Garrett Investigates Read Online Free PDF Page A

gravy, licked the windows of the carriage and trailed across the street in tendrils that seemed firm enough to touch. Cuan balanced awkwardly on the bench seat beside Garrett, trying not to stare as the drape of her trousers resealed the outline of her knee. He hunched over the amulet cupped in his palms, watching a needle of light flicker in the jewel at its center. A real cat’s-eye would have maintained its orientation, but this one spun lazily as the needle of a demagnetized compass. When Cuan sighed, his breath blew across it, and—impossible as that was—seemed to set it spinning the harder.
    “He won’t appear until sunset,” Garrett said.
    She had bent her head and was picking something from her coat sleeve; the wiry russet hairs of a dog, if he didn’t miss his guess. “Terrier?”
    She smiled obliquely and flicked the fur out the window. “You have a good eye.”
    “I like dogs. You keep it in your rooms?”
    “You may as well take some rest.” She looked away and drew her legs up onto the cushion, wedging herself into the corner opposite. When Cuan looked up in surprise, she reached for the lap robe that hung beside the door.
    She must have read his face accurately, or perhaps it was merely the wisdom of long experience with slightly raw recruits that led her to continue, “We have to be out amidst the city, it’s true. But nothing will happen until nightfall, and one of the most vital skills of a Crown Investigator is sleeping in carriages, Detective Sergeant. By all means, take the bench opposite.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “I think.” He held onto the amulet while he swung across the cabin of the carriage. There was another robe; he reached for it and snuggled himself into the corner opposite. Garrett seemed to drop off as soon as she shut her eyes, her breath leveling out and her head rolling softly on the long neck. Cuan did not find sleep so easy, with broad daylight outside the windows and the close, unchaperoned proximity of a woman, but he let his head slide to the side anyway, cupping the amulet where he could watch it without turning. If it flickered with anything resembling purpose, he would see.
    He didn’t expect to doze, but the late night and his gritty-eyed lack of sleep quickly won the day. When he awoke, it was to Garrett’s touch on the back of his wrist.
    “Sunset,” she said. He could see the slanted orange light—still fog-muffled—for himself.
    He sat up, rubbing his eyes as much to obscure the sleep-mussed visage across the dim carriage as to clear the sleep away. “You told me so.” He’d been dreaming, pentagrams and frankincense, and it almost seemed the cloying scent of resin still hung all around them. The amulet must have slipped from his hand in his sleep, because Garrett held it now, balanced lightly on her palm. “Any movement yet?”
    She bent over it briefly and shook her head. “It’s still slow spins.”
    As if her frown had conjured it, a whipsnake tendril of dream-memory skimmed his awareness. Conjured . Cuan shuddered. “Do devils just summon themselves?”
    A slow blink, as Garrett raised her gaze from the amulet cupped in her palms. “A conjured spirit,” she said. “Possible, though why you’d go to all that trouble just to murder a soiled dove or three—” She shook her head.
    “Well, fiddlesticks,” he said. “I was hoping against hope that I might have developed a facility for clairvoyant dreams.”
    “Maybe we should bring in a Spiritualist,” she offered. When he winced, she patted his knee and continued, “Whether or not your dreams are prophetic, it doesn’t mean you’re incorrect. Or…”
    She paused, and for a moment he imagined he saw her counting on her fingers. “What does now have in common with forty years ago?”
    “Well, I wasn’t here then,” Cuan said, to see her smile. “Same Iron Queen,” he said, opening his hands helplessly. “Though only just barely a Queen on that end. Long may she reign.”
    He