Read Night of Cake & Puppets for Free Online Page B

please), and of course death would be less of a bummer if there were a heaven (hell not so much). I’ve just never been able to believe any of it. Right now, though, to some small but detectable degree, it feels like the pH balance in my mind is shifting. Like my skepticism is being neutralized. Hopeful self is sitting on rational self’s chest.
    I unbutton the devil puppet’s coat. If there’s a radio control mechanism or something inside him, the natural balance of my mind will be restored. If not, who knows?
    Under the coat I find a wire armature. No, not an armature. It’s…a birdcage. The puppet’s body is a small birdcage, and where his heart would be there is a tiny yellow canary on a bird swing, rocking gently to and fro. I wouldn’t be surprised if it chirped, or flew. It doesn’t, though, and I feel through the rest of the puppet’s clothes for some hidden mechanism that might account for that tap tap of his leg at the glass, but there’s nothing. He’s wood and wire, just a puppet, and that tapping leg just hangs from the bottom of the birdcage, no internal control device at all. Only the puppet strings could have moved it.
    And the strings were slack.
    Curious. (You know, if curious means ‘impossible’ or ‘freaky’ or…‘ indelibly awesome .’)
    And now my head feels all full of moonlight or starlight or something. Or snow. My head feels like a snow globe that’s been shaken, and glitter is swirling around in it like unmoored stars.
    I unfold the butterfly. On the white underside of the origami paper I find a rhyme and a small schematic.
    Near the Devil’s Stream
    and using poison as bait,
    my counterpart impatiently waits.
    Okay. I’m good at riddles. The Devil’s Stream is the canal where the Vltava flows around the Kampa, the island on the Malá Strana side of the river. As for ‘my counterpart,’ it could mean Zuzana’s counterpart, but I don’t know who that would be. If it’s the devil’s counterpart, though, it would be an angel, so I search my mind for some famous angel in that area but come up empty. As for ‘using poison as bait,’ I come up really, really empty.
    So maybe I’m not good at riddles after all. Fortunately, there’s the schematic, which shows a street, a tiny red X inscribed on it. A new destination, right back the way I just came.
    Cradling the devil in the crook of my arm like a baby, I set off.
    Whistling.

8
    Thank God for Murdered Monks
    He came.
    He came to find me.
    When Mik rounds the corner out of sight, I sag against the wall of my hiding place – behind a lace curtain in the foyer of the building across the street – feeling as spent as if I’ve actually been conjuring spells and not just holding colored beads between my fingers. I let out a long breath.
    Mik came to find me.
    Did I think he wouldn’t? I don’t know. I don’t know. I get too flustered around him to attempt anything like sustained eye contact, and without that, it’s kind of hard to gauge interest. But watching him from hiding like a creepy serial killer, I could actually focus on his face long enough to believe that…he looked interested. Didn’t he? Well, he always looks interested, he’s that kind of alien, but just now he looked…dazzled.
    ‘Don’t you think he looked dazzled?’ I ask the black cat that’s rubbing against my legs. It slipped in here right when Mik showed up, like it was bloody well trying to lead him to me, and when it started purring as loud as a farm truck, I thought for sure Mik would hear. I may have shushed it. Shushed a cat. And what do you think it did? It purred louder.
    ‘I will do just as you wish,’ said no cat ever .
    In the safety of aftermath, though, my concern seems a little foolish. What did I think, that Mik would thrust open the door and demand, ‘ Why purrest thou, feline? ’
    The cat continues its purr-fest, which I take to mean: Yes, Mik was definitely dazzled. How could he not be? I ensorcelled him. For which, thank