Deadly Quicksilver Lies by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

when my father sold me. No. Not Emerald. This kid is different, Garrett. She never cared about anything enough to fight. Really, honestly, swear to whatever god, I wasn’t a pushy mother. She was happy just to go along. Far as she was concerned, life is a river and she was driftwood.”
    “I maybe lost something in all the excitement. Or maybe I’ve started remembering things that never happened. I could have sworn you were going on about her having fallen in with bad companions.”
    Maggie chuckled. She snorted. She looked uncomfortable. She did it all fetchingly. I tried to imagine her as she might have been in Teodoric’s day. I was awed by the possibilities.
    She stopped wriggling. “I fibbed a little. I heard about you having a relationship with the Sisters of Doom and figured you were a sucker for a kid in trouble.” The Sisters of Doom is an all-girl street gang. The girls were all abused before they fled to the street.
    “It was a relationship with one Sister. Who left the street.”
    “I’m sorry. I overstepped.”
    “What?”
    “It’s obvious I just stomped on some tender feelings.”
    “Oh. Yeah. Maya was a pretty special kid. I messed up a good thing because I didn’t take her serious enough. I lost a friend because I didn’t listen.”
    “Sorry. I was just trying to find a sure hook.”
    “Did Emerald see anybody regularly?” Business would take me away from memories. Maya was not one of my great loves, but she was pretty special. And both Dean and the Dead Man had approved of her. There had been no separation, she just didn’t come around anymore and mutual friends all hinted that she wouldn’t unless I grew up a little.
    That don’t punch your ego up, considering it traced back to a girl just eighteen.
    Emerald’s writing desk had numerous cubbies and tiny drawers. I searched them as we talked. I didn’t find much. Most spaces were empty.
    “She does have friends but making friends doesn’t come easy.”
    That wasn’t the story as it was told a few minutes ago. I suspected Emerald had troubles that had nothing to do with social status. Chances were she was lost in her mother’s shadow. “Friends are where I’ll find her trail. I’ll need names. I’ll need to know where I can find the people who go with them.”
    She nodded. “Of course.” I slammed a drawer, turned away from her. I had to keep my mind on business. The woman was a witch. Then I sneaked a peek. Did I really want to leave all that, to go hunting somebody who probably didn’t want to be found?
    Ha! Here was something. A silver pendant. “What’s this?” Purely rhetorical. I knew what I had. It was an amulet consisting of a silver pentagram on a dark background with a goat’s head inside the star. The real question was, what was it doing where I had found it?
    Maggie took it, studied it while I watched for a reaction. I didn’t see one. She said, “I wonder where that came from?”
    “Emerald into the occult?”
    “Not that I know of. But you can’t know everything about your children.”
    I grunted, resumed my search. Maggie chattered like the fabled magpie, mostly about her daughter, more in the way of reminiscences than useful facts. I listened with half an ear.
    I found nothing else in the desk. I moved to the shelves. The presence of several books brought home how much wealth Maggie stood to lose. Because a book takes forever to copy, it is about the most expensive toy you can give a child.
    I grunted as I picked up the third book. It was a small, leather-bound, time-worn thing with a goat’s head tooled into its cover. The leather was badly foxed. The pages were barely readable. It was one old book.
    My first clue was that it was not written in modern Karentine.
    Those damned things never are, are they? Nobody would take them seriously if any schnook could pick one up and decipher the secrets of the ages.
    “Check this out.” I tossed the book to Maggie. I kept one eye on her as I resumed my