Blaze of Glory Read Online Free Page B

get, the only place I might be able to survive the dangers from outside and inside until I had a chance to figure out what to do.
    The streetcar was crowded and hot, the morning rush of students, businessmen and plain old hardworking people filling almost every available space. I managed to grab a single seat by the window, forcing the window open to enjoy the cool breeze and help keep the coffee down. A young man bumped into me with a thick knapsack, almost taking my head off.
    “Sorry,” he mumbled, eyes on the ground. Then he glanced at me, a bit more focused. “Say, aren’t you…?”
    “Nope.” The smile was forced through the throbbing in my eye and the rumbling of my stomach. “I look a lot like her, don’t I? I get that all the time from my friends, and they say that I ought to use it to get into clubs and all that…” I chirped, fluttering my fingers in the air. “I mean, it’d be so cool to be her and all, don’t you think?”
    The rambling went on for two more blocks until the fellow shuffled away from me with a curt goodbye, and the rest of the passengers studiously tried to ignore me.
    Leaning my head against the coolness of the pseudo-glass, I took a deep breath. The last thing I needed right now was to be recognized.
    Mike had loved it. He would preen himself like a fancy peacock before we went out for dinner, the rare time that I convinced him that I was going to go stir-crazy if I had to cook one more time or have food delivered. He’d get into these tight jeans and shave off that day-old stubble that he seemed to have all the time, never enough for a full beard…
    I slammed my head against the window, enough to garner an angry glare from the other passengers. Couldn’t afford to spend time there, I had to get back in the game.
    Except right now I was racing the game itself.
    Sweat ran down my back as I fought my way to the back doors, jostling a few kids a bit harder than I should have but I was beginning to get a wee bit claustrophobic—not only from the people but also the electromagnetic waves overlapping and crashing into each other when I tried to focus through and past the headache.
    The Bookworm’s Hideout was more or less as I remembered it, a small hole-in-the-wall used bookstore sitting on Queen Street West squashed between a specialty condom shop and a fancy chocolate store. Of course when I had been the manager they had been a used CD store and an electronic surplus outlet, but you can’t have everything. The light blue paint was still peeling off in strips that tempted you to rip them off, and people had and did.
    I stopped to look at the bargain bin in the front out of routine, finding the usual obscure titles. All down to a dollar, and if I knew David Tierney, he’d give them away by the bucketful if you made him a good offer.
    A sudden tapping on the window caught my attention, causing me to step back a pace and nearly into a crowd of giggling schoolgirls racing along the sidewalk, too busy staring at their cell phones to notice the vagabond in their path. David smiled at me through the glass and motioned me to come inside.
    “My girl!” The elderly man enveloped me in a bear hug. “I was so worried about you.” He hustled me towards the back past shelves and shelves of books, practically carrying me. “You must need a good cup of tea.”
    The back of the store had been set up as a small sitting area years ago, an ancient coffeemaker spurting out what passed for coffee for anyone in the store. The rickety old table also held not only a small hotplate with a classic kettle usually full of water, but an old Brown Betty teapot, the fat body still keeping its shiny coating despite being used and abused for years.
    David gently pushed me down in one of the overstuffed armchairs and rushed to turn the burner on. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you in trouble?”
    “Yes. No. And a definite yes.” I slumped into the cushions. “David, I screwed up. Big