Dread Brass Shadows

31

I swung through the Safety Zone, found exactly what I expected to find. A big nothing. Morley's place was dead and dark. I was beginning to wonder if it wasn't time to start thinking about a wake.

I approached my place carefully. Crask might have it staked out.

Here was a problem that deserved some thought. I was too dependent on my home. If the bad boys wanted to hand me real trouble sometime, they'd just have to cut me off from my base.

Didn't seem to be anybody around. Even that off-and-on presence behind me was absent. Nice that whoever that was occasionally slipped up or needed rest.

I hustled to the door and banged away. Dean opened up. I crabbed, "What took so long?" He answered me with one of his better glowers. He hadn't taken long at all. The house was quiet. ‘Carla gone to bed?"

"Yes. I shall do so myself, now."

"Where? Across her door?"

"The daybed."

He didn't give me what I deserved for my crack. Oh, well. "Sleep well." I clumped into the Dead Man's room. "Awake there, Old Bones?" It would be like him to take a two-week nap in the middle of things.

Yes. I gather you were frustrated again.

"It just gets worse," I told him. "Any suggestions?"

Get some sleep. While the implications are disturbing, the information is tenuous. I will have to do considerable thinking.

"Get some sleep? That's the best idea you've had in years."

Do not allow frustration to embitter you, Garrett. We all suffer our unproductive days.

Easy for him to say. lie had unproductive centuries. "Your talent for noting the obvious remains unblunted."

Indeed. But we cannot indefinitely continue to be in the wrong place or to arrive too late.

"We can't? Want to bet?"

Despair does not become you, Garrett. Dawn follows the darkest hour as surely as the rains fall to earth. Put Chodo Contague out of mind. Rest. That is the most useful thing you can do at this point. Relax. And rejoice. He does not have the book itself.

He was right. The dead fat genius usually is. Sometimes he can't be wrong if he wants. But: "No. He's just got somebody who knows how to make a book. That son of a bitch would write his own." I was in one of those moods where you're contrary for contrariness's sake. But maybe I've grown up some. I didn't overindulge. "While you're pondering, conjure me up a theory that explains the disappearances of Morley Dotes, Saucerhead Tharpe, and Sadler. And figure Out who's following me like a ghost, so good I've never caught a glimpse."

As to those disappearances, I do have a hypothesis. Two, in fact. But they must be tested. And I refuse to discuss them till you have slept.

I knew better but wasted time trying to pry something out of him. He wouldn't budge. Does anybody ever budge? I don't think they can. They only don't or won't. It's always negative. How come?

See what kind of mind is out there leading the war on evil? Tsk-tsk.

He wouldn't budge. And even a boulder anchored to bedrock is less stubborn than a dead Loghyr.

I gave up, shambled toward the doorway.

What news from the Caniard, Garrett? As though he hadn't read my mind and found that I hadn't bothered asking around. Just a little nudge, there—nudge, unfortunately, being one of those words that doesn't come standardly negative. Old Bones nudges me a lot. Hinting that maybe if I cooperated more with him, he'd help me more. Right. Laziness is his reason for hanging around. He's too damned lazy to finish dying.

I didn't answer him. I tramped upstairs and threw myself into bed still clad, lay there searching my soul, tossing and turning, for at least seventeen seconds.