Rook & Tooth and Claw Read Online Free PDF Page B

I always knew there was. You got the aura.”
    “The aura? What’s that?”
    Mrs Vaizey made a circular motion with her hands. “It’s a kind of a
glow
that some people have around them. Sometimes a happy person can shine like a light. But most people have more like a
mottled
effect, different colours for different parts of their psyche, if you get my meaning.”
    “So what colour is mine?” asked Jim. He poured her another drink.
    “Yours is different. Yours scarcely glows at all. Yours is more like a shadow than a shine.”
    “What does that mean? That I’m depressed?”
    Mrs Vaizey shook her head. “Nothing like that. It means that you’re in touch with the world beyond. There’s a part of you that can see
through
this everyday world right into the next, same as looking through a store window on a sunny day. You have to cup your hands around your eyes, and press your face close, but you can always see
something
.”
    Jim gave an amused grunt, but Mrs Vaizey took hold of his hand between her claw-like fingers with all her knobbly silver rings and clutched it tight. “What do you think you saw today, Jim? You saw a man that nobody else could see. Now, was that man alive, do you suppose, or could that man have been something else?”
    “I don’t know what you mean by ‘something else’. What are you talking about, a ghost?”
    “Maybe a ghost. Who knows? It isn’t just the spirits ofdead people who wander through the world. Sometimes the living can do it, too.”
    “What, like an out-of-body experience?”
    “That’s one of the ways,” said Mrs Vaizey, looking down at the palm of his hand. Her sharp orange-lacquered nail probed his heartline, his headline and his lifeline.
    “You’re very bright,” she told him. “The trouble is, you’re stubborn, too. You don’t like taking advice from other people. You always think that you have a better way of doing things. On the other hand, you have moments of great self-doubt, when you feel that you might have taken the wrong fork in the forest. At times like these you feel that the trees are closing in on you, and that you can hear strange growlings in the undergrowth.”
    She looked up, and knocked back her second glass of bourbon. “Metaphor-orically speaking, of course.”
    Jim watched her, the way her silver hoop earrings dangled in the sunlight. He should have been sceptical but somehow he wasn’t. After today’s murder, he was prepared to consider almost any explanation for what had happened. If God could allow a young man like Elvin to die; then obviously they were living in a universe in which nothing was logical, and nothing was fair.
    “You’re very emotional, and capable of very great love,” Mrs Vaizey continued. “You had a love once who let you down, and it took you a long time to get over it. But another love will appear when you’re least expecting it – quite soon, by the looks of it – and this relationship will endure, on and off, for the rest of your life.”
    “On and off? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
    “Everybody has quarrels, Jim, especially people who really love each other.”
    “Well, I guess.”
    Mrs Vaizey probed his lifeline. He wished she wouldn’tdig her nail in quite so deeply. But then she looked up at him again and there was the most extraordinary expression on her face. She was staring at him as if she couldn’t believe that he was real. She probed it some more, peering at it intently; and then she said, “I don’t understand this at all.”
    “What’s the matter?” he asked her.
    “It’s very strange. Normally, if somebody’s lifeline is broken, you can predict when they’re going to die. You know, almost to the
year
.”
    “And, what? Is my lifeline broken?”
    Mrs Vaizey nodded. “You see here … way down at the bottom. It breaks up and goes every which way.”
    “So what does that mean? You’re not telling me that I’m not going to die young, are you? My dad and my mom are