Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan

couldn’t get a flight out until almost nine tonight.”
    “She told me not to stop you, Niki.”
    “I don’t think she gives a shit what I do, as long as I stay out of her way while I’m doing it.”
    “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t believe that,” and he comes in, sits down on the bed beside the suitcase. Niki closes it and the zipper sticks twice before she gets it to work right.
    “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
    Marvin scratches at his chin, and “Jesus,” he sighs. “Can we please just talk about this for a minute. Maybe Daria has decided it’s a good idea to let you go wandering off alone—”
    “I’m not ‘wandering off’ anywhere. I know exactly where I’m going. When I’m finished, I’ll try to come back.”
    “What do you mean, you’ll try ?”
    “I mean I’ll try, that’s all,” she says, then wrestles the heavy suitcase to the floor between them and sits down on the edge of the bed next to Marvin. “In the kitchen, I told you everything I could, everything I know for sure.” But the way Marvin’s looking at her makes her feel like she hasn’t tried to tell him anything, like she’s holding back, even though she isn’t, and she wishes he would stop.
    “This is so totally fucked up. You know that, right? I mean, yesterday you almost died on us, Niki.”
    “I feel better now.”
    “You look like Death with a hangover. Daria must have been thinking with her ass, taking you out of the hospital like that.”
    “Look, I asked you to help me, and you said that you couldn’t, so the least you can do is lay off. I know what I did, Marvin, and I know what I look like. All I said was I feel better.”
    Marvin kicks once at the suitcase, halfhearted kick with the toe of his right sneaker and the bag rocks back on two of its small plastic wheels, but doesn’t fall over.
    “I’ll be okay,” Niki says. “I’ll let you know when I get into Denver.”
    Fresh confusion on Marvin’s face to make her flinch and “Denver?” he asks. “I thought you said you had to get to Birmingham.”
    “I have to go to Colorado first. I have to see Mort and Theo, and I have to look for something I left there.”
    Marvin glances up at the ceiling, white paint and plaster and a jagged, hairline crack from an earthquake last spring that no one’s gotten around to having repaired. He closes his eyes and Niki wonders what he’s been taking to stay awake.
    “I want to believe you,” he says. “I’m sure you probably think that’s a load, but it isn’t. I want to think this isn’t all some twisted fantasy bullshit your brain’s spitting up because it isn’t wired the right way or it’s not getting enough dopamine or whatever. I’m trying so hard, Niki—”
    “Don’t, Marvin. You can’t force yourself into belief. I never should have told you. I should have kept my mouth shut. None of this even has anything to do with you.”
    He opens his eyes, clears his throat and turns towards her. “Before, the girl I was taking care of before you…” and he pauses, standing here at the brink of some confidence because he thinks he owes her one, tit-for-tat, reciprocal confession, and I should stop him, she thinks. I should stop him now before this goes any further and it’s too late to go back. But he’s already talking again, and she doesn’t have the courage to do anything but sit on the bed and listen.
    “The girl before you, I lost her. She was only fifteen, and she’d already tried to kill herself four times. She said she saw wolves whenever she was left alone—not real wolves, but that’s what she always called them because she said there wasn’t a word for what they were. She told me they’d come after her because she was really one of them, but she’d been born wrong. That’s exactly the way she put it. ‘I was born wrong.’
    “I hadn’t been with her a month when she broke a mirror and slashed her throat. Her parents were both at work, and I couldn’t keep