Hallow Point by Ari Marmell Read Free Book Online Page A

definitely not worth getting into. I was through with it, and whatever went down next was no skin off
my
nose.
    Done. Absolutely, positively done.

CHAPTER THREE
    I wasn’t done. Learned that as I got to the station.
    Smattering of papers danced down the street past me, carried by low gusts until they splatted against the side of this building or that, sticking thanks to the drenching they’d gotten on the way. I could almost read one of ’em; looked like somebody or other was having a huge sale on Ovaltine. I started up the station steps, making a mental note to remember not to care.
    Brakes howled, tracks rumbled, shaking oily drops from the trestles overhead, granting the already rain-soaked steps just that little bit of extra slick. Normally it wouldn’ta bothered me much. I could balance on a blade of grass in my youth, I wasn’t gonna worry about wet floors. Normally.
    Normally I didn’t feel like the dance floor on Come Cut a Rug With Your Donkey Night, either.
    Staggered once, caught myself with one mitt on the guardrail, and—
    Oh, fucking goddamn it, ow!
    It was a passing touch, not as though I’d tripped and conked myself on it, so it wasn’t
too
ugly. No agony, no shakes. My hand was pan-seared, though, ready to serve up with a side of greens, throbbing to beat the band. And it itched so bad I’d have welcomed ants and mosquitoes to scratch it for me.
    (Well, not quite true, since those bastards don’t bite me like they do you. Not here in the “real” world, anyway. Totally different story in Elphame, but what’s not?)
    Cast iron, that rail.
    It wasn’t the iron that surprised me, though. It was that I’d been dippy enough to touch it. I mean, I take the train everywhere I can’t hoof it. Ain’t as though this is the first municipal guardrail I’ve seen.
    You getting fed up with me barbering on about how thrown I was, how bushed and how beat, wah, wah, poor Mick, yet? Yeah, me too. Wanted to throw one more example at you, though, since it’s important for what comes next.
    By which I mean, it makes me look a
little
less like a complete dip.
    So I’m sidling away from the rail like it bit me, clutching one hand with the other, spitting enough profanity to make a priest spontaneously combust. Of the tiny trickle of pedestrians actually still pounding pavement at this hour, one of ’em turns out to be a member of an almost extinct species: Good Samaritan, tryin’ to wipe drops off his glasses without knocking his hat from his gourd, while shuffling over to see what’s up with me. Somehow, I didn’t think I wanted him eyeballing my nice new iron rash.
    “No problem, pal. Jammed my finger last week, keep forgettin’ not to grab stuff with it. Thanks, though,” I said.
    He gave me a queer look but moved on.
    I was gonna have to remember to give Pete a serious sock in the kisser for tonight. I was gonna have to get a better lock for my door. I was…
    Being followed.
    I just knew it, instantly. Hair on the back of my neck, phantom daggers in my spine, recollections of shapes at the edge of my vision, even tasted the flavor of lurking in the wet pollution perfume this city calls “air.” Wasn’t any sorta human tang, either. Old,
real
old, and always, always
craving
…
    Except… Nah. I was just being goofy again. Stairwell was empty but for me and a couple humming light fixtures, drunk fireflies flickering against a grimy ceiling. Rumble of the train up ahead, echoing patter of the rain. Not even a sign of the Samaritan anymore.
    The hinky feeling was gone quick as it crashed down on me, and there sure as hell wasn’t anybody around to’ve sparked it. Not just tired now, but paranoid. Jumping at squat and shadows. Muttering at myself—and nothing nice, either—I climbed the rest of the stairs, growled my way past the few folks standing around on the platform, and slipped between the brown sliding doors. Clunk, hiss, screech, shudder, and the train was chug-a-lugging its way cross