Read Online When Demons Walk by Patricia Briggs - Free Book Online

entrance of a long formal meeting hall and carried it with her the length of the room. She set it down casually on a small table inside the far door, smiling inwardly as a footman sighed with relief—not noticing that the small figurine than had occupied the table was now in a pocket of the full sleeve that covered her left arm.
    The figurine was encrusted with green gemstones that Sham thought might be diamond rather than emerald in the quick glimpse she’d managed before secreting it away. If so, the statuette of the dancing girl was worth far more than the candlestick that she could hear someone rushing to restore to its former position.
    The foolery distracted her from the fact that the last time she’d walked through this hall it had been strewn with bodies, many of whom she’d known. As they passed by the doorway she could still picture the young guardsman who had lain there in a limp heap, blind eyes staring at her. Only a little older than she had been, he’d asked her to dance one evening and talked about his dreams of adventure and travel.
    Sham winked at a timid maidservant who was staring at the lad in the ragged clothes. The maid blushed, then winked back, smoothing her bright yellow gown with calloused hands.
    Talbot led Sham into the private wings. The difference was immediately apparent from the lack of servants standing ostentatiously in the corridors. This was an area of the Castle she wasn’t familiar with, and she felt some of her tension dissolve.
    There were none of the richly woven rugs that werescattered around the floors in the public rooms, but she thought that it might be a recent modification to accommodate a wheeled chair. No small tables littered the halls as they had elsewhere; there was nothing the wheels of the Reeve’s chair would catch on.
    She bit her lip and the little statuette in her sleeve made her increasingly uncomfortable: the Old Man would not have approved. The Reeve had enough things to deal with; he didn’t need to worry that the thief he’d been forced to ask for help was untrustworthy enough to steal from him. She looked for an innocuous little table to set the stupid thing on, but Talbot’s path seemed to be confined to the denuded corridors that twisted and snaked back and forth.
    Finally they came to a narrow hall that bordered the outside of the Castle. On one side was the finished marble that pervaded the castle but the other side was rough-hewn white granite from an earlier age. The hall ended abruptly in a wall with a plain door; Talbot stopped and tentatively rapped on it with his knuckles.
    He raised his hand to knock a second time, but stopped when the door opened smoothly to reveal another one of the bland-faced servants that Sham was developing a hearty dislike for—a dislike that was compounded by the dancer in her sleeve. If it hadn’t been for that bland I-am-a-servant expression she wouldn’t have taken the blasted thing in the first place. She glowered at the wiry man who held the door.
    â€œThe Reeve was expecting you, Master Talbot. Come in.” His voice was as expressionless as his face.
    Giving in to the impulses that had often brought her grief in the past, Sham slipped the statuette into her hand and gave the valet the little dancer with her glittering green eyes and begemmed costume.
    â€œSomeone is bound to have missed this by now.” Her tone was nonchalant. “You might take it to the first long room to the right of the main entrance and give it to one of the footmen.”
    A brief snort of masculine laughter emerged from a darkened corner of the room. “Dickon, take the stupid thing tothe emerald meeting room and give it to one of my mother’s servants before they shrivel with terror.”
    With no more than a slight nod of disapproval, the manservant left the room holding the statuette in two fingers as though it might bite him.
    Sham looked at the expansive room that managed