All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,1

beyond endurance, and it was Angel’s fault. It was just that there were so many here, so many voices, and Angel would never be released, would be trapped here in this portal of souls until the very last one was freed. Angel was incorporeal. Ruth was the human needed to give voice to the souls trapped in this house, on these grounds. If she didn’t give a very human catharsis to the dead, they would never rise beyond the soul trap this place had become.

And now that she was dying, she needed to name a successor, or everybody trapped at Daisy Place would be doomed—Angel included.

“I’m sorry,” Angel said, regret weighting every word. “It probably seems as though I didn’t care—I handled everything all wrong. We could have been friends. I could have been your companion and not your tormenter. You deserved a friend, Ruth. I was not that friend. I’m so sorry.”

Ruth blew out a breath. Her words were mumbles now—Angel understood, even if the doctor and nurse at her bedside assumed she was out of her mind.

“You weren’t so bad,” she wheezed. “You were in pain.” A slight smile flickered over the canvas of wrinkles that made up her face. “You made my garden bloom. You couldn’t prune for shit, but you did try.”

“It gave me great joy,” Angel confessed humbly. No more than the truth. Angel had loved that garden, loved the optimism that had laid the fine Kentucky bluegrass sod and ordered the specialty rose grafts from Portland and Vancouver. No, Angel couldn’t prune it—couldn’t hold the shears, couldn’t hold back the tide of entropy that the garden had become—but that hadn’t stopped the place from being Angel’s greatest source of peace, even stuck here in this way station for the damned and the enlightened.

“I know it did.” There was defeat in Ruth’s voice. “Promise me,” she mumbled.

“What?” Angel would take care of the garden until freed from this prison—there was no question.

“Promise me you’ll be kind to him.”

Oh! Oh sweet divinity. She was going to name an heir.

“To him?” Angel asked, all respect.

“I left him the house, but the boy hasn’t had it easy, Angel. He’ll be here soon enough. Be kind.”

“I need his name,” Angel confessed. “If I don’t know his name, I’ll never find his soul.”

“Tucker,” she whispered, her last breaths rattling in her chest. “My brother’s boy. Tucker Henderson. Be kind,” she begged. “He’s a sweet boy…. Be kind.”

Triumph soared in Angel’s chest. Yes! Ruth Henderson’s successor, the empath who could hear the ghosts and help exorcise Daisy Place! Angel wanted to cheer, but now was not the time. With invisible hands but tenderness nonetheless, Ruth Henderson’s ghostly companion stroked her forehead and whispered truths about a glorious garden in the afterlife as the good woman breathed her last.

Blind Faith

TUCKER DIDN’T know how it happened—he never knew how it happened. One minute he’d be walking into a restaurant for dinner, and the next a stranger would stop by his table and strike up a conversation. Twelve hours later, Tucker would have a new friend—and a few used condoms.

It had cost him girlfriends—and boyfriends. He never planned to be unfaithful. He rarely planned to go into the restaurant or bar at all. He’d be strolling down the street, a bag of groceries in his hand and a plan for dinner with—once upon a time—friends, and he’d feel a draw, an irresistible pull, a rope under his breastbone tugging him painfully into another person’s bed.

He’d tried to resist on occasion, back when he’d had plans for a normal life.

When he’d been younger—a green kid freshly grieving the loss of his parents—it had worked out okay of course. Any touch had been okay. He’d been alone in the world, and the empathic powers his aunt Ruth had warned him about had arrived, and suddenly he was seeing a host of people who shouldn’t exist, wandering around in the world like everyday folk.

Sex had been comforting then.

He’d lost his virginity when he’d gone into a McDonald’s for a soda after school and ended up trading blowjobs with the cashier—who happened to be his high school’s quarterback—in the bathroom.

They had both been surprised (to say the least), but then Trace Appleby had broken down into tears and wept on Tucker’s shoulder because he’d never been able to admit he was gay until just that moment. He said he’d been thinking about taking drastic measures, and although he’d never been more explicit than that, Tucker had gotten his