Grim Tidings Read Online Free

am.”
    â€œLots of underlings, yes,” Uriel said. “Competent, a few. But none who have your skills and contacts—and none who are the Grim Reaper’s personal hound.”
    I rubbed my forehead. “Please don’t call him that. Not unless you want me dead of secondhand embarrassment.”
    Uriel reached up and tapped the bare bulb in the ceiling fixtureuntil it stopped buzzing. “You’ve been alive a long time, as far as humans understand time.”
    â€œJust over a hundred years,” I agreed.
    â€œIn that those years, you once encountered a serial killer called the Walking Man, yes? He worked the Midwest in the 1940s. Kansas, Nebraska . . . all those flat places where everything looks the same.”
    My breathing slowed as my heart rate picked up, just another defense mechanism you pick up when you live in a world where the slightest display of fear is an invitation to be beaten, or worse. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I know all about him.”
    â€œWell, he’s back,” Uriel said, pulling open the restroom door. “And since you’re one of the few people to see him and live to tell about it, I’d like you to look into it. For all our sakes.”
    I lunged forward and slammed the door shut again. Uriel lifted one of his perfect eyebrows. “Problem?”
    â€œYou can’t just drop that bombshell and walk away,” I said, bracing the door with my good arm.
    â€œI don’t see the problem,” Uriel said. “Please let me out. I feel like a thousand showers can’t erase the miasma I’ve picked up in this bathroom.”
    â€œYou know damn good and well there’s more to the Walking Man than a scary hitchhiker on the side of the road who likes to hack up motorists,” I said. My fast heartbeat was making my voice sound high and hysterical, and I gulped down a deep breath. “And if you know that then why the hell are you messing around with him? Leave him in Tartarus where he belongs.”
    â€œI am ’messing with’ him as you say because the Walking Manin fact escaped from Tartarus and I’d dearly like him back.” Uriel fixed me with his clear, unreadable gaze. His eyes weren’t dead, like a demon’s, but they missed human by a mile. It was like staring at the surface of a pond that never moved.
    â€œHundreds of human souls did a runner when Lilith broke that place open. If you want me to help, be honest with me, because I figured out that the Walking Man wasn’t human a long time ago.” Even saying it out loud filled me with shivers all over again, like we were standing back out in the cold.
    Uriel sighed. “Lilith packed Tartarus so full of human souls partly to power the engines of Hell, and partly to obscure that which isn’t . . . exactly mortal, shall we say?”
    â€œShe always liked to have eight or nine knives ready to stab you in the back,” I agreed. “So she hides the Walking Man in among the riffraff for . . . what? Her own personal amusement? If you’re so worried,” I said, “you must know what he is.”
    I waited, not breathing, to see if Uriel had the answer, not at all sure I wanted it.
    â€œThere are parts of Tartarus so deep that even I don’t know about them,” he said. “Whatever he is, he doesn’t need to be walking around here on earth.”
    â€œFor once we agree on something,” I said. Uriel cocked his head.
    â€œMay I exit now?”
    I got out of his way. “Go nuts.”
    Uriel stepped out, the door swinging back in my face. When I shoved it open again he was gone, like I tried to blink the exhaustion out of my eyes and when I opened them he’d vanished, like he’d never been there.
    The whiskey hadn’t helped with the whole wanting to sleep formonths thing, and I started for the parking lot. Even Uriel’s bad news couldn’t put a dent in the fatigue weighing me