Landslayer's Law Read Online Free Page A

somebody else ?”Scott yipped, aghast.
    Alec shook his head. “Favor for favor. Guy showed Aik how to work the gizmo; Aik promised him two packs of venison.”
    “It’s addictive,” Aikin explained helpfully.
    “Right. So anyway, the plan was to sneak in at sunset in a forestry van we’d got hold of, and do the deed—except that somebody showed up who wasn’t supposed to, which means we had to boogie before we even got the first round done.”
    “And then we had to explain ourselves,” Aikin added, rolling his eyes. “Which cost a bunch of time, which meant we had to get Miss Aife here home before she shifted.”
    “So guess what?” Alec took up again—to Scott’s amusement; it was like watching a comedy relay team, which concept would have chagrined the hell out of either nominally sober boy. “Guess whose van died in the middle of downtown Athens?”
    Scott lifted an eyebrow.
    Aikin nodded sourly. “Piece of shit. More to the point, piece of shit with no upholstery in back, which means Our Lady of the Iron Phobia looked set to do her thing in the worst place you can imagine.”
    “But being the quick thinking lads we are,” Alec went on, “we abandoned our wheels and beat feet to the nearest safe haven. Actually, we tried Myra’s place first, but she wasn’t home.”
    “Right.”
    “And we thank you for it,” Alec concluded, then turned to inspecting the enfield, which was quietly combing its elegant vulpine tail with one not-so-elegant claw. It trilled happily.
    Scott eyed the door with alarm. “Please don’t let it do that again. I’d hate to have Mr. X-Files barge in.”
    Alec turned pale. “Sorry. Like I said, it was the only place we could think of to let her out to change.”
    “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t just leave her in the cage.”
    Alec scowled. “’Cause she would’ve been too close to the iron bars, which really freaks her when she changes. It’s Aik’s famous imprinted conditioning, I think; when the change kicks in all that runs is instinct. Last time something like that happened, she yowled for three days solid.”
    “Yeah,” Scott nodded. “I heard about that.”
    “Made me wonder what’d happen if you tried to kill a double-cursed Faery woman who’s wearing the substance of this World.”
    “I don’t wanta know,” Scott sighed, checking his watch, then sighed once more—from relief—as he noted that the enfield was reverting to its more conventional form. Which was still damned disconcerting, even when it only wore its magical shape for roughly five minutes twice a day. “Must be a pill,” he told Alec.
    Alec nodded sagely. “I hate magic.”
    “Yeah,” Scott murmured. “I know.”
    A quick check to confirm that the enfield had fully lapsed back to cat shape, and Alec shooed his nominal pet back into the carrier. “Sorry,” he repeated. “Any port in a storm.”
    “And speakin’ of storms,” Scott noted. “It’s supposed to rain tonight, and I’ve still gotta put in some grunt time down at the lab.”
    “At least there’s no magic there,” Alec retorted with a smirk. “Just good old high tech-no-lo-gee.”
    “Right,” Scott snorted as he ushered his callers out, to the curious regard of his partner-in-crime at the register. “Thank God.”

Interlude I: A Time Between
    (near Sylva, North Carolina—Thursday, June 19—early evening)
    “You say they had green hair?” the Macon County Sheriff rumbled incredulously, his voice an uncanny echo of the thunder brawling among the mountains behind Jamie’s folks’ trailer, on the warped front deck of which they were presently ensconced.
    Jamie didn’t reply. Terror had caught him again—that cold, sick tightening in his gut that arose whenever something bad happened and he was forced to confront it with neither mercy, grace, nor warning—and sent him off to that dreamy distant place where he only lived in now. And for the moment, now consisted of contemplating his own