The Dark Divine Read Online Free Page B

Don became Dad’s most devoted parishioner. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten the way we met him. But I couldn’t.
    Did that make me the only Divinovich in a family full of Divines?
EVENING
    “I don’t know what to tell you, Grace.” Pete lowered the hood of my father’s decade-and-a-half-old, teal-greenToyota Corolla. “I think we’re stranded.”
    I wasn’t at all surprised when the car didn’t start up again. Charity and I regularly lobbied for my parents to get rid of the Corolla and buy a new Highlander, but Dad always shook his head and said, “How would it look if we got a new car when this one runs fine?” Of course, Dad meant “runs” in a relative sort of way. As in, if you said a heartfelt prayer and promised the Lord to use the car to help the needy, it usually started on the third or fourth turn of the ignition. But this time I wasn’t sure if even divine intervention could get the car moving.
    “I think I saw a gas station a couple of blocks back,” Pete said. “Maybe I should walk there and get some help.”
    “That gas station is closed.” I breathed on my frozen hands. “It’s been abandoned for a while.”
    Pete looked back and forth down the street. Nothing much was visible outside the veil of orange light cast from the streetlamp. The night’s sky was completely blotted out by clouds, and a frigid wind tousled Pete’s rusty hair. “Of all the nights to forget to charge my cell phone.”
    “At least you have one,” I said. “My parents are seriously stuck in the twentieth century.”
    Pete only half smiled. “Well, I guess I’ll go find a pay phone,” he grumbled.
    Suddenly, I felt like all of this was my fault. Only a few minutes before, Pete and I had been joking aboutBrett Johnson’s hiccupping fit during the chem test. Pete looked at me when we laughed at the same time, and our eyes met in that cosmic sort of way. Then the car made this horrible clunking noise and lurched to a stop in an alley on our way to the shelter.
    “I’ll come with you.” I flinched at the sound of shattering glass in the not-so-far distance. “It’ll be an adventure.”
    “No. Someone needs to stay with this stuff.”
    The Corolla was packed full of the boxes that didn’t fit in the truck. But I wasn’t sure I was the one who should stay behind to protect it. “I’ll go. You’ve done enough already.”
    “No way, Grace. Pastor or not, your dad would kill me if I let you walk by yourself in this part of town.” Pete opened the car door and pushed me inside. “You’ll be safer—and warmer—in here.”
    “But …”
    “No.” Pete pointed to the squatty building across the street. I could hear a couple of guys shouting at each other from one of the broken windows. “I’ll just go knock on the door of one of those apartments.”
    “Yeah, right,” I said. “Your best bet is the shelter. It’s a mile or so that way.” I pointed down the dark street. We were parked under the only working lamp on the block. “There are mostly apartments along the way, and a couple of bars. But stay away from those unless you want to get your teeth kicked in.”
    Pete smirked. “You spend a lot of time on the mean streets?”
    “Something like that.” I frowned. “Hurry … and be careful, okay?”
    Pete leaned in through the doorway with one of his triple-threat grins. “This is some date, huh?” he said, and kissed me on the cheek.
    My face prickled with heat. “So this
is
a date?”
    Pete chuckled and rocked back on his heels. “Lock the car.” He shut the door and shoved his hands into the pockets of his letterman’s jacket.
    I clicked the door lock and watched him kick an empty beer can as he walked away. I couldn’t see him once he left the light of the streetlamp. I scrunched down in my coat for warmth and sighed. It might be going badly, but at least I was on a date with Pete Bradshaw, sort of.
    Sc-rape
.
    I shot straight up. Was that the shuffle of gravel on the pavement?