Devil at Midnight (2 page)

I
t was a perfect cinematic night in the suburbs of Ohio: fat white moon, wispy silhouetted clouds, stars like pinholes drilled through a huge backdrop. The house Grace Gladwell lived in was a stone’s throw from where she sat, its yard so newly sodded the turf lines hadn’t filled in yet. The proximity of the rancher should have darkened her mood, but—ensconced as she was in the front seat of handsome Johnny Dorsey’s Buick convertible—she actually felt happy.

Johnny must have felt hopeful he’d finally have a conquest to tell his friends about. He shut off the ignition and let the straight-eight engine go quiet. He and Grace had been dating for the last three months, almost since the day she’d transferred to Lakeview High. The spring night was warm, and he’d thrown his letter jacket into the back of the Roadmaster. His gaze followed hers upward, then returned to her face.

Grace knew he wasn’t used to seeing her relaxed. With a smile of his own, he twisted toward her on the leather seat.

“This sky looks like the one from the movie. You know, when William Holden and the woman who wasn’t Gloria Swanson strolled through the studio lot.”

Grace laughed, because she couldn’t remember the second actress’s name, either. Johnny might play football, might come from a clean-scrubbed family and hold doors for girls, but he and Grace shared a trait or two. When they went to a drive-in, they watched the screen.

Tonight’s picture had been
Sunset Boulevard.

Feeling uncustomarily close to him—though feeling close to anyone tended to make her nervous—she scooted around like he had, her knee bumping his beneath her petticoatpoufed skirt. Johnny’s slightly sweaty hand dropped immediately to her knee. Grace enjoyed the warm squeeze he gave her, though she knew she shouldn’t encourage it. She tossed her head to distract him.

“‘I am
big,’” she said, imitating Norma Desmond’s melodramatic delivery. “ ‘It’s the pictures that got small.’ ”

“You could be a movie star.” Johnny’s thumb swept her bare kneecap. “Everyone at school thinks you’re pretty.”

Everyone thought she looked like Rita Hayworth, with her wavy red hair and her grown-up breasts. Grace appreciated the compliment, but being an actress wasn’t what she dreamed about. She laid her hand over Johnny’s to keep it from climbing higher. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Johnny leaned closer. “You can tell me anything, Grace.”

“I want to be a director. I want to be in charge and tell the actresses what to do. I want to make people forget their troubles for an hour or two.”

“Well,” Johnny said, obviously startled by her passion. “But why shouldn’t you be a director? We’ll call you Grace Hitchcock.”

“Oh, please don’t tell the kids at school. I’d die if they knew. It’s just a silly dream.”

He stroked her nose with one finger. “It isn’t silly if you really want it.”

She could have loved him then, this nice, normal boy who would have been horrified to know the minefield she was forced to walk every day. He’d have been horrified just by how many towns she’d lived in and how hard it was to think of anyone as a friend. He must have seen what she was tempted to feel for him. His eyes grew more liquid, more heated as she held his gaze. The moon shadows made his lashes look ten feet long.

“Grace ...

“I should go.”

“Not yet,” he said plaintively. “Your curfew isn’t up for ten minutes.”

“You know how strict my dad is.”

“The light isn’t even on. He’s probably asleep.”

Against her better judgment, Grace let him kiss her, let him pull her carefully over him as he slid down on the seat. Just this once, she wanted to feel cared for. Johnny was strong from playing sports all year, tall and muscled and—at seventeen—almost a man. Though he wasn’t rough with her, he was hard all over, including under his jeans. As she sprawled atop him, the ridge behind his zipper grew. She knew what the bulge was; she wasn’t totally naive, but the sensation of that part of him getting bigger shocked and excited her—more than she expected. When she squirmed her hips a little, her body overcoming her good sense, he groaned like she was torturing him.

“Grace,” he panted hotly beside her ear. “Grace, I’m so gone on you.”

She knew he was. Knew he wanted them to go steady and be a couple like other kids. She didn’t love him, but more than anything, Grace wished she could say
yes.

Instead, she wriggled from his arms and pushed away. The car door opened with a creak as he reached for her. She didn’t dare turn around. The soft rub he gave her back was tempting enough. “I have to go.”

“Grace.”

“I have to,” she said, ignoring his coaxing tug on her ponytail. “I’m sorry.”

She ran around the lemon yellow car in her saddle shoes, then leaned over his door for a last, quick kiss. She was gripping her pink purse so tightly her knuckles ached. “Go home, Johnny. Please.”

“I’ll wait for you to get inside.”

She kissed him harder, opening her lips to let her tongue push into the warm cavern of his mouth. She didn’t do that often; her being the aggressor got Johnny too worked up. Tonight was no exception. His breath broke and came faster, one hand rising boldly to cup the fullness of her breast. “Grace ...”

His voice was hoarse with longing.

“Go,” she repeated, tearing away from him.

She hurried up the front walk on trembling legs, waiting on the stoop until he shook his head and drove off. Only then did she slide her key into the lock.

She knew the house being dark didn’t mean she was safe. The dangers she faced liked to lie in wait.

She got as far as the kitchen entrance before her father struck.

“Whore,” he said. The back of his hand caught her across the cheekbone, hard enough to knock her off her feet.

The blow hurt, but her first thought was that if he’d bruised her, she’d have to stay home from school. She didn’t want to; school was her escape, but no one could be allowed to suspect the hell she lived in. The one time she’d tried to ask for help had only earned her another move.

“Johnny and I didn’t do anything,” she said, scrambling back from where she’d stumbled, farther into the living room. “It was just a kiss, was all.”

Her father grabbed her upper arms through her sweater set and hauled her up. He was a big man—fat really, though no one dared say that to him. Grace could smell that he’d been drinking. Maybe he’d lost his job again. “I saw that boy touch you. I saw you lying on top of him in his car.”

“He was only hugging me. I promise it was nothing.”

“George?” her mother said, querulous. She stood at their bedroom door, hair in curlers as she pulled her quilted robe close to her. The gibbous moonlight outlined her like a ghost. Grace knew she’d be no help. Helen Gladwell was little more than an audience for her husband’s rage.

“Your daughter’s a whore,” he said, so furious he was spitting. “A whore and a damned liar.”

He threw Grace back when he said
liar.
The liquor had stolen his usual caution but not his strength. Five foot five and slender, Grace hurtled toward the painted brick of the fireplace. Her skull struck the plain wood mantel, then cracked a second time as she dropped to the field-stone hearth. She wanted to cry out, but all that came was a moan.

“George!” her mother shrieked.

Time went funny, and suddenly her mother knelt by her side, clutching Grace’s hand to her breast. Grace’s head didn’t feel right, and something warm and wet pooled beneath her hair. Her mother was sobbing hysterically.

“It wasn’t enough?” she demanded of Grace’s father. “It wasn’t enough that I gave up everything for you? You have to steal Grace from me as well?”

“Mom?”
Grace tried to croak.

“She’s playacting,” growled her father.

She wasn’t, though. Grace felt a pulling sensation deep in her gut. A moment later, her life’s last scene faded to black.

G
race stood at the bottom of an outdoor amphitheater, looking up the bowl and across a broad fan of empty seats. The sky above her was cloudless, the sun a concentrated circle of blinding white. Beneath its glare, the grass that carpeted the theater’s steps glowed like emeralds. The seats themselves were ornate and old-fashioned, upholstered in deep red velvet and painted with pretty pictures of chubby cupids where the rows met the two side aisles. Gold-leaf scrolling framed the little paintings, twinkling a bit in the bright daylight.

Lacking anything better to do, Grace climbed the shallow steps. Her favorite seat was ten rows back and in the center. Today she didn’t have to squeeze past a single pair of knees to get to it.

She sat with a sigh of pleasure. She was wearing what she thought of as her play clothes: rolled-up dungarees and a soft button-down white shirt. Her saddle shoes were scuffed to perfection and her red hair was down. Prepared to enjoy a show, she looked in the direction of where a screen should have been. She saw the faintest glitter hanging in the air, but nothing solid seemed to be there. Instead, a dreamy landscape dotted with palm trees rolled into a blue distance. The recently rescued “Hollywood” sign perched partway up one of the low hills.

Well,
she thought,
if this is Hollywood, the movie should start soon.

“Popcorn?” suggested a deep male voice.

Grace should have been frightened; no one else had been here a second ago, and—in her experience—surprises weren’t good things. Illogically, she turned with an unfamiliar sense of excitement. The fair-haired man who sat beside her was broad shouldered. He wore a beautiful tuxedo with a white bow tie, very like the one Norma Desmond bought William Holden when he became her kept man. Despite the clothes, his face wasn’t William Holden’s—or any other face she knew. His features were worn but nice, as if he’d been living well and enjoying it. Grace thought he looked good-tempered, with a glint of humor in his kind blue eyes.

“I’m your guide,” he said. “You can call me Michael.”

Grace accepted a handful of popcorn from the bag he was holding out. It was delicious, buttery and hot with just the right amount of salt. Feeling a need to be polite, she swallowed before she spoke. “If you’re my guide, what is this place?”

When Michael smiled, deep lines crinkled around his eyes. “This is an in-between place. A place where things ... get decided.”

A flash came back to Grace of her father throwing her at the fireplace. The violence seemed like something that had happened to someone else. “You mean this is purgatory?
Am
I going to hell for kissing a boy?”

Michael crossed his right leg casually over his left, the shift turning him more toward her. “Do you think you should?”

“No! At least, I wouldn’t send someone to hell for that.”

“What would you send them to hell for?”

“For killing someone, I guess. You know, if it was murder. Or a kid. I don’t think it’s right to hurt them.”

Michael nodded, his gaze focused on the depths of the popcorn bag. He was shaking it a little. Grace had the sense that her answer disappointed him.

“Why would
you
send someone to hell?” she asked.

When his eyes came up, Grace’s heart contracted inside her chest. His expression was the most intense she had ever seen, like a ray gun shooting hot blue fire. He wasn’t disappointed like she’d assumed, but she couldn’t have said what his emotion was. It was avid, compelling, as if what he felt was too powerful to squeeze under one label.

“I wouldn’t send anyone to hell,” he answered. “I’m made of mercy and I can’t judge.”

“You can’t?”

“It isn’t part of the nature I chose for myself. Come to that, it isn’t part of the nature you started with.”

“That can’t be true. I judge people all the time.”

She’d braced her palm on the armrest between their seats, and her fingers tensely rapped the wood. Michael laid his hand over hers. The instant he did, his touch ran through her bones in delicious waves, calming her until she relaxed.

“Are you judging now?” he asked. “Would you kill your father if I gave you a gun?”

“Of course I would!”

Michael raised one gold brow.

“I would! He killed me.”

Except ... she didn’t feel dead, and she didn’t feel angry. Her father seemed small now, unimportant. But maybe this was some sort of trick.

“You did something to me,” she accused.

Michael shook his head. “I can’t do anything to you. Only for you. And only if you allow. This is simply the effect of the human part of you fading. You can’t hold on to anger or fear now. In fact, if you stay here long enough, you’ll grow more and more like me.”

Grace wasn’t sure she liked that idea. Michael seemed nice, and not being frightened put her on cloud nine, but she was human. She was
herself,
whatever that meant. Young as she was, she’d hardly had a chance to find out.