WINDOWS: A BROKEN FAIRY TALE Read Online Free Page B

won’t let me out of the lease.   I am thankful that you thought enough of my work to offer me the chance but
there is just no way I can join you right now.”   Sarah fished the money out of her right pocket and insisted on giving it
back.   Raven refused, calmly stepping an
arms length from the stall.
    Just the landlord,
Raven chuckled to herself happily.   She
needed someone to go to the ball with her tonight and she liked talking to
Sarah.   Plus she could work out some of
the aggression she’d built up since her step-mother’s message.   “If the landlord is the only problem, why
didn’t you just offer him that money to pay off the rest of the rent?”
    “I tried
that.   He said he would have me thrown if
jail if I left before the lease was up.   Now please Rave…”   The last word
died as she spoke and Sarah swore the temperature fell.
      “Why would he be able to do that?”   Raven’s cheerful demeanor dropped for half a
second.
    It took a
concentrated effort on Sarah’s part to suppress a small shudder. “It was
written into the contract.   I didn’t have
a whole lot of choice in where I sat up shop.”
    The constant smile
instantly brightened Raven’s face, and Sarah welcomed it with a silent word of
thanks.   She hadn’t known this weird girl
very long but somehow got the impression that situations degraded quickly when the
smiling stopped.
    “Let’s make a
wager.”   The woman in purple laughed.
    Struck speechless,
Sarah considered things for a moment and asked what the terms were.   Raven smirked with a gleam in her eyes.   At that moment Sarah learned a valuable
lesson that would serve her well in the future; that mischievous grin was a lot
more troublesome than no smiles at all.   
    “It’s really quite
simple.”   Raven still looked way to much
like the cat that swallowed the canary for Sarah’s comfort.   “If I can return here in thirty minutes with
your contract annulled, you have to go to a party with me tonight.”
    Sarah
blinked.   She hadn’t expected that but
for some reason was curious to know what Raven had was planning.   “Ok, so what do I get if you fail… when you
fail?”
    Raven shrugged her
shoulders, “You get to keep the five hundred dollars and I’ll never bother you
again.”
    Working things out
in her mind, Sarah couldn’t see the downside.   She was either about to be five hundred dollars richer or she was going
to be free from her contract and opening her own shop.   Either way she was getting something out of
this deal so she decided to take the bet.
    They shook hands
over the railing and Raven asked where she was going and who she was talking
to.   Sarah gave her directions to Mr.
Jackson’s office, located in a seedier part of town, along with her copy of the
contract still stuffed in her pocket.   With
a final wave, Raven sauntered back into the bustling city like she hadn’t a
care in the world.   Sarah went back to
shoeing the horse.   Regardless of Raven’s
success, she still needed to finish this job.

 
    After a short ride
Raven stood in front of a dilapidated brick building displaying a forlorn sign
which read, “Jackson
and Son’s Real Estate.”   Marching up the
steps, she was greeted with a host of cat calls from a small group of men who
were just as seedy as the neighborhood.   With a satisfied smile, she turned the knob and walked inside.   “This is going to be easier than I thought.”
    The first thing
she did after walking inside, however, was wrinkle her nose at the smell of old
cigar smoke and rarely washed humanity.   Lights swung from fraying cords, their unnatural glare washing out the
colors of the interior.   A rug so old and
threadbare that parts of the wooden floor were beginning to poke through
coughed up small clouds of dust as she walked down the hallway, searching for
Mr. Jackson’s office.   She found it and
was immediately surer of her success than she had been previously.    A