Downtime Read Online Free PDF

and taken rooms in our humble home.” An impish gleam in his eyes made Ezra laugh.
     
    “All right, then. I’ll give her his night’s lodging and hope it’s only the one night.”
     
    “Yes,” Derry said with a grimace. “I’d rather not tell her any more tales, if I can keep from it.”
     
    “We shall make sure of it,” Ezra said, and started downstairs ahead of us. I tried the hat on and unfortunately it fit. As for the gloves, no—I had my limits.
     
    Derry studied me with a fascination that didn’t mask the guilt in his face. “You won’t think the worst of us, will you, Mr. Nash? Truly, there was no harm meant. It’s something of a habit I’ve fallen into—”
     
    “Summoning demons?”
     
    Derry chuckled. “No, no. Visiting Ezra and Henry at the museum, ’round about closing. You see, it’s Ezra who catalogs the odder bits and pieces, and that book caught my eye. I’d asked him what it was, nothing more. There seemed no harm in asking and I could make neither head nor tail of it.” He sighed. “God forgive me, it’s my damned curiosity. I’ll rot in purgatory and it seems blessed unfair, when it’s the wicked things that are always the most interesting by half.”
     
    Derry was a guy I could like—the sort who would drink you under the table, then turn around and lend you cab fare home without ever asking for a penny back. “You couldn’t read Latin so Ezra decided to do a little showing off?”
     
    “It was Henry doing the showing off, and Ezra was fair set against it. But Henry couldn’t get the knack of it, you know, and—well, we were having a bit of a laugh over that and he took it poorly.” Derry’s expressive face screwed up in an even guiltier grimace. “So he egged Ezra on until Ezra had to prove he could do what Henry couldn’t. To be sure, we didn’t follow it to the letter. There were patterns to be drawn and the like. We just stood about while Ezra read aloud and….” His voice dropped. “There was a rush of heat like nothing I’d ever felt. The very air shimmered, as it will on a hot day, and there you were….” He stared at me and his face abruptly softened, gray eyes warm. “And here you are, God love you. Lost, hungry, and clapped out, to boot. We can talk it over while you’re having a bite to eat.”
     
    I didn’t want to admit I was feeling a little shaky, but apparently I didn’t have to. He took my elbow, no doubt to make sure I didn’t go tumbling down the stairs, and we went to the back of the house, into a bright kitchen. I was home again—not in New York, but back in Indiana, lying on the porch swing, reading comic books, and basking in the smells coming through the screen door. The black-haired woman at the stove might’ve been my mom, I mused for the brief moment her back was turned.
     
    And I’d thought I was homesick an hour ago.
     
    The woman expertly eased a fat, fragrant loaf of bread from the oven and set it on a small iron trivet on the stovetop. The table already creaked under platters of food, and Derry ushered me toward it. Ezra was out of his seat even as Kathleen turned to set the weight of a suspicious stare on me. Her eyes were gray like Derry’s, but where his were warm and friendly, hers were cool as a winter sky.
     
    Ezra clapped me on the shoulder, a supportive gesture, and I got the feeling that even with the extra cash, Kathleen was not too thrilled with my dropping in unexpectedly. “Kathleen, may I present Mr. Morgan Nash. Mr. Nash, Miss Kathleen Neilan.”
     
    I shoved the gloves into my pocket, dragged off the hat, and held out a hand. Her eyebrows lifted, but she accepted my hand briefly, then pulled away before I could get enough of a grip to shake. Not an appropriate greeting, I guessed. But I wasn’t up on nineteenth-century etiquette, so it would have to do.
     
    “Good to meet you, Miss Neilan.”
     
    Her gaze took me in from head to toe. “Leaving in the morning, are you?”
     
    “That’s