Winterbay Read Online Free PDF

places.
    Mira moved through the stalls, pushing through all the people, just as she had on the first level, and the results were pretty much the same. Odd looks, snickers, hands waving her off in annoyance or anger. She sensed the slowly growing, hollow feeling of desperation in her gut after each encounter. There was only one level left.
    Mira climbed an ascending bridge to the top level. She could smell food, could hear the sizzling of hot plates and grills cooking fajita meat or vegetables. With a sinking feeling, she saw that every stall on the level was a food booth. There were no more traders. She had burned through all of them, and no one she’d spoken to could show her a way to what she needed.
    She was now officially out of options, and that meant she was screwed. Mira leaned against the railing that circled the top deck, staring down at the surface level below with its two giant smokestacks, lit in bright circles of white light. What was she going to do now?
    “Funny, isn’t it?” a voice asked from her left. Mira turned and saw a girl leaning against the railing with her. It was startling—one moment the girl hadn’t been there and the next she had. She didn’t look at Mira; her stare just floated down to the main deck below. “The smokestacks, all lit up like that. Someone tried to make them seem like they weren’t a piece of the rusting hulk dying under the deck. They’re a lie, just like everything else here. You can’t trust anything.”
    Mira studied the girl quizzically. Her black hair was pinned behind her head, and she wore dark, form-fitting cargo pants and a faded, tucked-in David Bowie T-shirt. She was tall, Asian of some mix, and older than Mira, probably close to twenty, judging by the spread of the Tone in her eyes. They were almost completely filled in with its black, spidery tendrils now.
    “Does that go for you, too?” Mira asked.
    “Oh, indeed.” The girl finally turned, and her eyes were laced with other things besides the Tone. Cunning. Guile. Experience. It was all plain as day. Whoever she was, she was no trader.
    Mira frowned. She didn’t have time for whatever game or scam the girl was trying to run. She had to get out of here, had to find another solution, as impossible as that seemed. “Thanks for the tip.” Mira turned to leave, heading back toward the stairs down to the lower decks.
    “No problem, Freebooter,” the girl replied nonchalantly.
    Mira froze in place. Unconsciously, she glanced out of the corners of her eyes, checking if anyone was within earshot. They weren’t. At least not yet. “Accusations like that get you killed here,” Mira began, trying to sound angry. “I don’t appreciate—”
    “Don’t get your long johns all bunched. I haven’t told anyone yet. All kind of depends on whether what you have to say interests me.”
    “You don’t know who or what I am,” Mira stated.
    “Sure I do. It’s how you walk, mostly,” the girl replied. “Eyes to the ground, marking each step, always looking for those hidden kinds of death. Only one kind of person walks like that.” She nodded to the rows of people, almost a hundred, lined up at the third level’s various food stalls and, for the moment, oblivious to their conversation. “Doesn’t really matter, though. These guys don’t need a body of evidence. All they need is one word from someone like me.”
    “Someone like you?”
    “A known quantity. Which is what you are right on the verge of becoming yourself.”
    Mira swallowed. She’d gotten herself into the exact kind of trouble she’d hoped to avoid. “What do you want?”
    “To know why someone with as much to lose as you would come here.” The girl’s voice was ice.
    Mira hesitated. She could run, maybe leap over the railing and slide down one of the support poles to the deck, but if this girl really was as influential as she claimed, then Mira wasn’t likely to make it past the front gate. Swimming wasn’t an option, either; the