Read Online The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) by Frank Tuttle - Free Book Online Page B

got no response.
    “Dammit, Evis, I know you’re in there,” I said. “We need to talk. There’s been an incident.” I cussed silently, knowing what I had to do but hating it anyway. “Gertriss is hurt.”
    That did it.
    I heard movement behind the door. Rustlings and thumpings. A chair creaked. Footfalls, light and fast, raced toward me.
    Locks clicked, and Evis flung the door open, stepping back out of the light it let in.
    “How bad?” he asked, motioning me inside.
    “She’ll live. Broken rib, most likely. You, on the other hand—damn, Evis, what’s the matter with you?”
    He slammed the door and staggered back to his desk.
    Evis is a halfdead. On a good day he looks like a freshly exhumed corpse. His skin is pasty white. His eyes are cloudy soft orbs, no irises, just big black pupils. Wherever his skin is stretched thin, over the knuckles for instance, it darkens to the sickly hue of an old bruise.
    All that I’m accustomed to seeing.
    I’d never seen Evis a light shade of blue before. Never seen mottled patches of dark green beneath his eyes. Never seen thick black goo ooze from the corners of his eyes, his nose, his lips.
    He’d lost that famous vampire glide too. He stumbled as he walked, had to catch himself on his desk. His gait was slow and pained.
    He sneezed. Black goo flew.
    “Pardon me,” he muttered, dabbing at his face with a monogrammed silk hanky.
    “Angels and Devils,” I said, following him to his desk. “Are you sick?”
    He fell into his chair, stooped, and came up with a thick wool blanket, which he wrapped around himself.
    Hell, the man was shivering. I expected his fangs to start rattling any second.
    “What? I can’t get sick? Hell yes, I’m sick. What happened to Gertriss?”
    I laid it all out for him. The Ordwalds, the carnival, Ordwald dying, Buttercup being taken. He sneezed and coughed the whole time.
    I’d never heard of a halfdead falling ill. Hell, they hadn’t suffered during the yellow fever epidemics during the War, or the wet lung plagues after it.
    “So Gertriss. She’ll be all right?” he asked.
    “Sure. Unless she dies of a broken heart. I hear you’ve been dodging her the last few weeks.”
    He glared at me as he wiped at his nose.
    “Not the time or the place,” he said.
    “When would be a good time? Thursday? Next May? Never?”
    “How did you get in here, anyway?”
    “I am an expert in the ways of stealth and concealment,” I said. “I hid under a doily. Fine, you don’t want to talk about Gertriss, that’s your right. I thought you’d want to know what we’re mixed up in. Say, is Stitches around? She might know a way to swat pesky flying witches out of the sky.”
    Stitches is House Avalante’s up-and-coming sorcerer. Only I know that Stitches was most recently known as the Corpsemaster, and that as the Corpsemaster she faked her own death. Such knowledge doesn’t lend itself to peace of mind or easy slumber.
    “She’s on the moon,” said Evis.
    “The moon.” I rose. “Sorry to have interrupted your busy day.”
    “Sit down,” he said. “Dammit. Wait.”
    He flew into a fit of coughing that intensified into a full-blown doubled-over retching session.
    “Damn, Evis, should I fetch a doctor? A mortician?” I sat. “That’s not sick. That’s gravely ill.”
    “Dead already,” he gasped when it was over. “Look. Don’t want Gertriss. To see me. Like this.”
    “She’s not some fainting socialite,” I said. “She’s seen a lot worse.”
    He shook his head. “Going to get a lot worse. Fast.” He paused to let another epic choking coughing fit pass. “Trust me,” he said. His skin flushed a darker blue, veins pulsing just beneath the surface. “Don’t tell her. Any. Of this.”
    I didn’t like his eyes. His pupils expanded and contracted, but not in time together. The black ooze ran thicker and faster.
    “Have I ever asked you for anything, Markhat?”
    “No,” I said. “Are you asking now?”
    He nodded.