Closer Home by Kerry Anne King Page A

good actor, I’ll give him that. Keeping a righteous expression on his face, he bends his head to speak directly into my ear.
    “Get out of my church.”
    “I thought it was God’s church.”
    A camera flashes. I go cold, remembering that glimpse of red curls in the foyer. But before I can get a good look at the crowd, a meaty hand grasps my elbow. I look way up into a face that doesn’t even pretend to be spiritual. Ariel is still beside me, her arm firmly in the other goon’s possession. Shadow is nowhere.
    “You’ll need to leave now,” my bouncer says.
    Kelvin smiles, the mask of untarnished holiness firmly back in place. “Go in peace,” he says. “I will pray for you.”
    That does it. I forget that Kelvin is supposedly a holy man of God. I forget about the cameras and Ariel and all sense of decorum. He’s just plain old Kelvin from school, taking advantage of me and mine.
    “Asshole!” My fists are clenched and my free arm is moving, but it connects with empty air as my bouncer drags me out of range. Overbalancing, I trip over my own feet and begin a slow-motion tumble that is stopped by the inexorable force holding my arm. One of my shoes comes off, but he doesn’t miss a step and I have no choice but to scramble after him, bobbing up and down in an uneven one-shoed gait.
    The crowd parts before us like magic, people staring and whispering to each other. I keep my head bent, partly to keep an eye on my precarious footsteps, but mostly to keep from being recognized. There’s no need to look where I’m going, anyway. All I have to do is keep my feet moving and my personal bouncer takes care of the rest.
    A door opens in front of me, framing gray sky and rain. The rush of fresh air is more heavenly than anything about the service, and I step out of the church under my own steam. The bouncer blocks the doorway.
    “Don’t come back.”
    “No forgiveness at the Church of Kelvin?” I ask. He slams the door in my face. There is no outside handle.
    An airless, choking sound from Ariel spins me around in alarm. She’s doubled over, both arms clasped around her belly.
    “Oh my God, are you all right? Can you breathe? Are you choking?”
    Ariel raises her head to look at me. Tears are pouring down both cheeks. She makes that whooping sound again, then manages to suck in a good breath.
    “You—” she says, and then goes off into another fit.
    “What?”
    “Standing up to him like that. I thought you were going to kick him in the shins in front of God and everybody.”
    “Balls, actually. Shins are too good for him.”
    Ariel giggles. “He’s like two feet taller than you . . .” She breaks up again.
    The rain has switched from drizzle to downpour, and both of us are already soaking wet. My shoeless foot is in a puddle. I don’t know where the car is from here. And yet her laughter sparks something deep inside me.
    “This isn’t funny,” I start to say, but my voice cracks, and before I can help it, I’m overtaken by laughter that I can’t control.
    This sends Ariel off again, and the two of us stand there, whooping insanely, soaked to the skin and staggering like drunks. Shadow shows up from somewhere. Unable to get any sense out of either of us, he takes us each by an arm and tows us around the edge of the church and out to the street, where we parked the car.
    “We need to go before the service lets out,” he says, digging in my purse for the keys and unlocking the doors. That thought sobers me enough to let me drive, although the occasional giggle from Ariel sets me off again.
    My sense of direction has been turned completely upside down, and I’m actually grateful to Shadow when he starts spouting directions. He’s got some sort of app on his phone, which seems to take us on a far more roundabout journey than is necessary. On the off chance that somebody is following us, this is no bad thing, though his continual fiddling with the phone rubs my fur the wrong way.
    I’ve just made a