On Holy Ground (The Devil's Poetry Book 2) by Louise Cole

Author:Louise Cole [Cole, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valkyrie Books
Published: 2018-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

FATHER MULHOLLAND WOKE me gently. “I have to say morning mass, Callie. Find yourself breakfast.”

I shook myself awake. “Thank you. For taking me in.”

“You are very welcome, Callie. Where will you stay tonight?” His tone was kind but firm.

I looked down. I couldn’t impose on this sweet man any more – I had already put him in an impossible position. “I’m meeting a friend. He’s driving in to collect me, so I should be OK now, thank you.” Please God, make that true.

“Well, that’s good, then.” He gave me a broad smile.

“Do you know where the Public Library is, Father?”

“Let me see now. If you take the trolley towards the harbour you can get off at either Imperial or Park and Market. I’ll show you a map after Mass.”

I nodded and he left to minister to his less demanding parishioners. I dived under the shower almost before I heard the door click shut, though a brief sensation of cleanliness was instantly marred by pulling on yesterday’s clothes. I grabbed a Pop Tart in the kitchen, swilled some fruit juice and was out of the house within minutes.

I ran back to the tram stop and rode the same service I had taken yesterday but in the opposite direction. Imperial, Park and Market. OK. I could do this. The trolley swept down towards the harbour and the scents of lemon and salt and something sweet like popcorn wafted in through the ventilations shafts. An old lady sat opposite, her brown hands clutching an oversized handbag.

“Could you tell me when to get off for the central library please?” I asked.

“This is the green line, honey, so you want Twelfth Street.” She scanned the map above our heads. “I’d say Twelfth and Imperial.”

“Thanks.”

The journey seemed shorter on the way back, perhaps because I recognised some of the landmarks I’d passed the day before. And because I was nervous about meeting with the Saudis. What the hell was I doing, meeting foreign spies? How had my life got this messed up?

It turned out 12th and Imperial trolley stop was within a stone’s throw of the Greyhound station I’d alighted at the previous day. It was only 9.30. That man had said ten o’clock. My feet alternately dragged and quickened, torn between not wanting to get there and wanting desperately to get off the street. In the end I screwed my courage to the sticking place and ran, past some modern day half-built coliseum and down Park Boulevard until the library towered over me. Weird building. All chrome and metal and angles but with this huge domed roof made of curvy ladders. But when I stepped inside, my fear disappeared.

I was in a library.

I was home.

~

Senator Pierce held the phone a little way from his ear in case he growled. Adele Langley brought out the predator in him. Someone had told him she’d bought the desk of Roosevelt’s wife. He could imagine it too, her sitting all prissy and self-important at the desk of a First Lady.

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