In Truth and Claw by Ari Marmell

Author:Ari Marmell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

CHAPTER EIGHT

I dusted outta there late the next morning.

I wasn’t near a hundred percent yet, but a good night’s sleep—well, a night’s sleep; wasn’t much good about it—had fixed up a lotta what ailed me. The rest just needed time, and a bit of luck-slinging with the L&G, which I wasn’t about to do around the Ottatis. They didn’t need me muckin’ with their fortunes any worse’n I already had.

And I needed to get away from them, figure how I was even gonna start makin’ things square. Especially with Adalina. Not trustin’ me could get her into all sortsa dutch, maybe more’n I could ever yank her out of.

Woulda been easier if I was someone who deserved that trust, but whaddaya gonna do?

Yes, I left on my own, which means yes, I knew where they were layin’ low. Somehow, askin’ Bianca to arrange a ride for me didn’t feel like the wisest course of action just then.

After hoofin’ it a few blocks, so I wasn’t in quite such a fancy neighborhood, I stopped in at the first clothing shop I could find that didn’t look to be completely outta my price range. Picked out a shirt to replace the one the Ottatis had wrapped me in while I was out (it didn’t fit that well), and a coat, to replace the ones the vampire’d shredded. And then a second coat because I figured I was gonna need a spare. (My sword drew some odd looks from the salesman, but I stared soulfully into his eyes and made him forget about it.) Got to the counter, found out they were still outta my price range, had a conversation with the salesman where we once again stared soulfully into each other’s eyes—I was gonna have to buy him flowers at this rate—and then they weren’t outta my price range anymore.

Yeah, I know. It ain’t a trick I pull much, but you do what you gotta do, right? Besides, the country was still in a depression. They shouldn’ta been charging so much, anyway.

Got myself a paper—no murders in the last day, or none the newshawks had caught wind of, anyway—and made my way back to the office, just to check on everything.

Nothing to check on. No mail of importance, no scrawled notes, no clients waiting, and if anybody’d tried to reach me on the payphone, neither Mr. Soucek nor any of the other tenants had taken a message.

Not that they often did.

I went inside, did some ritual salting and sweeping, waved the Luchtaine & Goodfellow overhead a few times, and felt a tiny bit better. So now what?

Still had no leads on the vampires, and I wasn’t any more eager to start diggin’ around random cemeteries than I’d been yesterday. Still no leads on Orsola, either, and after gumming up everything with the Ottatis, that wasn’t a topic I wanted to spend too long mulling over. Yeah, I’d have to, sooner or later, but right now I was votin’ strenuously for “later.”

What I

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