Broken Quill [2] Read Online Free

you just say?”
    “Declan does that,” Sophie said, and
held the Polaroid camera up to her eye again. “Spouts the poetic nonsense of
the long–suffering. You two look good together. Smile.”
    A bright flash lit up the afternoon
and ’Phie’s camera spat out another picture. She handed it to Brie.
    We watched the picture develop
slowly, fading from black to life. It showed the detective and I seated
together on our bar stools. I was leaning in toward her, and she sat straight
and proper—as you do around new people—with a carefully composed face baring
just the hint of a smile. Brie’s shadow stretched up the wall behind her as the
early afternoon sun began a slow fall toward the west.
    Mine did not.
    I wondered, with not too much worry,
if she would notice.
    “So, how about that drink, Detective
Brie? This strawberry and lime cider is dee licious.”
    Brie looked at me over the rim of
her sunglasses. “I’m more of a wild berry girl, Mr. Hale.”
    “Known you half a day, and you’re
already breaking my heart.” I sighed and raised my glass. “Well, cheers
anyway.”
    The schooner exploded in my hand and
a shower of ice, cider, and glass lacerated my palm. Something hard hit me in the
chest like a sledgehammer and I was knocked back off my stool and into the wall
behind me. Away in the distance, I heard a loud snap as though a car had
backfired.
    I saw stars and struggled to draw a
breath, slumped against the wall. The air had been pushed from my lungs. One of
the ducks flapped its wings angrily at me a few feet away. Another snap cut through the air, and the bird exploded much like my delicious cider had.
    “Duck!” Brie yelled, throwing herself to the concrete
behind the table.
    “It sure was…” I muttered, staring
at what was left of the poor creature.
    Ethan and Sophie, not averse to
danger, scampered inside, abandoning their various cameras and laptops as the
tavern’s other patrons just began to react—to scream and run.
    Someone was taking shots at me.
    This wasn’t the first time, but it
was the first time in a long time.
    I looked down at my chest. My
reinforced waistcoat shimmered with a dull blue light. A heavy chunk of hot
lead had flattened against the left breast pocket. It fell to the ground with a
clunk. If not for the Willful protections, I’d have found out once and for all
just how immortal the Infernal Clock had made me.
    The pain blossoming across my chest
felt a lot like mortality.
    This was a sobering thought and made
me thirsty. I made it to my knees and reached up onto the table to retrieve my
bottle of cider, still half-full. No sense seeing it going to waste.
    All of this happened in a few
seconds, and Detective Brie acted with a lot more self-preservation than I. She
hurled her shoulder into the large table and knocked it over, shielding us both
behind the thick tabletop. Perhaps not enough to stop another bullet, but the
shooter wouldn’t be able to see us anymore.
    “Are you hit?” she yelled. Her service weapon—a
slick, dark pistol—looked out of place in her small hands. “Hale, are you
okay?”
    I took a drink. “I’m okay, I think.”
    She stared at me for a moment, and
although I couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, I sensed a
thousand questions burning through her mind. Brie shook her head and snapped
open her phone just as another shot slammed into the table. The bullet didn’t
make it through the heavy wood, but a spray of white splinters erupted from the
underside.
    As Brie called for backup, I peeked
around the table’s edge to see what I could see. We were surrounded on all
sides by several tall buildings just across the lake and beyond the tiny pine
forest. People were scattering every which way, diving for cover. The shooter,
whoever he was, could have been anywhere. But given where he had hit me and the
duck, he—or she—was most likely on the roof of the building across the lake.
The angle was right.
    I ducked my head back