Spiritwalk by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page B

living with them.
    “Sally tried helping me, but I just couldn’t take her concern. Things got real bad between us and she just had to split...”
    Blue had been staring at the table while he talked, the words spilling out of him in an undammed flood. Suddenly he looked up, straight into Button’s gaze. What am I doing? he thought. What am I laying all this shit on her for?
    “Look,” he said. “I guess you got a little more than you were asking for with that one simple question. I’m sorry. I don’t usually run on at the mouth like this.”
    “That’s all right.”
    She sat there, looking at him with those guileless greengray eyes until Blue stood up suddenly from the table.
    “I’ve got to check a few things on my bike,” he said. “The carb’s acting up and...” His voice trailed off. All he wanted was to get away. Motormouth here needs the time to clear his head, he felt like he should tell her, but all he added was, “I won’t be that long.”
    “I’ll do the dishes,” Button told him.
    “Great. Okay.” He turned abruptly and left the kitchen.
    Button stood there for a long moment, then set about washing up. When she was done, she wandered aimlessly down one of the long hallways. A doorbell rang just as she reached the rooms fronting O’Connor Street. She called for Blue, but when there was no answer, she stepped up to the door and opened it herself.
    2
    Chance and Joey parked the Mustang on O’Connor Street, near the corner of Clemow. They left it with its nose pointed north for a quick getaway. Construction on the Central Park bridge blocked the street going south.
    “Now be cool,” Chance told his partner as they approached the nearest door of Tamson House. A few discreet questions in the right places had told him what he wanted to know. The girl was what they were after and there was only Farley living here at the moment. In other words, nothing was going to come up that he and Joey couldn’t handle by themselves. “If Farley or anybody else answers, I want them out of the way, fast. If it’s the girl, we snatch her and run. Got it?”
    “Yeah, but Farley—”
    “We’re not getting squat for Farley,” Chance said. “If he’s there, great, we got ourselves a bonus. If he’s not, we play it like I laid it out.
Got
it?”
    “Sure, Chance,” Joey said, plainly unhappy, but unwilling to push the point.
    Chance took the seeking stone out of his pocket and pointed it toward the House as they approached. It glimmered eerily in his hand, brightening as they neared the second doorway north of Clemow. The House loomed above them, three stories high here and continuing down the block in a facade that made it look like a row of houses tucked snugly one against the other, although it was in fact all one structure.
    “We’re getting lucky,” Chance said.
    He hit the bell, then tapped his foot impatiently as they waited for someone to come. Joey took up a position on the other side of the door, a tire iron held down beside his leg where it couldn’t be seen by anyone happening to look at them from across the street.
    “Okay,” Chance murmured. “This is it.”
    The door opened and he had one quick look at their quarry. She stood framed in the doorway, chestnut hair tied back in a messy French braid that looked like it had been slept on and wearing blue jeans and a dusty rose sweatshirt. The stone flared in his hand.
    “Grab her!” he cried.
    Shoving the stone in his pocket, he snatched the tire iron from Joey’s hand and ran for the car. By the time he had it pulled up to the curb in front of the doorway, Joey was half-carrying the girl under one arm to join him. She struggled in Joey’s grip, but she might as well have fought a gorilla for all the good it was doing her. He had a big meaty hand clamped across her mouth to stop her from screaming.
    Joey tossed her into the back of the Mustang. He slapped his seat back into place and got in as the car was already starting to roll.