Giving Him Hell_A Saturn's Daughter Novel by Jamie Quaid

Author:Jamie Quaid [Quaid, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary fantasy, humor and satire, urban fantasy, paranormal
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2014-09-29T22:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Laughter and applause in an empty building is a lot scarier than one would think. Schwartz shoved his muscled arm in front of me to hold me back, then slipped silently through the lobby to the back hall.

I tiptoed after him. Maybe we should have thought about weapons, but in my experience, weapons usually caused more harm than good. Shooting the uniforms blocking Andre’s building would have been bad. Turning them into gnomes . . . Not good but probably not deadly.

I was contemplating getting a baseball bat to keep handy, when Schwartz relaxed and let me catch up to him. Even I recognized the sound now—a television. We’d been afraid of a sound heard in every normal home across the country.

Given that we had no power and that I owned no television, it didn’t make sense, but that was canned laughter. A child’s voice chimed in. I didn’t know any children.

For all that mattered, why was it warm in here when it was freezing everywhere else in town? I’d learned to regard heat with suspicion.

It had been a long, strange day. I didn’t know how much more I could face, but if I couldn’t take a hot shower, I might as well keep on pushing on.

I walked into an ordinary family room in what had once been my empty, cobwebbed storage area. Cora, my snake-wielding bestie, and Jane Claremont, my perennially bankrupt journalist friend, glanced up from a catalog they’d been perusing. They’d appropriated the couch Andre had left in one of the smaller offices. A floor lamp illuminated the wall. A toddler sat in a kid’s car seat and giggled at a cartoon on a computer screen.

“Cozy,” I said, leaning against the wall while Schwartz studied the computer setup and cartoon with interest. “Ned said we had no utilities.”

“Utilities are working in the neighborhood behind here,” Cora said with a shrug. “Frank hooked us up and turned us on. Don’t ask questions.”

Frank was Cora’s boss and the shady owner of Discreet Detection. I never questioned him, but I raised an eyebrow at Jane. She lived in my old apartment a bus ride away from the Zone.

“I called to tell you that the state is going forward with the eminent domain plans,” Jane said, “but somehow I ended up talking to Cora. One thing led to another . . .”

“I got your keys from Sarah,” Cora said. She was blunt where Jane shied from speaking out. “I was freezing my tail off. Jane here’s about to be booted from her place, and Frank said he knew a man who knew a man, and here we are.”

I glanced at our resident cop, but he didn’t seem concerned that Frank was stealing utilities. Schwartz wandered off to inspect the rest of the place—or in search of an operational bathroom. This side of the street was closer to sane neighborhoods. It made a crazy sense that we could hook up to their lines.

I collapsed on the sofa, raising a cloud of dust. The fabric was so old, I couldn’t even tell the color.

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