Maxie’s Demon Read Online Free Page B

running away. Then I remembered something awkward, and fumbled in my pocket. If they were all pretending to be Elizabethan or whatever, would they take my money?
    ‘Don’t sweat it,’ he grunted, seeing me hesitate. ‘I’ll pay.’
    I almostaccepted, as usual. I’d hardly any cash, I might need it all, but something inside me twisted into a tiny knot of defiance. Maybe it was the weary contempt in his voice, maybe it was Poppy’s kindness. ‘I’d rather,’ I said stubbornly, lobbing back the sneer.
    He looked up, surprised. ‘All right. I’d say a pound would cover it, with a tip.’
    ‘So theytake our money in the …’
    ‘
On
the Spiral. Herethey do; a very good rate, too. Not further in.’ He watched me put the money down. ‘Since you won’t listen to reason, chew on this – a long time back, when I first wandered out on to the Spiral, a very wise friend of mine told me that how you manage out here often seems to depend on how you first get in, good way or bad. I was lucky. You – well, what would you say? I needed help. You may, even more.You can leave word for me here. My name’s Steve.’
    ‘Mine’s Hugh,’ I said, because it isn’t. ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t hold your breath or anything. And thank the girl for the salve!’
    I tried to head for the door at a civilised pace, not bolt. But the sheer relief when I slammed it behind me, and heard the latch drop, was almost dizzying. There was this old eccentric who used to sit in railway carriages,wearing dark glasses and grinning and beckoning at anyone about to come in. Somehow he always got a compartment to himself. And that would be what this citizen had been trying to do to me. Scare me back to the junction, sure – which’d be lousy with blue pointed heads by now, every cop in the county probably, all busy taking statements and causing five-mile tailbacks. Sod that for a gameof soldiers! And him pissing himself with laughter at the thought, no doubt. The only safe way for me was the other way, wherever it led.
    Last time it had been an open prison, fraudsters and embezzlers for company – a better class of felon, just like the old man’s friends. This time it’d be somewhere harder; so there wasn’t going to be a this time.
    Maxie’s wordon it, and Maxie is never wrong;well, not since the 3.45 at Kempton Park, anyhow. Odds-on favourite, too.

CHAPTER TWO
Green Light
    T HE VILLAGESTREET was a misnomer. You’ve heard of getting into a rut; this was it. In places it was still a path, well trodden and pebble-strewn, meandering away between banks of scrubby grass. Maybe two or three cottages on each side, a few grubby sheds, a couple of farmhouses set well back along even narrower paths.
    None of your honeysuckle-round-the-door perfumingthe evening air; more like faulty drains. Or no drains at all.
    So
this
is Broadway!
    At the little crossroads the other streets looked just exactly the same. Handy; saves all that stressful decision-making. It was dusk, but none of the windows were lit; they were probably all in the pub. It did occur to me I might slip in and snap up the odd essential to speed me on my way, but these yokels probablystill clapped people in the stocks or the ducking-stool or something. Besides, did I really want some guy’s best moleskin leggings? No, the sooner I was out of here the better.
    Ihurried over the crossroads and on, stubbing my unprotected toes on stones and swearing, and found the path beginning to slope upward through a narrow dell. This countryside didn’t go in much for hills, but there seemedto be a rolling stretch beginning here, with what looked like grazing fields behind solid hedges – nice to look at but murder to dodge through. I glanced back hurriedly to see if I was being followed, but the only citizen in sight was a vaguely female form beating the hell out of something in a cottage vegetable patch.
    I shivered. I could empathise with weeds; nobody wanted me either. Ahwaz wouldn’t,not now