Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde Read Free Book Online

it!"
    Selwyn offered a steadying hand to keep the bat from tipping over.
    In appreciation, the creature kicked him. But then it began hopping about, one tiny foot lifted, yelping, "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! You big bully!" It tried to kick Selwyn with the other foot, and flopped onto its back.
    Selwyn held out his finger, and the bat reluctantly took hold and pulled itself upright, using the tiny little thumb at the edge of its wing as a hand. Selwyn looked from the bat with its huge ears and large fleshy nose to Farold's corpse, to Elswyth. "What happened?" he asked helplessly.
    "
'What happened?'
" the bat shrieked. "
'What happened?'
What kind of fool question is that? Selwyn Roweson, you dumb twit, even
you
should be able to see
what happened.
You dumb twit." Still holding on to Selwyn's left: forefinger, it kicked at the bone in Selwyn's right hand, missed, and found itself—both feet off the ground—dangling by its thumb from Selwyn's finger.
    Elswyth, naturally, sided with the bat. She snatched the bone from Selwyn and shook it at him. "Didn't I tell you to keep this pointing at the corpse?"
    "Well, actually," Selwyn corrected, "you didn't so much tell as show—"
    She smacked him on the head with the bone.
    "Yes," he agreed for safety's sake. "Yes, you did."
    "Then why did you go and point it at the bats?"
    "I didn't do it on purpose," Selwyn said. "It was just, the bats made a sudden noise that frightened me."
    "Frightened you?" both Elswyth and the bat shrieked at him. Elswyth pointed the bone at the tiny bat and yelled at Selwyn, "Look at him. He's about as big as your finger. What, precisely, do you find so terrifying that you had to go and muddle the spell?"
    "The
noise
startled me," Selwyn protested. Why did she always make things out so that he sounded like a fool? "I wasn't frightened of
one
bat." He decided against mentioning that the whole swarm of bats was a little more intimidating than one all by itself. Most likely Elswyth wasn't intimidated by any number of bats, and she looked ready to use the bone on his head again. He said, "So Farold's spirit returned to the wrong body? It went into this bat's body? Can we redo the spell?"
    "No," Elswyth said in a tone that indicated, once again, he was a fool. And, to Farold, she said, "Bats can't stand, so stop trying."
    "As though it's not bad enough being dead," the bat complained, still clutching Selwyn's finger and jumping up and down with rage, "now I've got to be a rodent, too?"
    "I'm sorry," Selwyn said.
    "Actually," Elswyth said, looking thoughtful, "you're not."
    Selwyn and the bat looked at each other. "Who's not what?" the bat demanded. "He's not sorry?"
    Elswyth shrugged. "That I have no idea about. But you're not a rodent."
    "I'm a bat."
    "That's a different thing entirely. Bats have mouselike faces, but they're in a completely different order from rodents."
    "Thank you very much, professor." The bat spit on the floor. "Now there's a thoroughly useless piece of information to add to this whole mess. I
look
like a rodent, I
feel
like a rodent—who are
you
to tell me I'm
not
a rodent, you ugly old witch?"
    Selwyn saw the flash of irritation in Elswyth's eyes. He pulled back his hand so that the bat could try to escape, but it stood its ground, wobbly but defiant.
    Elswyth raised the bone, which was big enough to send the bat—or Farold, or Farold in the bat's body—back to where she'd just summoned him from. But she took pity on his small size and, instead, hit Selwyn.
    "No wonder someone murdered you," she told Farold as Selwyn rubbed his leg but didn't dare complain that this latest attack had been unfair. "You're a very irritating little snippet."
    The bat stood motionless for a moment. "That's right," it finally said, much subdued. "I
was
murdered. That was how I came to be dead. I remember hearing you call me, and that's why I came back."
    "Right," Selwyn said, glad to be back on the topic they needed to be on. "We called you here so that you could