Covenant Read Online Free PDF Page A

tighten?
    “Go on,” she intoned.
    “I’d like to know about who has committed suicide there, and when.”
    The five-dollar bill suddenly appeared back on the table before him.
    “I will not take your money for speaking of zat,” she hissed, and abruptly stood.
    “Who sent you to taunt me like this? Was it Karen? Melody?”
    As her voice rose, her accent slipped away. For a second, Joe saw through the getup and glimpsed a middle-aged small-town housewife wearing a loud robe over her daytime clothes. And then Angelica the Reader returned, eyes still flaring slightly, but otherwise in control.
    “You can leaf now, sir,” she said, still standing.
    “Please,” he began, suddenly sure that George had sent him to the right place. “I wrote a story for the newspaper today about the Canady kid’s death—he jumped last night— and I just wanted to find out more about the cliff. Nobody will tell me anything about it, but someone said you might know. So I looked you up.”
    “Who zent you?” Angelica asked in a calmer, richly colored Gypsy voice.
    “I don’t think I should tell you,” Joe replied, staring her down. “But it wasn’t one of those women you mentioned. Actually, it was an older gentlemen who said you knew town history.”
    “Of that, he vas surely correct,” she said. The seer put a finger to her lips and stared hard at Joe. Pacing the room, she trailed that same finger across a tawdry collection of crystals, baubles and beads. She lingered a moment at a dull bronze key, hung from a nail on the wall near a collage of old photos.
    “Listen closely, and I vill tell you what I know.”
    Angelica straightened her cape with a hand, recrossed the room and eased back into her chair.
    Her eyes were brown. A deep, forest brown that hid behind lashes too-black. They stared at him intently over the top of steepled fingers. Fingers each ornamented by a ring.
    “There is an evil spirit in the cliff, my young reporter friend,” she began. She leaned across the table, so close he could feel her breath upon his face.
    “It feeds not on the bodies, but on the souls of men.”
    “The name’s Joe,” he offered.
    Her gaze did not falter at his interruption and she continued to speak, soft and low. He was starting to see why people could be sucked in by her. When she spoke, her eyes flickered with an inner spark and her lips parted in some secret glee. He was sure she could be convincing.
    “I have not felt where this spirit came from, or how long it has been here,” she murmured. “Perhaps it iss the haunt of Indians long dead. An earthen spirit that still yearns for sacrifice and in this age of unbelief finds only murder left to fill its belly. Or perhaps it is a demon chained for all eternity in ze bowels of that dark rock. Its history isn’t of importance, but its hunger is. Every year, that spirit drags at least one person off of ze cliff to crush them on ze cruel rocks below. Its hunger is great. And growing. Most of those who die are strangers to Terrel. Drifters. Businessmen from out of town.”
    She leaned forward to whisper. “Walk carefully, Joe,” she warned, and turned away. When she looked back, her eyes were glossy with moisture.
    “Every year, at least one of those unlucky enough to visit the rocks at the bottom of that cursed hill are stolen from this town. And we who live here mourn them quietly, and in fear. For we never know when it will be ourselves that the cliff calls.”
    This seemed to be going nowhere fast, Joe thought. He should have known better than to expect anything but fairy tales from an astrologist.
    “What can you tell me about the last few people who jumped?” he prodded.
    “That they have met their destiny.”
    Angelica stared him down at that, her hands no longer crossed, but palm-down on the table. She looked ready to either jump up or throw the table at him; he wasn’t sure which.
    “So I suspected,” he countered. “But who were they? When did they