Boneyard (The Thaumaturge Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

snowy gravel yard. We paused on the front stoop and Leo lifted his head, scenting the cold air.
    “Smells a little ripe,” he said, giving me a significant look.
    I could smell something too, even with my weak human nose, and another tendril of apprehension wormed into my belly.
    “Maybe we should—” I started to say and then the door flung open, revealing a manic-eyed woman in a Montana Grizzlies sweatshirt.
    “My dad,” she gasped and Leo and I exchanged a glance.
    “Okay,” I said, startled. She looked back and forth between us in jerky whips.
    “Come on!” she cried and turned away, vanishing into the gloom of the house.
    With the door open, the smell almost gagged me. It was rot and garbage, shit and dust, all rolled up, set on fire and then shoved in my face. I blanched, and beside me, Leo actually gagged. He turned his head to the side and panted.
    “Fuck,” he said, looking at me with watering eyes. “That's disgusting.”
    “Go,” I said, nodding towards the door and he scoffed.
    “Yeah, right. You first.”
    “Some bodyguard,” I grumbled, stepping into the house. Under my feet, the saggy linoleum gave way with a groan and right away I bumped up against a stack of damp newspapers and cardboard that reached over my head. I shivered, no warmer inside that it was out and glanced around the room, taking stock.
    Garbage. As far as I could tell, the place just overflowed with garbage and stacked boxes.  The horrible smell started to invade my throat. Feeble light emanated from a single source, coming from the front corner, but it was enough to help me make out the stacks of books and piles of clothes and lumpy black garbage bags.  A narrow pathway threaded between the stacks of clutter, and I inched through it, following the sound of the woman's harsh breathing.
    “Hoarder?” Leo whispered, right at my shoulder. His arm covered his nose and mouth. Above the black leather of his sleeve, his eyes squinted into slits.
    “Apparently,” I whispered back, grimacing as my leg brushed against a fish aquarium stuffed full of what appeared to be raw animal pelts, stripes of red gore still clinging to the undersides. Carefully, we picked our way through the squalor, bumping against newspapers and lampshades and mountains of canned food.
    “Here.” I stepped past the stacks and found a small clearing, a little oasis in a desert of crap. The woman stood anxiously beside a maroon armchair and in the armchair sprawled a corpse. I'm not ashamed to say that I gagged, spun on my heel and would have fucking made for the hills if Leo hadn't been right behind me. He grabbed my arms to steady me, looking over my shoulder as he did so and even he recoiled.
    “Holy shit,” he said and made a weird spitting noise like a cat that's huffed gasoline.
    “Oh my God.” I panted into his shoulder, trying to suck oxygen and not suck in that god-awful burnt piss smell at the same time.
    “It's my dad,” the woman wailed from behind me and Leo shoved me back a little, his eyes wide and freaked.
    “You're on,” he said, planting one hand between my shoulders and pushing me forward.
    I couldn't look at the corpse, though the initial visual impressions of rot and sag and gape burned the backs of my eyes. I stared at the woman, breathing with my mouth open.
    “I can't fix that,” I said desperately and her face crumbled like a tissue, her small mouth turning down and a low pitiful moan coming from it.
    “Look, I'm sorry,” I tried, and involuntarily glanced down at the body. This time I couldn't look away, my treacherous eyes cataloguing every detail of the corpse, from the stretched black lips to the sunken eyes to the stiff folds of the flabby neck skin.
    “Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
    “You have to help him,” she cried, reaching for my hand and hanging onto it. Her hands were freezing, her vaguely pretty face suddenly familiar. “Everyone says you can.”
    “Do I know you?” I asked. Also, everyone