Vesik 04 - This Broken World by Eric Asher Read Free Book Online

me,” she said before walking away.
    I grabbed the last two pieces of catfish, shrugged, and followed her toward the front of the restaurant.
    “You’re him!” She motioned to the black and white, eight by ten photo on the wall.
    I squinted and leaned down to get a better look. “Oh. My. God.”
    “I knew it!”
    The photo showed me, with Zola, and a tower of empty baskets on the table. I looked absolutely sick, my hands folded over my stomach. It had to be at least ten years old. Maybe even fifteen?
    I nodded and took a bite of catfish and smiled. “It was some damn good food.”
    She pulled a phone out of her pocket. “I waited on you two back then. Never seen anything like it since. Can I take your picture?”
    I raised my eyebrows and demolished my last piece of fish. “Sure. Why not?”
    She handed her phone to the hostess behind the register. We stood to either side of the photo and smiled as the hostess snapped a new picture.
    “Thank you so much,” the older server said. She flashed a wide smile.
    “No problem.” I paid my bill, left an excessively large tip, and continued on to Coldwater, amused and somehow content after revisiting that little piece of my past.
     
    ***
     
    I followed the highway south as it narrowed into two lanes on either side and finally turned into a curvy, one lane death trap. The setting sun slowly lit the sky on fire as my tires crunched onto a narrow gravel drive. I didn’t like taking my old ’32 Ford onto gravel roads, but I didn’t give it too much thought, nervous as I was about training with the Old Man. I bounced up and down a few miles of hills before I was hit by the presence of unusually active ghosts.
    I saw several in the fields where the slab town once stood. Some performed repetitive tasks at a shimmering, ghostly sawmill, and others casually strolled along the old road. A concentration of ghosts that large was unheard of for the area. Most of the ghosts here didn’t move around. I wondered if the Old Man had stirred them up. A long curve eventually crossed into an open field surrounded by an old deciduous forest.
    At the top of a gentle hill stood the old cabin. The ancient oak tree out front cut into the starry night sky. Zola had told me the cabin had been around in one form or another since before the Civil War. I didn’t doubt it. Hell, so had Zola.
    Smoke curled from the edge of the front porch. Moonlight shadows kept me from seeing into the darkness clearly, but I was quite sure it was the Old Man seated before the orange glow around the old steel shutters.
    A bright light flashed out behind the cabin like a lightning strike. There were no clouds in the sky and I could clearly see the Milky Way slowly churning by above us.
    “You’re not going to ask me to chop firewood, are you?”
    A gruff laugh echoed out from the porch. “If you don’t know how to cut firewood, we’re both in the wrong place.”
    Another flash of light briefly lit the surrounding woods, followed by a quiet hiss and a sharp pop.
    “What was that light?” I asked.
    “Dell! Damian’s here. Come around, kid.”
    I couldn’t see the face beneath his dark blond hair until he got closer, but the grumbling was unmistakable. I took a few steps toward Dell and shook his hand. He nodded as he took a bite out of a chocolate bar. Zola had told me he used sugar to cope with the side effects of necromancy. I’d never really had side effects quite that severe. Dell’s affinity for sugar had earned him the wonderful nickname of Roach.
    He looked up and the moonlight caught his features. His eyes were silver in the dim glow, but I knew they were the cool gray of a born necromancer.
    “Dell will only be with us through tomorrow night. He has some friends in the packs outside of the Irish Brigade. I’m sending him out with Hugh.”
    “Out of the frying pan and into the doggie bowl,” Dell muttered.
    I grinned, and as my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I could see the Old Man’s gaze