Something More Than Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

rubbernecked drivers at bay. One by one the emergency vehicles quenched their flashers and receded into the slushy night. The crowd dissipated.
    Meanwhile, flametop still had the bit in her teeth. “I can’t be dead,” she mumbled.
    I sighed. I knew she was trouble the minute I saw her.
    “You’re peddling your fish in the wrong market, lady.”
    Her eyebrows came together, hunched low over eyes the color of polished amber. “What does that even mean?”
    “It means you have a lot to learn and the sooner the better.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “C’mon. I know a place. I’ll buy you a cup of joe and read you the headlines.”
    “What about Martin? I can’t leave him like this.”
    The hard boy had gone back to cradling his head on his hands. He was alone. Maybe the bulls had given him a card, a referral for a grief counselor, before hitting the road. But they had breezed and he hadn’t. The clouds of his breath formed a pale pall around his head. He whimpered like a motherless puppy.
    But my ward wasn’t going to budge until he scrammed.
    I sighed. “Does he have somewhere to go?”
    “We’re staying at a hotel.” She shook her head. For a second there, I thought she was going to turn on the waterworks. Big brother squeaked like a schoolgirl; I wondered how it sounded when flametop cried. But she drew a breath and said, “He has a room there.”
    “Where?” I asked. She gave me the name of the joint. I didn’t know it.
    “Can we send him there? Can you? Can you”—she gestured vaguely, hopelessly—“zap him there?”
    “‘Zap’ him?”
    Her voice was as weary as I felt. “I dunno. Use your angel mojo.”
    I cracked my knuckles, straightened my fedora. “Let me show you how it’s done, doll.”
    And so I strode over to big brother and said, “Hey, pal, why the long face?” And a few minutes later I’d waved down a taxi, poured him into it, and bought his fare. I stiffed the driver on the tip, but one could argue that wasn’t the worst thing I’d done all evening. I returned to her after ditching the lush.
    She wasn’t impressed. “I could have done that.”
    “Well, strictly speaking, no you couldn’t. Not without popping a vein in his noggin. It’ll take some practice.”
    “All you did was put him in a taxi.”
    “It worked, didn’t it?”
    “It doesn’t seem very … angelic.”
    “I’ve been down here a while, so sue me. Let’s call it going native and move on.”
    The traffic had returned to normal. The taxi merged into the flow, and soon it was just another trio of taillights in the windy night. The ocean gave the floodwalls hell.
    Flametop said, “He shouldn’t be alone.”
    “Lady, you are one cuckoo twist if you think we’re following him. He’ll be fine. We got our own problems, me and you.”
    For a second there I thought she’d let me off the hook. Thought she’d choose to tough it out on her own. Damn near stubborn enough, this frail. But I should’ve known not to get my hopes up.
    “Our mother died,” she said, almost to herself, though I knew it was a question. “We had a funeral…”
    “Sorry, kid. There ain’t no Santa Claus and there ain’t no afterlife. Dead is dead, not a family reunion.”
    “But … You just said I’m dead, too.”
    “I also said you’d won the lottery. You’re one in a trillion. Don’t let it go to your head.”
    “I don’t understand anything,” she said in that spun-sugar tremor. Something about the way she said it gave me a glimpse of the kid who wore footie pajamas and a ballet tutu, the frightened little girl before she became the dish who wore cashmere and strode the world with red-carpet dignity. Never let it be said Bayliss turns a cold hard heart to a damsel in distress.
    “Look. I know it’s all cockamamie right now. But you’ll get the gist of things. Promise. Now follow me.” I offered my elbow but she gave it a dead pan. So with a sigh I led her back into the rabbit warren of the