The Silver Glove by Suzy McKee Charnas Read Free Book Online Page A

Gran said, “the cause isn’t lost. Not yet, anyway. They’ve done the best they could at Sorcery Hall. They’ve sent me home.”
    What could I say to that? Sure, they sent you, my tiny little old Gran, to fight horrible big Brightner?
    I said, “But he knows about us now, Gran! He tried to get me to bring you to him. And he made a grab at me, and now he’s after Mom. He’s already after us all!”
    â€œOh, yes,” she said. “I’m afraid that’s true, lovie. I’m sure that as soon as I gave him the slip he got nervous and checked up on me. Now that he knows I’ve a magic gift myself and that I trained in Sorcery Hall, he’s hot on my trail. And yours and your poor mother’s, of course. He’s not sure how strong I am, so he’d like to get hold of you or your mother to use as an argument, you might say, against my interfering with his plans. So he’s turned up at your school, and in your mother’s life.”
    Oh, no. My mother the hostage. “What can we do?”
    Gran closed her eyes for a minute and didn’t move. Then she opened them again and turned over the last of the cards, which showed a tower being struck by lightning.
    â€œThat looks awful,” I said.
    Gran swept up the cards. “It is awful. Well, your job is to try to keep your mother out of Brightner’s clutches. I’m going to go to this restaurant-shelter with Dirty Rose tonight, in the guise of a street person myself of course, and find out what’s going on there. Collie’s Kitchen, it’s called. Odd name.”
    That would teach me to make up stories about Gran being a spy in her youth! I felt as if a mean-minded Fate had been listening to that conversation and had turned my own imagination against me.
    â€œÂ â€˜Collie’s Kitchen,’ ” I said angrily. “Sounds like a restaurant for dogs.”
    Gran said, “I’ll phone you in the morning when I know a bit more about the place, and we’ll decide what to do next.”
    I said, “But if you get held up or something—Gran, Brightner’s working in my school! He’ll get me! And Mom thinks he’s wonderful. What can I do ?”
    She looked at me critically. “Keep your wits about you and hang on to the silver glove.”
    I had an inspiration. “I’ll give the glove to Mom,” I said. “It saved me. It’ll protect her, too, won’t it?”
    Gran sighed. “I doubt it. She fights my magic, always has, so how could it help her? You keep the glove. It will work for you.” She tapped the table top with the corner of her glasses for emphasis, before slipping them back down the front of her clothes. “Now let’s pack up here and I’ll be going. Where is Rose, do you see her?”
    The day had turned cold. There were hardly any customers now, and some of the vendors were closing down their stalls. The rug vendor lugged a rolled-up carpet on his shoulder toward a battered van parked outside the yard.
    I helped Gran turn the card table on its side and I started wrestling with the rusty catches that let the legs fold in along the inner edges. I was boiling with questions.
    I said, “You can’t go, not until you teach me how to use the glove. I don’t know anything, really, about what it can do—”
    Gran held up one hand to stop me. “Look!”
    There was Brightner at one of the gates, talking with a young cop. He must have waited outside my building and followed me, figuring that sooner or later I would lead him to my Gran!
    And, like a jerk, I had.
    Another cop came strolling up to the opposite entrance. The third gate, on Columbus Avenue, was jammed by two guys trying to get all their boxes of brassware out at once. Gran and I were sealed up inside a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence.
    Brightner had been a cop himself. All he had to say was that Gran had run away from an old