03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil Read Online Free PDF

hear the scrape of my mother grinding her teeth.
    “The tester was biased against me,” Mom said, her voice so sharp you could cut souls with it. “He was being unreasonable.”
    “You hit a cop car—a parked cop car,” Dad said, “in my brand new Bugatti. The car had temp plates on it and you totaled it.”
    “The cop car was illegally—”
    “Fine,” I yelled, before Mom and Dad could really start going at it. “I’ll take you shopping. When do you want to go?”
    “Well, I made a personal shopping appointment for Nordstrom’s at nine thirty. Its eight thirty now and it will take you twenty minutes to get from your place to mine and then another thirty-five minutes to get to Ross Park Mall, and that’s if we don’t hit traffic. So basically, if you leave now we should make it. That’s not a problem, is it?”
    “Mom,” I said and then bit back a groan
    “What?” Her voice was transparently innocent. She knew she’d put me in a corner and she didn’t care. Inconveniencing someone else? My mother lived for it.
    “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I hung up the phone and waved at Stephen before leaving the coffee shop with my muffins clutched tightly in my free hand. Matt and Lisa followed me outside, letting me seethe for a few minutes before either of them even thought about talking to me.
    “Everything okay?” Matt wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side, letting his warmth soak into me, and I could feel my toes starting to curl.
    “No. I have to hurry home so I can take my mother for a personal-shopping appointment all the way across town and I don’t even have time to take a shower first. I’m tired, sweaty, and you probably don’t want me cuddled in your side with all the gunk that’s on my scrubs.”
    “What’s a little dirt?” Matt laced his fingers through mine and pulled my hand up for a brief kiss. “Besides, you’re beautiful.”
    “Aww,” Lisa said and I looked up to see her staring at us, her eyes filled with tears. Oh great, we’d gone from morning sickness to emotional train wreck. “That’s so sweet, you guys. She’s been puked and shit on and you don’t even care. Even though you’re sort of broken up you love her enough to cuddle her when she’s covered in germs.”
    Matt stepped away from me slightly but kept hold of my hand. I couldn’t help snickering. Before his death at the hands of his mother’s minions, and subsequent resurrection, Matt had been a lawyer. He wasn’t a prissy guy but the dirtier parts of the medical field weren’t something he’d grown immune to, either.
    Matt led us into an alley and looked around before opening a phase portal centered on the stoop in front of our building. “Hey, Lisa?”
    “What?”
    “Could you give us a minute?” Matt asked.
    “I don’t have a minute,” I said. “I’ve got to take Mom shopping.”
    “She can be a few minutes late.” Matt tightened his grip on my fingers and smiled as Lisa stepped through the portal and started up the stairs to our apartment building. Once she was at the front door, she smiled at both of us.
    “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids.”
    “Is there anything you wouldn’t do?” I asked and she furrowed her eyebrows together.
    “No, not really. Okay, well have fun anyway.” She waved once and then opened the door and hurried inside, not giving either of us another glance.
    Matt stepped through the portal and then turned to look at me. “Coming?”
    I stepped through the portal and stared at him as reality stitched itself up behind me with a quiet pop.
    “I’m sorry,” he said and sat on the stoop. He pulled me down to sit beside him and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry for how I behaved earlier. I don’t know what I’m doing with you anymore. With you and trying to pull my family into the twenty-first century and everything else I’m lost Faith. I really am just lost. I don’t know how to do this. How to do