“Actually, love, I’m contracted specifically for fallen angels and all the baddies who want to cut the Vessel out of you, remember? Anything else really isn’t in my jurisdiction.”
My mouth dropped open. “That’s what’s wrong with Americans today! Slackers. No one willing to do anything more than their job description allows.”
“I’m not American, love.”
“Still!” I was fuming. I turned on my heel and marched out of the bathroom, stopping only to narrow my eyes at Will. “See this spot on the ground?” I screamed, feeling the hysteria growing in my chest. “This could have been me!”
“It happened here?”
“No, at the school. In the parking lot.”
“Did you upset the bathroom ghost again?”
“This. Is. Serious. And you know what? I’m going to file a complaint with the Guardian department. I’m going to get a new Guardian! Who do I call?”
“W-w-w-dot-guardian-dot-com.”
I paused. “Seriously?”
“No.”
“Ass!”
I stomped toward my bedroom, watching Nina and Vlad’s heads swinging back from me to Will like they were watching a tennis match.
“I think this one’s way funnier,” I heard Vlad tell Nina.
Will caught up with me and threaded his arm through mine. He pulled me along with him. “We’ll go ahead and wrap you in bubble wrap the second time allows.”
I rolled my eyes. “So. Not. Helping.”
I was far less steamed by the time I was dressed and settled in Nigella. Partly because I had found a clean pair of non-stringy underwear and partly because Will apologized with a hunk of Galaxy chocolate.
“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Will wanted to know.
“Well, if you would break down and buy a car from this century, we could be following a GPS. Right now, this”—I waggled the directions Vlad had printed out for me, complete with the Some roads may no longer be accessible or exist warning—“is all we have.”
Will sighed, but leaned back into the driver’s seat. “Okay.”
“Oh, right up there. That’s the street we need.”
We turned off the main road and were immediately plunged into a mecca of large houses with actual lawns and perfectly manicured landscaping. Hulking trees laced over the streets, but the cheery, mega-watt streetlamps made everything look like it was a Martha Stewart setup rather than anything encroaching or smothering.
“Nice neighborhood,” Will said, nodding. “Quaint.”
“If you consider five thousand-square-foot houses quaint. This is it.”
The doors in front of me were the largest I had ever seen. Like, behemoth, leering, laughably big. They, along with the carefully coifed swirls of juniper in pots the size of my bathroom, dwarfed me physically and mentally, everything telling me that I was a tiny, unsavory fly in the ointment of the posh. I tried to steel myself, to steady my shoulders and give myself the kind of self-talk that included bon mots like “money doesn’t buy class” and “no one has the power to make you feel small but you,” but even with such great bumper-sticker nuggets it was more than obvious that I stuck out like a sad, sore thumb among the carefully cultivated perfection here, and I almost felt sorry for Alyssa, for having spent her formative years as a showpiece in this gilded cage.
My fingertip on the doorbell released a series of clock-tower bells. The hunchback-esque crescendo shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did and I hopped back, hand on my chest, Will’s arms quickly snaking around my waist.
“It’s just a doorbell, love.”
I quickly righted myself, feeling heat zinging through me. I blinked and stuttered. “Um, right.”
The open door sliced through my awkwardness with Will and a one-dimensional image of a perfect, upscale soccer mom poked her dewy, Botox-young face through the opening.
“Yes,” she said, blinking red-rimmed eyes that seemed to bulge around her pulled skin. “May I help you?”
I cleared my throat and mustered up courage from somewhere, offering a teeth-baring smile that I hoped was more welcoming than grimacing. “My name is Sophie Lawson and this is Will Sherman. We’re teachers from your daughter’s school. I appreciate this is a difficult time, but would it be possible to speak with you about your daughter, Mrs. Rand?”
Mrs. Rand seemed to shrink into the slit of open doorway. I could see her hand go to her throat, her bony knuckles pressing against her breastbone. “You have the wrong house,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “The Rands don’t live here.”
The woman clicked the door shut before I had a chance to respond.
I sighed, pushing out my bottom lip. “Well, that was useless.”
Will licked his lips and grinned, looking nothing less than smug. “Not exactly.”
I rolled my eyes, sighing. “Oh, let me guess? Your plan is to bat those sexy hazel eyes at Mrs. Rand in there and she’s going to roll over and give you anything you want, huh?”
Will’s grin went from smug to mischievous in a single, panty-melting second. “You think my eyes are sexy?”