Jonathan Nasaw Whistler 2 Shadows

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."Look what I " "Cheese and bread, boy!" The woman bustling aroundfrom behind the cauldron, wiping her hands on her apron, adjusting her stiffblack-ribboned straw bonnet, was a brown-black crone, tough and rubbery andwrinkled as a dried currant."M'send you out for ladyroot and you come backwit de whole lady.Good ting me ain' send you to fetch goatweed orelephant-leg.""Dis is Selene, Granny.Taxi man left her up by Greathouse." Granny stoppedin her tracks."Greathouse, you say?" The boy explained about hiding in thebushes when he heard the sound of a car engine climbing the dundo track towardthe Greathouse; about seeing two people drive up the hill, but only one drivedown; about following Selene into the compound, and spying on her long enoughto see that she needed help."Don't fret none, Granny," he concluded."It'sall bald daylight up deh now she ain' be Drinker.""Boy, you ain' knowwhatshe be, or ain' be." She peered across the yard atSelene."What were you doing up by Greathouse, you?" Quickly, Seleneconsidered her response.She didn't want to lie to the crone things weregetting too freaking mythical for that but she didn't want to appear cowed,either.She opted for a bold joke: "I dunno, picking goatweed?"It must have struck the right chord the weed woman came closer."Oh? And whatyou do wit goatweed after you pick it?" she asked slyly.Mythicaler and mythicaler, thought Selene.She had presented herself as awoman of knowledge, and been challenged accordingly by the crone.Fortunatelygoatweed, the smallest member of the Saint-John's-wort family, known assinjinweed to the English, corrupted to injun wort in the States, was a stapleof the Wiccan pharmacopoeia."If I were feeling sad, I could make an amulet ofthe flowers to wear around my neck.If I needed protection, I'd dry a branchand hang it over my window to keep evil spirits at bay.Or maybe I'd give afew leaves to a maiden to put under her pillow so that she could see herfuture husband in her dreams."The old woman had listened politely, fiddling absently with her bonnet,removing one of the pins that secured the dangling black ribbon; when Selenehad finished, she turned to her grandson."Leave us now, Joe-Pie.""But Granny "Page 58ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Don'tbutyour Granny.You want to listen to woman's talk, Granny ga make awoman out of you wit me razor.Go fetch me de ladyroot me ask you to fetchprevious.And dis time don't come back without, else Granny can't make BertaRobinson no love-powders, and she ain' ga pay Granny no money, and you ain' gahave no new Beebops on Christmas Day.""Reeboks, Granny, Reeboks," the boy called cheerfully over his shoulder as heleft the yard."De kind you pump."The old woman smiled fondly as the boy rounded the corner."Friendly boy,"she said, but the instant they were alone she seized Selene's wrist tightly inone hand and jabbed the pin she'd removed from her hat ribbon into the back ofSelene's hand.Selene sprang back, but it was too late her arm was numb to theelbow.Out of the frying pan& she thought, confused but surprisingly peaceful as theyard began to spin around her.She never did manage to finish the thought.CHAPTER 3Technically, the villa on Lamiathos appeared to be a difficult job, even foras skilled and passionate a firebug as Aldo, as he'd discovered when he wentout to reconnoiter late Tuesday night.Unlike the redwood Marin A-frame, theclapboard El Sobrante farmhouse, or the wood-beamed Tahoe Manor, the stonewalls and terra-cotta tiles of the villa would make poor tinder.(TheGreathouse had been another matter: constructed in the Danish fashion, thewalls were two-foot-thick stucco, but a stucco with a molasses base.Thriftybastards, those Danish sugar planters.So once the propane, gasoline, and oiltanks had been blown, the rest of the place had burned spectacularly.Or soAldo had read in theVirgin Islands Sentinel: he'd used time-delayed fuses inorder to catch the vampires asleep during the daytime without getting caughtby daylight himself, and was back in his bedroom at the Kings Frederick andChristian Arms with the curtains drawn long before the Greathouse had goneup [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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