Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds by Kris Austen Radcliffe Read Free Book Online

likely rip his shirt trying to force his shoulders through, and that would help no one. He pushed the kid toward the break. “Meet me around front.”
    Edward straightened his collar again before walking through the lilacs. He’d smell like a time-local little old lady until he showered and changed, but sometimes his job demanded sacrifices and giving off an olfactory contradiction to his handsomeness was one of them. Sacrificing the job itself, was not.
    This mess, he fixed. A man did not simply back away from a problem and let it fester into something wiggling and putrid. His mother taught him better than that. If it wiggles and it smells like a decomposing rat’s ass, you put on your protective gear and you clean it up. Leaving messes for others was not acceptable.
    Edward rounded the front of the garage and pulled up short as the new smell hit him hard: popcorn.
    Burnt popcorn.
    Fear broke open his maintenance routine control strategies and Edward yipped. A real, high-pitched, little dog yip popped out of his throat.
    Sherry was not amused. She squatted on the front driver’s side corner of the hood of the nicely-cleaned, dark blue SUV in the driveway, her elbows on her knees and her face the same hard piercing hell it always was. She might be lovely to watch walk away—her hips and her breasts balanced perfectly and her bouncy blond curls made all men sigh, but the level of distaste beaming from her ice-blue eyes would kill the most hardcore murderer at fifty paces.
    “What do you think you are doing, Mr. Strevakoff?” She rocked slightly on her gripper slippers and the aluminum of the SUV’s hood crackled. She used her elbows to press her knees down at the same time as she steepled her fingers very much the same way as Lancaster had.
    When the son of a bitch fired Edward.
    “My job , Sherry.” Because I’m good at my job , you witch , he thought.
    Her eyes flashed as the suburban sun poked out from behind one of the fat fluffy clouds dotting the sky. The light brightened her skin slightly, but she did not move. Nor did her face change. “So am I, Mr. Strevakoff.”
    Chill crept through Edward, moving from his skin to his bones. Sherry’s wasn’t a job anyone talked about. Her reports were not shared. The scuttle was that she had something on Lancaster, which was why she could stink up the entire Flight with her damned popcorn.
    “Sherry, listen. There’s a mess here. Something needs cleaning. I can’t let that—”
    A high pitched, feminine scream blasted from the neighboring backyard. “Oh my God! What are you doing? Who the hell are you? Get out of my yard!”
    A stuffed-up yell followed, along with the sounds of something flat hitting poor Bart, then a congested and hollow “I’m sorry!”
    “Mr. Strevakoff, this is your doing.” Sherry, once again, did not move. She stayed on the hood of the SUV, still squatting on the corner like a demented angel. “Clean it up.”
    Edward whirled around just as Bart ran out of the neighbor’s backyard, a big pink beach towel and a bright green bikini top wrapped around his head. A topless woman in a matching bikini bottom and one arm covering her chest ran out behind him.
    Edward lost all sense of his fellow time travelers. All sense of the suburban place his car had dropped him into. Of the fluffy clouds floating above like pillows for cherubs. Of the welcoming scent of lilacs still clinging to his shirt.
    Edward lost sense of everything but the semi-clad woman yelling at young Bart.
    He never thought he’d see her again but here she was, the friend of the target whose head he’d so long ago stared at for an entire “movie.” She was just as smoothly beautiful now as she had been then, with her clean, even skin. And her curves. And lovely, finger-enticing hair.
    Edward did a quick calculation. For her, the “movie” had probably occurred three weeks ago.
    Bart yelled something about being really sorry and wiped his nose on the beach towel. Police