Cogling Read Online Free PDF Page B

get paid.
    “Cook…” Edna began, but the tomtar shook her head.
    “Gotta send him home.”
    Edna gasped. She couldn’t allow him into the streets alone. “Some gin-addict might jump him hoping for a few pennies.”
    Cook tapped the spoon against the side of the pot. “Take him. I’ll cover the party for an hour, but no longer.”
    “Thank you!” Edna pulled Harrison toward the dressing room. He changed his clothes at her orders, tucking the pocket watch beneath his shirt. She hustled him from the manor and refrained from mentioning the theft until she pushed him into their apartment a half-hour later. The evil coiled through her body as though it had become one with her blood. Her breath quickened at the tightening around her lungs.
    “You owe me, Harrison! If anyone finds out I had to bring you home, it’ll be my job. Not to mention I had to waste money on trolley fare. I’ll have to walk home tonight, and tomorrow night, too. It’ll take longer to get your medicine. What hurts?”
    Harrison stared at the wall.
    “Give me that wretched watch. Where you got it is beyond me, but it ain’t ours!” If he behaved, the evil wouldn’t make her shout at him so.
    He wailed as she tore open his shirt, seizing the pocket watch. Color drained from his face and his eyes adopted a dark glow. A moan escaped his lips.
    “Stop it!” Edna yanked the chain over his head.
    The sound of grinding gears filled the apartment. Harrison gurgled, his howl ceasing. Black smoke puffed from his ears and nostrils, pouring from his mouth, and he burst apart in a shower of sparkles.
    A pile of metal cogs remained.



You are nothing, I am more.
    dna’s mouth dropped open as she circled the pile of cogs, poking it with her foot. “This is a dream. Hag magic.”
    Harrison would pop back up and laugh. He
had
to.
    She held a gear to the light filtering through the dirty kitchen window. Triangles were engraved into both sides of the metal. The evil vanished as though ice water had washed it away.
    He fell apart.
She shook her head. It couldn’t be him. Some cruel joke, sick entertainment,
something
. “He had an earache. That didn’t make him a machine.” She pictured the automation in Rachel’s bedroom. Harrison didn’t look anything like that.
    Edna’s eyes watered. “Are you hiding? Come out now, please!” Her voice quaked. “This isn’t funny.”
    A motorcar honked in the street, and in the apartment below, a man laughed. The sounds vanished into a whirling hollow that consumed her head. Edna stepped over the pile of gears and cogs, grabbing the edge of the table to keep her balance.
    She had to be delirious, still in bed dreaming. Edna breathed deeper to quell the erratic beating of her heart, but her head felt lighter, dizzier. She had to find him.
    “Harrison!” She staggered into the living room and parted the paisley curtain screening her parents’ bedroom. No one. The evil winked back like a sadistic reminder:
I’m here, I’m playing off your emotions.
    Edna threw open the door to the bedroom she shared with her brother, empty as well, and checked the normal places he hid: beneath the beds, behind the trunks. Empty. She dropped to her knees, twin thumps against the floor. Her hand gripped the splintered doorframe, forehead bowed to the wall. A soot demon scurried toward a hole under the window. Its backbone stood out in a row of knobs against its golden skin.
    Edna rubbed her prayer beads.
May the seven Saints protect him.
    She couldn’t solve the mystery alone; she needed help. Who else would be home during the day? “Mrs. McGraw!”
    Edna stuffed the watch into her coat pocket and ran for the hallway. She bolted past the peeling, whitewashed walls and banged on the neighbor’s door.
    “Mrs. McGraw, I need your help! It’s me, Edna Mather.”
    The door squealed open and Edna fell into the warm, round arms of her neighbor.
    The elderly woman frowned. “Dearie, what’s the matter?”
    “Harrison blew up!”