A Shimmer of Angels Read online

  A SHIMMER OF ANGELS

  Lisa M. Basso

  For John and Jackie. Without you two I never would have put words to paper. You are loved and missed every day.

  A SHIMMER OF ANGELS is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Lisa M. Basso.

  A Shimmer of Angels

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC. Month9Books is a registered trademark, and its related logo is a registered trademark of Month9Books, LLC.

  www.month9books.com

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Rayna pretends she doesn't see angels, until students start showing up dead, forcing her to reveal what she's seen and what she knows.

  ISBN 978-0-9850294-3-2 (tr. pbk) ISBN 978-0-9850294-2-5 (e-Book)

  1. children’s 2. fiction. 3. fantasy. 4. A Shimmer of Angels. 5. Lisa M. Basso. 6. young adult. 7. Paranormal. 8. Angels.

  No part of this ebook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, address Month9Books, LLC, PO BOX 1892 Fuquay-Varina, NC 27526.

  www.month9books.com

  Cover design: Stephanie Mooney

  Cover art copyright©: Month9Books, LLC. 2012

  eBook formatting: Studio 22 Productions

  Praise for A SHIMMER OF ANGELS

  “Rayna is a courageous heroine who finds herself in the middle of two gorgeous angels and a fascinating world. I look forward to more from Lisa M. Basso!” —Karen Mahoney, author of The Iron Witch

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a novel is a journey the likes of which no one can truly be prepared for. It’s so much more than sitting at a desk alone. So, in honor of that, there are a few (dozen) people I’d love to thank.

  First of all, I have to thank Georgia McBride for falling (pun intended) in love with this story and believing in it enough to take a chance on it and on me. These words would not be on this page, and this story may never have been shared with so many if not for you.

  To my incredible editor, Mandy Schoen, who is, simply stated, a genius. Our long, back-and-forth e-mails helped keep me sane, and your incredible insights kept me afloat and pushing forward. Thank you for understanding my twisted characters and finding ways to make them shine (and lose their $#!*).

  I also want to thank Courtney Koschel, Rachel Bateman, Ashlynn Yuhas, Brittany Howard, and Kelly P. Simmon. And to all of the Month9Books family, including the generous, talented, amazing up-and-coming Month9Books authors whose books I can’t wait to get in my hands and devour: thank you.

  I couldn’t go on any further without thanking my mom for loving me so fiercely and showing me how far a hard-working woman can go in life. Even though we live so far away now, no distance will ever be too great for us. (P.S. so sorry for those pesky teenage years, but without them I wouldn’t be so dead-set on writing for Young Adults.)

  Thanks Dad, for taking care of me, always being there, and for passing on a seriously unique (and sort of messed up) sense of humor.

  And, of course, Randy, for encouraging me to take that big step and finish my first novel, for pushing me when I need it and letting me work when and where ever the muse strikes. Thank you for being my rock. You truly are the love of my life, and I still can’t believe how lucky I am.

  To Lesley Jones, my unbelievably awesome, go-to writerly friend who is always there when I need an ear no matter how busy you might be. For all the e-mails, chats, brainstorming sessions, hours of gaming and giggling, and most importantly the crazy cat-lady silliness. Never, never change, and keep reaching for the stars.

  I’d also like to thank my fabulous critique partner, Katee Robert, for helping me along on this crazy writing journey, and for letting me share in those thrilling, smexy stories of yours.

  Terry, Danny, and Katie Gripton, my second family, for taking me in so long ago when I felt lost, and for letting me keep coming back (and not just for a summer or two).

  My dear Andrea Creighton, the truest, most dedicated friend any girl could ask for—the kind that freaks out (in a good way) when you tell her you’re going to be published, and inspires me to be sillier every day.

  A huge thank you to the readers. Without your extreme good taste, I wouldn’t be here in this amazing position. To my blog and Twitter friends, my breaks revolve around you and your crazy antics. To everyone I may have forgotten, and everyone to come, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  A SHIMMER OF ANGELS

  Lisa M. Basso

  Chapter One

  Doctor Graham said I was in remission the day he signed my release papers, and I believed him. God knows, I wanted to believe him. Armed with three prescriptions and an outpatient schedule requiring weekly visits with a counselor, I’d left, because anything was better than that place.

  The thing about beliefs? Even the strongest can be shattered by the simplest of things.

  Hallucination-free for six months now, I should have expected it wouldn’t last. And judging by the golden-haired boy across the street—the one sporting the curved wings—remission had just become a fond and distant memory.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. Please don’t be real. Please don’t be real. My heart sputtered and cold disbelief coiled around my lungs, reminding me that pleading never worked. So I sucked in a breath and opted for common sense instead. Angels don’t exist. They never had. Dr. G had made me see that during our therapy sessions. And yet, three months, twelve days, and fifteen hours after my release, there they were. Again.

  I used to see them all the time—winged beings, walking around. They were the cause of my frequent, thirty-day stints at the Sunflower Serenity Mental Health Clinic—or the SS Crazy, as I called it—over the past three years. But they were just projections of an unstable mind. I understood that now. I pulled in a slow breath and forced my eyes open.

  I felt stupid relieved to find the wings gone, the guy they’d belonged to swallowed up by the crowd outside the window. I would have laughed at my foolishness had my pulse not been jumping. It was a slip, nothing more. The first in months.

  A plastic cup bounced off the black-and-white checkered floor, pulling me back to the hectic shuffle of the diner. Waitresses scrambled to talk, shouting over the louder patrons. Exhausted-looking parents wrestled with squirming kids, shoveling food down their throats before dropping them at school. It was Heaven compared to the silence of a mental institution’s cell, and nowhere near as … colorful as mealtimes with the clinically insane.

  “This place is crazy busy.” Lee leaned across our table, his bony elbows bumping the salt shaker on one side, his empty hot chocolate mug on the other. “Are you sure you want to work here?”

  Leland Alexander Kyon—spiky-haired beanpole and geek extraordinaire—was not only a total dork, but the best friend I’d ever had. He knew me better than anyone, and if he thought this was a bad idea, I probably should have listened.

  “Well, I need a job. My dad says kids today should learn the value of a dollar.” I laid the back of my hand over my forehead and sighed dramatically, mostly to distract him from the way my knee kept bouncing against the underside of the table and the trembling of my fingers set against my own mug of hot chocolate. “So Laylah and I are destined for a life of diner servitude and bad tips.”

  It wasn’t a total lie. Dad’s tech job paid well, but my stints at the SS Crazy had resulted not only in my restored sanity, but also huge medical bills. Dad swore it hadn’t affec
ted our financial situation, but I knew he wasn’t being straight with me. It was the little things: the off-brand cereal, the badly patched uniform skirt Laylah had worn every day for a week, even the way he emptied the swear jar every Saturday morning before we’d get up. My family was hurting, and it was my fault. Besides, there was college to think about. I couldn’t let Dad take out loans for me. Not after everything I’d put him through.

  Too bad neither Dr. G nor Dad agreed with me that I should have a job. Something about the risk of stress-induced relapse. But Dr. G didn’t have to worry about college. He’d already put his son and daughter through grad school.

  I probably could’ve chosen any old job, but I wanted something that would make me feel normal again. And what’s more normal than a waitress at the all-American Roxy’s Diner?

  I straightened the silverware over my folded paper napkin, making sure the bottoms of the fork and knife lined up, even as I inched the spoon up to balance the difference in length. A toddler in a highchair across the aisle screamed and flung his chocolate milk at the floor, dousing a passing waitress in a wave of brown, milky rain. I tensed, my fingers knocking the silverware askew.

  Lee and I watched the mother send the poor waitress scampering for a milk refill. He shook his head. “Whatever, Ray. It’s your sanity.”

  I froze, cutting him a shocked glance. I’d never told Lee about the sanitarium. His mention of my sanity was merely Lee being Lee. Unless he suspected … But he wasn’t looking at me, turning instead to dig some cash from his book bag. He doesn’t know how messed up you are, I reminded myself. And he won’t if you just breathe, act normal. I hated keeping the truth from him, but I hated the thought of him knowing it even more. He was the only friend I had, and I intended to keep him.

  Lee tossed a five on the table. “Just remember what I told you: stay positive.” He leaned back in his seat and crunched down on a dark piece of sourdough toast. “Perky wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  I speared him a glance. “Perky? Really?”

  “Darlin’?” Our waitress called, her voice grating like sandpaper. Weathered laugh lines and crows’ feet defined an otherwise pretty face. “You still interested in the job?”

  I nodded and murmured, “Wish me luck.”

  Lee shot me a double thumbs-up.

  I followed the waitress to a booth by the window. She angled for the seat facing the back of the building, which would leave me the seat with a clear view out the front window, where angel-guy had been. There was no way I’d let the possibility of seeing another set of imaginary wings doom this interview. I moved quickly, sliding in behind the waitress to claim her seat.

  The back wall of the café was blissfully wing-free. I let out a small breath. See? You can do this.

  “Have a seat,” the waitress invited, her voice sharp with sarcasm as she took the seat across from me. My face flushed with embarrassment as she examined me, much the same way Dr. G had so many times. Like there was something not quite right with the person across from her.

  Nerves turned my stomach, and I wrung my hands together under the table. During my time at the facility, I’d learned that when you’re wearing a smile, it’s easier to pass yourself off as happy. As normal. So I flipped the happy switch I’d been perfecting. The corners of my mouth fluttered as I tried to hold a smile that wasn’t as convincing, or as solid, as it used to be.

  Pull it together, Ray. Normal kids hold down jobs, and you’re normal now.

  The name tag pinned to the waitress’s pink-and-white frilly uniform read “Daphne.” She leaned across the table to flick a crumb to the floor, and I noticed the dark line of a hairnet behind her ear. And I’d thought the nude stockings and white nurse’s shoes were the worst part of the uniform.

  “Can you tell me about the job?”

  Daphne slapped her notepad down on the green-and-pink speckled tabletop. “We open at six every morning. We close at ten, midnight on weekends. The work is hard, the tips are crap, and the neighborhood gets rough after dark.”

  I was sold.

  Daphne tilted her head, propping it up with her hand. A dull sheen coated her hooded eyes, mirroring the luggage and yellow-tinted concealer beneath them. “We pay minimum wage, offer flexible hours for students, and we’re desperate.” She leaned in closer, dropping her arm. I waited, wondering if her head would fall without the support. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

  “Rayna, but I go by Ray.”

  “You know, Ray, you have to be at least sixteen to—”

  A siren cut through the air. I jerked my gaze to the window in time to watch an ambulance squeal around the corner and out of sight. Daphne was still talking. I knew that, but I couldn’t make myself hear the words. Couldn’t tear my gaze from the corner of the building, where the ambulance had disappeared. Couldn’t quite make myself believe it wasn’t coming back for me.

  Daphne’s cigarette-etched voice rose above the fading wail, a note of suspicion lacing her next words. “You’re not one of those runaways, are you? ‘Cause I’ll need a parent or guardian’s signature for the work permit.”

  I dragged my attention back to the interview. It’s just an ambulance, I told myself, willing my shaky hands still. At least they were under the table, out of sight. I dug my nails into my palms to keep myself in the moment.

  “I’m sixteen and definitely not a runaway. Just new to San Francisco.” A dish crashed to the floor. I flinched, immediately hating myself for it. The time away from the SS Crazy hadn’t made me any less jumpy. But there was little difference between the sound of that dish breaking into a million white pieces and that of a fellow schizophrenic throwing the contents of her dinner tray at my head.

  A waitress with way too much cleavage stooped beside the counter to pick up the pieces. The bell above the cook’s station chimed, and a man at the table behind Lee bellowed for service. Daphne and I turned toward the yelling customer, totally busting Lee, who was watching Cleavage Waitress a little too closely.

  Daphne squirmed to the edge of the booth. “Glamour calls. Jot down the hours you’re available and any previous references you have.” She slid her ordering pad and pen toward me and climbed the rest of the way out of the booth, her joints popping as she stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  She shuffled toward the pick-up window. I watched her balance five omelet specials across her arm, dropping them off at the table behind Lee. She returned to the counter and shoved a broom into the clumsy waitress’s hands. I looked down at the blank ordering pad in front of me.

  Previous references. I cradled the pen in my hand, waiting for it to write something—anything that would make me appear experienced, confident, and sane. Somehow, I didn’t think library apprentice or gardening instructor at a mental health clinic would accomplish that.

  Daphne returned much quicker than I had anticipated. Her hands popped up to her hips, and she quirked her lips, waiting.

  “So,” I began, determined not to let my anxiety get the best of me. “I don’t have any previous references and I can be here by three thirty, but I have a standing appointment on the second Wednesday of every month.” My monthly check-in with Dr. Fritz, the local psychiatrist who monitored my meds—not to be confused with the school therapist I met with once a week—could not be missed. Ms. Morehouse, my school therapist, was the only reason Dad was letting me attend public school.

  Daphne drummed the table with her fingers, her droopy eyes peeling back the layers of my psyche. “Hmm. You’ve got a sweet face.”

  I bored the toe of my Converse into the linoleum. I didn’t like her examining me like that. She had no idea what lay beneath the “sweet face.”

  “It’s a good face,” she continued. “The kind that could bring in more business. So do you want the job or not?”

  My first big decision on the outside. I had to do it, if only to show Dad and Dr. G that I wasn’t some fragile girl afraid of her own shadow. Determination welled in my chest. I straightened up and pulled back my should
ers. “You’ve got yourself a new waitress.”

  She tugged a thin stack of papers from her apron pocket. “Fill these out and bring them back in a day or two.” She shook a finger at me. “Don’t forget a parent’s signature.”

  Yes, yes, yes! “Great, no problem.”

  Daphne’s shoulders relaxed, and she smiled—she seemed almost as relieved as I was. She shuffled off to a table closer to the counter, stockings sagging around her left ankle. My lip curled as I took one last critical look at the uniform. I’d been dressed in worse.

  I rolled the papers between my hands as I walked back to Lee.

  “Did you get the job?” Lee asked between clicks of his phone.

  I pulled my backpack up from the floor by its purple handle and tucked Daphne’s papers into my English binder.

  “I think I did.”

  He looked up from his tiny screen long enough to offer me a smile. “That’s great, Ray!”

  Yeah, it’s great now, but wait until Dad and Dr. G find out. Then, the opposite of great. Potentially disastrous.

  And what if Dr. G and Dad were right? What if I really was too fragile to hold down a job, to interact with a demanding public, to pour coffee for low-caffeinated patrons? I tucked my hands behind my elbows. What if I wasn’t really better at all?

  Movement in the window caught my eye. I checked my breath and dragged my gaze up from the table, forcing myself to look out the window. Throngs of people passed through Union Square daily for the shopping and world-famous cable cars. Today was no different. The corner of Powell and Sutter bustled with business men and women and tourists toting cameras over their shoulders. But not a wing in sight.

  My heart slowed to a normal pace, and a relaxed smile crept across my face. I could do this. I was stronger than the madness. I grabbed my backpack, hoisting it over my shoulder. “You know, Lee, I think today might just be a good day.”