Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lifted a hand, and Mel headed over to her booth. “You need anything else?”
    “Not at all.” The redhead dabbed at her lips with a napkin. A plate of fluffy scrambled eggs and link sausages sweating grease sat nearly untouched on her plate, though she’d eaten about half the toast. “I am delighted with your service. You remind me very much of a woman I used to know. Have you ever been to Hawaii?”
    “Waiting tables doesn’t pay quite that well,” Mel said. “Besides, who needs Hawaii? I don’t like swimming, and when it comes to sand, there’s plenty of that right here in Arizona.”
    “Mmm. The woman you remind me of... I owe a lot to her. I owe my life to her, if I’m entirely honest.”
    “Honesty’s the best policy, so I’m told.”
    “I wouldn’t go quite that far—Mel, is it? Here. Take this. You can start saving up for a trip to the islands.” The redhead passed something to Mel, then rose and sashayed out of the diner like she was walking on a fashion-show runway someplace. Now she could get any man she set her sights on, Matt reckoned, even if she was pushing forty. Hell, age was no drawback in this case. You couldn’t sway like that without years of practice.
    “That’s a woman who could make you forget your vows,” Matt said. “I don’t believe I can even remember my wife’s name right now.”
    “You’re a sexist pig, Matt.” Mel didn’t put much acid into the comment, though. She was looking down into her hand. “She left me a hundred dollar tip on a twelve-dollar check.”
    Matt whistled. “That makes up a bit for how slow it’s been today, I reckon.”
    “There’s that. Something funny about her, though.”
    “Anybody who drops a hundred dollar bill on the table in a place like this is funny somehow .”
    Mel tucked the tip unselfconsciously into her bra and went to greet a handful of customers who rushed in all at once, and the next half hour was pretty busy, with Matt back behind the grill and Mel running around hard enough that he considered calling in one of the other girls to pick up the end of a shift.
    When a lull came, and Mel stepped into the back to take a slug from a bottle of water, she suddenly gasped and reached into her bra. “What the hell ?” she said. She held out a handful of wet, torn leaves. “The money’s gone, and there’s this mess instead!”
    Matt blinked. “That,” he said after a moment, “is just about the shittiest magic trick I ever saw in my life.”

The Limits of Omniscience
    Rondeau sat sipping espresso on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, even though caffeine always made him too jittery. Bradley was at the table, sticking sensibly with decaf, and Pelham sat on an armchair in the corner, fretting. He’d followed the redhead for a while the day before, but had lost track of her when she went into a shop and never came out, at least as far as he could determine. On several occasions Pelham opened his mouth, as if to say something, and then didn’t. Pelham had a way of radiating his anxiety but keeping other feelings to himself. Rondeau knew if whatever Pelham was mulling over mattered, he’d come out with it eventually, once he’d examined it from every direction first.
    “So do we light black candles and chant?” Rondeau said. “Or burn DVDs of your old movies?”
    B shook his head. “It shouldn’t come to that. Those kind of rituals are ways for mortals to get the attention of larger forces that aren’t usually aware of them on the individual level. Big B is already aware of me, the way you’re aware of your little toe, anyway, which is to say, you probably don’t think about it much unless you stub it on something.” He sighed, rolled up his right sleeve, and extended his hand over the table. Then he carefully tipped the cup of decaf coffee over, spilling a scalding stream onto the flesh of his forearm. B hissed at the pain, and the television clicked on: “Whoa, hey, self-mutilation is a really rare