Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga Read Online Free PDF

meticulous, but efficient,
exercise.
    "I just think there are more pressing
problems these days than a lot of broke-down warblers nobody
listened to even before we wiped out their particular kind
of—er—act," she said (in deference to the sensibilities of the
others). "We have the people pretty well reconditioned now.
Nobody's going to listen to a few jerks who haven't been heard from
in years and can't even reenter the country legally." She blew a
disdainful smoke ring from her Brimstone Light cigarette.
    "She does have a point, Chair," the
Expediency Devil agreed. "And we have other agendas. Mustn't let
this little prejudice of yours stand in the way of—"
    "Don't you be telling me my job, XP," the
Chairdevil snarled. "Fortunately, I have learned never to rely on
DD and have arranged a reception committee at the border."
    "Who's handling it?" XP asked.
    "Minions who cannot be deterred by the
spells in the cursed instrument carried by Mr. Willie MacKai."
    "Minions have failed before."
    "Ah, but these minions are cottonmouth water
moccasins and a flash flood as well as some very nasty wetback
muggers. I don't think a banjo, even a magic one, is going to be
much protection."
     
    * * *
     
    The water moccasin nest lay in wait, just
under the surface of the water. These cottonmouths were no smarter
than average, but they had supernatural instructions to lay in wait
and kill the humans who would enter their domain. To the west, red
lightning, heat lightning usually, flashed in the night, making
Julianne Martin nervous as she remembered the night in Maryland at
the folk festival when lightning had burned away her hearing. Now
she heard better than any of them, since the Wizard Michael Scott
had magically mended her ears. During her deafness she had learned
to listen with her inner ears as well as her external ones. Right
now she heard trouble, and sure enough, as Willie rose and headed
to the banks of the river, starting to wade across, the red
lightning, usually the sign of continued drought and even a
harbinger of prairie fires, turned white, to sheet lightning, and
storm clouds clumped like a pack of mad dogs, clashing in the skies
of the west, blotting out the moon and stars. Thunder crashed and
the lightning strobed again and the banjo broke into a
Mexican-sounding tune.
    "What's that one, Willie?" Julianne asked,
her voice coming out thin and nervous. The rocks, the water, the
molecules of sand, all seemed alive with warning. The world beyond
the physical one was fairly howling with agitation, and Juli's
inner ears, the ones that heard that kind of thing, were ringing
with alarm bells and sirens. So when Lazarus started the tune, the
first one in a while, she paid close attention.
    Willie paused in the act of starting
to wade, whistled to himself for a moment, and said, " 'La
Llorona.' I used to sing it. There's different stories about it.
Some say she was one of Pancho Villa's wives, some say she was
widowed in the revolution, others say she was a grandee's daughter,
but most agree that for some reason or other she drowned her own
child, and for that reason she haunts the riverbanks—although
naturally there's a lot of disagreement about which riverbanks—sobbing and moaning
and—"
    The banjo thumped itself with a dramatic
chord and quieted to a soft trickle. Above its notes Juli clearly
heard the sound, a wailing and moaning. The others heard it too.
They were all staring over her shoulder. She turned to see a
black-clad woman wringing her hands and wafting straight at her.
Juli jumped aside or the ghost would have gone straight through
her.
    "Is that her?" Ellie whispered.
    "I'd say so, yeah," Brose whispered back.
"Ain't shy, is she?" He rolled his eyes and shook his head. "I got
a feelin' about this."
    The ghost glided up to a fascinated Willie,
who mumbled, "Excuse me, ma'am," as if he was about to tip his
Stetson, which he wasn't wearing. He took a step back toward the
river, but she stopped him when she