Little People by Tom Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

finding a safe home for my evidence; luckily I had one of those empty plastic film canisters handy, and I scraped it off my finger into that, sellotaped round the lid and cached the canister on the top of my wardrobe, among the dust and spiders’ webs. That made a quick visit to the bathroom something of a necessity – the dust dissolved in the milk to form a fine, creamy-textured taupe mud, which I decided I’d probably be better off without. Once again my luck held and I was able to sneak back into my bedroom, shut the door and get down to a brief but intensive figuring-out session before rejoining the family downstairs.
    It didn’t take me long to resolve on a plan of campaign; it was basically just a minor tweak on what I’d already done, only with a degree more thought and insight behind it. Of course, I had to wait till early the next morning before I could do anything about it. Luckily, this time I managed to wake up when the alarm went off at 6 a.m. (horrible time of day, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise). I crawled out of bed, pulled a shirt and trousers on over my pyjamas, and snuck down as quietly as I could to the kitchen.
    Preconceptions can be a real pain in the bum, can’t they? For some reason I’d got it into my head that elves must be vegetarians – probably because of their alleged fondness for bread and milk, though the fact that they’d used my previous offering of same as an ashtray seemed to suggest they weren’t all that keen on the stuff after all
    â€“ so I couldn’t bring myself to plunder the turkey carcass, just in case I mortally offended their principles, or whatever. So I burgled the biscuit jar instead, and dug about in the back of the kitchen cupboard for a bar of cooking chocolate I’d remembered having seen a while back – not parsimony, let me hasten to add; it was simply that after three days’ infestation by my blood kin, it was the only unscoffed chocolate left in the house.
    Fortunately, the booze wasn’t a problem. True, they’d swigged a hell of a lot of it over the past few days, but Daddy George was far too canny to underprovide in that department; not that it mattered, since I was able to fill my saucers from the dregs of last night’s unwashed-up glasses.
    Tiptoeing down a gravel path in the dark while carrying a tray of saucers three parts full of stale beer calls for precision footwork, excellent night vision and a certain degree of luck. It’s not something I’d recommend to anybody who’s inclined to be timid or slapdash in their approach to fine work – such as, on both counts, me. Still, I made it. The hardest part was locating the saucer-drop sites by dead reckoning alone, since I couldn’t see what I was doing. It’s amazing, though, what a clear mental image of a place you can drag into your mind’s eye when you absolutely have to. As soon as the last saucer was in place I snatched up the tray and legged it back indoors, pausing only to hop up and down a few times and scream noiselessly when my unshod big toe found the large stone urn on the corner of the patio.
    Mercifully, about half of the house guests pushed off that day, which eased the tension around the house to a certain small degree. We were still lumbered with Cousin Valerie, Auntie Chris, Uncle Pat and Psycho Jack, Mum’s unlovely half-brother; it was nevertheless a blessing, like seeing off the boils and the locusts and only having the plague of frogs to contend with. By the time we were through with the waving-goodbye ceremonies for the ones we were managing to get shot of it was lunchtime. I was able to hide in my room until 4 p.m. on the pretext of having work to do for next term, and at 9.30 I synthesised a headache that got me out of the front room and back to safe territory. I got undressed, set the alarm again and dropped off to sleep as quickly and painlessly as if I’d been reading a