Style and Disgrace (2 page)

“I’m really sorry,” he said, taking my hand. “I’ll make it up to you?”

“I don’t know…” I gave him a coy look. “Will you be my date for the pre-release party tomorrow?”

“I’d love to. What time?”

“Starts at nine but we’re making a band appearance. I’ll get you a pass and we can meet inside if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” He leaned close and kissed my forehead. “You sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine.” I gave him a brave smile. “Besides, it’s not like your work disaster would go away if I said I wouldn’t be.”

“True enough…but I’ll hurry if I have to. Or you could come with me?”

“Like this?” I laughed and shook my head. “No way I’m leaving the house looking like Elsa Lanchester.”

He tilted his head, brows furrowed. “Who?”

“The Bride of Frankenstein?”

David laughed. “C’mon now…”

“Hey, she’s hot…but I ain’t cool enough to swing that image.”

“You’re crazy.” He backed away. “Must be a musician thing.”

I escorted him to the door. “No, it’s a
Wright
thing. Didn’t you hear my mother last night?”

“Fair point.” We hugged at the door and I watched him go, leaning against the doorframe. The few minutes it took for him to depart were blessedly free of thinking. My mother’s return was relegated firmly to the back of my mind and for a few lingering moments, I was able to just enjoy the fact David was in my life.

When the door closed, that was another matter entirely. The emptiness of the house closed in on me like an oppressive blanket when it was already too hot. I busied myself with cleaning up the dishes from the night before, made the bed, and took a shower. None of it alleviated the sense that
home
wasn’t nearly as comfortable as it should’ve been.

I went for a walk, dialing up Sammy half a block away. A sense of loneliness took residence in my heart, weighing me down to the point I practically shuffled along the sidewalk.

“Abby? Hello?” Sammy’s voice crackled on the phone before clearing up. Her tone suggested that she had just woken up, but with her that could mean she was hip deep in a movie or playing the piano. I swore if none of us ever called her, she’d forget how to use her voice.

“Hey.” I barely recognized myself. The relief in that one word jarred me out of my slump enough to make me straighten my posture and walk with more certainty. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“What’s wrong?” Sammy went from casually sleepy to alert and concerned. I felt bad for wringing out her worry, but I really felt like I needed it. “Where are you?”

“Just taking a walk near home,” I said. “Something happened last night…”

“With that David guy?” Protectiveness mixed with aggression came through the line loud and clear. “Where is he?”

“It wasn’t him. Can we…are you busy today? I don’t really want to be alone.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Your place?”

“Yeah, see you soon.”

I hung up and made my way back home. It took a minute to convince myself to go inside. What was normally a sanctuary seemed like hostile territory and when I finally crossed the threshold, all I could think about was hurrying to get back out.

Vanity eventually beat out ambiguous emotions and I took a few minutes to apply some makeup. The sweatpants and baggy sweater were a little too frumpy for me to be out in the world in. I could only handle so much
I gave up
before I’d go crazy. I changed into a pair of jeans, boots, and a black blouse.

The effect made me look a little better, but I couldn’t quite shake my stricken expression. A knock at the door suggested I didn’t have time to worry about it. I grabbed my jacket and purse before hurrying downstairs and throwing open the door.

Only it wasn’t Sammy that had knocked.

A fist lashed out, bare knuckles sailing toward my face before I could so much as gasp. It seemed to move in slow motion, giving me plenty of time to make out the pores on the person’s skin, the blond hairs curling around the cracks in the fingers, and the white flesh stretched over the bone.

Warmth spread over me and I thought I had been hit so hard I didn’t even register the blow. My feet
felt
firmly planted on the floor, so I hadn’t been knocked down. A man’s muffled scream echoed as if far away. The world around me seemed distorted as if I were seeing it all while submerged in water.

The punch never landed. My attacker was hurled away from the porch by some unseen force, tossed through the air until he landed hard on the pavement. The world returned to normal just in time for me to hear the crack of his spine and the squishy, wet thud of his skull as it glanced off the ground.

I fell to my knees as nausea welled up from my abdomen and filled my head. Dizziness hit me so hard I thought I might pass out. A tremor started in my hands and spread to my limbs until I felt as though I had just gone overboard on a long workout. Despite the fact I had just been attacked, all I could think over and over was
please don’t throw up
.

Peripherally, I heard a car pull up and footsteps moving toward me. “Abby?” Sammy called, hurrying up the steps. She crouched in front of me, her hands on my shoulders. “Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“The guy…” I gasped. “He’s…out there…did you see…where is he? Be careful…”

“What guy?” Sammy asked, glancing over her shoulder. “There’s no one, hon. Are you okay?” She hesitated. “I think I should get you to the hospital.”

“No!” I lashed out and grabbed her hand. “I just…I think I had a weird hallucination…or …something.” I took a deep breath, a sense of ease falling back over me. The street was empty. The man who had attacked me was gone…if he had ever been there in the first place. “Last night was really rough on me I guess.”

“Let me help you up.” Sammy hoisted me to my feet. “We have to talk about this and you’d better be pretty convincing if you don’t want me to take you to the ER.”

I felt my face and, to my embarrassment, was relieved I hadn’t sweat.
Vanity is going to be the death of me
. I managed a grin and motioned toward her car. “Can we go somewhere else? Just for a drive even?”

“Anything you want. Just…I’m worried about you, Abby.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, locking the door and engaging the alarm. “You and me both, Sammy. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter Three
Confession

More advice from Abigail Wright: Never wear white when pink is an option, pick your destination
before
you get in the car, and never talk to monkeys at the zoo. They have an agenda you want no part of.

—Abby’s Facebook

We drove in silence for nearly a mile before I could tell Sammy was a little impatient to hear my story. She was too respectful to press, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t wild with curiosity. I felt selfish for taking comfort in her presence without opening up to her immediately, but I needed the few minutes before I could talk about it…any of it.

Then there was the dilemma of specifically
what
to say. Did I tell her about the Sphere? Did I tell her about Ian? Or did I just tell her about my crazy-ass mother showing up? Any one of those things on their own was weird enough. All of them at once had been overwhelming to me, so I couldn’t imagine how someone new to the situation would react.

“So…you’ll never believe this.” I realized anything I told her would start out like that and it was likely true. I hesitated for half a moment before deciding on the lesser of all the evils. “I was having a fantastic date with David last night…dinner…meaningful glances…”

“Don’t tell me he did something stupid,” Sammy interrupted. “Seriously, I’ll put him down.”

I grinned despite the situation and put a hand on her arm. “Thanks for the concern, but he really wasn’t the problem. In fact, we were…escalating our relationship a little.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean you…”

I nodded. “Yeah, and it had started out with one hell of a promise.”

“I’m not sure why I’m surprised, you treat third base like most people treat buying tickets to the park.”

“Sammy!”

“What?” She gave me a sidelong glance. “I’m not saying you’re a slut, but you certainly don’t have inhibitions about getting physical.”

“
Anyway
,” I said, diverting the conversation back to the point, “we were in bed and before anything
really
interesting could happen, there was a knock at the door.”

Sammy’s brow furrowed and she nodded, signaling me to continue.

“I went down there and, I’m not kidding, it was my mother! Standing on my doorstep at midnight twelve years after the last time I saw her! Just bold as brass, hanging out there in all her entitled glory.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe it. What did she want?”

“Some cryptic crap about my birthday and something my father wanted her to give me. She was out of control, too. You wouldn’t believe the way she acted!” I shook my head. “I eventually kicked her out, but she didn’t even have an explanation for where she’d been all this time!”

“We’ve gone over this before,” Sammy said. “Your mother’s a bitch. I’m not surprised that when she decided to show up, she wanted to prove it to you.” She reached over and took my hand. “And don’t think I’m saying you should’ve known that’s how it would be, I’m just reminding you of what you already knew.”

“I know,” I squeezed her fingers. “I guess…she was always really good at guilting me. Somehow, things were
always
my fault even when I had no control over them. She was a master of all that.”

“That’s kind of a mom thing I think. You should see how mine treats me.”

“I’ll never forget the time I had gotten into a school play, something I wouldn’t even have dreamed possible. Rehearsals were every night for the month leading up to the performance. I rushed home and told my grandparents who were absolutely thrilled. I figured since they were mom’s parents, she would be, too.”

“Not so much, huh?”

“Not even close!” I scowled out the window. “She came in and I told her what happened, proud as I had ever been. She gave me this critical look, thought for a moment, and said,
Well, it could be worse. You could have gotten into the choir
.”

Sammy hissed. “Ouch…weren’t you
in
the choir?”

“Yes!” I nearly shouted I was so exasperated. “Drove me absolutely insane and now that she’s back, I swear she’s going to make a second go at pushing me over the edge.”

“Doug told me something a long time ago and it’s really made a difference. Once we all graduated from college, he said,
Just remember, she no longer has power over you
. We were free from her influence, on our own, and pursuing our dreams. Mom could kiss my ass. The moment I really embraced that, all my familial stress melted away.”

“Doesn’t she still try to ride you?”

Sammy nodded. “Of course, but now I just tell her off and everything’s fine. I don’t take orders from her. I’m doing quite well without her.”

“Sounds liberating.”

“You had the luxury of your mother making the choice for you a long time ago. Now that she’s back, you just have to remember the same credo. It’s your life, Abby, and whether or not she’s part of your life will be entirely up to you.”

I wondered if I should tell her the rest or if that would just confuse the matter. Talking about my insane mother coming out of the blue to bother me was easy. It was another thing entirely to discuss angels, hallucinations, and whatever the hell Ian Preiss was. Maybe if I hadn’t been so weird about him when he came around the first time, I’d have a leg to stand on, but any complaint would just sound like bad sportsmanship.

I had to be tactful if I was going to fill Sammy in on any of the
real
dilemmas I was facing. Frankly, it didn’t feel like the time. I already had her sympathy and I could probably rant about family problems the rest of the day without argument. Any of the other stuff, especially that of a supernatural quality, was going to have to wait until I understood it better myself.

We idly exchanged stories about our families and I tried desperately to not be distracted by the bizarre episode on my doorstep. I couldn’t be sure what I had experienced was real. Was that a hallucination or did someone actually attack me? Ian had warned about strange things and I had easily believed him on some level. Still, there was a skeptic roaming around in my head saying this was all bullshit.

I needed to talk to Ian.

* * * *

Several hours later, I had Sammy take me home. I felt considerably more at ease and was ready to face the rest of my afternoon on my own. The impact of the incident in front of the house was lessened, the confrontation of my mother behind me, and all I wanted was a light lunch and a conversation with Mister Preiss.

I called him as I walked up the steps, waving to Sammy as she pulled away.

The phone began to ring and I paused. There was a sound off to the right, a soft classical melody playing on my porch around the corner. I lowered the phone and contemplated running. If I hurried, I might be able to flag Sammy before she got too far, but then, if this were something weird, that could involve putting her in danger.

“Don’t worry.” Ian’s voice made me jump as he stepped into view, holding up his phone. “I was just checking around for you. I had a bad feeling this morning…thought I was just being paranoid. Then you weren’t here.”

“You and I have a lot to talk about!” I pointed at him, more accusing than I meant to be. “Since you already seem to know all about it, how about you start talking?”

Ian raised his brows. “Really. I felt the attack, I came here as quickly as I could, and you were gone. I don’t think you need to get uppity with me because I didn’t catch you on your way out to the supermarket.”

My cheeks burned. “What was it then, Ian? What attacked me and how the hell did it get thrown back? I half thought that was you saving me for a minute, but clearly I was wrong.”