Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls Read Online Free PDF

very own.
    Contrary to what she’d said, the pay phone wasn’t “very near.” Alyce’s limp didn’t slow her, but a cold slick of sick sweat drenched Sid by the time they’d trekked halfway across the city. At last, the gas station appeared at the end of the block with the box on its steel post clearly labeled PHONE .
    Sid reached for his wallet, but his hand found only his empty pocket. “Bloody hell.”
    Alyce stiffened.
    He gritted his teeth. She was like a beaten dog, flinching from a yell. Of course, she could rip his leg off and beat
him
with it if he was the sort to kick a dog. “I don’t suppose you have any money on you? A few coins, maybe?”
    She stiffened even more, shoulders rounding, though he tried to sound curious rather than reproachful. But damn, ithad been a bad night—bad enough that he wasn’t going to be able to sulk back to the warehouse under his own power.
    This left him only one choice.
    He called the toll-free number. “Hugh, it’s Sid. I know it’s awfully early, but could you do me a favor—” He sighed as the line clicked over to another ring tone before he finished. The London @1 offices served as a finishing school of sorts for the eldest sons of Europe’s Bookkeepers, but the leagues’ heretofore strictly male definition of good manners hadn’t left room for secretarial charm. “No,” he muttered, “putting me through to the Bookkeeper was really not the favor I wanted to ask.”
    “Sidney?”
    Sid closed his eyes and reminded himself that routing the call through London kept him from the trouble of having to make a collect call to the Chicago league. Since he wasn’t entirely sure they’d accept the charges, it would be easier just to deal with the usual disapproval.
    “Hullo, Dad.” His father would be at the big mahogany desk with the matching credenza that weighted the room toward Learned Respectability. It was the crack of dawn in London, but his father would be sitting at that desk, which faced away from the gorgeous panorama of the Thames—no sense getting distracted by the view. “How’s the weather?”
    Over the phone came the thin creak of a chair spinning in place. “Foggy, but not as cold as Chicago.”
    Sid opened his eyes. Alyce stared down the street away from him. In her thin shift, now minus most of the skirt, she must be freezing. But the only thing less gentlemanly than letting her freeze would be handing her his wadded tweed and bleeding out at her bare feet. “You were right about the cold. Speaking of your being right, I’m in a bit of a bind.”
    “I’ll wire you money for the return flight.”
    Sid tightened his grip on the phone. The pressuretwanged across to his wounded shoulder. “Nothing so drastic. I just need Hugh to make a call for me.”
    “Where is your—? Never mind. What’s the number?”
    “It’s nothing you need to bother with, Dad. Hugh can—”
    “The number?”
    The tension crawled back up Sid’s spine to gather at the base of his skull as he rattled off the @1 Chicago phone number. Thank God he’d always been good at memorizing. “If you could ask Niall to send a car to the corner of Ontario and LaSalle, I’d appreciate it.”
    “What sort of trouble are you in?”
    “Dad, I’ve been here less than forty-eight hours. How bad could it be?” Before his father could enumerate, Sid countered, “How are you doing?”
    “I’ve been here more than seventy years, Sidney. How bad could it be?”
    The dry amusement in his father’s voice made Sid shut his eyes again. And this time he saw only the empty black. “Right then. I’ll check in again later.”
    “Most likely I’ll be here.” The rasp of the chair grated through the wires again. “Be careful, Sidney.”
    “I am, Dad. Take care.”
    Sid waited until the line disconnected before he hung up.
    “Your father is sick,” Alyce said.
    “I know.”
    “Then why are you here?”
    “Because my father is sick.” If the talya could hear cancer over a