King of Swords (The Starfolk) Read Online Free PDF Page B

you?”
    “No, the stares do.”
    “Oh, Rigel! People just think you’re an albino.”
    “Albinos have red eyes.”
    “But how many people know that? Very pale gray eyes aren’t that rare. Keep a shirt on and you’re a high-octane stud with the cutest buns this side of the Mississippi. If I were in the mood for cradle robbing I’d have had your diapers off long ago.”
    “
Ahem!
You did, last night.”
    “And you went to sleep on me. How do you think that makes a girl feel?” She smiled at him, and then after a couplemoments of silence, she said, “Are you sure you’re okay with going back to Vancouver?”
    “Vancouver is great.” Joey Lotbiniere would lend him a guitar, and he earned as much busking in Granville Island Market as he ever did anywhere. He would go back to public lamentation for lost loves he had never known and sins he had never been able to afford.
    The Walmart parking lot was surprisingly crowded for this early in the morning. Mira parked as close to the door as she could and sprinted across the tarmac. He followed more slowly out of respect for his still-tender wounds. He needed new boots, jeans, and if the money would stretch, a spare shirt. He preferred to buy at thrift shops when he could, but a guy over 195 centimeters and under seventy kilos had trouble finding new clothes that fit, let alone castoffs. He joined Mira inside the mercury-lit blimp hangar.
    “I need another suitcase,” she said. “See you back here in fifteen?”
    He said fine and strode off in the direction of Men’s Footwear, weaving in and out of clusters of strollers, chattering women, bawling toddlers, and elders on walkers. The store wasn’t crowded, but it still held more people than he’d seen in one place in the last three weeks. A small lady asked him if he could lift down one of
those
for her, and he happily obliged. That happened at least once every time he entered a big-box store like this one.
    Coffeemakers: hundreds of coffeemakers! Scores of different sizes and brands. Who needed all of them? Who bought them? Did they need one in every room? Did coffeemakers go out of style after a month or so? Or just fall apart?
    He was cruising along a Kitchenware canyon between columns of plastic containers towering up on his right and cliffsof stratified china and glassware on his left when he felt a sudden tingle from his bracelet. He spun around but saw nothing untoward behind him. Imagination!
With paranoia you are never alone…
He decided to go back, though, moving cautiously. The bracelet kept tingling without getting stronger or weaker. Should he head for Gardening, say, and arm himself with a pitchfork or whatever else looked lethal? Or should he just trust the bracelet, which seemed to have an appropriate response for every possible danger? Or should he just shift his butt the hell out of the store and wait for Mira at the Winnebago?
    He reached a cross-aisle. Looking both ways like a child crossing the road, he made eye contact with a burly, unshaven, dirty-looking man about five meters away. The man snarled at him, ripped open the package he was holding, and pulled out a carving knife. He bawled out an obscenity and charged.
    Nobody can undo store packaging with their bare hands
, Rigel thought inanely. He took to his heels and ran straight ahead, ignoring stabs of pain from his scabs. Halfway up that aisle a pregnant woman screamed at him and released the stroller she was pushing so she could grab a toaster off the shelf beside her and throw it at his face.
    He batted it aside with his iron glove and kept right on moving. Still screaming, she hurled a stainless steel coffeepot and he treated that the same way. He did register the fact that he had not been wearing a gauntlet a few seconds ago, but he was in too much of a hurry to consider the ramifications; he just had time for the fleeting thought that it was the same glove that had formed around his fist that time in Vancouver. As he jostled past the