Pale Immortal Read Free Page B

dark thoughts, sharp black bangs slanting across his forehead.
    Dan was a native. Except for a couple of years interning at a forensic lab in Madison, he'd lived in Tuonela his entire life. Although hardly more than a kid, he understood the significance of the missing blood when you lived in a town that meant land of the dead, a town where the Pale Immortal had once walked.
    Behind her, Rachel heard the metallic snap of a lighter and turned to see her dad taking a deep drag from a cigarette, his eyes unfocused and troubled. Was he thinking what she was thinking?
    This, on top of a recent theft of blood from the hospital, wasn't proof of anything, she told herself. And not the time to verbalize her own concerns. "I'll know more once I've examined the body," Rachel said.
    Normally she would have gone to her apartment and cleaned up a bit. Had some coffee and probably some breakfast, most likely at Peaches, because she hated to cook.
    But she wasn't going to expose herself to the public with this horrific homicide having just taken place. People would stare. They would ask questions. They would be afraid. And she had no way to alleviate their fears.
    She went directly to the morgue. It was the best place to hide.

Chapter 4
     
    It was every guy's nightmare.
    A kid showing up at your door, calling you Dad. Worse, a mentally unstable kid who'd just tried to kill himself with your own gun. Right in front of you.
    The kid—Graham—was sitting at Evan's kitchen table, eating as if he hadn't had a meal in a week. Evan figured the least he could do was feed him.
    Graham had changed into dry clothes He'd washed his hands, but his face and curly hair still bore traces of mud.
    In the adjoining living room, beyond the bookcase divider, thick black curtains were pulled tight, the room illuminated with low-wattage incandescent bulbs. Evan was used to the murkiness; Graham didn't seem to notice.
    It was strange as hell to have somebody sitting at his kitchen table, invading his space and filling the room with an alien presence, but certainly much more peculiar to have a teenager claiming to be his son.
    "Your mother ..." Evan began, fishing for infor- mation, yet not wanting to set the boy off Evan needed details if he was going to be accused of being somebody's dad.
    Graham looked up from his bowl of cereal. He wiped milk from his mouth with the back of his hand. "Lydia. Everybody calls her Lydia."
    Lydia
    That's what Evan had thought He pushed the box of cereal closer, but Graham shook his head. "You say she dropped you off, then left?" Evan asked.
    "Yeah She always threatens me with you. Like, 'If you don't straighten up, you're going to live with your father.' We've driven partway here before."
    To think that this poor kid had been carrying around some mental image of his father, yet there wasn't a man out there thinking about Graham. "What was different this time?" Evan asked.
    "I didn't beg to go home."
    "Where is home?"
    "Arizona."
    "That's a long drive."
    "Thirty hours straight."
    Years ago the same road had brought Lydia Yates to Tuonela and then taken her away. She'd been one of those girls who'd slept with half the boys in high school. She and her mother had breezed into town one day during Evan's senior year. All the guys had been infatuated with Lydia. She'd been beautiful, and they hadn't yet learned how to be discerning and pick up on clues that would have told them to give her a wide berth. Lydia's mother got a job tending bar at one of the local dives. Lydia used to run her own little operation, tempting classmates with free liquor and sex. She'd most likely had a serious mental problem. Back then they just figured she liked to do it. A lot.
    It had been a temptation boys couldn't resist. They knew it was wrong, but told themselves it was just this one time ....
    Lydia mesmerized them all. She had been exotic and exciting, and Tuonela rarely saw anything exotic and exciting.
    When she ended up pregnant, she'd pointed a