The Mister Trophy Read Online Free PDF

Markhat?”
    I was tired and wet and filthy. I’d spent the night in a sewer. Thirsty half-dead were sleeping with my picture under their pillows.
    “My cousins?” I asked. “Now why would you say a thing like that?”
    Mister Chin growled.
    And that was that. No long hike downtown, no afternoon on the Square answering the same questions over and over in a ten-by-ten room decorated in Stifling Heat and Rank Body Odor. I scribbled my initials at the bottom of an incident report and waved the Watch goodbye.
    Mama Hog was inside sweeping. Mister Chin was scooping out debris. Mister Jones was hammering together a new door out of two of Mama Hog’s old tables.
    Me? I had plans to make, plots to hatch, baths to take—so naturally, I stripped, rolled up in an old green Army blanket and slept like the dead I was so very close to joining.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    I was dreaming. A tall, green-eyed blonde was stroking my hand and whispering my name. She had perfect elfin features and a mischievous wind threatened to remove her last few gauzy veils. I leaned a little closer, heard a noise, woke up—and was face-to-face with Mama Hog. I think I may have screamed.
    Mama Hog was holding my left hand. And mumbling something under her breath. And she wasn’t a bit like the tall, elfin blonde in my dream.
    I sat up. She hung on tight to my wrist and spat out a string of nonsense words.
    “What the—”
    “Shut up, boy,” she hissed. “You mess with the half-dead, you need this.”
    I was wearing a bracelet or a wristlet or whatever you call a finger-width ring of tarnished brass chain a sham-artist soothsayer wraps around your wrist.
    I snarled something and grabbed the thing with my right hand. “I’m a tolerant man, Mama, but I don’t appreciate people sneaking around and messing with me in my sleep,” I said. “I’m taking this thing off, and you can take it with you when you leave, which better be soon.”
    But I wasn’t taking it off. It didn’t have a clasp or a joint or any way I could see to open it or loosen it.
    “Mama—” But she was gone. I got up and stepped on a chunk of my broken desk and cussed some more and was still cussing when Mister Smith poked his head through my door.
    “A child brings a message,” he said. A grime-streaked street urchin darted past the Troll and marched right up to me, a roll of paper gripped tight in his grimy little fist.
    No fear in that kid’s eyes, not even for Trolls. I guess the street takes that early, these days.
    “You Markhat?”
    “I am.”
    He handed me the paper. “They said you’d feed me.”
    “I can’t,” I said. “Not today. But go next door—the door with the cards on it. Ask for Mama Hog. Tell her Markhat sent you. She’ll feed you till you bust.”
    He went. I snickered and unrolled the paper. There was a map of the streets down by the river. An arrow pointed to the rear of a warehouse, the fifth one south of the big barge-docks. A hand-drawn clock lay at the arrow’s tail; the hands were both straight up. One stick figure stood at the door; three other, much larger stick figures stayed back in the street.
    “What does it say?” asked Mister Smith.
    “We meet them behind a certain warehouse, down by the river,” I said. “At midnight. Vampire lunchtime. I go in alone.”
    Trolls grumbled.
    “Mister Chin feels we should go now,” said Mister Smith. “Mister Jones is undecided.”
    I yanked a clean shirt out of the pile in the floor. “They won’t have your cousin’s remains at the warehouse, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said. “Going early would just hack them off. They’ll be watching. You can bet on that.”
    “They are without honor,” said Mister Smith.
    “They are indeed,” I said. “And they’ll expect us to be the same.”
    “So we wait, and we go, and we trust they will keep their bargain?”
    “We do,” I said. “It’s that, or just declare war. And they’ll never hand it over if we start shoving.