The Edge of Ruin by Melinda Snodgrass

Author:Melinda Snodgrass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books

TWENTY-SEVEN

RICHARD

The water in the swimming pool was bathtub warm. Pretty soon my strokes had slowed, and I was taking a breath every two strokes instead of every four. Only the pain as my wound pulled and tugged kept me awake.

The hilt hung on a lanyard around my neck, and it felt like it was trying to drag me to the bottom. Man falls asleep in swimming pool. Drowns. Film at eleven.

And the sword would be the thing that tipped the balance. I tried not to read significance into the thought.

Back home I would have left it rolled up in a towel. But not here. Here it was never leaving me.

Pamela had fallen asleep in the car on the drive back from Franklin’s. Even her terror over Sam’s breakneck driving style hadn’t been able to keep her awake. One particularly fast turn sent her falling against me. I had clasped an arm around her shoulders to steady her, and had the disorienting sense of protectiveness. Who knows, maybe some day we’d actually like each other.

Whoa, let’s not go too far here.

I kicked harder. The sound of the churning water was both muffled and hollow in the echoing, tile-lined room. We’d gotten back to the condo at 1:00 A.M., but my sleep had been disturbed by the memory of crying children. The adults had experienced the sword, so they knew how much it would hurt, but most hadn’t been discouraged. Only one woman had refused, saying she didn’t want to deny her child his dreams and imagination. She had taken her son and left.

Her argument had actually shaken me. Maybe kids did need pretend games and imaginary friends to develop normally. What if the sword took that away? I didn’t understand this weapon, and the man … creature who could have enlightened me was well out of reach. Which left me relying on my own judgment, and my choices so often sucked. Fortunately, Franklin was made of sterner stuff. He shrugged off the woman’s objections as dumb. “Hell, I can still imagine. In fact I can imagine a whole hell of a lot. More than I’d like.”

I had warned that he might not feel that way when his children were crying in pain. But again Franklin had brushed if off. “It can’t be any worse than a vaccination for school, and this is more important than a damn shot for whooping cough.”

So, in addition to reassuring me, the conversation had also provided me with a way to describe what happened when I used the sword. Being inoculated. It beat every other phrase people had come up with. When Cross called it “the touch” it sounded sleazy. When Pamela called it “submitting to the sword” it sounded like an S&M sex act. Dagmar had suggested “the dubbing,” but that was even worse. “Inoculated” worked.

I tucked, somersaulted, caught the side of the pool with my feet, and pushed off again. Estevan’s shadow fell across the water. What a life—rich as hell, and I had to be guarded around the clock.

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.