The House of Daniel Read Online Free

than facing a wild fireballer with the bases loaded and the team down two in the late innings.
    The door opened, it seemed like in slow motion. Yeah, I was that tensed up. Only I couldn’t haul off and coldcock the first thing I saw on the other side. If something had got fouled up some kind of way, if it wasn’t Charlie Carstairs’s brother, I’d feel bad about whaling the snot out of the wrong guy. Big Stu probably wouldn’t pay me the ninety he still owed me, either. Odds were he’d take the first ten out of my hide.
    Then the door got all the way open. I started to ask, You Mitch Carstairs? As soon as the guy in the room went Yeah or Uh-huh or Who wants to know? , I’d let him have it.
    Only I couldn’t. Even the question clogged in my throat. Because it wasn’t a guy in the room. It was a girl.
    She was somewhere near my age. Dark blond hair in a permanent wave, green eyes, pert nose. Prettier than the secretary-type gal back at my roominghouse. Not actress pretty, I guess, but not far from it. “Yes?” she said to me, her voice deep for a girl’s.
    God damn Big Stu to hell and gone! He didn’t say anything about a girl. She complicated everything—in spades, she did. But I needed that money the way I needed air to breathe. So instead of what I’d meant to ask, I came out with, “Where’s Mitch Carstairs?”
    Those green eyes got a little wider. “I’m Mich Carstairs. I don’t think I know you.”
    I felt like she’d sucker-punched me, not the other way around. And I realized I hadn’t even known what I was doing yet when I swore at Big Stu in my head before. He’d had a magic done, looking for Charlie Carstairs’s kid brother, and the wizard said Michelle and he heard Mitchell . Or maybe the wizard screwed it up. I didn’t know, and I still don’t.
    But I did know that, no matter how bad I needed those ninety clams, I didn’t need ’em bad enough to beat up a dame to get ’em. I’m no vampire—I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t do what Big Stu wanted done, not if my life depended on it. That I might be laying my life on the line by not doing it … I didn’t think about that, not then. Fool that I was.
    Real fast, I said, “No, Miss, you don’t know me. But you’re Charlie Carstairs’s sister, aren’t you? Charlie Carstairs over in Enid?”
    â€œThat’s right.” She gave kind of an automatic nod. “Has something happened to—?” She broke off.
    â€œHe’s fine—now. So are you—now. If you stick around Ponca City for even another day, though, you won’t be.” Once Big Stu found out I’d messed up, he’d send some guys who didn’t worry about what they hit as long as they got paid. Still fast, I went on, “Get out of town. Get out of state. Go to California.” Yes, I had Pa in my head. “Just go, quick as you can. Git!” I might’ve been shooing a stray dog.
    Her eyes got wide again, wider this time. “I can’t do that!”
    â€œSister, you can’t do anything else, not if you want to stay in one piece. I know what I’m talking about.” I pulled out my right hand with the knuckleduster still on it. If I’d tried to take the damn thing off, it would’ve looked like I was playing pocket pool. She saw what it was, of course, but she didn’t raise any fuss. She must’ve seen I wasn’t about to use it. After I stuck it back in my pocket, I said, “Yeah, I know, all right. Some pieces of work, you just can’t do.”
    â€œThank you,” she said quietly. Her mouth twisted. You want to know how pretty she was? She was still pretty when it did, that’s how pretty. For all I know, she might’ve got even prettier. When her face cleared, she nodded once more, this time to herself and not to me. “All