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

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    “Dana,” she said, tapping herself on the chest. “Dana LeBreche. We went to high school together.”
    “Dana,” I repeated. I remembered a smiling brunette, a member of the debate team, a friendly nerd who got along well with everyone. She bore little resemblance to shell-shocked woman in front of me, her eyes swollen with tears and her short hair pulled back from her face into a messy ponytail.
    “What happened to him?” Leo asked, suddenly pushing past me and leaning over the recliner to examine the corpse. I breathed through my mouth, the smell cloying in my throat, but the stench wasn’t coming from the body. It hardly smelled of decay, the freezing cold keeping the body from really rotting. No, it was the house around me that reeked and I wondered if it had smelled this bad when the man had been alive, if he had lived in such appalling squalor.
    “I dunno,” Dana said. She sniffed loudly, and ran her sleeve under her running nose. “Dad and I don't... we aren't—” tears welled up again and for a minute she just cried, staring down at the corpse. I tentatively touched her shoulder, my heart pounding.
    “Dana. I'm sorry,” I said again and she nodded jerkily.
    “I haven't talked to him in a couple weeks,” she said, her voice a little stronger. “He drinks.” She glanced at me, at Leo, meeting our eyes to give weight to her meaning and we both nodded in understanding.
    “We fight,” she added. “He doesn't...” A frustrated sigh took the last of her sentence and she turned her face away, visibly trying to calm herself.
    I took my hand away, giving her what privacy I could, and Leo caught my eye. He nodded down at the corpse and I reluctantly moved closer.
    “Heart attack?” I whispered. The body sacked out limp on the recliner, a faded blue crocheted blanket over its knees. The armchair pointed at an old rabbit-eared TV, the screen blank. Beside the armchair, a flimsy little side table held a bottle of Canadian whiskey and a saucepan filled with some moldy yellow lumps. Leo sniffed at it and glanced at me. “Mac and cheese,” he told me quietly.
    “Hypothermia?” I guessed again. “It's freezing in here.”
    “Maybe. Or carbon monoxide poisoning.” Leo jerked his chin towards the corner. “That's a wood stove.”
    “How long do you think he's been dead?” I asked, very quietly. Dana caught my attention as she turned, halfheartedly wiping the mascara off her cheeks.
    “I don't know,” Leo said, just as quietly. He glanced at Dana, and then casually turned his back on her, so that he faced only me. “I'm a little more familiar with fresh bodies,” he whispered.
    Those words hit me like a ton of bricks, because yeah, I fucking knew that . I went hot and then cold and I looked away, my eyes bouncing all over from the pitiful corpse to the pitiful garbage stacked all around me to the pitiful grief-stricken daughter.  Exhaustion washed over me.  Suddenly the position of the body, folded into a worn recliner and facing a small, out of date TV, seemed incredibly sad.
    “I think it's been a couple of weeks,” Dana supplied. “I spoke to him a few days before Halloween. I asked him to come to Missoula for the kids' costume parade. He didn't show up though, and I was really angry and—and—” she broke down again, and this time Leo simply drew her into a hug, slipping an arm around her shoulders and just pulling her into his arms like they knew each other.
    I scoffed, but it seemed to be exactly what she needed. Her arms locked around his waist and she buried her face in the soft leather of his coat and she just cried. Leo held her and whispered things to her. I stood there awkwardly, all third wheel, me and the dead guy. Absently, I poked my finger through a hole in the seam of the recliner's upholstery, tearing some threads and feeling the material catch on my ragged cuticles. My hand hovered only a few inches from the dead guy’s wispy white hair. I jerked my hand back and