I’m leaving,” she said. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted.”
    “No, you don’t.” I found something original to say. “You can be insulted anywhere you go. It’s your hobby, isn’t it? Indignation.”
    An invisible hand grabbed a thick bunch of my hair and yanked. I yelped. Mom smiled at me, turned on her heel, and stalked out. She slammed the front door behind her so hard that the windows rattled again, this time from natural causes.
    Aunt Eileen let out her breath in a long sigh. Ari stopped lurking in the hall and hurried over to me. He slipped an arm around my shoulders and hauled me in to rest against him. I leaked a few tears onto his chest, then pulled myself together.
    “She dropped by unannounced,” Eileen said to me. “I’m so sorry, dear.”
    “Well, I’m sorry I lost it.” I wiped my face on my shirtsleeve. “Ari, will you forgive me for being a jerk?”
    “What makes you think you acted badly?” Ari said. “She has to be the most appalling woman I’ve ever met.”
    I decided that falling in love with him had been one of my better decisions.
    “She really was responsible for those—” Ari hesitated. “Those phenomena, I