Jack, the giant-killer Read Online Free PDF Page A

windows and the glimpses of all those other lives through them.
    She paused in front of the deserted house. As she looked at its dark bulk, the flood of last night’s images that had been troubling her washed away. God, she could be so stupid sometimes. Bad enough she’d hacked off all of her hair and then went out and got drunker than she’d been since she and Kate had celebrated their first pay cheques. Or that she’d let Will get her so worked up about what she did with her life. But then she’d had to manufacture this whole…
    weirdness involving men staring at her from empty houses, biker gangs and little men…
    She pulled the cap from her pocket and investigated it, more by feel than by sight. But there was still this cap, she thought. She had to talk to Kate about it. Right. And she had to get on with her life. First thing tomorrow she’d go to the hairdresser’s and have something done about this mess she’d made of her hair. When people asked her why she was wearing it short now, she’d just tell them it was because she wanted it this way. It had been time for a change, that was all. Time to find some… meaning.
    That brought a frown. She brushed the short stubble with her fingers. She wished Will had kept his opinions to himself.
    Still fingering the cap, she stretched it between her hands, wondering if it would fit. It would hide the ruin of her hair. She put it on, then blinked. A quick sensation of vertigo almost made her lose her balance. When she recovered, the night had changed on her again.
    The otherworldly feeling was back. The silence. The cat-soft sense of something waiting. She turned to look at the empty house and saw him again, the watcher, standing at his window, studying the night, looking at her, beyond her. She turned to look out at the park where he was looking.
    It had either grown lighter, or her night vision was sharper tonight. She could see straight into the heavy shadows under the trees by the river, see the splayed branches, each leaf and each bough, and there… She sucked in a quick breath. Sitting silent on his Harley was one of last night’s riders—a black figure on his black and chrome machine, a shadow watching her as well.
    There was a connection between the riders and the man in the house. She knew that now. She didn’t quite dare approach the rider—last night’s wild plunge from her hiding place had been an act of bravado that she wasn’t prepared to repeat sober—but the watcher in the house might not be beyond her. She could call to him, talk to him through the windows. She started to push her way through the low cedar hedge.
    “Hssst!”
    She turned quickly, looking left and right. Nothing. A pinprick of fear snuck up her spine. Before she could move again, a low voice sounded almost in her ear.
    “Don’t be so quick to visit the Gruagagh of Kinrowan— there’s some say he owes as much loyalty to the Unseelie Court as he does to his own Laird.”
    This time she looked up. There was a small man perched in the branches of an oak tree that grew on the border of the park and the back yard of the watcher’s house. She could see him very clearly, his blue jacket and the red cap on his head like the one she was wearing. He had a grim sort of face, a craggy expanse between his beard and cap, nose like a hawk, quick feral eyes.
    “Who…?” she began, but her throat was too dry and the word came out as a croak.
    “Dunrobin Finn’s a name I’ll answer to. Here. Take my hand.” He reached down a gnarled hand, veins pronounced, the knuckles knobbly.
    Jacky hesitated.
    “Quick now,” Finn said. “Or do you want to be the Big Man’s supper?” He pointed in the direction of the rider as he spoke.
    “Do…do you mean the biker?” Jacky managed.
    Finn laughed mirthlessly. Before Jacky knew what he was up to, he was down on the ground beside her. He hoisted her up under one arm and scrambled back up the tree. She was shocked at his speed and his strength,