Dead to Rites Read Online Free Page A

Dead to Rites
Book: Dead to Rites Read Online Free
Author: Ari Marmell
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dealin’ with your whole life.”
    “Sure, sure, but nerves is still nerves.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Anyway, it might not be too big a deal if it was just a few guys. But Mick, there’s been a whole
lot
of folks asking a whole lot of questions about you. Me’n the others, we’re getting jittery precisely because there’s so many. There shouldn’t be this many people that we don’t know but who know about us. At all, let alone that we all know
you
.”
    “Wait, wait, wait. None of you know who these people are?
Any
of ’em?”
    “Not a one.”
    Okay, I hadda give him that one. That
was
reason to start worrying.
    “What have they been asking about, exactly?”
    “All kindsa stuff. Who you pal around with. Where you go to take a load off. What we know about your cases. Sometimes sorta asking around the edges of what types of magic you can throw, though they’ve never come out and dug into that directly. Oh! And a lot of questions about that lady you were chumming it up with back during the whole spear affair.”
    My blood ran cold, and I don’t mean I felt a chill. When the
aes sidhe
say our blood “ran cold,” we mean it. You coulda wrung out an artery to cool a fifth of Scotch.
    “Ramona?”
    “Yeah, that’s her. Whatever happened with her, anyway?”
    Who the hell knew? I hadn’t seen her since she’d swished her way outta the Field Museum of Natural History, and I still didn’t know if I even wanted to.
    No, that ain’t true. I definitely wanted to. I just didn’t know how much of me wanting to see her was actually
me
wanting to see her. I never had figured out if there was anything more’n her own mojo behind how dizzy I got over her.
    But I
was
pretty sure I didn’t much like people poking around about her—for her sake or mine.
    “And it’s been a bunch of different guys asking these questions?”
    “Yep. Gals, too.”
    “And none of you recognized a single one?”
    “Nope.”
    “Fae?”
    I’d pretty much given up any of my usual human subterfuge by this point. I wasn’t blinking, wasn’t fidgeting or shifting my weight, damn near a statue. Not that I had to hide any of that stuff from Franky anyway, but letting all that slide wasn’t a good habit to fall into.
    He shrugged helplessly. “I really can’t say, Mick. They all
seemed
human enough, but you know how hard it can be to tell with some of us.”
    Yeah. Yeah, I did.
Why’d you have to drop back into my life, Ramona? Things were a lot smoother without you.
    So, who’d I seriously irritated lately? Not a whole lotta people were comin’ to mind, surprisingly enough. It was possible Vince Scola—one of Fino’s rivals—still held a grudge after our last meeting, but it didn’t seem too probable. I’d pretty well convinced his people that my world was something they wanted to steer clear of. Besides, this didn’t feel like the Outfit’s style.
    My only other recent human enemy had been Orsola, and this didn’t sound like her, either. Plus the whole pushing-up-daisies thing kinda put the kibosh on that notion.
    I had rivals and enemies in both Courts, but the Seelie and Unseelie both had better ways to learn anything they wanted to know about me—and anyway, they already knew a lotta what these people were asking.
    Nah, this almost hadda be an independent or an outsider. And hey, who did I know who fit
that
bill?
    “Is it possible,” I asked Franky, “that this wasn’t a group at all? Just one gink wearing a buncha different faces?”
    “Uh…” Pretty clear he hadn’t thought of that particular notion before. “Sure, I suppose. I mean, I never saw more than one at a time, anyway. Guess one of the others might’ve, but they never said one way or the other. You got someone in mind?”
    “I just might, yeah.”
    All right, I’ll be straight with you. I
wanted
it to be Goswythe. The
phouka
hadn’t exactly been haunting my nightmares or anything, but I hadn’t much cared for having this lingering threat hanging
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