Read Online Child of Fire by Harry Connolly - Free Book Online

into her room and I went into mine next door. I stripped off my clothes in the bathroom and examined them in the bright lights by the sink. My jacket, shirt, and pants were nasty. I needed a laundromat and some industrial detergent. I wasn’t going to get them. I took the clothes into the shower, washed off the waterless cleaner and blood, then scrubbed at every spot ofblood on my clothes I could find. The blood was still wet, and the clothes came clean fairly well. I tried not to think about what sort of diseases Harlan might have had. I just wanted to be clean.
    Eventually, I ran out of steam. I hung the clothes on chairs by the heater and turned it on low. Then I fell onto the polyester bedcovers and disappeared into dreamless slumber.
    It seemed like an instant later that Annalise thumped on my door, hitting it hard enough to rattle it in the jamb. I climbed out of bed, wrapped a blanket around me, and opened the door.
    She had changed her clothes, switching her fireman’s jacket for simple brown leather. Her pants were black and her shirt a white button-down that looked a size too big for her. Her boots had been exchanged for simple black leather walking shoes.
    She barely glanced at me. “Get dressed. We have a lot to do today.” She tossed the keys to me.
    My clothes were still wet, but they were all I had. There were traces of Harlan’s blood that I had missed the night before. Damn. I put the nasty clothes on my clean body and went out to the van. I left the jacket in the garbage.
    It was just after 7 A.M. The sky was gray, and there was a steady drizzle. I was hungry but I couldn’t picture myself sitting at a restaurant with wet, bloody clothes. I just drove, hoping to find a drive-through somewhere.
    Instead, Annalise had me turn into a side street beside an outdoorsman’s store. Aside from the diner, which had cardboard taped over the broken windows, it was the only place open at this hour.
    Annalise led me inside and bought me new clothes. They weren’t fancy—four pairs of jeans, four black long-sleeved pullover shirts, four pairs of white socks, one pair of black hiking boots, one windbreaker with a zip-out lining.
    The clerk held open a trash bag and I threw in all my old things, including my sneakers, which were rimmed with Harlan’s blood. I hadn’t even noticed. He threw all that old stuff away, and I walked out in new clean clothes.
    It felt good. I wondered if the four pairs of clothes meant she expected me to live another four days.
    Next, we stopped off for breakfast. We chose a different diner this time. Annalise ordered very rare steak with eggs and a side of ham. The waitress looked dubious, but Annalise packed all of it away.
    Her tattoos were visible above the open collar of her shirt and at the edges of her sleeves. They looked like mine, which meant they were made with a paintbrush and a spell, not a needle and ink. They were just as permanent, though.
    I didn’t know who had given them to Annalise, but I wondered if she’d been conscious for it. I’d been awake for part of my own tattooing, and the pain had been worse than anything I’d ever experienced in my life, with the exception of casting my ghost knife spell.
    I absentmindedly touched the spot below my right collarbone where I’d been feeling twinges for the last few hours. My fingertips registered the touch of normal flesh, but my chest registered nothing at all. The parts of my body marked with spells couldn’t feel a thing.
    And those spells had come from Annalise. I wondered if she could sense them—and me—the way I could sense the ghost knife. I also wondered if my tattoos had been as painful for her to cast as my ghost knife had been for me. When I’d created the ghost knife, channeling all the energy needed to power it had been like dousing myself with gasoline and setting myself on fire.
    It was possible that I’d cast the spell incorrectly, but what if I hadn’t? Annalise might have had to go through that