Hotter Than Hell by Kim Harrison, Martin H. Greenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

brothers her wrists. “Little help here, guys.”
    The note changed.
    “Tom! What the hell are you doing?” Mike might as well have remained silent for all the notice Tom took as he pulled out the handcuff key.
    Ali grinned as the cuffs dropped to the floor, steel ringing against the tile. “They’re controlling him, Mike. Take my advice and cut your losses.”
    Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear her.
    When Tom wrapped one huge hand around his shoulder, crushing the elegant line of his suit, holding him effortlessly in place, he was too astonished even to shout. Demanding Tom listen to
him
, he grabbed the younger man’s wrist with both hands. Tom ignored both the words and the grip and removed both of Mike’s earplugs, one after the other.
    As the music changed again, Ali scooped the wax plug she’d taken from Tom off the floor, scrubbed it against her dress, and shoved it into her empty ear.
    Stepping back into sight of the stage, she raised a hand in farewell.
NoMan’s
audience had begun to move to the music and while she had no idea just where they’d be moving to, it really wasn’t something she needed to see.
     
    “Apparently, Michael Richter is taking a well-earned vacation in an undisclosed location, no one knows where Tom Hartmore is, two recording companies have filed for bankruptcy, one high-placed executive has given everything to charity, two more have turned themselves in for tax fraud, and there are at least three messy divorces happening in the industry between people who’ll be dividing acts with their assets.” Glen set the paper down on her desk and shook his head. “If Brandon and Travis are responsible…Are you sure you can control them?”
    “Not control, manage,” Ali reminded him. “Besides, they owe me.”
    “Speaking of.” He put one finger under her chin, and studied the burn across her cheek. “That looks like it’s healing well.”
    “Still hurts.”
    Green eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned. “You need something to take your mind off it. Just say the word and I’ll break out the champers. Tell me that
NoMan’s
finally decided to sign with us.”
    “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?”
    “Because once they sign, they’re off limits and tonight I’ve been invited to a private concert.” Ali leaned back, tucked her hair behind her ears, and smiled. “They’ve promised me an audition I’ll never forget.”

MINOTAUR IN STONE
Marjorie M. Liu
    I DREAM OF THE MINOTAUR WHEN MY EYES ARE closed. I cannot see him, whole, just fragments: the cold hard sinew of his large hand, the corded muscle of a massive thigh. I glimpse, briefly, the line of a collarbone, the hollow of a straining throat; higher, the curve of a horn.
    Minotaur. Son of a wayward queen and a god.
    And he wants me to save his life.
     
    The first time I dream of the Minotaur I am curled in a nook on the basement level of the library, the third lowest floor, part of the catacomb, the labyrinth. It is very quiet, deathly so, almost midnight. Security guards roam high above. I do not fear their discovery. At night, they are too uneasy to trawl for bottom-dwellers in the underground shadows of the library’s belly. Spooks, ghosts, ax-murderers in the stacks; I have heard those men tell ridiculous stories.
    There is nothing to fear. Books are my friends, have always been my friends, and when I lived homeless on the street I learned to hide in the tall stacks, live in the shadows of musty corners, hidden by the illusion of intellectual preoccupation, studious charm. Now, barely in my twenties, it is a small thing in the evenings, after my tiny job at the library café, to make myself soft and invisible; to blend, to become, to live as an uninvited guest, quiet as a book—and as a book, a dull creature on the surface, but full of the raging wild dark inside the words of my heart.
    The café closes at eight. The library doors at nine. By ten, all the stragglers have been rounded up.