Dark Angel Read Online Free Page B

knows. Poor Aaron again. But he grins and doesn’t seem to care. I guess that means they’re in love.
    ‘Get in the car,’ I told Holly. ‘And don’t squish my mask.’
    For once, Holly did as she was told. ‘Hey, Tania, you rock,’ she told me as she assessed my turquoise and gold splendour with a cool eye.
    Compliments from Holly are rare. ‘Did I just hear her say something positive to me?’ I muttered to Grace.
    ‘Get in the car too,’ Grace told me, glancing at her wrist and remembering that angels don’t wear watches. ‘I’m sure we’re gonna be late.’ Pot, kettle, black.
    ‘Bye, girls,’ Dad said, coming around the side of the house carrying JFK. He wouldn’t put the book down, wouldn’t eat or sleep until he’d read all eight hundred conspiracy-laden pages. ‘Say hi to Zoran Brancusi from me.’
    Grace released the handbrake and slid down the drive.
    ‘Awesome. Does your dad actually know Zoran?’ Grace was surprised. I find she usually takes stuff too literally.
    ‘Like, yeah!’ Holly laughed from the back seat. ‘There are only a million Romanians living in the United States as we speak!’
    ‘Be back before midnight!’ Dad called after us.
    So we set off down the road, three little Cinderellas totally thrilled to be going to the ball.

    Holly demanded music. Grace played a CD by a girl singer she’d just discovered. She was only the same age as us but she sang wise, soulful songs about her boyfriend leaving, the world lying at her feet in fragments but finding the strength to carry on. The album title track was called ‘Out of the Ashes’.
    ‘I thought it was Tania who was fixated on things burning!’ Holly sighed.
    ‘Listen, I just like her voice, that’s all.’ Grace drove through town, along Main Street, already in deep shadow, out along the tourist route up towards Black Rock.
    ‘I’m not fixated,’ I protested.
    ‘Yeah, you are,’ they chorused.
    ‘I don’t like the word “fixated”.’ Meaning, I personally think my preoccupation is justified even if they don’t. I pointed to the mountain looming ahead of us. ‘Look around – what do you see?’
    ‘Smoke,’ Grace admitted.
    ‘My point exactly.’
    We were entering burnout territory from a small forest fire two years earlier, where you get those weird, blackened tree stumps pointing like crooked, witchy fingers towards the sky, with toppled trunks criss-crossing the hillsides and green grass just returning. Beyond that we could see a heavy cloud clinging to Black Rock, backlit by the setting sun so that grey turned to white at its fluffy rim.
    ‘I cried the day you left me.’ Grace’s singer had a broken voice to match the message. ‘Tears fell like rain.’
    ‘Jesus!’ Holly groaned as she reached over my shoulder to press a button and change the disc. She tilted her silver helmet back from her face. ‘I thought we were supposed to party.’
    ‘We will when we get there,’ Grace promised. The Botticelli angel was driving fast into the white-rimmed smoke cloud, through the burnout, on up into the mountain towards the blue peak when a line of guys in helmets and yellow jackets hiked wearily along the side of the road towards us.
    ‘Here come the firefighters,’ Holly pointed out.
    There were about twenty of them in single file, some with goggles strapped to their helmets, most carrying a pickaxe or a shovel, all wearing backpacks and all dog tired after twenty-four hours on Black Rock. As we approached, someone gave an order to halt and wait for transport. Silently unslinging their packs, the men sank on to the sloping grass verge.
    ‘Poor guys,’ Grace muttered, remembering their dead colleague. ‘Does anybody know how the fire started?’
    Holly and I shook our heads. The missing firefighter. No shelter, a wall of flames a hundred feet high, what hope did he have? I felt my own throat constrict and my lungs struggle to suck in air.
    ‘It makes you feel kind of guilty,’ Grace went on,