The Angel Stone: A Novel by Juliet Dark Read Free Book Online Page A

Bill?”
    “Bill looked like he still wouldn’t mind clocking me one about that, but he was more concerned that I watch out for you. So I told him I would.”
    “I’m not the one who needs watching out for right now,” I said, pointing at the Alpha Delta Chi house, which glowed like a malevolent Christmas tree. Pounding music, raucous shouts, and high-pitched giggles drifted toward us on the fog. “I can’t believe that any of our female students were stupid enough to go to this thing.”
    “Let’s have a closer look,” Frank said.
    In the fog, we sneaked around the garage and into the backyard. There was a two-story gazebo; its top floor would afford us a good view of the party. In Diana’s time, the gazebo had been covered with climbing roses and night-blooming jasmine that scented the inn. Now the roses hung dead on their vines, and the gazebo smelled like beer and that noxious clove incense that permeated everything the Alphas touched.
    “I’m getting an uncomfortable flashback to my days as an altar boy,” Frank whispered as we climbed up into the second story of the gazebo. “Stop me if I start confessing.”
    I started to laugh at the notion of Frank as an altar boy, butmy amusement was cut short by the crack of a gunshot, followed by a high-pitched female shriek. Frank pulled back a handful of dead vines and we looked into the yard. Adam Sinclair, in a flowing toga and nothing else—I could tell from the way the house light shone through the flimsy fabric—was standing in the middle of the backyard, aiming a pistol at the fence. A throng of young women dressed in skimpy costumes stood around him. Toga-clad boys and more girls in skimpy costumes sat on the back porch, egging him on.
    “Do Bambi next!” one of the girls, dressed in a slutty-vampire costume, shrieked.
    I looked toward the fence and breathed out a sigh of relief when I saw there wasn’t a live deer, but, still, what I saw was macabre enough. Arranged across the top of Diana’s white picket fence was her beloved collection of ceramic figurines: deer, rabbits, foxes, and an entire family of red-capped gnomes.
    “Bambi it is,” Adam said, cocking the trigger of the gun.
    There was a sharp crack, and a ceramic deer exploded in plaster dust. Slutty Vampire and her friend Slutty Nurse shrieked with laughter, but a girl in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit didn’t. I thought I recognized her from my Intro to Fairy Tales class.
    “I
liked
Bambi,” she said. “This is stupid.” She downed the rest of her beer, burped, and started weaving her way toward the back gate. One of the toga-clad boys detached himself from the crowd and followed.
    “Uh-oh,” I said. I switched sides so I could keep track of Red Riding Hood, who was walking now in the narrow alley between the garage and the gazebo. She’d reached the gate but was having trouble working the clasp.
    “Let me help you with that,” said the boy who had followed her, coming up behind her.
    “Thankth,” she slurred.
    The boy reached his arm around her as if to open the latch but instead grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed himself against her, pinning her against the gate.
    “Hey!” she cried. “Get off!”
    “I’m going down there,” I said, turning to Frank, but he was gone, already in the alley. He tapped the frat boy on the shoulder. When the boy turned, Frank punched him in the face and he slumped to the ground. I hurried down into the alley, not sure whose rescue I was coming to—Frank’s or the repellent Alpha’s. I wanted to wallop the frat boy myself but didn’t think it would help either of our professional careers if we murdered him.
    Frank was going in for a second punch when I reached him. I grabbed his arm. “Whoa there, Delmarco. I don’t think this one is going to be bothering anyone else tonight.”
    Frank glared at me, but he pulled back his arm. “Yeah, but what about the others?”
    “I have an idea. I thought of it earlier today.”
    I rummaged