The Angel Maker by Alex North

Author:Alex North
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Celadon Books

Twenty-one

Katie remembered how it had felt to wake up the day after her father died.

His death had been sudden and peaceful: a good death in many ways. He and her mother had both been home, her father reading in the armchair in the front room while her mother bustled about the apartment. They had been talking only minutes earlier. And then her mother had walked back through to the front room and found her husband unresponsive. He was still sitting just as she’d left him, with a book splayed open on the arm of the chair beside him, as though he’d put it down carefully there before deciding to take a nap. She called Katie while she waited for the ambulance, and even then, she still wasn’t sure if he was just sleeping and if she might be bothering everyone for nothing.

That afternoon and evening had been too busy for Katie to take it in properly and for the grief to hit. It was a state she took to bed with her. When she had woken up the next day, there had been a moment when everything was normal. She was in her bed with Sam asleep beside her, and the morning light in the room was exactly as it always was. There had even been a few seconds spent drifting. But then her mind began prodding her. Something was different. Something was wrong. And then she remembered. The knowledge that her father was gone arrived as a horrible clench inside her chest, and it felt like the world suddenly upended around her. This was not how it was meant to be. Rather than emerging from a nightmare, she had somehow woken up in one instead.

She experienced a similar sensation when she woke up the morning after seeing the face at the kitchen window. The night’s sleep had brought a degree of peace that remained for a few seconds before it was replaced by the nagging sensation that something was wrong. Then she remembered what had happened, and a feeling of dread ran through her and snapped her awake.

Someone had been watching the house.

She rolled over quickly.

Sam was there, lying with his back to her. She assumed he was asleep. Not a care in the world, she thought. She slipped quietly out from beneath the sheets. In the hallway, she leaned around Siena’s door and saw that she was still asleep too. The whole house felt silent and safe. And yet a thrum of fear was running through her.

Because it wasn’t.

Katie padded softly downstairs and made herself coffee.

Then she stood by the back window, staring out at the bedraggled garden.

The police had arrived quickly last night. Two officers—both male—had turned up within twenty minutes of her call, listened to her, and seemed to take the matter seriously. One had stayed with her in the kitchen, taking notes, while the other investigated the garden, a flashlight beam moving here and there in the rain, occasionally settling on something and pausing before moving on.

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