The Uninvited by Cat Winters Read Free Book Online Page B

that he was listening.
    “That’s too easy,” he said. “ ‘Livery Stable Blues,’ by the Original Dixieland Jass Band.”
    I lifted the bristles off the ground. “Are you a musician?”
    “I play guitar.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes.” His shoulder blades stiffened beneath his tweed vest. “Really.”
    “Maybe you should go over there and play with them sometime.”
    He glanced back at me with a scowl. “Maybe you should mind your own business.”
    “I just—”
    “You seem like a person who’s ‘always just’ something or other. I’m not going to go play with a band who wouldn’t want me with them. They’re probably also . . .” He stopped and pinched his lips together.
    “Probably also what?” I asked.
    He just sat there, half turned toward me.
    I sat up tall. “What were you going to say?”
    He stood and knocked his knee against the cabinet with a thud that must have hurt. “I think it’s time for you to go.”
    “What did I say?”
    He marched toward me. “Go fix up somebody else’s messes instead of mine.”
    I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m not done with the—”
    He hooked his hand under my elbow and yanked me toward the door, pinching my skin.
    “Wait! I want to finish the job.”
    He pushed me against the door and shoved his blue German eyes and hot breath in my face. “I know who you are, Ivy. Scrubbing away all those bloodstains will never, ever erase what they did.”
    The boarded-up entrance fell open behind me, and I was out in the cold, dark air with the door slamming shut two inches from my nose.

 
    UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ....................................
    Chapter 5
    I stopped and leaned against the cold bricks of an unlit corner to catch my breath. My stomach clenched. Pain shot down my legs and burned through my feet, and my skull cracked into two separate pieces, like Emily Dickinson once described in a poem.
    I felt a cleaving in my mind
    As if my brain had split. . .
    He knew who I was.
    Oh, God. He knew.
    Two blocks behind me, the jazz band played on as if nothing were amiss, the beat of the drums a distant pulse, the cornet a faraway wail. The furniture store tugged me back toward it—my legs thrummed with the urge to turn back around and return. To make amends. Yet I forced myself to move again, away from him. Away from the blood.
    A car motor rumbled from somewhere nearby, and a stab of fear shot through me. Maybe someone had seen me enter his store. Maybe Billy’s friend Lucas had been observing my actions ever since that morning—spying, listening, watching with his magnified eyes.
    Headlights rounded the bend two blocks down. Words written in frosted block letters jumped out from the storefront window beside me: B UCHANAN C H A M B E R O F C O M M E R C E .
    “Oh no! Damn!” I muttered aloud.
    I had just helped out the prime target of the local American Protective League’s scrutiny, and there I stood, next to their headquarters.
    I dashed around the corner, pressed my back against a wall in the shadows, and prayed the driver would continue heading eastward on Willow. The car growled closer—I could feel the engine humming across the bottoms of my feet. I smelled gasoline and oil and hoped the driver hadn’t seen me. Perhaps he was simply a regular person traveling home for regular reasons.
    The engine pop-pop-popped to a stop around the bend, and I heard someone pull the automobile’s clutch lever all the way back to set the rear parking brake. I sucked in my breath and held the air in my lungs, willing my body and my clothing to blend into the wall. Doors opened and shut. Male laughter bulldozed over the cornet and the piano down the way.
    I calculated how quickly and quietly I could run down to the next corner and disappear into the blackness of night. Before I could even think to move, however, one of the men from the automobile uttered the name “Schendel.”
    I froze.
    “What do you think we should