Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) Read Online Free PDF Page A

stupid bullshit.”
    Jonathan snorted. He’d been an art student, and had a PhD in critical theory to show for it, which he said was a great qualification to run a café. Marzi had been an art student once upon a time, too, until she dropped out to focus on making comics instead. “So what we’ll do is, we’ll call the cops,” he said. “We’ll tell them we heard a commotion, and when we came out, we found all this stuff.”
    “Declining to mention our killer shadow hypothesis.”
    Jonathan shrugged. “That would be my advice. There are heaps of ID here. If the people did just drop this stuff, the cops will find them, and cite them for littering or something, and all will be well. If something else happened.... We learned a few years back there are some things cops aren’t capable of dealing with.”
    She groaned. “But I don’t want to deal with it either, Jonathan. This whole normalcy thing – I like it.”
    “Maybe it’s nothing we’ll have to deal with. Maybe it’s just... I don’t know. Sometimes, every once in a while, a shark eats a surfer. Maybe, if something did this... maybe it’s just something like a shark. Just passing through.” He looked around. “Though staying in shark-infested waters doesn’t sound like a great idea. Maybe let’s pick this stuff up and go inside, huh?”
    “If it’s a crime scene we shouldn’t disturb it,” she said.
    “I’m pretty sure killer shadows don’t leave fingerprints, and if we leave it all here unattended, somebody will wander by and take the credit cards... but okay. Let’s at least go up on the porch, okay? We can keep an eye on the stuff from there.”
    She nodded, and they withdrew to the steps, the ones leading up to their huge wraparound porch covered in tables and benches, one of the café’s great attractions when the weather was nice, which it was more often than not here on the coast of central California. Jonathan went upstairs to get his phone, then came back down and called the cops.
    Marzi watched the sky, looking for shadows cast by nothing at all.

Rondeau and Pelham in (and Under) Vegas
    Hamil had been Marla’s consigliere when she was chief sorcerer of Felport, and though their relationship had soured when he voted with the rest of the council to send her into exile, Rondeau still considered the man a friend. He’d bought Rondeau’s nightclub, admittedly a site with interesting magical properties, for stupid amounts of money, laying the groundwork for Rondeau’s subsequent life of leisure.
    Well, mostly leisure. “I don’t know,” Rondeau said. “You’re a master of sympathetic magic. Can’t you just, like, create a sympathetic magical link between someplace really warm and Las Vegas, and kind of balance things out?”
    “Possibly, possibly.” Hamil’s deep, rich voice was uncharacteristically distracted. “But I’d need to go to Vegas, and things are frantic here right now. Don’t tell Marla I said so, but the city’s gone a bit to hell since she left – just now we’re dealing with a rash of inexplicable cases of spontaneous...” The rest of the sentence was indistinct, as if he’d turned his head away from the phone, and Rondeau heard him shouting orders at someone.
    “Did you say spontaneous combustion?” Rondeau said. “We could use some of that around here.”
    “Hmm?” Hamil said. “No, no – spontaneous decapitation . Four cases so far, none of our people, only the ordinaries. Very mysterious, and I’m tracing the sympathetic linkages and – I’m sorry, I can’t be of any help today, Rondeau. Under other circumstances I might, but it’s impossible now.”
    “But–”
    “May I offer a bit of advice?” Hamil said. “If you were in Felport during the days of Marla Mason’s reign, and a strange witch arrived and began causing problems, would you call up someone thousands of miles away for help?”
    “Of course not,” Rondeau said. “Marla was the chief sorcerer, so she’d take care –