Vengeance Read Online Free PDF

for him if we'd put the villain's zombie to work for us."
    "Did you find the spells?” Sinhalese asked.
    "They're not here. Or if they are, he's taken their location to his grave.” Duff swore slowly, precisely, fluently. “The man was scum,” he added despairingly. “But he's snatched triumph from his own defeat.” His brow wrinkled. “Odd how stubborn he was. Even at the end, when only my charms kept him breathing, he insisted he didn't have my spells. I almost believed him innocent. Hah! What an actor!"
    "So he's bested you then?” Sinhalese asked.
    "No!” he shouted. “Never!"
    Sinhalese tapped her lip with a finger. “Maybe he had them but got rid of them."
    "Why?"
    "What if you'd gone to the law?” she asked.
    "Pah! I'd not waste my time with them!” he snorted.
    "Yes,” she urged, “but what if you had? He could have called for a search and made you look like a fool. The more I think of it, the more it seems that he hid them somewhere. He couldn't lose: If you went to the law you couldn't prove anything. Even if you won, you'd look like a fool as the fiasco became public knowledge."
    Duff smiled grimly. “What do you suggest?"
    "We could try a spellhound,” Sinhalese suggested.
    "That'll cost a fortune!"
    "If you don't recover that box, your most potent spells are gone,” she said. “We're beggared anyway. At least this way we might get them back and stand a chance of catching those responsible."
    "Whoever they are,” Duff snarled, “they'll pay with their lives.” At that point the picture dissolved, as if Jocasta were watching a clichéd drama. The spy toppled to the ground, its life ebbing away.
    No longer able to control the urge to be sick, Jocasta ran into the back rooms. She splashed cooling water on her face and reluctantly returned to the front office. “Nothing on that tape,” she said. “All Maltby's ‘confessions’ led nowhere. I suspect that he would have told Duff anything at all to end the torture, especially if he thought that it was what Duff wanted to hear. But if he thought Duff would release him while Task went to look for the spells, he must have been as big a fool as Duff thought he was. After a while, torture takes on a momentum of its own, so Duff would probably never have let him go.” She frowned. “No clues there—just a warning of the kind of man we're involved with."
    —But we knew that anyway, surely?—
    "Yes,” she said, and her laugh was more a sob, as she shivered. “But there's knowing, and there's really knowing."
* * * *
    At home the next morning, as she applied her make-up, she glanced in the mirror at her tiny cubicle, and her shoulders drooped. “You'll have to work ‘til you're three or four hundred before you could afford to actually buy a place like this,” she muttered. If she solved this case, she could buy a tiny apartment, but if she failed—she tried not to think about failure.
    She'd felt her age and more these last few weeks, but the night before had been her lowest ebb for many, many years. She'd scrimped and saved for most of her life, in a variety of dead-end jobs, before finding clerical work at an agency that was now her competitor. She thought, Whatever happened to those lovers you used to dream about as a girl? Romance had passed her by long ago. Men who attracted her had no interest in a workaholic spinster, and she was uninterested in those who did want her. The truth was she had had little time for romance, especially if it threatened to impede what passed for a career.
    Pausing at the door she looked around. Her clothes seemed to have become alive, invading the normally immaculate sanctuary of the spellhound's area. This formed the top half of the side of the room, away from the oceanscape that was this week's offer on the window-wall. She still preferred her nest to Duff's mansion: A sofa bed and few cosy rugs and throws were more to her taste than his crystal statuettes and antique pix.
    She couldn't even be bothered to