The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) by Mark Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page A

wounds. Well, it’s been a long time. The scars are
healed, the masses have grown fat, and Rome asserts the Devil is nothing more
than an allegorical symbol. So how do I prove to you that I am what I say?”
    Marco thrust the bottle
at him. “We’re nearly out,” he grinned, stumps poking out mockingly.
    Goose Man leaned his
staff against the body of an old Chrysler and accepted the bottle, frowning.
“Would it help if I told you the bottle was not half-empty, but half-full?”
    “You heard the man,”
Lucas said. “Make a miracle, or get the fuck out.” It seemed as good a way as
any to end it.
    Goose Man regarded the
bottle steadily then placed the paper he carried into his pocket for
safekeeping. “Bear in mind, gentleman, I’m a little rusty. The last person who
needed me to prove myself asked for far less, and served me twice as well as
you will.”
    Then Goose Man passed the
bottle back, apparently satisfied. Marco took it and tipped it into his mouth,
a grin breaking across his face like he had just heard a good joke— a priest,
a nun, and a plumber walk into a bar … — before spraying the contents out on
the dirt. “Whadda fuck?”
    Cho snatched the bottle
from him, shaking it violently. What stuck to the edges of the glass was clear;
not the dark, artificial red of cheap wine, but clear as glass, clear as…
    “Water! It’s fuckin’ water!
The fucker scammed our wine!” Cho was shaking the bottle in Goose Man’s face,
screaming at the top of his lungs. “What the hell’d you do with it?”
    Lucas felt lightheaded.
He didn’t want to panhandle, or hang out behind the restaurants and wait on the
Hefty sacks of food, half-eaten but still edible. He wanted to sleep. He wanted
to forget. Forget Goose Man, forget the morning, forget the half-bottle of wine
that was now only water. Forget everything.
    “You had wine. Now you
have water,” Goose Man said with forced patience, the tone of a man explaining
complicated matters to small and unruly children. “It may not be what you
wanted or expected, but that’s life. I gave you magic. That’s all you asked
for.”
    Then everything went to hell.
    Matty smashed the bottle against Goose Man’s head, shards
spraying the fender of the old Chrysler, and Marco dove at him, fists flailing.
Then Matty and Johnny pulled Goose Man down from his throne, pummeling him.
    And Goose Man did nothing. He simply allowed it to happen, as
if he expected it, even wanted it.
    Lucas stepped forward and kicked Goose Man, limbs wooden and
out of his control. A half-hearted kick at first, the second was more forceful.
And suddenly, without knowing why, Lucas was savagely kicking the one they called
Goose Man and Crazy Moses. And Lucas was screaming. And the other three were
screaming. He had no idea why: why they were screaming, or why they were
howling like animals, or even why they felt compelled to beat the man until he
ceased to move, but only lay there like an empty sack of rags that they were
kicking, some kind of gruesome child’s game gone horribly wrong.
    For his part, Gusman
Kreiger—like Goose Man, just another false name in a long list employed down
through the centuries—thought the wine a poor choice in retrospect. And as the
darkness swept over him, his final thought: Next time someone demands a
miracle, simply walk on water; you can never go wrong with a classic .

 
     
     
     
     
     
DABBLE’S
BOOKS
     
     
    Dabble watched Ellen Monroe all morning. He liked the way she blinked, as
if every moment was her first, a refugee dragged suddenly into the full
brightness of day, startled and hesitant. She was concentrating: where she was,
what she was doing, what she was saying. And when she stopped concentrating,
when she disconnected herself, let herself loose in the wonderland of her own
imagination, she changed. Her every move became as graceful as a bird in the
air, the effortless glide of a fish through water.
    She was unaware of his observations, of