A Snake in the Grass Read Online Free

ashes, gone. And the person connected to that soul
would drop dead on the spot. The souls might be willing to make
that sacrifice. I wasn’t.
    While my wife flipped the light on and went
about cleaning up the broken glass, I stood in the kitchen and did
a few deep breathing exercises. Slowly, my adrenaline faded and the
riot of movement under my skin died down. “There we go…”
    “Five bloody o’clock in the morning, and
everyone’s up traipsing around in their skivvies.” A large grumpy
form shuffled out of the hallway, already reeking of gin and pipe
tobacco. With gray hair sticking out at wild angles, a scruffy coat
of more-salt-than-pepper whiskers, and a heavily patched bathrobe
over possibly moldy house slippers, it looked like something out of
that movie with the puppets and the glam rocker in the tight pants.
You know the one I mean. “Can’t get a solid night’s sleep for all
this bloody noise!”
    “Want me to put the kettle on, Terrence?”
Mira was nicer than I was at this hour of the morning.
    “Yes, missus, if you would please.” The
curmudgeon shuffled his way over to my kitchen table and plopped
down, producing a hip flask from somewhere in his moth-eaten robe
and taking a swig. “The crazy bint clearing the house?”
    “Yeah, Sveta’s taking a look around, but it
was just Chunk being a pest.”
    Terrence snorted. “And the one time you think
it’s ‘just’, it’ll be something worse. You let her do her job.” He
eyed me up and down from under his bushy gray eyebrows. “And go put
some pants on, for the love a God and wee fishes.”
    “Yessir.” With a sigh, I retreated toward the
back of the house, brushing past Sveta in the hallway as she
returned. “You, too. Pants.” She only grunted at me.
    I pounded my fist on one of the closed doors
as I passed. I knew if Terrence was up, he’d roused the kid too.
They made such lovely roommates. “Up! Work!” If I was going to see
the sunrise, then Estéban could see it with me. The kid had been
slacking on his workouts lately anyway. We all had. Hazard of this
new, totally bizarre, living arrangement.
    I understood, on a theoretical level, why
Ivan believed I needed bodyguards. One person had already died over
the souls I was now carrying under my skin, and there was no lack
of evil creatures and nefarious doers who would be happy to make me
casualty number two. But I would forever question the old man’s
choice in who he had assigned me.
    Sveta I understood, in a “I’m actually kind
of scared of her” way. She was good with every weapon I’d ever seen
her pick up, alert bordering on paranoid, and practical in the cold
way that mercenaries grow to be. She was the only female fighter I
knew of in an occupation that typically chewed up the men and spit
them out if they stepped wrong by an inch. I’d seen her fight once,
years ago, and even then, I knew that I’d never hold my own against
her. It was just a good thing she was on my side.
    Terrence, however. Terrence Smythe was what
Great Britain inflicted on us in retribution for that little
revolution we had a few centuries ago. The information on him in
our champion database, Grapevine, was spotty at best, despite my
newly expanded access. I assumed the lack of info was because he
was mostly active before computers were invented. Maybe before the
invention of the abacus.
    From what I understood, he had been a
champion in his younger years. He’d survived to become a retired
champion, which told me that at some point, he’d been a badass in
his own right. Now, though, he was pickled on gin more often than
not, and hobbled around with a cane when he thought it might earn
him some sympathy. For him, people fell into two categories: those
with names, and those without. For example, Sveta had been “that
crazy bint” since day one, but Mira was either “Missus” or “Miss
Mira.” Me, I was “you.” Estéban was “boy.” Guess it could have been
worse.
    His only redeeming