The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

wondered. And what is it about that book? You know every story ever
told, and every storyteller who ever gibbered out some nonsensical piece of
indulgent fluff while the real world flitted by and beyond his reach. Don’t
tell me there’s a new player in town.
    She felt a chill pass
through her like she was a kite caught high in the gusts of March, and she
started to shiver.
    It cannot be that, can
it? Not now. Not after so long.
    Serena reached for a
delicately crafted teacup, the blend of tea smelling faintly of rose hips and
peppermint, but the cup knocked over, tea spilling down on the floor, the small
handle snapping off. She only stared at the dripping puddle of off-green water,
the broken pieces of the teacup, and wondered what it could mean. Wondered what
to make of spilled tea, broken china, Ellen Monroe, and a book called The
Sanity’s Edge Saloon ; a book that Nicholas Dabble had never heard of
before, and of which he confessed to know nothing about—a fact alone that was
impossible.
    Outside, clouds shuttled
across the sun, turning the street dark, and Serena wondered for the first time
that morning what had become of the limping man who stalked Ellen Monroe, the
man carrying a bent lightning rod for a staff.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
A FLY IN THE
OINTMENT
     
     
    He had escaped.
    No easy feat, defying the
universe. To turn into the whirlwind of God and shake your privates in His
direction was an affront that demanded the utmost of certainty, an absolute conviction
of one’s place in the cosmos.
    And lightning reflexes
lest the offender lose said privates as punishment for insurrection and poor
manners.
    But that kind of
reprobation really wasn’t part of His milieu anymore. No more floods or columns
of fire or Angels of Death visiting the firstborn of every household not marked
by the blood of the lamb. No, not His style at all.
    But while spared his
life, such as it was, he lamented the loss of those simpler times when everyone
had their place: rules to follow, rituals to observe. Men. Gods. Or even one
such as himself.
    And simply because he
escaped with his balls intact—he suspected they still worked though there was
no proof of that yet—it did not mean he escaped unscathed. The damp chill of morning
made his hands ache, the joints cemented together with ground slivers of glass.
And his legs wept where the bones had been splintered and poorly healed like
lovers enduring the heartache of prolonged separation. It was dull and
constant, and he wasn’t sure if it would ever go away.
    It served as a reminder to
that old axiom: bliss was fleeting, pain eternal.
    But he was alive. Others
faired less well, the Wasteland burying their bones and scattering their
tortured souls upon the eternal wind. They were gone from the world, gone from
the mind, gone from reality on all of its separate planes in all the
directions. And he seemed to be following in their footsteps. Limping like a
cripple, his staff as useless as an umbrella in the desert, but he was going
the way of the forgotten just the same, unable even to stop himself.
    He still clutched the
paper with its delicate, purposeful folds and its promises of flight. Hope came
in strange places, portents no longer carried by doves or witnessed in
rainbows, but folded into paper airplanes made from old museum flyers. What a
strange world this was; nothing at all like before.
    Or maybe you’re just
crazy, eh, old man? Can’t rule out that possibility, can we? No, not when it’s
the most obvious answer, the most reasonable, the most sane. Occam’s razor,
right?
    There was that voice
again, that persistent whisper in his head, soft-spoken counsel, deceptively
simple and pure and very possibly true.
    Not for the first time,
he found himself on the verge of tears. And he hated it. He hated the
salt that begged to spill from his eyes. He hated the tight knot in his throat
that choked this world’s stale air. He hated himself for letting this happen,
and he