Fireshaper's Doom Read Online Free

make it back before we headed out.”
    “Yeah, and that really pisses me off, too. I mean she said she’d be back from Gainesville at the beginning of summer—but is she? Hell no! It’s out of Lakeview Thursday night, and hop a jet for a month in Frisco Friday morning.”
    “Well, she really couldn’t afford to miss the opportunity.”
    “Oh, sure.” David sighed. “I understand—rationally. But dammit, we’ll be graduating in another year and who knows what’ll happen then.”
    “Yeah, I know, man. But you’ve got to admit that logically it was the best thing for her, and she’s basically a logical person. Lakeview’s a lot better school than Enotah County High, and for photography, it’s no contest. She’d never have won the award she did by hanging around here.”
    David frowned and sucked his lips. “I know that too, Alec. But she knew we’d be gone to Governors Honors most of the summer. Surely to goodness she could have put off California by one bloody day.”
    “She didn’t make the plans, as I recall. It was a graduation present from her aunt one year early.”
    “Well, damn her aunt, then.”
    Alec braced himself and pointed through the windshield. “Better damn that traffic light up there instead—’cause if it turns red, you’re in trouble.”
    “No way, man!” David laughed as he floored the accelerator and flashed through the light at about twice the posted speed limit. It was the only one in Enotah County and easy to forget—especially as only a month or so had passed since the familiar caution light had been replaced with a full-fledged red/yellow/green. One more intrusion of so-called civilization into the mountains, David thought.
    The black glass cube of the Enotah Municipal Post Office was a block off the main square, right between the prickly mass of ancient Gothic courthouse—abandoned now, though thankfully not slated for destruction—and the bold planes and angles of the brand-new one. Old Mr. Peterman the postmaster was coming through the front door when David screeched into the parking lot. He looked up, smiled, and shook his balding head. A ray of stray sunlight reflecting off the polished surface behind him gave his remaining hair the appearance of a wispy halo.
    “Hey, Davy, what’s up?” he asked as David bounded up the two stone steps from the sidewalk.
    David found himself unexpectedly out of breath. “Am I too late to check the mail?” he panted. “What about packages—you got any packages? I’m leaving tomorrow for six weeks, so do you think you could, like, check and see if anything came in the afternoon stuff? It wasn’t sorted when I was by on my way to MacTyrie, and I’ll be gone before it runs tomorrow.”
    Behind David’s back Alec shot the postmaster a conspiratorial wink.
    The old man pursed his lips, but his eyes twinkled merrily. “Five o’clock, boy.”
    David checked his watch. “Four fifty-nine,” he countered, with his most ingratiating smile. Suddenly he felt very foolish.
    Mr. Peterman pointed to his wrist. “Government issue. Never wrong.”
    “Oh, come on! Couldn’t you just check?”
    “How long you been living here?”
    David vented an exasperated sigh. “Seventeen years.”
    “And how long has the Enotah Post Office closed at five?”
    “How should I know?”
    “Longer’n that!”
    David’s face fell. “No package then?”
    The postmaster reached inside the door and picked up a large flat parcel from behind the glass front wall. “Not unless it might be this’un.” He grinned triumphantly and started to hand it to David, then at the last possible instant whisked it from the boy’s eager fingers, staring at the address label like a mischievous child. “Wait a minute. This says, ‘David Sullivan Esquire. ’” He cocked his head sideways, “You ain’t no ‘esquire,’ are you?”
    David rolled his eyes desperately.
    “Well, that’s what it says here,” Mr. Peterman went on guilelessly, thumping the package