The Nimble Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

lifetime.
    Behind the remembrance of a torrid lesbian affair with a
beautiful dark-haired girl nearly half her age, and beyond an exceptionally
awful production of La Boheme , Doyle found the elusive bit of
information that he had been searching for, and claimed it as his own.
    He plucked his fingers from the skull, tossed the now-empty
shell back into the flames, and wiped the viscous, hideously warm gray matter
from his fingers upon his scorched handkerchief. The fire raged all around him,
attempting to block his path and consume him, but the mage knew the language of
fire, speaking to the conflagration politely and with respect, and it allowed
him to pass unharmed through the doorway and into the smoke-filled hall.
    In the corridor, where smoke billowed and flames had already
begun to lick across the ceiling and ripple up the walls, Eve waited. Her face
was covered in dark patches of soot that resembled war paint. Her eyes darted
about like those of a desperate animal. Her kind did not do well with fire.
    "I can't believe you're not burned to a crisp."
    Doyle moved past her silently on his way toward the exit.
    "At least tell me that you got whatever it was you
risked being burned alive for," she said, following close on his heels.
    "I did indeed," he said as they hurried across the
entryway and out into the damp night air. "Time is short, now. We must act
swiftly. He's far closer than I would have guessed."
    Squire awaited them on the sidewalk in front of the burning
brownstone. The goblin held an open umbrella, rain sluicing over the edges, and
he wore a nervous expression upon his grotesque features.
    "A real gentleman's gentleman," Eve muttered as
she reached him.
    Sirens wailed in the distance, but they would be far too
late to save this building. As they moved toward the car, Eve cursed loudly. Doyle
turned to face her, only to flinch as something wet and heavy struck his
shoulder, slippery on his neck. Suddenly the pre-dawn was alive with the
staccato thunder of one damp impact after another. In the midst of the rain,
something else was falling from the sky.
    "What the Hell?" Eve snapped, shielding her head
as the toads continued to fall, bouncing off the brick steps, the streets, and
the cars below them. Multiple car alarms wailed, partially drowning the rather
offensive sound of soft flesh striking hard pavement.
    Doyle stared about in alarm. Things are far worse than I
thought . Squire scrambled up the steps to shield them both from the
pummeling rain with the large, black umbrella.
    "This can't be good," Eve snarled, pushing bloody,
ruptured amphibian corpses out of her way with the tip of her designer boot.
    "Be thankful it ain't cats and dogs," Squire said,
as the rain of toads continued to fall all around them.
    Far worse.
     
     
    Julia Ferrick turned off the engine of her Volvo wagon in
the underground parking garage on Boston's Boylston Street and wondered, as she
so often did, what had happened to her real son.
    "I was listening to that," the imposter growled
from the passenger seat. He had insisted on listening to one of his homemade
music mixes on the drive to their family appointment, and when she had turned
off the engine, it cut off a headache-inducing grind in mid-verse.
    "And you'll hear the rest of it on the way home,"
she said with exasperation, placing her keys and the parking garage receipt
into her handbag. His name went unsaid. More and more, of late, she had trouble
calling him Daniel, or even Dan. She didn't know him anymore. Jesus, she craved
a cigarette.
    "I wanted to hear it now," he said curtly,
refusing to make eye contact with her.
    Julia looked at him, avoiding her gaze as if he would turn
to stone if their eyes met, and wondered when exactly the aliens or the goblins
or maybe even the Gypsies had come and taken away her real son and replaced him
with this grim doppelganger. She ran her thumb over the tips of her fingers,
where the nails were short and ragged. It was a nervous habit