Read Online Avenging Angels by Mary Stanton - Free Book Online

irritating Gabriel Striker made the effort to keep an unobtrusive profile. Sometimes they slipped up and the people around Bree asked uncomfortable questions.
    Antonia set her jaw in a determined way. “Sit down, Bree. I want to talk to you.”
    Bree raised one eyebrow. “You sound exactly like Daddy when he wants to have a Serious Talk. Do you want to have a Serious Talk?”
    “Don’t get lippy with me, Bree. Not now.”
    Antonia was six years younger. From the time Francesca had brought her little sister home from the hospital, Bree had brushed her hair, read her bedtime stories, and watched over her on the playground. As time went on, she kept an eye on the dozens of dazzled teenage boys that trailed after her sister in high school like hounds after a particularly delectable fox. She’d thrown herself into the breach when their parents went ballistic over her sister’s merry distaste for college and took her in when she left home to chase after life on the stage. Not once, in all that time, had Antonia reared up and tried to come over the parent with her. Until now.
    “Okay,” Bree said, amused.
    “And if you keep on smirking at me, I’ll pull your hair so hard your scalp’ll be pink for a week.”
    Bree tucked her hair behind her ears. It was long, silver-blonde, and, as Anthony Haddad had seemed to figure out, her one vanity. She wore it in a coronet of braids to keep it out of the way when she was at work, but she hadn’t bothered with that this weekend. It fell freely down her back, almost to her waist. “Got it.” Then, since her sister looked both worried and cross, she added a real apology. “Sorry. It’s usually me talking to you like a Dutch uncle. Not the other way around.”
    “Yeah. Well. Get used to it. I mean, we’re here to take care of each other, right?”
    “Right. Sisters forever.”
    “Right.” Antonia took a deep, nervous breath. “So. What’s up with you, anyway?”
    “What do you mean, what’s up with me? Nothing’s up with me.”
    “Something’s wrong.”
    Bree gathered her hair up and twisted it into a long tail. “Got a scrunchie on you?”
    “Something’s really wrong . . . a what? A scrunchie? We’re having the most important talk of your life and all you can think of is your hair?”
    Bree held her hair in one hand and extended the other. “Just keeping my hair out of the way of your grabby little fists.” Antonia dug a rubber band out of her jeans pocket. Bree sat next to her on the couch and fastened her hair up in a ponytail. “Now,” she said kindly, “spill it.”
    Suddenly Antonia looked much older than twenty-two. “I don’t want the kindly big-sister act. I don’t want the mother-in-absentia act. I want you to take a good look at yourself and then . . .” She took a deep breath. “I want you to see somebody.”
    Bree stared at her.
    “A doctor, first. You know, like an internist. And then maybe a shrink.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.” Her voice seemed to come from somebody else.
    “I’m not ridiculous.”
    “You think I’m going crazy?”
    “I don’t know what to think. All I know is, ever since we’ve moved here you’ve gotten well and truly weird.”
    “Maybe you could be a little more specific,” Bree said. She could be very sarcastic if she put her mind to it and she was putting her mind to it right this minute.
    Antonia flinched, but said, “Sure. You want specific? I’ll get specific. I hear you talking to people and when I walk into the room—nobody’s there. I hear you screaming at night with bad dreams. And those huge scary dogs? Miles and Belli, you call them?”
    “They’re Russian mastiffs,” Bree said. “I told you: I’m taking care of them as a favor for Professor Cianquino while he’s out of town.” This was a good fib. She wished she’d thought of it before. “They’re a pair of perfectly normal Russian mastiffs.”
    “You didn’t tell me any such thing. And if you had, I would have said bullshit,