Read Hold The Dark: A Markhat story for Free Online

it is not junk,” said Ethel. “Is silver, no?”
    “Silver, all right. Well worked.” I turned the comb. Let it glisten in the light. “But Martha put it in that jar. She never once used it.”
    Ethel held out his hand. I let him take the comb.
    He closed his eyes, gripped it tight. The other Hoobins closed their eyes and began to mumble what I took to be lilting Balptist prayers.
    I shut up and watched. Ethel’s face went red, his jaw quivered and I could see his teeth grind together through the skin of his cheeks. I counted to fifty and decided Hoobins didn’t breathe like mere city folk when his ears flushed and he opened his eyes and sucked in a lungful of air.
    He flung the comb down, atop Martha’s bed.
    “I could see nothing,” he said, more to his brothers than to me. “Nothing to help, or find.”
    I frowned. “What were you looking for?” I said.
    “For Martha,” he said. “Sight runs in our family. But mostly to the women. And Momma is stricken, Martha is gone and it is for you to find her.” He took up the comb, holding it gingerly, as though it were hot, or unclean. “Take this, finder. Take whatever you will. Take and find.” His gaze turned down, and he sagged. “This much I saw, brothers. Martha lives. But only at the sufferance of those who know neither mercy nor shame.” He looked up at me again, sky blue eyes wet and pleading. “Find her. Any price. We will pay.”
    I took the comb and looked about at Martha’s things, at the sad rabbit-furred slippers waiting by her bed, at the bathrobe patient on its hook.
    “I’ll find her,” I said. “And you’ll pay what we agreed, no more.”
    Ethel nodded. His eyes were welling up, and I got out of there, preferring the tender mercies of halfdead or the Night Watch to the spectacle of all the Hoobins weeping around Martha’s empty red chair.

Chapter Four

    I kept to the middle of the street, all the way out of the New People neighborhoods. I even whistled an old Army marching song and put a jaunt in my step, jut to let the scores of New People peeping down at me know how much vampires and silly Curfew laws meant to the fearless finder Markhat.
    Once out of sight, of course, I shut my fool mouth and slunk all the way home, darting from doorway to doorway, giving dark alleyways wide berth, hiding twice from passing Watchmen and once from a band of mean-eyed drunks.
    By the time I reached Cambrit, I was winded and weary, but none the wiser. I toyed with the comb in my pocket, but saw no further than Ethel had. Had Martha bought the comb for herself? It seemed unlikely—why spend so much on a bauble, if she’d planned to toss it out when the junk jar filled up?
    Which meant, perhaps, it was a gift. And, if so, then it wasn’t the gift that Martha despised. No, it must be the gift giver. Why else would she hide such a thing away?
    I trundled on. There wasn’t any traffic on Cambrit, though I could hear drunken shouts and the sound of hammering nearby. I passed Momma Hog’s, but no light showed in her window or under her door, so I trudged on. I doubted that her cards could tell me anything I didn’t already know, or the Hoobins wouldn’t have needed me at all.
    I reached my door, fumbled with the key, managed to get inside before being taken by halfdead or fined by the Watch. Three-leg Cat sat atop my desk, preening his wicked right foreleg and generally making it plain he hadn’t been waiting for me, no not at all, but as long as I was taking up space I might as well fix him a snack before he went out carousing.
    I lit a lamp, went past my office and lit another lamp in my room. I keep a tin of jerky back there. I hate the stuff—it reminds me of the Army—but Cat likes it well enough.
    “Here you go,” I said, tossing him a piece. “Now beat it, you Curfew-breaking scofflaw.”
    He scooted. I pulled off my shoes, undressed and called it a night.
    I didn’t sleep immediately, though. Something Ethel said bothered me. “She