Finder by Emma Bull

Author:Emma Bull
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: windling, borderlands, ya, wolfboy, bordertown, orient
Publisher: Emma Bull

Chapter 8. Talking Heads

She was tired—reasonable enough, I was tired, it had been a hell of a day—and said, if I didn’t mind, she’d as soon sleep in the armchair as stumble off home.

“I mind,” I answered. “You can have the bed.”

“Where will you sleep?” She really did look tired; her eyelids drooped, her shoulders drooped, and her head was carried a little crooked, like a rose beginning to sag on the stem.

“Same place I slept before I got the bed. On the floor.”

“Aren’t you a little bruised and chipped for that sort of thing?”

“Nah. Foam pad and a sleeping bag will take care of it.”

She protested a little, but only a little. She slid from the chair over to the bed in one boneless motion, and seemed to fall asleep as soon as she landed.

It didn’t sound like a restful sleep. I lay on the floor in my sleeping bag listening to her cough, because I knew I’d wake up every time she did it, anyway. Not a familiar sound. Tick-Tick had been hurt before, and sick drunk once in my memory (tequila shots, immoderately taken, will make even an elf sick), and mildly food-poisoned a couple of times, from one cause or another. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her cough before, and the strangeness of it, and the intensity, brought me fully conscious every time she did it.

When the light through the window got to be too much to ignore, and the room warmed up too much for the sleeping bag, I got up and put a kettle of water on. I was out of peppermint tea, which the Ticker would have liked, and out of licorice root, which she wouldn’t have liked but which would have been good for her. There was purple coneflower, though, which according to Ms. Wu was good for the immune system. Okay, better late than never. I made a pot, poured out two cups (I had no idea if I could catch anything she could catch, but a well-groomed immune system is an ornament to one’s life at the best of times), and took hers to the bedside.

“Hullo,” she croaked. Tick-Tick usually wakes up quickly and gracefully, unlike yours truly. This was obviously not going to be one of the usual days.

“Tea. Do you want honey in it?”

“No, thank you. I’m sorry if I kept you up. I did, didn’t I?”

I thought about lying politely, but it would have been pointless. “I think Linn gave you his stupid cold.”

“I think you’re right. Probably the day before yesterday; he was coughing at the hospital.”

“I hope he’s miserable.”

“For shame, dear heart. I assure you, I’m not miserable. Indeed, once we finish this pot of tea, I think we should venture out for breakfast. Oh, but I was so weary last night, as if all the virtue had been drawn off from my blood!”

She spoke in a good, strong, lively voice, but spoiled it by coughing at the end.

“I can cook something here.”

“Certainly. This from

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