Cruel Zinc Melodies

64

I’d forgotten the ghosts. They hadn’t been much of a nuisance since the dwarves showed up. They’d faded, maybe because they were kind of used up. Or maybe the cold getting down under had begun to have an impact.

But now they were back and there were only two human targets, one already immunized by knowledge.

Belinda screamed. Her behavior baffled the nonhumans.

The shade troubling her was, to me, an indistinct, pus-colored shimmer.

She screamed again. Why didn’t she just run away? That would solve it. Though the racket sounded more horrified than terrified. A distinction sometimes difficult to see. Stipulated.

I shed my marvelous loaner coat, stepped over, wrapped Belinda’s head so she couldn’t see. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe from having seen a tinker do it to his cart dog when the mutt had a seizure.

It worked.

The shimmer faded right away. It tried to assume several familiar shapes. I showed it my back and hung on to Belinda till she stopped struggling.

Saucerhead appeared in the doorway. ‘‘Hey, Garrett. The drivers are here to get your ratpeople.’’

I turned to look for John Stretch. The ratman nodded my way. He’d heard. He went to gather his henchrats.

Belinda let me know she was ready to come out. I turned her loose.

‘‘Wash that damned thing, Garrett. It’s ripe.’’ She looked around nervously.

‘‘What did you see?’’

Her honesty surprised me. ‘‘My mother. Looking exactly the way she did when I found her the day she died.’’ Her voice turned chill. Her mother had been murdered. By her father, Chodo, the world assumed. For fooling around. A sport in which Chodo himself had indulged, regularly. Belinda asked, ‘‘What happened? And will it happen again?’’

I tried to explain. Without being sure myself. ‘‘I don’t know why people see what they see. Most get something bad. But I’ve seen my mother, my brother, and a couple people who aren’t dead yet. You saw your mother. Some Hill types who were here earlier shared one ghost and brought it into focus so good that I’d recognize the woman in the street.’’

Aside, I said, ‘‘Good night, Rocky. Thanks for helping.’’

Morley and Singe had vanished.

Belinda maneuvered to keep the ghost behind her.

Did it mean anything that there was only one, now? Why not one for me?

There had been a platoon of the damned things before the Windwalker and her dad showed up.

John Stretch’s people moved out. Soon I’d be alone with Belinda. Not an eventuality to which I aspired. ‘‘Where did your thugs get to?’’

It was absodamnlutely guaranteed that if she maneuvered me into any position where temptation could be laid on, I’d be drowning in furious redheads before the smoke cleared away.

Belinda mused, ‘‘I hadn’t thought about that. Yet. It’s a question I’ll need to explore.’’

Really. She should have had six guys all over her the second she screamed.

She was herself again. ‘‘I’d better go. We don’t want Tinnie frosted about us being alone together with only twenty ratpeople and a few thousand rats for chaperones.’’

‘‘You surprise me sometimes.’’

‘‘I surprise myself. I have these impulsive moments when I turn human.’’

She was a sociopath fully aware of her psychosis.

I meet sociopaths in my line. Most know their heads don’t work like regular people’s. None of them consider that a handicap.

We went outside. Belinda’s men were gathered around the new guard shack, trying to keep their bits and pieces warm. To a man, supported by Tharpe’s crew, they hadn’t heard anything from inside the World.

Curious.

I saw Belinda off, then John Stretch and the last of his mob, with their harvest of succulent grubs. It was twilight, the sky now cloudless, the night coming up indigo. Shivering flying lizards perched high above, disappointed by the absence of game.

‘‘Don’t got much use for them things,’’ Saucerhead said. ‘‘Though their skin makes a damned good bootlace. But they help keep down the vermin.’’

‘‘Really? How so?’’

‘‘How many pigeons you see?’’ Tharpe isn’t fond of pigeons. Something to do with a strategically placed load at a critical juncture during a pickup game of outdoor passion at some point in the past. He won’t talk about it.

‘‘There is that.’’

‘‘Silver linings, brother. Silver linings.’’