Book 11 - Whispering Nickel Idols Read Online Free PDF Page A

but it’s haul out the
meat cleavers when I get you back with a nympho nymph.“
    Two more staffers materialized. Lugging industrial-grade butcher’s
equipment. In a vegetarian establishment. “Them new-generation
eggplants must be fierce.” Everybody seemed intensely interested in
managing a wily envelopment of their good buddy Garrett.
    Not promising at all.
    Dotes made a slight gesture. “One more chance, Garrett.”
    “I wanted to check on how things are coming, setting up for tonight.
And to say hi.”
    “And why are you interested?”
    “Because I have to be here, cabbage breath boy. I can’t weasel out.
And I don’t feel good about the setup.”
    Morley glared at me. Slim and dark, handsome and always impeccably
bedecked in the latest fashion, he radiates a sensuality that sets them
swooning even when he strolls through a nun shop.
    “You got smudge under your nose.” He’d begun sporting a thin little
mustache.
    Morley didn’t grin. “Sit down, Garrett.”
    I picked a chair. The one closest to the door.
    Morley sat across from me. He stared. Eventually, he said, “Word’s
out that you’re on Belinda’s payroll now.”
    “That’s a crock. Who said that?”
    “Belinda. Last time she was here messing the arrangements around.”
    “It ain’t true. You know me better. I wouldn’t work for her even if
I needed work. And I don’t. I’ve got me a nice little piece of the
hottest manufactory in TunFaire. You’re just trolling for an excuse to
get your bile up.”
    “She was convincing.” Dotes studied me some more. Something big was
bothering him and all his boys. Nobody wanted Mama Garrett’s favorite
boy for a friend.
    “Spit it out, Morley. What’s going on?”
    “This party is bound to go bad. And here you come, supposedly
Belinda’s full-time top stud, ambling in ten minutes after your honey
sends word the party won’t happen here after all. The Palms will just
cater. The party will happen in Whitefield Hall. Because my place isn’t
big enough. Too many people in the life want to pay their respects to
the kingpin.”
    “I don’t know anything about any Whitefield Hall. Is that the
Veterans’ Memorial hall that commemorates the War of Coady Byrne’s
Broken Tooth?”
    Karenta had a lot of little wars over a lot of little provocations
in Imperial times. Then we changed up, became a kingdom, and jumped
into one big war that lasted over a hundred years. The one I was in.
Along with every human male I know, including my brother and father and
grandfather, and Grandpa’s father and grandfather and all their
brothers and cousins and bastard kids.
    The killing is over now. So far, the peace has been worse than the
war.
    “I don’t know anything about your wars,” Dotes replied. Being half
dark elf, he enjoys treaty exemption from some human laws. Like the one
establishing conscription. And he doesn’t give a feather about history.
He doesn’t care about last week—unless last week might sneak up and
whack him on the back of the head. “But it is some kind of soldiers’
memorial.”
    Morley is shallow. Morley is pretty. Morley is the nightmare that
wakes fathers screaming in the night. He’s the daydream their daughters
take to bed, fantasizing. He’s the bad boy the girls all want, thinking
they can tame him, before they settle for some dullard who’ll just work
for a living and treat them like they’re people.
    I’m so jealous.
    “I can’t picture it. What’s special about it? Why would she move
there?”
    “I told you. Because she can get more people in. Because it isn’t
operated by people she doesn’t trust.”
    “Belinda doesn’t trust you?”
    “Are you that naive? Of course she doesn’t. Not to be what she wants
me to be.”
    “What would that be?”
    “Her tool, fool.”
    “Don’t start with the vegetarian poetry. It don’t make sense on a
day when the sun
is
shining.”
    Dotes shook his pretty head. He didn’t want to play. “Belinda
wouldn’t trust