Read Online May Contain Traces of Magic by Tom Holt - Free Book Online Page B

at it for a few seconds, as though he suspected it of playing games with him. Yes, all right, post-traumatic stress syndrome or whatever the medical term was, maybe Jill was a little bit off her head tonight because of what she’d seen at the shop. But that still left the problem of what had munched its way through an entire packet of digestive biscuits, and the more he thought about that, the stranger it became. Furthermore, now he came to think of it, the unidentified muncher had eaten all the biccies and then put the wrapper back in the bag. Karen wouldn’t have done that, she’d have binned it, no doubt breathing a heavy sigh as she did so because it was non-recyclable, and it’d have had to have been a fairly sophisticated mouse—
    Under other circumstances, if he’d had a problem like that, he’d have phoned Jill; who’d either have explained it away in ten seconds flat, or told him not to be so stupid as to worry about it. Option not available. Chris sat down with his half a cold pizza on his lap, and tried to rationalise it, but his mind kept slipping off it, as though it had been waxed.
    Karen got home just after ten; in a foul mood, overtired and overwrought. There’d been a screw-up at work, she explained, and she’d had to stay on and sort it all out in time for the meeting tomorrow. Chris didn’t ask for details and she didn’t offer them. He heard her slamming cabinet doors in the bathroom as he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
    He had the dream again. Not that he minded. It was a nice dream, his favourite.
    He was in the car, somewhere in Staffordshire, although the view through the window was of mountains, their sides covered in an endless sea of pine trees, shimmering faintly grey in the summer heat. Sitting beside him, she’d just said, ‘At the end of the road, turn left,’ though the road went on, straight as an arrow, as far as the eye could see.
    â€˜The road is very long,’ he said. He talked like that, in the dream.
    â€˜You will know when the time comes to turn left,’ she replied.
    â€˜How will I know?’
    â€˜I will be here to tell you.’
    He didn’t look round. ‘I am glad you will be here with me when the turning comes,’ he said.
    â€˜I am always with you,’ she said, and he could feel the warmth of her radiance, and the edges of his vision blurred golden from the light that shone from her, and he passed a signpost that said Stoke on Trent 455 miles .
    Oh good, he thought; because when he saw that sign it meant it was the point in the dream where he was allowed to ask one question and still be able to remember the answer when he woke up. It was amazing, the sort of stuff she knew about, and she’d never been wrong yet.
    â€˜SatNav,’ he said, ‘who ate the biscuits?’
    Silence for a while, and then she said, ‘The one who is to come ate the biscuits, Chris.’
    Oh, he thought. Never wrong yet; but there were some nights when she came over all cryptic, which was only to be expected when you considered that she was just his problem-solving subconscious mind, sublimated into the form of the only entity in the world he really trusted.
    â€˜I do not know who that is,’ he said. It was all right to admit stuff like that, in the dream. In real life, of course, women expect you to be bloody telepathic.
    â€˜When the time comes, you will know,’ she said. ‘After six hundred and fifty-four miles, prepare to turn left.’
    Oh no you don’t, he thought; so he asked, ‘Who is the one who is to come, SatNav?’
    â€˜The one who is to come will unite the children who fell,’ she replied. ‘The one who is to come will lead them along the road they have to travel, taking the third exit at the next roundabout. But you will not remember that when you wake up, because it is still hidden.’
    Oh well, he thought, fair enough. ‘Why did the one