Picking the Ballad's Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

Chairdevil said.
    "We know, we know," the other devils
said. "They enjoy jail."
    "But, boss, I don't see how else we're
going to control them," the Superstition Devil said, whining a
little. "That blasted banjo defeats all of our schemes and I just
got a report that my ghoul minion has had to leave one library of
that—well, you know, that material we don't talk about—untouched
because one of the dead actually rose up to protect it. I don't
like it when dead people I don't control start
interfering."
    "It's that banjo again, I'll bet you
anything," the Expediency Devil said. "Old Wizard Hawthorne
reaching out from the grave to foil us again with that spell on
that blasted instrument. We have to destroy it and all of those
songs but we're spreading ourselves pretty thin as it is. There's
still work to be done in the United States, and Canada is
presenting a real problem. The bureaucracy and big business aren't
as firmly entrenched there and so the minions aren't as helpful.
More amateur singing goes on up there too, so the resistance to us
is stronger."
    "And it's not," said the Doom and
Destruction Devil, sometimes called D&D but more familiarly
known as Threedee, "as if we didn't have more important matters to
attend to. I'm at my wit's end trying to keep peace from breaking
out and all you people can do is worry about these silly
songs."
    "What do you think was
responsible for the first peace threats?" the Chairdevil snapped.
"But I see your point. Which brings me to mine. Basically, DD,
since you volunteered, I think we'll leave the British end of the
operation up to you. Contain these people and destroy them—or at
least destroy that thing they've been using against us. We've already used
the minions to take out the libraries and collections and the major
living receptacles of the material and it made so little difference
to the living it didn't even create a stir. But the dead may cause
you some problems."
    "Maybe," she said. "But then, maybe I
can talk to the lab and promote better dying through chemistry too.
Trust me, boss," she said with a wolfish grin and another large
bubble that grew and grew and grew until it obscured her whole
form, which seemed to shrink as the bubble grew larger until, when
the bubble popped, DD was no longer behind it.
    Back in the sleeping
compartment, Torchy Burns stretched. Oh, well, maybe she'd have to
forgo most of the fun and wrap this up more quickly than she'd
planned. That would require minions. She sent out feelers into the
ether and way up at Abbotsford Walter Scott's ghost felt her
sending. She'd overdone it a little, however. It just so happened
she had the most appropriate people nearby. Use show business to fight show
business, she chuckled to herself, and wrapped her arms around
Willie MacKai, running the open neck of a flask under his nose.
"Wake up, Willie, luv. Time for your medicine," she said. The
banjo, abandoned in a corner, twanged "Whiskey in the
Jar."
     
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    The train made a short sighing stop
and hooked on to three private cars gaudily decorated like Gypsy
wagons. One held the machinery of carousels and tilt-a-whirls, one
held tents and caravans, and from one boxcar came the roars of big
cats and the trumpeting of elephants. A sign on the side of the car
proclaimed it Circus Rom.
    In Carlisle the train stopped again.
Emerging from the WC, in the back of the car, Juli looked out the
window and saw uniformed policemen lurking near every car, trying
hard to look nonchalant. Hurrying back to her own compartment, she
pointed out the trap to the others. Anna Mae swore roundly and
pounded on the wall separating their compartment from the one
containing Willie and Torchy.
    She was too slow. Willie and Torchy
flashed by the compartment door, heading toward the back of the
train. The banjo alone could have been arrested for disturbing the
peace, so loudly did it continue to twang "Whiskey in the
Jar."
    "Where's he goin' now?" Gussie
mumbled, waking from a