Turn Coat Read Online Free PDF Page B

kill—and die. I’d Seen the Queens of Faerie as they prepared for battle, drawing all their awful power around them.
    And I’d be damned if I was going to roll over for one more horrible thing doing nothing but jumping from one rooftop to another.
    “Come on, punk,” I snarled at the memory. “Next to those others, you’re a bad yearbook picture.”
    And I hit myself with it, again and again, filling my mind with every horrible and beautiful thing I had ever Seen—and as I did, I focused on what I had bloody well done about it. I remembered the things I’d battled and destroyed. I remembered the strongholds of nightmares and terrors that I had invaded, the dark gates I’d kicked down. I remembered the faces of prisoners I’d freed, and the funerals of those I’d been too late to save. I remembered the sounds of voices and laughter, the joy of loved ones reunited, the tears of the lost and bereaved.
    There are bad things in the world. There’s no getting away from that. But that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about them. You can’t abandon life just because it’s scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt.
    The memory of the thing hurt like hell—but pain wasn’t anything special or new. I’d lived with it before, and would do it again. It wasn’t the first thing I’d Seen, and it wouldn’t be the last.
    I was not going to roll over and die.
    Sledgehammers of perfect memory pounded me down into blackness.

    When I pulled myself back together, I was sitting on the bed, my legs folded Indian-style. My palms rested on my knees. My breathing was slow and rhythmically heavy. My back was straight. My head pounded painfully, but not cripplingly so.
    I looked up and around the room. It was dark, but I’d been in there long enough for my eyes to adjust to the light coming under the door. I could see myself in the dresser mirror. My back was straight and relaxed. I’d taken my coat off, and was wearing a black T-shirt that read “PRE-FECTIONIST” in small white letters, backward in the mirror. A thin, dark runnel of blood had streamed from each nostril and was now drying on my upper lip. I could taste blood in my mouth, probably from where I’d bitten my tongue earlier.
    I thought of my pursuer again, and the image made me shudder—but that was all. I kept breathing slowly and steadily.
    That was the upside of being human. On the whole, we’re an adaptable sort of being. Certainly, I’d never be able to get rid of my memory of this awful thing, or any of the other awful things I’d Seen—so if the memory couldn’t change, it would have to be me. I could get used to seeing that kind of horror, enough to see it and yet remain a reasoning being. Better men than I had done so.
    Morgan had.
    I shivered again, and not because of any memory. It was because I knew what it could mean, when you forced yourself to live with hideous things like that. It changed you. Maybe not all at once. Maybe it didn’t turn you into a monster. But I’d been scarred and I knew it.
    How many times would something like this need to happen before I started bending myself into something horrible just to survive? I was young for a wizard. Where would I be after decades or centuries of refusing to look away?
    Ask Morgan.
    I got up and went into the bathroom attached to the bedroom. I turned on the lights, and winced as they raked at my eyes. I washed the blood from my face, and cleaned the sink of it carefully. In my business, you don’t leave your blood where anyone can find it.
    Then I put my coat back on and left the bedroom.
    Billy and Georgia were in the living room. Billy was at the window that led out to the tiny balcony. Georgia was on the phone.
    “I’m not getting anything out here,” Billy said. “Is he sure?”
    Georgia murmured into the phone. “Yes. He’s sure it circled this way. It should be in sight from where you are.”
    “It isn’t,” Billy said. He turned his head over his shoulder and said,