Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel) Read Online Free

Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel)
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was about to slay again, there was a sudden, fiery explosion that killed the murderer while leaving Lopez and the other people present (including me) unharmed. When a villain had tried to escape from Lopez by holding a gun to my head, he’d been foiled by a shower of fiery sparks that rained down on him from light fixtures on the ceiling. On an occasion when Lopez and I were having a particularly volatile evening, my bed had burst into flames—while we were on it together. And during a Vodou ritual last summer, he had been involuntarily possessed by a fire spirit. Lopez remembered nothing about that trance, during which he had played with flames and hot coals without incurring any injury (though I assumed he’d had to throw away the trousers he’d been wearing that night, which were not nearly as impervious to fire damage as his own flesh was).
    When I had realized earlier today what Susan intended to do to John, I’d called in the cavalry—that is, I’d phoned Lopez, who arrived within minutes, accompanied by a reassuring number of police officers, to help stop her. And then an unexplained burst of fire saved my life at a moment when Lopez was scared to death for me—as he subsequently told me with more crankiness than affection.
    Given the pattern that seemed so apparent to me, I didn’t understand how Lopez could fail to realize—or at least start to suspect—that
he
was the common denominator in these fiery incidents. But Max, who hypothesized that he was exhibiting some form of pyrokinesis, didn’t consider his obliviousness surprising.
    If this was an ability Lopez had possessed since birth or early childhood, Max had told me, then the unconscious processes that created these events might feel so normal to him as to be unnoticeable. And since the incidents seemed to occur only in moments of extreme stress, then they might be too irregular for Lopez to perceive a pattern, let alone identify himself as the source of that pattern.
    In other words, I shouldn’t be puzzled by his obtuseness. Anyone as stubbornly prosaic as Lopez was bound to be dense about this sort of esoteric phenomenon.
    And it wasn’t a subject I could picture myself raising with him. Well, not unless our pending conversation about the misfortune cookie that I’d stolen from his car last night went a whole lot better than I was expecting it to go.
    As I watched the Yee family’s store burn, I wondered if anyone else in Lopez’s life—anyone besides me and Max—had ever suspected that he possessed mystical power of which he was unaware.
    “It looks like the building will have to be gutted,” I murmured. “They won’t be able to save anything, the way the fire is consuming the place.”
    “It had a fierce beginning,” Max said, “and it spread with terrifying rapidity.”
    “But despite the brushes with death on this one, I guess it’s all come out good, huh?” said Lucky. “Not even someone as smart as the Gambello family’s lawyer could get Susan off the hook after what she did today. Attempted murder right in front of a bunch of cops?
Stupid
don’t even begin to cover it.” He shook his head at the unprofessional sloppiness of that.
    “Susan has been taken into custody?” Max asked.
    “Yes. And she seemed completely demented while they were arresting her,” I said. “Max, do you think she’s got the ability to free herself from behind bars?”
    He shook his head. “Only if she’s in a facility foolish enough to let her set up a private laboratory and have access to many unusual ingredients. I’ve seen no evidence that she’s able to exercise power in other ways.”
    “Well, that’s a relief. I want her to stay in prison.” After all, besides Lopez, she had tried to kill me and John, too.
    Lucky said, “And what with this whole building burning down, the evil mother can’t get any second thoughts about rebuilding that basement workshop to do some more dark magic.”
    “True,” Max said pensively, his gaze
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