Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs Read Free Book Online

disconnect.
    “I’ll take no news as good news.”
    I shrugged. Stupid. Ryan couldn’t see me.
    “Here’s my suggestion.” He changed topics again. “Shoot that recording over to your audio geeks.”
    “I don’t have it.”
    “Why not?” Still neutral. No one does it like Ryan.
    “Strike refused to leave it with me.” Alone in the dark, I felt myself blush with humiliation at my own ineptness. “I phoned the Burke County sheriff’s deputy who recovered the bones.”
    “What did she say?”
    “I’m waiting for a callback.”
    “It might be wise to have the audio analyzed.” Ryan stated the obvious.
    “I’ll call Strike in the morning.”
    That turned out to be a bad idea.

T hat night I attended a Mad Hatter’s party of the macabre.
    I was seated at a table stretching as far as I could see in both directions. White linen cloth and napkins. Silver spoons and candlesticks. Porcelain tea service.
    Ryan was across from me, wearing a bow tie, tux, and red wool tuque. Beside him was a woman who barely came up to his shoulder. Her hair was a foggy nimbus haloing her head, her features a shadowy landscape lacking in detail or definition. The woman’s body ended at the bottom of a rib cage rippling below a cut-off long-sleeved blue tee.
    Behind Ryan and the woman, a huge arched window framed a neon sunset. Garish yellows, oranges, and reds, heaped layer upon layer, supported an ominous black disk floating just above the horizon.
    I knew that was wrong. That the sun should be light. I tried to tell Ryan. He kept talking to the woman at his side.
    Far down the table to my left, Mama and Larabee were engaged in heated discussion. Larabee was in bloodstained scrubs. Mama had on the black Chanel suit she’d bought for Daddy’s funeral but never worn.

    At the far right, Hazel Strike sat alone in jeans and boots, backpack beside her on the snowy linen. The fiery twilight made her topknot look like brassy meringue.
    Everyone was holding a tiny china cup. Ryan’s fingers looked huge on the scrolly little handle.
    Mama and Larabee grew louder, but I couldn’t make out their words. Recognizing a dangerous note in my mother’s tone, I tried to stand, but found I was glued to my chair.
    Drizzle began falling. No one seemed to notice but me.
    I looked at Ryan.
    “Will you melt?” he asked.
    I tried to answer. My lips wouldn’t form words.
    “Will you let Cora Teague melt?” Flat.
    Still my mouth wouldn’t work.
    “Melt.” Larabee, Mama, and Strike chorused in unison. The word reverberated, as though bouncing off the walls of an enormous chamber. I looked around. All three were staring at me.
    “Will you let me melt?” Sharp-edged, no echo.
    I refocused on Ryan. His eyes were angry blue flames.
    “Do I disappear into the black hole?”
    Before I could answer, Ryan swirled backward and vanished into the menacing death-disk sun. The woman’s fog-hair swirled, sucked upward by Ryan’s sudden departure. Her face, now revealed, was devoid of flesh, the empty orbits pointed at me in beseeching accusation. A beat, then the woman swooped a path identical to Ryan’s.
    Frightened, I whipped my gaze left. Mama and Larabee were gone.
    Right. Strike was on her feet, curling knobby fingers inward, telling me to join her.
    I turned away. Tried to peer into the wormhole that had swallowed Ryan and the woman. Saw nothing but tomb-like black.
    “Ryan!” I screamed.
    I awoke, heart racing, skin slick with sweat.
    Wildly disoriented, I took a moment to figure out where I was.
    The clock said 2:47 A.M.
    Birdie was up on all fours, back arched, undoubtedly annoyed that I’d interrupted his sleep. I stroked his head, and he settled at my knee.

    I closed my eyes.
    Inhale.
    Exhale.
    Calm.
    I repeated the mantra again and again. Of course sleep didn’t come. My mind was obsessed with deconstructing the dream. Which typically does not require Freud. Remarkably uncreative, my subconscious simply reworks its recent intake.
    The tux