Penult Read Online Free Page A

busy intersection I managed
through some awkward pantomiming to hail a cab.
    I hated the idea of blowing my ample
but limited cash on a taxi ride but I was in a hurry. Karla was
waiting for me at her special place, the identity and location of
which, I still wasn’t completely sure about. I wish she had her own
phone instead of borrowing her cousin’s. It would have made things
so much easier.
    As the cab careened through the back
streets, I had time to reflect on what had just happened. Were
these the people who had been following Karla? I don’t know why
they would be so interested in us, or why they wanted me to stay
away from Wendell. Maybe they were just purists who didn’t want
anyone to tamper with the natural order of the
Liminality?
    It surprised me how little they knew
about me. Belinda saw me as some guy with a little black card who
was being courted by Wendell’s guild of friendly assassins. All she
cared was that I stayed the hell away from them.
    She mentioned nothing of my exploits
in the afterlife: busting out of Root, raiding Frelsi, cruising the
Singularity, taking down the Horus. I would have thought by now my
name would have gotten around.
    Maybe I was a little too full of
myself. The afterlife was an enormous place, populated by hundreds
of generations of souls, many more talented and powerful than I
could ever hope to become. Why should I expect her to know about
some kid named James Moody?
    Penult sounded not much different from
Frelsi. Another bunch of surface dwellers broken out of Root. Angel
wannabes. Folks trying to pretend they were somehow more special
than everybody else, living in yet another facsimile of
Heaven.
    I had nothing to worry about from
their so-called ‘Friends.’ I had no intentions of working for
Wendell. I don’t even think Wendell had any interest in me anymore.
He didn’t strike me as the vindictive type, unlike Sergei. Wendell
was all business. He knew when to cut his losses and walk
away.
    It irked me that the Friends were able
to track my purchases on that little black card. That meant Wendell
could do the same. But if I refrained from using the card in Rome
until we were ready to leave, that would keep us one step ahead. As
long as we kept moving, we would be fine.
    If Karla and I could agree on a place
to settle down, we could withdraw a big cash advance someplace far
from our destination, travel there incognito, and then burn the
damned thing once we got there.
    For now, though, I was not quite ready
to give it up. I was hooked on the purchasing power it brought us.
Not having to worry about money was a huge convenience. It made
everything so easy. Hungry? Pick a restaurant. Any restaurant.
Tired? Any comfy hotel will do, no matter how expensive.
    I let the driver take me into central
Rome and drop me downtown near the Coliseum. That wasn’t anywhere
near where I planned to meet Karla, but I wanted to make sure I
wasn’t being followed. Even before I left the states, she had
warned me to be careful.
    Karla had intended to stay with her
cousin Franca in Rome the whole time I was in prison, one of the
‘black sheep’ from her father’s warped Sedevacantist perspective.
To me she sounded like one of the few normal people in that clan of
weirdoes and religious fanatics.
    She didn’t stay put for long. It only
took a few days for her to realizing that someone was tracking her.
She didn’t know who and didn’t care to find out. She bounced
between Italy and the UK because her sister Isobel was still
missing and she suspected that her dad’s sect might have something
to do with it. I don’t know how she managed it because she didn’t
have much money. I had a feeling that most nights she slept on the
streets.
    She assured me that she knew how to
take care of herself. Not to worry. She had a handle on the
situation.
    But unlike me, she had been making
regular excursions to Root. That alone told me something about the
state of her mind.
    Karla’s letters were