The Darkening Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

almost dainty two-fingered grip. He held the little octagonal pot a full two feet above the cup, pouring without spilling a drop while pivoting 180 degrees. The hairy giant presented this offering with a low bow and one of the characteristic flourishes that for him took the place of conversational pleasantries. While Dmitri understood Greek more or less fluently, he was laconic to an extreme, and when he did speak, it was in short bursts of his incomprehensible mountain tongue.
    Alex thanked him before sipping the chewy coffee.
    “Is Grandfather about?”
    The Albanian clasped his hands together and opened them like a book.
    “Ah, reading,” Alex said. “I’ll bring him while you finish setting the table.”
    He crossed the dark hall and entered his grandfather’s even darker library.
    The old man sat in his wheelchair by the cold fireplace, snoring gently, a large book on his lap and a candle smoldering on the side table. His tall and elegant frame was cloaked in his favorite scarlet and gold damask robe, cinched with a braided gold belt. His sleeping face was long and attenuated, crowned by a lengthy mane of hair still thick and lustrous though its color had bleached to a bone white. Long spider-like fingers steepled the tome he’d been reading, and narrow slippers of purple velvet protruded from under the robe’s hem. In sleep his face looked slack.
    He startled. Fierce intensity snapped back into his figure and piercing intelligence into his gaze.
    “Good morning, Alexandros,” he said in Greek. “Ready for another week at your new American school?”
    “Ready enough, Grandfather. Shall I push you to breakfast, or would you like to walk?”
    The old man caressed one of the wooden wheels.
    “I’m not feeling my strongest today.”
    “You haven’t been eating enough.” Alex began to maneuver the bulky chair. “You lost too much weight on the ship.”
    He half-remembered a time when the hair had been more gray than white, and Grandfather had stood on his own. A little stab of pain jabbed Alex in the temples. By the Father and the Son, he hated mornings.
    “My diet does not agree with me like it once did,” the old man said. “The wine no longer tastes of the fruit but only of dry dust and decayed earth. Enjoy the bright flavors of your youth, for eventually all things are wearisome. Would that the eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” A grin made his face look all the more cadaverous.
    With Constantine Palaogos’ cryptic allusions, partial comprehension was only to be expected. He wheeled Grandfather through the dining room, as the old man thought the kitchen too bright and fit only for servants. Once settled in his accustomed place, he glowered at the food, making no attempt to help himself.
    Alex sighed and sat, grabbing a few olives to munch on.
    Dmitri set Alex’s abandoned coffee before him and handed his employer a cup of dark liquid, saying only one word: “Basil.” Alex shared this middle name with his grandfather, and it was Dmitri’s private appellation for the old man. The big servant settled comically on the tiny stool he preferred, reminding Alex of a Russian dancing bear.
    They hadn’t spoken the previous evening.
    “Yesterday I made some American friends — from my school — but while we were out enjoying the day we stumbled on a tragic scene.”
    Constantine’s eyes glittered; the macabre was guaranteed to pique his interest.
    “Tragic? Tell me about that first, then I’ll want complete descriptions of each companion.”
    Grandfather preferred detailed reports, which he blamed on his years as a military officer. Alex dutifully summarized.
    “I saw no obvious motive for the killing, but the condition of the cadaver, the cruelty of the attack, the ritual arrangement of the corpse… I did wonder: could it have been one of them?”
    The old man’s narrow face brightened.
    “You were right to suspect more than the usual variety of meanness,” he