First Frost Read Online Free Page B

quick infusion of cash first, which was why he’d stopped here. It wouldn’t be a lot, but it would get him through the next few months. Business had been slow this year. There were fewer and fewer people on his list and, truthfully, he didn’t have the skill he used to have. He once was able to blackmail people so smoothly he could make them believe giving him their money was all their idea. But his heart just wasn’t in it anymore.
    Or so the expression went.
    He was fairly certain he didn’t have a heart anymore. The only thing that kept his blood flowing through his veins was the thrill of the heist, and even that felt like going through the motions these days. The last time he could remember feeling an actual beat to his long-ago heart was when he’d been eight years old and his mother, the Incredible Zelda Zahler, Snake Charmer from the Sands of the Sahara, had left him during the night, never to be seen again. Her name had actually been Ruthie Snoderly, and she’d been from the tiny town of Juke, West Virginia, about as far away from the sands of the Sahara as one could get. She’d been neither pretty nor nice, but he had loved her. Under her thick pancake makeup, her skin had been pockmarked, but he would stare at her adoringly from his cot at night and imagine her scars were constellations, a secret map to a far-off, happy place. Her accent had been thick and rural, and sometimes when he heard that deep Appalachian accent even today, he found himself longing for something he’d never really had in the first place: home.
    He set his suitcase down. It was a strange place, this North Carolina town. There was a huge gray sculpture of a half-buried head in the park. One of the eyes on the sculpture had a monocle, and the hair had been so expertly molded even the comb marks looked real. He sighed, thinking this almost wasn’t worth the effort. If he hadn’t put so much research into this already, he would wait for the next bus and go to Florida right now. Maybe he would get a job at Taco Bell for the winter.
    The Great Banditi working at Taco Bell.
    No, that was something even he couldn’t foresee.
    So, first things first. He had to find Pendland Street.
    He turned and noticed a teenager across the street. She had long, dark hair and a steady gaze. She had stopped to stare at him. Not everyone could hold a stare that long and not seem rude. He quickly summed her up: too observant. He smiled to put her at ease.
    â€œI was wondering,” he called to her, “if you could tell me where Pendland Street is?”
    She pointed west and he thanked her, picking up his suitcase and hurrying away. Best to be a mystery to some. Confusion was always the best way out of an unfamiliar situation. Any magician worth his salt knew that.
    He found the street easily and walked slowly past the rambling old houses. Decent enough, he supposed. But the neighborhood didn’t give him hope that he could make more money here than he’d already figured.
    He had no idea where he was going to stay. He never did. Oftentimes it was in a park or a patch of woods somewhere. But his bones weren’t what they used to be. He longed for softer things these days. Softer bus seats, softer beds, softer marks. And there was a chill in the air here that he didn’t like. He wasn’t moving fast enough to avoid the cold touch of autumn as it marched steadily from the north, and it made his joints stiff.
    Halfway down the winding street, he stopped. His feet were already aching because, even though his shoes were so highly polished that they made perfect star-point reflections in the sunlight, there were holes forming on the soles, and he could feel every pebble he stepped on.
    He looked up and saw that he had stopped in front of a house with a large sign on the front lawn that read, HISTORIC PENDLAND STREET INN.
    He looked at the address number. It was a mere nine houses away from where his