Read Online Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone - Free Book Online

huge and monstrous, please?”
    There came a horrid twisting, and an inrush of air. The creature collapsed into himself, passing through a stomach-churning stage where he was emphatically not gargoyle, but not human either. Strands of muscle showed through the broken stone, which melted into yielding, warm flesh.
    A young man stood before her, strong, good chin, ripped clothes, ripped chest. His eyes remained green as gems.
    Tara’s eyebrows floated upward of their own accord.
    “What?” the gargoyle said.
    “You’re…”
    “A monster?”
    “I was going to go for cute.”
    Ms. Abernathy? Are you well? Again the shout scraped across her soul.
    “Thanks?”
    “Don’t thank me. That makes it harder.”
    He opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but before he could speak, before he could react with all that mind-numbing speed and strength, she drove her knife deep into his stomach. It entered with a sizzling of seared flesh. His mouth opened in a silent gasp.
    As she pulled the knife up and out, his body was already healing. With a swipe of her mind she took that power from him. He started to turn himself to stone, but the glyphs on her left arm sparked silver as she stopped him. The plan relied on him looking human: no swift healing, no claws, no rocky skin. His blood would have stained her clothes, but a wave of heat surrounded her and turned that blood to vapor.
    She’d chosen her target well, and her depth. Missed the intestines and vital organs but nicked a few arteries going in, not so bad that he’d bleed out in minutes, but bad enough. He went slack, and fell free of her blade.
    She knelt beside him and passed the knife to her left hand. The glyph-rings on her fingers, the spider on her palm, sparked silver as the blade faded into them. Next came the hard part. She framed his face with her fingertips and tightened her grip. Her nails pressed into flesh, and her Craft pressed deeper.
    She twisted her wrist and peeled his face away. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Behind, she left a smooth, unbroken pane of skin.
    Why do this? Why get involved? Save that someone had tried to kill her before breakfast, and someone else apparently succeeded at killing Judge Cabot. Two attacks in one morning, both on people connected with the case. Tara needed to know more, and she had little confidence in these Blacksuits and their Justice.
    Holding the face in her left hand, she reached into her purse with her right and produced a black, leather-bound book, cover scrawled with silver. She stuck the face, carefully folded, between pages 110 and 111. Click went the latch, then back in her shoulder bag.
    She had little power left. Enough to make a pass over the bleeding, faceless body and wipe away the miniscule traces of her Craft. Add to that a light ward against discovery, strong enough to block normal sight, but weak enough that it would never fool a Craftswoman.
    Ms. Abernathy?
    She stood, stepped back from the body, brushed a stray lock of hair into place, and squeezed her fists tight. Her nails bit into her palms, and she screamed.
    *
    The Blacksuits weren’t the individuals Tara would have chosen to comfort a person who had discovered a faceless body. If she had been telling the truth, and indeed stumbled upon a wounded, comatose man while wandering through the garden, their precise questions would have driven her to hysterics. As it was, after she staunched the gargoyle’s bleeding and bound his wound Tara felt compelled to hyperventilate, sit down in Cabot’s parlor, and ask for a strong cup of tea.
    What might have happened to this young man?
    “I almost tripped over him, by all the gods. Couldn’t have seen him if not for the Craft. I mean … Shit. I think … Maybe he was here. Talking to Cabot? Maybe whoever killed Cabot didn’t notice him at first?”
    Why not kill him in the same way?
    “Not enough time. Oh. Thank you. Tea. Maybe not enough power. We’re dealing with an amateur here—little skill, less soulstuff