Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series Read Online Free PDF Page B

know!
    Platinia was safe.
    Zwicia was safe.
    Without his crystal, John-Lyon-Pfnaravin
would be caged. And maybe killed!
    If she could find a way to bring him
back.
     
     
-4-
     
    Though the morning's forecast said a storm
front from the West was closing on Kansas City, it was a mild day
for the end of November, the air smelling more of the damp of
spring than of the dust of fall, John driving slowly to enjoy this
Indian Summer day.
    He found his mind wandering, though. To be
honest, after being the Crystal-Mage of Stil-de-grain, his life as
junior member of a small Social Science Department was ... boring.
(That's how the young men of the Lost Generation must have felt
after World War I. Returning from the pulse pounding terror of the
front, numbers of them had never been able to fit into the dull
routine of civilian life.)
    A stray thought about Professor Fredericks'
community service project at the nursing home had John remembering
Paul's theory that the Van Robin who'd just died at a retirement
complex was the same man who'd built John's house. On the night
John had told Paul about going to the "other world," Paul had even
suggested this Van Robin could be the "otherworldly" Mage,
Pfnaravin, trapped in this world after coming here from the "other
reality."
    A speculation that could be checked out?
    Maybe. If John had the time to call one old
folks home after the other until he found the place that had Van
Robin as a patient.
    Two blocks further and a sudden left had John
plunging through the shrubbery that hid the entrance to his private
access road. Another mile through enfolding, stick-dry bushes, a
slam of brakes, and John was parked in his weed-choked, woodland
surrounded yard.
    Prying himself out of the elderly sports car,
John climbed the shaky porch steps and keyed himself inside.
    Hanging his jacket on a hook on the entrance
hall coat rack, John passed the stairs with hardly a look, veering
through his living room to get to the kitchen where he'd find
sandwich meat in the fridge.
    Except ... he couldn't find the lunch meat
package. Another indication of his distracted mental state was his
tendency, lately, to misplace things.
    Backtracking to the living room, John sat in
the carved, oak chair.
    Staring at the phone on the shaky end table
by the sofa, John had an idea about how to start a possible Van
Robin search.
    The idea was to dial up short, fat,
no-necked, diamond-ringed, cherry-cheeked, Cadillac-herding, "call
me Madge, honey" -- the real estate lady who'd unloaded this house
on him.
    Not an easy woman to forget.
    Try as he might!
    Just thinking about that woman brought back
her sales pitch. First, "Just call me Madge, honey" had establish
the fact that John Lyon was from out of town, that he had no
relatives in Kansas City, and that he had, as yet, made no friends
North of the River.
    After that came her predictable attempts to
sell him houses she knew he couldn't afford.
    Followed by the tour of this property: an
old, limestone building in the middle of a couple of acres of
woods.
    The house had a first floor entrance hall
that accessed a moderately sized living room to the left, small
bedroom (convertible to a den) on the right, and kitchen at the
back.
    Opposite the front door, half-open stairs
squeaked to the second floor, the upper level "sporting" three,
ruined bedrooms plus an old-fashioned bath.
    Not much. But all John could buy.
    By the time John had signed the contract at
the realtor's office, talkative Madge had revealed everything about
the house except that it was haunted! (No sense spoiling the new
arrival's impression of Kansas City by being negative.)
    Though it had taken some time, he'd traced
the house's "ghost" sounds to the wedge-shaped storage space
beneath the stairs; eventually discovered that those strange noises
originated in some other world.
    The background to his Van Robin investigation
reviewed, John moved to the old green divan. Took the Yellow Pages
from the phone stand beside