Devil's Food Read Online Free PDF Page B

the strictures of her code, Starshine was as armoured as a fifteenth-century knight. And as helpless, if she fell off her steed.
    Daniel sat down at the table as Starshine took a breath and directed her gaze at me. It was almost as diamond-hard as it had been in her prime. But the face around it seemed to have fallen away. Long creases almost hid her mouth and eyes. Her hair was still long but it was streaked with grey and white strands and hadn’t been combed in a while. Her fingernails were filthy and she smelt unwashed.
    ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about Sunlight, and where he might have gone. This is Daniel Cohen. He’s a private detective. He’s going to help me.’
    ‘Why would he help you ?’ grated Star, the emphasis on ‘you’ meaning ‘such a valueless thing as you’.
    ‘Because he loves me,’ I told her. That set her back on her metaphorical heels and I hurried along before she could recover and start telling Daniel why he really couldn’t love someone like me.
    ‘When did he leave, Star?’
    ‘Time,’ she said, making a broad gesture, ‘is immaterial.’
    ‘No it isn’t, Jacqui,’ put in Therese Webb. ‘You can manage it. You must have some method of telling what day it is, or what phase of the moon it is,’ she added. ‘You were always so interested in the moon.’
    ‘Third day past full.’ Star knew her phases all right. I could check with Meroe.
    ‘Where is the moon now?’ asked Daniel gently.
    ‘Two days past full,’ Star answered.
    ‘He’s been gone nearly a month and you only started looking for him now?’
    I observed: ‘But you were so close!’
    ‘Once,’ she said gloomily. ‘Once we were as close as the fruit and its stone. But since I went to the crone he has been restless. He does not desire female flesh beyond its climacteric. He yearns after young women. There are none in the collective who would accept him.’
    There couldn’t have been many women in the collective under fifty, anyway. Not many young women wanted to abandon Australian Idol and Long Island Iced Teas and hot pink hi-top sneakers in favour of dead vegetable stew, undiluted weather and mud. If you couldn’t take a mobile phone and an iPod to it, I’m sure that Kylie and Goss wouldn’t go. I swallowed. The thought of my own biological parent searching the city for young women was strangely unappetising. On the other hand his chances of success had to be very limited. The last time I had seen Sunlight he was growing bald, growing grey, a bit stooped, with two missing teeth. Not attractive at all.
    ‘So you believe that he came to the city to seek for … er …’ Daniel searched for a word.
    ‘Yes, young man, I believe that “er” is what he was after,’ said Star, giving Daniel her full attention for the first time. ‘So you are Corinna’s lover?’
    ‘I have that honour,’ said Daniel.
    ‘And I suppose that you too are a carrion eater, a drinker of corpse broth, inflated with yeast and poisoned with alcohol, salt and sugar?’ she asked in a rising tone.
    ‘All of those things,’ said Daniel equably. ‘When did you begin to think that something was wrong about your husband’s absence?’
    ‘It was all wrong,’ she snapped. ‘He said he would be away for a week. I gave him his week. I gave him more, in case he had found some young flesh who could tolerate him once his money ran out. But after three weeks, I knew something was wrong. He had not called, he had not written.’
    ‘So, no contact at all?’ Daniel made a note.
    ‘Someone called,’ admitted Star. ‘After three weeks. A man. Said that Sunlight wanted to tell me that he could not come back.’
    ‘And that was all?’
    ‘That was all. Not his own voice, a stranger, calling to say that Sunlight could not come back. No reason. No explanation. Just that he could not come back. So I packed my things and I came here. To find you, Corinna. To make you find your father.’
    ‘Do you remember anything about the call?