Dark Angel Read Online Free Page A

in old mine.’
    ‘Is he OK?’ I asked.
    Dad shook his head. ‘Didn’t make it. They told family in Irvine County. Brother lives here in Bitterroot.’
    So I went straight on to Zoran’s blog, expecting and probably hoping to see ‘Cancelled’ written all over the invite to his party. But no, he’d updated everyone with the sad news and decided in spite of the tragedy that the Heavenly Bodies event would go ahead: ‘Our doors are still open, the band is here. We’re ready to party.’
    ‘Look at this,’ I said to Dad. ‘Don’t you think he would cancel?’
    ‘Lot of money, lot of time getting ready,’ he shrugged. ‘Live music, caterers. Anyhow, celebrities don’t think how we do.’ And he went back to the Cuban missile crisis and how the president was rumoured to have taken his eye off the threat of nuclear war to admire the curvaceous charms of Marilyn Monroe.
    So when Grace called to tell me that Jude still couldn’t leave his house, I was more than ready to call a rain check.
    ‘Let’s stay home, girls together,’ I suggested. ‘Play some music, read magazines.’
    ‘And miss the big event?’ she argued. ‘Tania, everyone will be there!’
    ‘But you can’t leave poor Jude.’
    ‘What am I gonna do? Hammer at the door pleading with the parents from hell to let me in?’
    ‘OK, but how’s he going to feel knowing you’re out partying?’
    ‘Don’t do that to me,’ she warned. ‘Jude knows how much I’ve been looking forward to this, so he’s fine with it. What does Orlando want you to do – stay home and mope?’
    ‘Actually, he said for me to go party.’
    ‘Exactly my point! And the costumes, Tania – we made a lot of effort.’
    I stood with the phone to my ear, gazing out of the window at the sun sinking behind Black Rock. It looked like a gold coin with a red rim melting on to the dark horizon and turning the sky violet. ‘Why don’t I want to go?’ I sighed.
    ‘Because deep down you’re an antisocial loner with depressive inclinations and I see it as my duty to rescue you from yourself!’ Grace declared in doctor–patient tones. ‘I’ll be over at your place in thirty minutes, dressed and ready to party.’

2
    I t was time to go, Grace told me.
    There she was at my door, dressed as an angel, totally convincing. Whatever image you have in your head, double it for the effect Grace made in her costume, all gauzy and ethereal with her smooth pale skin, soft, full lips and shining, clear grey eyes. Long, fair curls hung loose. She wore fine silver and gold cord wrapped around her torso over thin white chiffon folds like a Botticelli Venus, showing the curves of her breasts and the lean lines of her thighs. And white feathered wings spread wide behind her.
    ‘Can I get a ride?’ Holly called over the fence. Her version of angel was bolder, more warrior archangel – with her physique how could she help it? Her blonde hair was invisible under a silver headdress shaped like a helmet, there were no soft folds to her metallic tunic and she wore shiny wristbands and open gladiator sandals, also in silver.
    ‘Sure,’ Grace told her. ‘Just throw your wings in the back.’
    Holly frowned as she strode up the drive. ‘I don’t do wings the way you do wings,’ she said, showing us the two small silvery ones attached to the heels of her sandals. Mercury, messenger to the gods – that was who she was.
    Grace and I paused then grinned our approval.
    ‘Where’s Aaron?’ Grace wanted to know.
    Holly shrugged. ‘We had a fight over who would drive. Now he says he won’t go to the party. Do I look like I care?’
    ‘Poor Aaron.’ I said this deliberately. We all do, as a kind of joke – ‘Poor Aaron’ – every time Holly throws her weight around. Example: she leaves this incredibly gorgeous guy standing outside the music store in town for a whole hour then doesn’t even say sorry when she shows up. Poor Aaron. Or she beats him at tennis then makes sure everyone