Read Online Lord Loss by Darren Shan - Free Book Online Page A

Gret are though, in new frames. Recent photos. I remember the day they were taken, last summer, when we were on vacation in Italy.
    No photo of Mom. I go through them all again, but she isn't here. The two of us are missing.
    Shopping for clothes, twenty miles from Carcery Vale, in a large mall. Lots of people and noise. I feel lost in the crowd. Dervish sticks close by me, sensing my nervousness.
    Kebabs when we've finished shopping. Hot and juicy. Dervish nibbles slowly at his, delicately. I finish long before him. Slurping down the last of my Coke. Studying him as he eats. Wondering if I should mention Mom's and my absence from the hall of portraits.
    “An unasked question is the most futile thing in the world,” Dervish says, startling me. Doesn't look up. Swallows his food. Waits.
    “I was looking at the photos and portraits in the hall today,” I begin.
    “And you want to know why there are so many teenagers.”
    I frown. “No. I mean, I noticed that, but it was Mom and me I was curious about. You have photos of Dad and Gret, but not us.”
    “Oh.” He grimaces. “My
faux pas
. Most people ask about the teens. The photos and portraits are all of dead family members. I like to frame them as they looked at the end of their lives, so most of the photos were taken shortly before the subject's death. We have a tragic family history — lots of us have been killed young — which is why there are so many pubescents up there.”
    He wipes around his mouth with a napkin, carefully balls it up, and lays it aside. “As for why Sharon hasn't been included, it's simple — no in-laws. Everybody on those walls is a blood relative. It's a family tradition. But I have lots of photos of her, as well as Cal and Gret, in albums that you're free to browse through.”
    “Maybe later,” I smile. “I just wanted to make sure you didn't have any underhanded reasons for not including us with the others.”
    “Everything's aboveboard with me, Grubbs,” Dervish says, then sips from his mug of coffee without taking his eyes off me. “Well — almost everything.”
    Late. Close to midnight. In my pajamas. No slippers — I left my old pair at the hospital and I forgot to buy new ones today. The stone floor's cold. I have to keep moving my toes to keep them warm.
    I'm drawn back to the hall of portraits. Studying them in moonlight, the faces mostly concealed by shadows. Focusing on the teenagers. Dozens of them, all my age or slightly older. Wondering why the faces of the dead teens fascinate me, and why I feel uneasy.
    I'm back in my room, in bed, before the answer strikes and drives all hope of sleep away in a flash. In the restaurant, Dervish didn't simply say that many of our family members had died young — he said they'd been
killed
.

SPLEEN
    S ETTLING in. Daily chores — washing up after meals, sweeping a different couple of floors each day, polishing the furniture in one of the large halls or rooms. Lots of other less-regular jobs — taking out the garbage, cleaning windows, running errands in the village.
    I enjoy the work. It keeps me busy. Not much else to do here apart from play chess with Dervish, watch TV — Dervish has a massive 60-inch widescreen set, which he hardly ever uses! — and read. Chess doesn't thrill me — Dervish is like Mom and Dad, a chess fanatic, and beats me easily each time we play. I'd as soon not play at all, but he gently presses me to work on my game. I don't get my family's obsession with chess, but I guess I'll just have to bear it here like I did at home.
    I read more than I normally do — I'm not big on
litrachoor
— but Dervish doesn't have a great collection of modern fiction. I pick up a few new books in the Vale, and order some more over the Internet, but I'm not spoiled for choice. I try some of the thousands of occult books littering the shelves, figuring they've got to be better than watching the moon all night, but they're too complicated or densely written to be of