The Third Magic Read Online Free PDF

mumbled.
    Hal sighed. The ice cream was leaking through the paper bag onto his arms.
    "Did you get it?" Bedwyr asked, tossing his bowl-cut blond hair. He was the only one in the room who had noticed Hal.
    "Yeah. Relax." Hal took a magazine out of the bag and tossed it to him.
    Bedwyr retired with it immediately to an armchair in the far corner of the living room and opened it to the stapled section in the middle. On its glossy cover was the title Vintage Motorcycle superimposed over the image of a 1971 Hurley FX Superglide Night Train.
    Although the young man's official capacity was that of Master of Horse, Hal had persuaded Bedwyr to change his allegiance to motorcycles upon the knights' arrival in the New World. Given the young man's natural understanding of things mechanical, he had fallen utterly in love with the first Harley whose engine he exposed, and had carried on an affaire du coeur with the species ever since.
    "Hi, Hal." Arthur walked over to him as the others helped Taliesin down off the table. "Are you all right?"
    He tried to sound casual, but Hal knew that the boy was worried.
    In the years since he and Hal had gone into hiding, Arthur had begun to exhibit a sixth sense about danger. Perhaps it was because they had encountered it so often; or maybe it was only the natural development of a talent the boy had been born with. Either way, the sense, Arthur's "knowing," as he called it, had been growing more acute.
    "One of the old man's stunts, that's all," Hal said reassuringly. "I thought I'd hit him with the truck, but… well, there he is, stepping out of your cake." He inclined his head toward Taliesin, ringed by men who had once been the Knights of the Round Table.
    Arthur laughed. "It looked like a pretty disgusting cake, anyway."
    While he was helping Hal dish out the ice cream (the knights, who had never tasted such a thing during their previous incarnation, could not get enough of it), he watched the old man in the next room. It was a great relief that Taliesin had actually come, and had not been, after all, a figment of Arthur's imagination.
    "This is all hard for you, isn't it," Hal said quietly.
    Arthur looked up. "What? What do you mean?"
    "This." Hal gestured with the ice cream scoop. "The guys, the old man... The cup."
    "We got rid of the cup."
    "That doesn't mean it never existed."
    Arthur bent over his ice cream again. "I kind of wish none of it had ever existed," he said.
    "You and me both."
    "I mean, it's not that I'm not grateful to you…"
    "Cut the crap, Arthur. Most of your life has been spent trying not to get killed. It's been lousy, and we both know it."
    "It would have been lousy if you hadn't been there," Arthur said, acknowledging Hal's sacrifice in staying with him as his guardian and protector for the better part of a decade.
    Hal waved him away. Sentiment made him uncomfortable. "I just wish there'd been another way," he said lamely. "I've tried to write to your aunt Emily, but all the letters came back. I just don't know where she is."
    "She may not be alive." Arthur did not look up from his task. The last time they had seen Emily Blessing was in the dining room of a hotel in Tangier, Morocco nearly four years before. He had seen only the barest glimpse of his aunt—his only living relative—before a fire and its aftermath of pandemonium broke out. The three of them had become separated then, and by the time Hal and Arthur found one another, Emily had disappeared. "It was a pretty bad fire."
    Hal didn't answer. He had loved Emily Blessing. It was for her—and Arthur, and himself—that he had stopped drinking, brought a halt to the self-destructive lifestyle of a man who'd had nothing left to live for. He had saved their lives, and they, in turn, had saved his.
    Had Emily ever known that? he wondered. Had she ever believed that their one night of love had changed Hal forever, that he hadn't intended to leave her, that he had taken her nephew away because the