Book 10 - Angry Lead Skies Read Online Free PDF Page B

than knowing that I’m working.
    I ground my teeth a bit, then continued, “So let’s
get this sorted out quickly. I’ve got to catch up with
Katie.” Before she developed an attitude toward me that I was
sure to regret.
    Dean scowled as he headed toward the kitchen. Katie isn’t
one of his favorites. He doesn’t approve of Katie. He
hasn’t been able to charm her the way he did my few other,
occasional female friends.
    I fear Miss Shaver will have to wait, Garrett.
    “No. Not hardly. Right now there’s nothing more
important than Miss Shaver.”
    Playmate and Kip appeared startled. Old Bones hadn’t
included them in his message. Though Kip did look baffled and kept
rubbing his head and looking around like he knew something was
going on.
    I have exceeded myself somewhat, ethically, in reviewing the
boy’s memories. There being so many questions accompanied by
so few answers it seemed possible that the best course was to see
if he might not know something without being aware that he knew
it.
    Plausible, if prolix. I had used that argument on him a time or
three, trying to prod him into becoming a little more aggressive in
mining the thoughts of visitors and suspects. “And what did
you discover?” You have to give him his line or he
won’t communicate.
    Very little, to tell the truth. This boy has no more than
two toes anchored inside our reality. His head is occupied by a
totally eclectic jumble of fantasic nonsense and it is amidst that
that he lives most of the time. He is always the hero in his own
tale.
    Well, aren’t we all?
    Some of his fantasies recall well-known epics and sagas.
Some have their genesis in common storytellers’ tales. Some
are mutant versions of historical events. And even a few things
might possibly have some basis in truth
—
behind the
fantasy stuff he has built on top of genuine events. Inside his
head it is impossible to discern the real from the imagined.
    “If most of it concerns girls it sounds like the inside of a
normal boy’s head.”
    You would think that way. And you would be incorrect. While
it does concern girls, some of it, it does so principally in the
clever and daring methods by which he rescues the enchanted
princess or other damsel in distress. While there are several of
them I have yet to discover any of his fantasy women less than
chastely clad or treated.
    I gave Kip a quick glance consisting of about eighty percent
worry and twenty percent accolade. Though I suspected that respect
for women was not a real part of the equation. Naïveté would be the
real culprit.
    The Dead Man continued,
He
is
acquainted with
creatures he knows as Lastyr and Noodiss. They are not human but
the boy has not cared enough about the answer to find out what they
really are. The images in his mind are not familiar to me.
    The image that appeared in my mind, then, was unfamiliar to me
as well. “Inbreeding? Or interbreeding?” You need only
stroll around TunFaire a few hours to see the incredible range of
Nature’s artistry and her bottomless capacity for the cruel
practical joke.
    Perhaps. And, perhaps, they are something never before seen.
In this world.
    “Let’s not turn alarmist!” I growled. Alarmed.
Once upon a time not long ago I got into a head-butting contest
with something never before seen at that time: very nasty,
never-brush-their-teeth and talk-back-to-their-mamas foul, elder
gods who thought that the god racket would be a lot softer if they
could bust out of the dark place where they were confined and could
come set up shop in our world.
    There was nothing supernatural about the watcher in the
alley, Garrett. Quite the opposite, I think. There was no magic in
it at all. It seemed as though it stood entirely outside the realms
of the magical, the metaphysical, and the supernatural.
    I gobbled a couple pints of air while I tried to make sense of
that, trying to sort through the countless implications. A world
without magic! A place of order and predictability,