SHADOW THIEVES
A Garrett, P.I., Story
by Glen Cook
I WAS HALF ASLEEP IN THE BROOM CLOSET I CALL AN OFFICE. SOMEBODY hammered on the front door. Odd that they should. I wasn’t home much anymore.
This time I was hiding out from the craziness that comes down on the newly engaged. My future in-laws dished me make-crazy stuff relentlessly.
I began disentangling myself from my desk and chair.
Old Dean, my cook and housekeeper, trundled past my doorway. He was long, lean, slightly bent, gray, and almost eighty, but spry. “I’ll get it, Mr. Garrett. I’m expecting a delivery.”
That was one impatient deliveryman. He was yelling. He was pounding. I couldn’t understand a word. That door was fortress grade.
Dean did not use the peephole. He assumed the noise came from whoever he was expecting. He opened up.
All kinds of tumult rolled on in. Dean shrieked. A deeper, distressed voice bellowed something about getting the frickin’ frackin’ hell out of the way!
I started moving, snagging an oak nightstick as I went. That gem had two pounds of lead in its kissing end.
More demanding voices joined the confused mix.
I hit the hall fast but my ratgirl assistant, Pular Singe, was out of her office faster. At five feet Singe was tall for her tribe. Her fine brown fur gleamed. She slumped a bit more than usual. Her tail lashed like an angry cat’s but she emptied a one-hand crossbow as calm as sniping at the practice range. Her bolt hit the forehead of a thing whose ancestors all married ugly. It was a repugnant shade of olive green, wide like a troll, and wore an ogre’s charming face. It smelled worse than it looked. It filled half the hallway. Its forehead looked troll solid but Singe’s quarrel was unimpressed.
What kind of toy had she found herself now?
. . .
