Dead to Rites Read Online Free PDF Page B

asking your goons not to poke me?” I said. “I don’t much appreciate it.”
    “Are you
trying
to make an enemy here, Oberon?” Shea demanded.
    “I hadn’t realized I still had a choice. But no, Shea. If I were, this arm would never work again.”
    I released the gink with a rough shove, enough so he stumbled down a couple steps but had no difficulty catching himself. With his
left
hand; he seemed to be having problems with his right.
    “As is, he’ll be fine in a few hours. Couple days, tops. I’m just making a point, that’s all.”
    Hruotlundt was starting to grumble, which sounded a whole lot like a rock-crusher with a cold.
    “If you gentlemen are
quite
finished, then?”
    “I don’t—”
    “You gentlemen
are
quite finished.”
    I shrugged at Shea. “I’m done. You done?”
    Shea shoved his roscoe back under his coat, snarled, and stomped out, his trouble boys right on his heels. Guess he was done.
    “So,” I said to Hruotlundt, “how’s your night going?”
    * * *
    It took some fast talking to convince the
dvergr
to even let me into his office after that, which I guess is only fair. Finally, still sounding as though he was gargling gravel, he pushed open the outer door—still with the Minotaur-head knocker—and through the reception room. His blonde and vacant secretary was perched behind a heavy oak desk, meticulously applying nail polish so bright red she coulda used it to signal aircraft. I couldn’t tell without closer examination if she was the real deal or another homunculus crafted to appear human—and I decided without too much difficulty not to ask Hruotlundt one way or the other, since I’d been responsible for thoroughly wrecking the last one when she (it) didn’t wanna let me in.
    Huh. You know, it occurs to me that there’s maybe a
reason
a lotta folks don’t like me.
    Office itself hadn’t changed, but then, it never did. Everything was old, worn, bland. One lamp, one phone—an old candlestick model—and two doors, one to the storeroom, the other to Elphame. One of these days, I’d have to visit from the Otherworld side of things, see if it was true that the place was a lot swankier if you came from that direction.
    “What do you want, Oberon?” He slumped hard into his chair, which woulda been a more significant gesture if he’d had a longer way to go between
stand
and
slump
. “I’m still trying to recover from all the chaos that resulted last time you were here.”
    I grinned openly at that. “First off, you know damn well that was none of it my fault. I got dragged into the whole mess. And second, I keep my ear to the ground, Hruotlundt. So many Fae in town, digging for the Spear of Lugh? A whole lotta them wound up with other little valuables, and you turned a real nice profit on most of those. So nix the sob story; you ain’t had it so good in years.”
    “What. Do you. Want?”
    I jerked a thumb toward the outer door.
    “What’d
they
want?” I’d hoped, just tossin’ it out that way while he was already agitated, I might surprise some information out of him.
    Since the glower he gave me pretty clearly said, “You’re
intensely
stupid,” it obviously didn’t work.
    “You know I don’t discuss clients, Oberon.”
    “Yeah, but…”
    Dammit. What could I tell him? That Shea bein’ here made me nervous? That I’d run into the gink before, even been inside his house specifically searching for it, and hadn’t caught even a hint of a whiff of a trace of magic?
    I get that I mighta given you cause to think otherwise, since all the events in my life I talk about revolve around magic. But here in your world, it’s rare. It ain’t something most people are wise to, obviously, and that includes the mob. The old ways Fino learned from his mamma, “Bumpy” Scola’s protective charms and private witch? Those are the exceptions, see? They’re two of only a handful of the city’s crooks who dabble in the supernatural.
    And Shea ain’t one of that