Suicide Kings by George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass Read Free Book Online Page A

if I came and helped out?”
    “That’s nice of you, but it wouldn’t change my answer.”
    “Oh.”
    “Sorry, Wally. Don’t do anything rash, okay?”
    “You bet.”
    Wally stared at the ceiling.
That’s in the PPA.
He hadn’t put that together before. He knew a little about the PPA; that whole mess down in New Orleans, Bubbles and all, was tied up with the PPA. He knew that much. But until she’d said it, he hadn’t associated Tom Weathers and Dr. Nshombo and the PPA with Lucien’s Congo.
    All the more reason to go to Africa, and the sooner the better. All the more reason to find a traveling companion. But the more he thought about it, the more Jerusha seemed the best choice.

Friday,
November 27

     
    The Winslow Household
Boston, Massachusetts
    A Legacy of Noel’s previous profession was an inability to sleep any deeper than a doze. He awakened when the mattress shifted as Niobe left the bed. Cold grey dawn seeped around the edges of the blue velvet drapes, and Noel could hear snow pecking at the windows. He snuggled deeper under the down comforter, and was headed back to sleep when a tiny whimper of fear from the bathroom sent him leaping out of bed. “Niobe!”
    At the same moment she called out, “Noel!” The panic in her voice squeezed his heart.
    He ran to the bathroom, the legs of his pajamas whipping at his ankles. She was sitting on the toilet with her arms wrapped around her stomach. He dropped to his knees in front of her.
    “I’m cramping.”
    “Bad?” he asked.
    “Not as bad as last time,” she replied through white lips.
    Oddly she was staring at a point where the tile met the porcelain side of the bathtub rather than at him. Noel had a sudden memory as they had stood on the rocky beach of a distant Scottish island, and she had told him how she had tried to cut off the damning mark of her jokerdom, and winback her parents’ love. He glanced at the thick white scars that twisted across her tail. She had nearly bled to death in the bathroom of her family home. Noel realized this was the room.
And that bitch put us in here.
He again felt that shaking desire to kill his mother-in-law. “I’m taking you to the clinic.”
    “We can’t just run off,” Niobe called out as he ran back into the bedroom. “They’ll be so angry.”
    “Watch me. And fuck them.”
    Noel pulled her long, fur-lined suede coat and his overcoat out of the closet. He returned to Niobe, got slippers on her feet, and tucked her into her coat. The hood framed her face. She looked like a figure on a Russian icon box. He slipped on his own slippers and guided her back into the bedroom.
    He pulled back the blinds so he could map the sun’s progress.
Come on, come on!
They couldn’t lose another. Niobe couldn’t take much more. He wasn’t sure he could, either.
    It was another four minutes before he could make the transformation to Bahir. The pajamas cut into his crotch, and the overcoat strained across Bahir’s broad chest. It didn’t matter. He would transform back once they reached the Jokertown Clinic.
    Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
    Michelle opened her eyes.
    Juliet, Joey, her mother and father, and a couple of people dressed in hospital scrubs were ringed around her. Her throat was raw, like when she had strep throat. She tried to speak, but she had no voice.
    “She’s alive!” Juliet said.
    “You don’t know that,” snapped Michelle’s mother.
    “It could be a reaction to the feeding tube being pulled,” said the woman in baby-blue scrubs.
    Michelle tried to look around, but she couldn’t move her head much. Behind her mother, there was a table crammed with flowers and candles. The floor under the table was thick with store-bought bouquets. She looked up. The ceiling was bare plywood and had water stains.
    A TV hung from the far corner with the sound turned off. It was tuned to a news channel, and there were bulletins scrolling across the bottom of the screen. She caught the last bit of one