Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel) Read Online Free Page A

drifting toward Lily for a moment.
    With her daughter in prison, her business destroyed, and her son presumably planning to distance himself from her, there might not be anything left in her life that Lily cared about enough to go to such lengths again.
    Max had told me before that Evil often consumed itself with its own voracious appetite. Looking at Lily, I realized once again that he was right about that.
    Assuming a deliberately more upbeat tone, Max noted, “Fortunately, despite inconvenience to the neighbors, no one in the area appears to have been injured due to this conflagration.”
    “And it looks like the fire department is managing to prevent it from spreading,” I added, watching them work and impressed by their efficiency. “So I don’t think anyone besides the Yees will lose any property, either.”
    I looked at Ted and his mother again. They were now being examined by paramedics—and still arguing. Lily looked sullen and tragic—and still beautiful. Ted looked furious—which wasn’t surprising, though it was unusual. He was normally a very affable guy, though feckless, incompetent, and unreliable.
    “I feel sorry for Ted, though,” I said. “He’s done nothing wrong, and he didn’t know his mother and sister were doing wrong. Yet he’s lost everything. Even the store. I know he didn’t care about it, but it was also his home—and it must have been worth some money.”
    “It’s bound to be insured,” said Lucky. “So unless someone can prove this fire was caused by mystical arson—”
    “Unlikely,” Max said. “They will look for mundane causes and will never find any.”
    “Then there’s probably gonna be a nice payout,” Lucky said to me. “If he’s got any brains at all, the kid will talk his mom into splitting it with him.”
    “Well, after what she did, he’s certainly got the guilt leverage for that.” And I thought that walking away from his toxic family and their past with a wad of money in his pocket, free to live on his own terms and forced to become self-reliant, might be a very positive outcome for Ted Yee.
    At any rate, it was certainly a positive outcome for anyone else involved in this whole fiasco whom his mother and sister would have willfully cursed with misfortune or death in order to sabotage Ted’s ambitions.
    A shiver passed through me as I again recalled finding that deadly cookie in Lopez’s police car. He could have died at any moment. The second that fragile cookie began to crumble, he’d have been doomed . . .
    I fervently hoped that Susan Yee would spend decades behind bars.
    And I realized something as I watched her home burn in the wake of her mystical booby trap. “Lily and Ted don’t know about Susan’s arrest.”
    “The cops’ll catch up to events soon and tell ’em,” said Lucky.
    “Yes, I guess you’re right.” I suspected they’d both be relieved by the news, though probably for different reasons. And since I wasn’t eager to speak to the Yee family ever again, I was content to leave it up to the NYPD to tell them what had happened.
    The NYPD . . .
    I glanced at Nelli and recalled that there were pressing matters I needed to discuss with Max. But looking at him now, I realized this wasn’t a good moment for that. He had just survived a deadly inferno after performing mystical tasks that were probably exhausting.
    I said to Lucky, “We should take Max home. He needs a shower, a hot meal, and some rest.”
    “Oh, that sounds wonderful,” Max said on a sigh.
    I looked around at the scene, wondering if he’d get in trouble for leaving it without making a statement to the authorities. But no one was paying attention to us—and I thought that Lily and Ted were unlikely to mention Max to anyone as a witness, let alone explain his involvement. It was in their best interests to stick with a simple and mundane story about today’s events; the building suddenly caught fire, they didn’t know how or why, and it had spread