Apocalypse to Go Read Online Free Page B

suppose you’d call them?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Behind every so-called poltergeist lurks someone just like my mom.”
    “I really wish she’d married again,” Aunt Eileen said. “She was very beautiful when she was younger, you know. That’s where Kathleen and Sean get it from. Deirdre had her chances, even with everything.”
    “Everything,” I glanced at Ari, “means all of us kids, with Pat’s lycanthropy thrown in as a bonus.”
    Aunt Eileen nodded in sad agreement.
    “Why didn’t she marry again, then?” Ari said.
    “She was staying faithful to my father like a good Catholic widow should.” I tried to keep my voice level, but Aunt Eileen winced at the sarcasm. “I just don’t understand that.” I turned to her. “I’m sorry.”
    She shrugged and gave me a watery smile.
    “But now we know he’s not dead.” Michael came strolling into the living room as calmly as if he hadn’t run for his miserable life a few minutes previously. “Why won’t she believe us?”
    “Because it only hurts worse, dear,” Aunt Eileen said, “knowing he’s alive but can’t come back. Do you remember what he wrote about having to wear that StopCollar thing?”
    “Well, yeah.” Michael frowned down at the rug. “Y’know, I feel lousy about this. Maybe we never should have shown the letter to her.”
    “Maybe so,” I said, “but it’s too late now. We did.”

C HAPTER 2

    A RI AND I LEFT MY AUNT’S around eight o’clock that night with my notebooks, enough leftover food for two dinners, and a special family photo album and scrapbook that Eileen had put together for us. As usual, I insisted that I drive. Unless you’ve been a passenger in a car driven by a macho Israeli guy, you don’t know what “fear of death” means.
    We’d just turned onto Sloat Boulevard for the last leg of the trip home when Ari’s shirt pocket began to beep. He pulled his cell phone out of the pocket and glanced at it.
    “Drive faster,” he said to me. “Someone’s trying to breach the security system.” He pressed a couple of buttons on the phone. “I’ve alerted the police.”
    As I tapped the accelerator, I thanked Whomever that Ari wasn’t doing the driving. If he’d been behind the wheel, we would have careened through the streets at eighty—needlessly, thanks to our souped-up Saturn’s interesting features. Whenever we approached a red light, I pressed a button on the steering column, and the light turned green. Turning corners at fifty—no tipping, no screeching, no problem. We made it back to our pair of flats in record time.
    As I turned off Noriega onto 48th, I saw a squad car pulled up in front of our building. I parked in front of the building next door. Before I could turn off the engine, Arihad opened the door and gotten out. He ran down the sidewalk ahead of me and joined the pair of uniformed officers who were standing under the streetlight. I locked up the car in case someone was lurking nearby. I caught up with Ari just in time to hear an officer say, “No sign of forced entry.”
    “Good.” Ari was holding his Interpol ID out where they could see it. “Do you think we could have a look through the front window with your torch? Er, flashlight.”
    As they went up the front steps, Ari returned his ID to his inner jacket pocket. The second officer nodded at me to indicate that he knew I was there, then walked over to lean against the squad car and look up at the top flat windows. Apparently, I was supposed to feel protected.
    Thanks to the streetlights I could see up and down 48th. Down by the corner on Moraga a man was standing, hands in his jacket pockets, watching. I sketched a surreptitious Chaos ward and sailed it his way. When it hit, nothing happened. One of the neighbors, I assumed, being curious. He proved my assumption right after a minute or two by taking keys out of a pocket—I heard them jingle—and letting himself into the building on the corner.
    Ari and the other police