Read Online Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers by Scott Nicholson, Robert J. Crane, Daniel Arenson, S.M. Reine, J. R. Rain - Free Book Online Page A

computer lumbered out of her chair and vanished. She left all of her crap on the desk, including an empty water bottle and a cell phone. It was scattered everywhere. Encroaching on my space. I didn’t care if she was going to look for another book or going to take a piss. No one was respectful of public space anymore.
    I picked up the phone and dialed Suzy.
    “Why the fuck are you calling me?” she said when I identified myself. “Tell me you’re out of town, Hawke.”
    “Nice to talk to you, too. Listen, I need you to pull files for me.”
    “What? Are you working right now?”
    She tore me a new one for a minute, and except for a quick look around to make sure Grandma Space Hogger wasn’t on her way back, I kicked back and let Suzy’s vitriol wash over me. It was soothing, in its own way. Familiar. The dulcet background sounds I was used to at the office.
    “Feel better?” I asked when she wound down.
    “Hmph. That’s what you get for taking off without leaving a note, asshole.” I heard the clatter of computer keys on the other end of the line. “Okay, what files am I pulling?”
    “Any RVs that have checked in at more than five of these California RV parks in the last three months.” I listed the locations off. Suzy typed furiously.
    “Huh,” she said. “One RV comes up. Registration for…Belle Stonecrow. You’re still after the necromancer?”
    “Actually, I think she’s necrocognitive, like Peter was before he—you know. She’s not raising zombies, that’s for sure.”
    “Stonecrow is my case, Hawke.”
    “I’m helping you find her. You can think of it as me paying you back for use of your couch last night.”
    “Whatever.” Suzy couldn’t conceal how excited she sounded. It was a breakthrough. A good breakthrough. This was the shit that fueled us.
    Isobel Stonecrow was living out of RV parks. It was so simple, and considering how much crap witches needed to lug around, practical as hell. Better than sleeping in the back of a car, too.
    “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll find her.”
    I was about to hang up when Suzy said, “You wouldn’t leave if I told you to again, would you?”
    “Not a chance.”
    + + +
     
    I was in good shape. Not like the guys in the Union, but I kept up with my cardio. So I managed to reach the first two RV parks by noon with the help of a couple of city buses. No Stonecrow. I took a break around noon, stopping in a burger joint to escape the rain and splurge on dollar cheeseburgers. Bargain menus had saved my bacon between paychecks before.
    The cheeseburgers would’ve been so good with bacon.
    The third RV park took a longer, deeply unnerving bus ride to reach, and it was in the bad part of town. Know how they talk about “wrong side of the tracks?” Well, it looked like this park had been planted solidly in the middle of those tracks and then run over a few dozen times by trains hauling thousands of cattle, each of which took a giant dump on the park as it passed.
    It was inside a crumbling brick wall. The smell of rain failed to overpower the sewage stench of a couple dozen RVs dumping their shit all over the place. Every so-called “recreational” vehicle looked like it had survived a nuclear blast.
    If radioactive hillbillies ever vacationed in Los Angeles, this would have been the spot.
    “You okay, dude?” the man at the window of the third RV park asked as I stopped to catch my breath. “Don’t die on my sidewalk, man. I gotta clean this thing.”
    I knew I looked bad, but on-the-verge-of-death bad? And people said that no one cared in this town. “I’m fine.” I took a few deep breaths and regretted it. Man, that smell was terrible. Hard to tell if it was coming from the park or the guy operating the gates. He looked like a radioactive hillbilly himself, mostly bald with more hairy moles than teeth. “I’m actually looking for a friend.”
    I went through the whole deal, miming Stonecrow’s height against mine, tracing her more slender