The Angel Stone: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

funny
, I thought, taking the tunnel to my right. It was narrower than the one I’d been in and lined with wide steel pipes that were covered with rust and peeling paint. Previous tunnel explorers had left their marks on the walls: a long-nosed
Leroy was here
, several hearts with initials, and a scrawled
Help me! My English teacher has read too much Poe and buried me alive behind this wall!
    I followed the twisting route until I heard voices. I stopped and listened.
    “I’m just saying he didn’t seem so bad. The man was a Jets fan, after all,” a man’s voice, which I recognized as Frank Delmarco’s, said.
    “He wasn’t even a man,” replied a lilting female voice that could only belong to Soheila Lilly. “He was an incubus, and it’s in his nature
—our
nature—to be pleasing. He probably told you he was a Jets fan to win you over.”
    “Nah, I can always tell a real fan. Besides, he had no reason to win me over. And when we were on our way to the door that morning, he told me something …”
    I held my breath, eager to hear what Bill—clearly whom Frank was talking about—had told Frank. They’d gone together to find a way of unmasking Duncan Laird on the morning of the summer solstice, but then Bill had stepped between Duncan and me and taken the lethal blow meant for me.
    “He said that if anything happened to him, I should tell Cal—”
    “I don’t want to know,” Soheila cut Frank off. “Whatever protestations of love he made—however real they might have seemed—make no difference. He’s gone. Callie needs to get over him.”
    “But that’s just it. He may not really be gone. He said …”
    In my eagerness to hear what Frank said next, I stepped forward—and tripped. My flashlight clattered to the ground.
    “What’s that?” I heard Soheila cry.
    “It must be Callie.”
    “Frank, don’t. You don’t know it’s her …”
    But Frank was already barreling down the tunnel, like one of his beloved football players, ready to tackle an unknown foe. You had to love Frank—but if he was keeping Bill’s last message from me, I was going to throttle it out of him.
    “I’m fine, Frank,” I said, scrambling to my feet and shining the flashlight at him. In black turtleneck, jeans, and beret, he looked like a special-ops agent. “I just fell.”
    “Jeez, McFay, could you be a little more careful?” he huffed. “You scared Soheila.”
    I heard a musical laugh behind Frank as Soheila came into view. If anyone could make urban guerrilla camouflage look chic, it was Soheila Lilly. She was wearing tight black leggings, which clung to her every curve, tucked into tall lace-up boots. Her silk turtleneck was just a shade off black—aubergine, I thought, although it was hard to tell in this light—and worn under a black leather jacket. Her abundant dark hair fell in luxuriant waves around her face, and the beret Frank had given her was tilted to a rakish angle. Whatever she wore, Soheila emanated a seductive charm. Whenever she laughed, the air around her rippled with the scent of cardamom and cloves, reminding me that she had once been a wind spirit, before the desires of humans had shaped her into a beautiful woman. For thousands of years she had fed on those desires,becoming a succubus who needed the human life force to survive, until she had fallen in love with a human, whose returned love had made her partly human. When Angus Fraser died, Soheila had sworn off feeding on humans, using Aelvesgold to maintain her life force. But now that she was cut off from her source of Aelvesgold, she would inevitably grow weaker. I noticed that even though it was warm in the tunnels, she looked as if she was freezing. Still, she smiled as she said, “I think Frank was just looking for an excuse to come to your rescue, Callie.”
    Frank scowled, an expression so habitual that he had vertical lines etched on his forehead. Those furrows had deepened over the last two months, as he’d watched his