Stone Angel by Christina Dodd

Author:Christina Dodd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Christina Dodd/Smashwords
Published: 2012-06-23T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

SOPHIA … HER green eyes are glassy like peridots, her tears frozen in trails along her cheeks. She holds her arm toward Amanda, calling, “Mandy! Mandy! Help me!”

With a gasp, Amanda sat straight up in bed, her forehead slick with sweat, her body trembling. She pressed her hands to her eyes, holding back her own tears, then she wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to find comfort where there was none. She knew there was none; the dream came to her every night, and every night she was once again desolate and broken.

In her tissue-thin t-shirt and worn old boxers, she slipped from her bed. Going to the window, she looked out.

Spring was supposed to be coming, but the cold, hard winter refused to give up. New York sidewalks glittered with frost, and the tall, old, homeless woman who trudged down the street waved her arms as if trying to fend off the cold. Or … or as if she were giving a tour of the nineteenth century mansions that lined the street.

With a shiver, Amanda grabbed her blue cotton bathrobe from behind her closet door, pulled on her fuzzy green socks, and grabbed her blanket. But when she went back to the window, the old woman was gone, pushed by the north wind onto a different block.

Amanda supposed the old woman was crazy. So many of the street people were. But if she didn’t free Sophia soon, Amanda could see herself walking the streets, giving tours to invisible crowds of people. Sometimes it seemed as if the stress was too much. Already, at night when she couldn’t sleep, she paced the lonely corridors of Irving's mansion, making plans to rescue Sophia, or imagining vengeance on Liam, or futilely seeking tranquility.

She placed her blanket back on her bed, opened her door, and down the dimly-lit hallway she went, trying to remember what it was like before Sophia was taken. She had slept like a baby then, always tired from a long day of getting Sophia to school, working at the hospital all day, and making dinner for Sophia in the evenings, while her little sister did her homework. On the weekends, they watched Harry Potter films and played Scrabble.

Amanda didn’t have her own life. She had no time of her own, and while she knew what she was missing, she also knew what she had; a sister and a family. When Liam came along, he had had to ask and beg and grovel before she would date him, and even then she was always home early. Sophia had no parents. She had little enough of the normal existence. Amanda was determined to always be there for her.

She had failed miserably, and all because one wicked Irishman had convinced her she could have both — her sister, and a lover.

Now Amanda wandered the wide and elegant halls, wishing for her old cramped apartment back if it meant she could be with Sophia and not know that Liam was one of the Others.

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