"And you?"
"Who knows? I used to believe her. And I suppose there's a little part of me that still thinks wherever I am, whatever I'm doing—good, bad or indifferent—God's got His eye on me. Or Her eye."
"So . . ."
"So if He doesn't want something to happen He can stop it."
"Oh, we're back to that. If God doesn't want me to get out of here, He'll make sure I don't."
"Right."
Todd allowed a little smile to creep onto his face. He looked like a mischievous six-year-old. "So what do we think when we see that . . ." He nodded to the light in the distance. "Isn't it like it's looking the other way?"
Now Tammy smiled.
"Maybe," she said. "Maybe God's saying: I'll give you a chance. Just this once."
Todd leaned forward and kissed Tammy on the cheek. "Oh I like that," he said. "Just this once."
"It's just a theory."
"It's all I need right now."
"So you want to go?"
He paused a moment and studied the light in the Canyon below. The angel had apparently paused down there, either to contemplate the loveliness of Creation, or to fall asleep for a while. Whatever the reason, it was no longer moving.
"If we're going to go," Todd said, "this is the time. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"I'll go get dressed."
• • •
They found Maxine (who had in turn found a bottle of vodka, and had drunk a third of it on an empty stomach, which wasn't perhaps good for her state of mind, but what the hell? It was done). Tammy explained to her what she and Todd had seen from the balcony, and that it was time to try to make a getaway. Pleasantly lubricated by the vodka, Maxine was ready for an escape; in fact she was first to the door, bottle in hand, remarking that the sooner they were all out of this fucking house the better for everyone.
Tammy led the way, clutching Maxine's car-keys tightly in her palm, to keep their merest tinkle from reaching the ears of the angel. The Canyon was now completely dark. Even the few stars that had been lit overhead earlier were now covered by cloud, as though—Tammy thought—the angel had extinguished them. It was the kind of notion she wouldn't have given room to on any other night but this, in any other place but this; but who knew where the bounds of possibility lay tonight? It was ridiculous, in a way, to imagine that an angel could blow out stars. But wasn't it equally bizarre that there should be a dead man walking in her footsteps, planning to outrun Heaven? Incident by incident, wonder by wonder, her adventures in the Canyon had escalated in outlandishness; as though in preparation for this night's excesses. First the ghosts and their children; then the Devil's Country; now this.
They moved without mishap to the gate; paused there to be sure the coast was clear and then moved on—again without incident—out into the street. Nobody said a word.
If the silence of the natural world had been uncanny from the balcony, it was ten times stranger now they were out on the road, where there would usually be a chirping carpet laid out all around them, and trilling songs in the darkened canopy. But here, now, nothing. It made what was already strange enough, stranger still. It was as though every living thing, from the most ferocious coyote to the tiniest flea, was intimidated into silence and stillness by the scale of power in their midst. The only things foolish enough to move were these three human beings, stumbling through the darkness.
All was going well until Tammy caught her foot in a pothole and fell sideways. Todd was there to catch her, but he wasn't quick enough to stop the short cry of alarm that escaped her as she slipped. It was the loudest thing that had been heard in the Canyon in a long while; its echo coming back off the opposite wall.
She silently mouthed the word damn; then, taking a deep breath, she went to the car, adrenaline making her a little more efficient than she might have been otherwise, and opened the door. The car announced that there was a door open with an irritating little ping, ping, ping. Well, hell, it scarcely mattered now. They were committed to this. The angel was already pricking up its ears, no doubt.
"Get in," she hissed.
Todd ducked into the back. Maxine opened the passenger door and slid in with something less than grace. Then she slammed the door so hard it was probably audible in Santa Barbara.
"Sorry," she slurred. "Force of habit."
Todd leaned over from the back seat and put his hand on Tammy's shoulder.
"Give it all you've got," he said.
"I'll do what I can," she said, and slipped the key into the ignition.
Even as she was instructing her fingers to turn the key, the moon came out above Coldheart Canyon. Except, of course, that it wasn't the moon, it was the messenger of God, roused from its meditations, and climbing a silent ladder into the dark air over their heads.
"Fuck and double fuck," Todd said.
It moved straight toward the house, and—perhaps because the evening was a little damp, and the marine layer had come in off the ocean—it had collected around it a cloak of mist. Now, instead of simply being a light, it looked like a cloud with a white fire burning at its core; trailing a tail like a comet.
Tammy wasn't intimidated. She turned on the car engine. It roared, reassuringly loud.
"Handbrake!" Maxine said. "Handbrake!"
"I've got it," Tammy said. She took off the handbrake, and put the vehicle into gear. Then she slammed her foot down, and they took off.
"Todd!" she yelled over her shoulder. "I want you to keep an eye on that sonofabitch for me."
Todd was already doing just that, peering out of the back window. "It's still above the house," he reported. "Maybe it thinks we're still in there."
"I don't think it's that dumb somehow," Maxine said.
Tammy drove the car up the street, and around two wide curves, before she found a place where it was possible to turn round. It was a squealing, messy five- or six-point turn in the narrow street, and the last maneuver delivered the back end of the car into the shrubbery. No matter. Tammy hauled the wheel round and accelerated. Todd went to the other side of the back seat, and looked out.
"Huh," he said.
"What?"
"The damn thing still hasn't moved."
"Maybe it's lost interest," Tammy said.
It was a forlorn hope, of course, scarcely worth voicing. But every moment the thing failed to come after them was blessed.
"By the way," she said, as she turned the first wide corner south of the house, "I got a little taste of what that thing does to you, Todd—"
"You mean the memories?"
"Yeah."
"Did it freak you out?"
"No. It was just sort of banal, really. It has a memory of my Aunt Jessica—"
"It's coming."
"Oh shit!"
Tammy glanced in her rearview mirror: nothing. Looked over her shoulder: nothing.
"I don't see it!"
"It's after us."
"I don't see it!"
She caught a glimpse of Todd's face in the mirror, his eyes turned directly upward; and she knew where it was. The next moment there was a light on the road all around the car, as though a police helicopter had appeared over the ridge with a spotlight, and caught them in it.
There was a turn up ahead. She took it at sixty-five miles an hour, wheels shrieking, and for a moment the cloud overshot the road, and she was driving in near-darkness. Losing the light so suddenly left her utterly disoriented and she took the next curve, which came fifteen yards after the previous one, so tightly that the left-hand side of the car was clawed by twigs and branches. Todd whooped.