Murder of Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

at his book.
    “I’m sorry,” Niki said, not entirely certain what she was apologizing for and feeling more annoyed at Marvin than sorry for playing “Dark in Day” twelve times in a row.
    “No,” he said, but no change at all in his expression, the strained patience, his good-nurse face that she hated so much. “It’s not your fault. I think I’m getting a headache.”
    Niki picked up one of the CDs, turned it over and stared at her reflection in the iridescent plastic. Her face too round, too fat because the Elavil made her gain weight and hold water. Dark circles beneath her eyes and the disc’s center hole where her nose ought to be. She held the CD at an angle so it caught the lamplight, sliced it up into spectrum wedges, violet to blue to green, yellow to red, and she hummed quietly with the song. Daria’s bass thumping out the rhythm like an erratic heartbeat, breathless fingertip dance across steel strings to draw music from nothing, and Niki murmured the last part of the chorus just loud enough that Marvin would hear.
    “‘Dark in day, I’d always say, that’s not the way to know,’” her voice and Daria’s, pretending they were together because Daria was still on tour, out singing for other people in Nashville or Louisville or Memphis, some distant Southern city that Niki had never seen and never wanted to see. And her reflection in the CD wavered then, as if the plastic were water now and someone had just dipped their hand into it, concentric ripples racing themselves towards the edge of the disc, and Niki dropped it.
    “Is something wrong?” Marvin asked, and no, Niki said, didn’t say the word aloud but shook her head, not taking her eyes off the CD lying on the floor. It had stopped rippling and she stared back up at herself from the mercury-smooth underbelly of the disc.
    “You’re sure, Niki?” and she looked up at Marvin, hoping he wouldn’t see that she was frightened, because then he’d try to get her to tell him why, to explain another one of the things that no one ever believed she really saw or heard. The things they gave her pills for, so that she wouldn’t really see or hear them, either.
    “I dropped it,” she said. “Sorry,” and then she smiled for him, and Marvin smiled back and stopped looking so concerned.
    “It’s almost midnight,” he said. “Don’t forget your medicine. And will you please use the headphones if you’re going to keep playing that same song over and over?”
    Niki glanced nervously back at the CD, but it was still just a CD again. Nothing that shimmered or rippled like ice water, and she reached for the headphones lying in their place on the shelf beside the stereo as “Dark in Day” ended and began again.
    Lady lost in all your pain and thunder, all your shattered wonder…
    She reached down and used one finger to gently flip the disc over so she wouldn’t have to see the mirrored side anymore. The safer, printed-on side instead, Tom Waits’ Bone Machine, and hardly any of the silver showing through.
    Walking where the spinning world grows brittle, and I can’t find you there…
    She plugged the black headphones into the stereo, and Daria’s voice shrank to a whisper, a small, faraway sound until Niki pulled the phones down over her head so that the music swelled suddenly around her again, wrapped her tight in electric piano and drums and the constant, comforting thump, thump, thump of the bass guitar.
    You never look over your shoulder anymore, Daria sang, her gravel-and-whiskey voice suspended somewhere indefinable between Niki’s ears, somewhere inside her head. I’m afraid what you would see. And Niki began singing again, never mind if it annoyed Marvin, because everything she did annoyed Marvin, and singing made her feel a little closer to Daria.
    “‘Dark in day, I’d always say, dark in day, that’s not so far to fall.’”
    The three prescription bottles were lined up neatly for her on one of the big speakers, the pills