Read Online Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater - Free Book Online Page B

lovely.” The smile on his face dimmed when he saw what I was holding. “Another one?”
    My expression mirrored his. “It was in my tip jar.”
    Dropping his eyes to the pile of money on the counter, Luke shook his head. “I don’t think you need that kind of luck.”
    “Every girl needs luck,” Sara offered. “I’ll take it if you don’t want it.” I looked at Luke, and he shrugged, so I gave it to her.
    As I scraped the coins back into the tip jar, Luke said, “Rumor has it you’re getting off soon. Can I drive you home?”
    “Fifteen minutes. Will you wait?”
    Sara sighed. “No one else is going to come in, Deirdre. It’s about to rain. Just go. I’ll close everything up at five thirty.”
    I was taken aback by her surprising display of selflessness. “Uh—thanks! Are you sure?”
    Sara smiled at me, and then at Luke. “Yeah. Get lost. And take your tips.”
    “Half are yours,” I lied politely.
    Sara looked at the tip cup in front of her, filled with nickels and dimes. “Yeah, right.”
    So I stuffed the bills into my pocket and left the coins—customers tipped better if they saw that there was already money in there—and followed Luke into the oppressive afternoon. From the tightly knit clouds overhead, it was obvious that rain was coming, but until it did, the air would only get more smothering. I was glad for the ride home; when I’d walked here this morning, the day had been bright and clear.
    We stood for a moment, staring up at that churning sky, and then my nose caught the now familiar herbal scent. I thought Luke must smell it too, because he was frozen beside me, looking at the edge of the parking lot.
    “Come on, let’s go.” Tugging my hand, he led me to the car. Inside, he turned on the air-conditioning, but the scent of thyme blasted through the vents—stronger than it should have been from just one freaky guy. I didn’t know what was going on, but the smell reminded me of the feeling the freckled guy had given me, circling around me.
    “Let’s go,” I said urgently.
    Luke didn’t need any more encouragement. He reversed so fast that the tires scrubbed pavement when he stopped and shoved the car into first gear. With a wail from the engine, we tore out of the parking lot, clipping down the road at well above the speed limit. A mile away, the thyme began to fade. After three miles—past the turn for my house—it was nearly gone. Ten miles from Dave’s, there was nothing left in the car but the faint clean odor that was Luke’s.
    I wanted to say something about it, but it would break the unspoken rule of pretending he was normal. Anyway, I knew now that it wasn’t just him that was abnormal. There was some big storm, just like the purple tempest above, that was circling around me, waiting to break, and Luke was only one of its elements. The freckled guy was another, and maybe Eleanor from the reception as well. And all the four-leaf clovers.
    “Damn!” Luke yelled suddenly, slamming on the brakes. A white hound leapt out of the middle of the road, and I gasped, “Rye?” But then another white hound leapt out from the brush by the side of the road, and then another, and another, disappearing after the first in the brush on the opposite bank. There must have been twenty—all copies of Rye, baying and howling.
    “They all look like Rye,” I said softly. For some reason it was the most supernatural thing I’d seen all week, and it was just a pack of hounds. Just a pack of hounds, all the same color as Rye. They could have been littermates. A freaking lot of littermates. I had gone almost seventeen years without seeing another dog like Rye, and now there were twenty of them?
    I became aware that Luke was looking at me. “You saw them?”
    “There were twenty of them. Of course I saw them!”
    Luke muttered something and made a U-turn to head back to the house. His fingers clutched the steering wheel. I didn’t know what had disturbed him, but I knew I didn’t like