The taste was more than a few eggs, onions, and peppers seemed to justify. It was lush and hot and rich. He smiled at my reaction and slid the rest onto a plate for me.
‘That’s really good,’ I said through my mouthful.
‘There’s a secret to it. Always drink some brandy first. There. Enjoy. So, yeah, we were looking to break the Invisible College’s back. Get rid of Coin, disrupt the induction. It’d be just like penicillin taking out a case of the clap. We both knew it was dangerous. I don’t know how they got to Eric, but I’m dead sure they did. Your average mugger would have been out of his depth with him. Guys like Eric don’t die at random. He got hit.’
I took another bite of the omelet, chewing slowly to give myself time to think. On the one hand, everything Midian said was clearly insane. A two-hundred-year-old man cursed by demons. A cabal of evil wizards planning to engineer the demonic possession of a new batch of cultists. And my uncle in the middle of it all, dead because someone caught wind of his plan.
On the other hand, if anyone had asked me a week before what my uncle did, I would have guessed wrong. And even if every word coming out of Midian’s mouth was crap, it seemed to be crap he believed. And so maybe this Coin guy believed it too. I’d had enough experience with the kind of atrocities that blind faith can lead to that I couldn’t discount anything just because it was crazy. If Coin and the Invisible College believed that they were demon-possessed wizards and that Eric was out to stop them, that could have been reason enough to kill him. Things don’t have to exist to have consequences.
I was lost in bitter memories for a moment. The flare of a match brought me back. The deathly face was considering me as he lit a cigarette.
‘I’d think it was bullshit too if I was you,’ he said. ‘You doubt. I respect that. Doubt’s important stuff.’
He took a long drag, the coal of his cigarette going bright and then dark. Long, blue smoke slid out of his mouth and nostrils as he spoke. It didn’t smell like tobacco. It was sweeter and more acrid.
‘Thing is, kid, you gotta doubt the stuff that isn’t true. You go around doubting whether pickup trucks exist, you’ll wind up on the curb with a lot of broken bits.’
I put my fork against the side of the plate and looked up at him.
‘I’m taking this to the police, you know,’ I said.
‘Won’t do you any good. They’re just going to think you’re nuts. They have an explanation that suits them just fine.’
‘All the same—’
A hard tap came from the front room. Both of us turned to look. The little glass ball that hung over the door had fallen. It rolled uneasily along the unseen slope of the floor-boards. While we watched, the ones over the windows fell too, one-two-three. Midian grunted.
‘When you came in,’ he said, ‘you didn’t drop something behind you? Ashes or salt, something like that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’
Midian nodded and took another drag of his cigarette.
‘That’s too bad,’ he said.
With a bang like a car wreck, the front door burst in.
Table of Contents
Full blooded
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
About the Author
Interview
Chapter 1
Chapter 2