Lethal Control by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin and Blount
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELI (7)

At the next intersection, Dag let the Escort roll to a stop. We were lucky it was night, and we were on the outskirts of Bragg. Traffic was minimal—well, it was nonexistent—and the streetlights were spaced far apart. On one side of us, Bragg huddled under the dome of its own light pollution, a gray skin stretched out over the night. On the other, the lake was an empty space, as though someone had cut out part of the world. And then, even farther, like neon brambles, New Orleans.

After a moment, the jack around my neck swung right, and I pointed.

Dag turned right.

Along with other valuable traits like finding really porny books for me and getting me a job and recommending a great hand lotion—ok, I found it in her purse, and then she refused to tell me where she’d bought it, but thank you, Internet—Miss Kennedy was apparently really good at hoodoo.

Like, really damn good.

All that whining and moaning about family legacies and not wanting to be involved, etcetera? When the rubber hit the road, it turned out that Miss Kennedy seriously knew her shit.

The jack was, she had explained, essentially a modified flannel. I’d had about as much as I wanted to do with flannels the year before, but I understood the general principle. Flannels—or mojo bags, as they were also called—were typically made out of flannel. Hence the name. You added the right items inside, and if you knew how to shape the energy, they could produce certain effects. How’s that for woo-woo? Of course, an all-around genius-slash-perfect-physical-specimen like me was also, it turned out, naturally good at woo-woo. Big surprise, right? It’s my curse, being able to—as my fellow bros would say—crush everything. Ask Dag. I’m so good at getting stains out of his shirts that sometimes the whole shirt disappears.

For a jack, you needed the following: red flannel, a silver dime (pre-1965, for those playing along at home), some High John the Conqueror (the root, not the leaves), goofer dust (which, when I pressed Miss Kennedy, meant graveyard dust), the wishbone from a chicken, a lodestone pair (fancy word for magnets, which both Kennedy and Dag refused to explain, so thank you, Internet), blood (from the shirt we’d found at the fishing camp), and musk. Animal magnetism, Miss Kennedy had said.

Thank you for noticing, I had said.

That was when Dag sent me to sit in the car.

Miss Kennedy had all this stuff in her trunk, by the way, most of it organized in old tackle boxes. Which really makes you think, when was the last time she went on a date?

I got out of the car to ask her, and Dag made me get in the back seat, and I think I saw him set the child locks.

Fast-forward, and now we were following the jack as it led us to Reb.

At the next intersection, Dag had to pull over while a Silverado blasted past us. The truck had—at my estimate—eighteen frat boys crammed into

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.