Anthology.The.Mammoth.Book.of.Angels.And.Demons.2013.Paula.Guran Read Online Free PDF

by garlic fumes that she would never be able to get herself together again; she was afraid of water running in the gutters and crosses on churches. She was afraid of the eyes of God.
    She was bumping helplessly against the bedroom ceiling in doomed panic when someone did arrive. Not Roberta (as she at first thought because of the honey-gold hair) but Stephanie, from the next generation; her granddaughter, who wanted to be – what? An actress. She was certainly pretty enough, and so young. Rose blinked hungrily at her.
    Someone was with her, a boy. Stephanie pulled back the curtains and daylight streamed in. She would not be able to see Rose, maybe not even hear her.
    Rose noticed something new – a shimmer of color and motion around Stephanie, and another around this boy. If she concentrated hard, while floating after them as they strolled through the place giggling and chatting with their heads together, Rose could see little scenes like bits of color TV taking place within the aura of each of the young people: quick little loops of the two of them tangled in each other’s arms in his, and a rapid wheel of scenes in Stephanie’s aura involving this boy dancing with her, applauding from an excited audience, showing her off to important people.
    Their hopes and dreams were visible to Rose, like sit-com scenes without sound. The walking-on-the-beach scene, a comfortable winter beach with gray skies and green sea and no sand fleas Rose recognized at once. She had had the same fantasy about Fred.
    While he was having, no doubt, fantasies like this boy’s, of sex, sex and more sex; and sex with another girl, some friend of Stephanie’s . . .
    “Dump him, Stephanie, he’s nothing but a wolf,” she said indignantly, out loud.
    The boy was too rapt in his hormones to hear. Stephanie frowned and glanced sharply around the room.
    “Come on,” the boy said. “Who’d know? It would be exciting.” Good grief, he was proposing that the two of them make love right here – on the floor, on Rose’s antique Chinese carpet! Rose saw the little scene clearly in his aura.
    Stephanie hesitated. Then she tossed her honey hair and called him an idiot and tugged him out of the place by the hand. But she came back. She came back alone after dark and without turning on the lights she sat down quietly in the big wing chair by the window.
    “I heard you, Gramma Rose,” she said softly, looking wide-eyed around the room. “I heard what you said to me about Jeff, and you’re right, too. I know you’re here. The stuff about the apartment being haunted is true, isn’t it? I know you’re here, and I’m not scared of you. You can come out, you can talk to me. Really. I’d like it.”
    Rose hung back, timid and confused now that her moment had come. After all, did she really want her grandchild’s presumably fond memories of Gramma Rose replaced with the memory of Rose the vampire?
    Stephanie said, “I won’t go until you come talk to, me, Gramma Rose.”
    She curled up on Rose’s empty bed and went to sleep.
    Rose watched her dreams winking and wiggling in her aura. Such an appealing mixture of cynicism and naivety, so unlike her mother. Fascinated, Rose observed from the ceiling where she floated.
    Involuntarily reacting to one of the little scenes, she murmured, “It’s not worth fighting with your mother; just say yes and go do what you want.”
    Stephanie opened her eyes and looked directly up. Her jaw dropped. “Gramma Rose,” she squeaked. “I see you! What are you doing up there?”
    “Stephanie darling,” Rose said in the weak, rusty voice that was all she could produce now, “you can help me. Will you help me?”
    “Sure,” Stephanie said, sitting up. “Didn’t you stop me from making an utter idiot of myself with Jeff Stanhope, which isn’t his real name of course, and he has a gossip drive on him that just won’t quit. I don’t know what I was thinking of, bringing him up here, except that he’s cute of