Read Odd Thomas for Free Online

last smiled. "I could bake something."
        "You could bake anything ," I said.
        "What would you like me to bake for you, Odd Thomas?"
        "Surprise me." I consulted my watch. "I better get to work."
        She accompanied me to the door and gave me a good-bye hug. "You are a good boy, Odd Thomas."
        "You remind me of my Granny Sugars," I said, "except you don't play poker, drink whiskey, or drive fast cars."
        "That's sweet," she said. "You know, I thought the world and all of Pearl Sugars. She was so feminine but also…"
        "Kick-ass," I suggested.
        "Exactly. At the church's strawberry festival one year, there was this rowdy man, mean on drugs or drink. Pearl put him down with just two punches."
        "She had a terrific left hook."
        "Of course, first she kicked him in that special tender place. But I think she could have handled him with the punches alone. I've sometimes wished I could be more like her."
        From Mrs. Sanchez's house, I walked the six blocks to the Pico Mundo Grille, which is in the heart of downtown Pico Mundo.
        Every minute that it advanced from sunrise, the morning became hotter. The gods of the Mojave don't know the meaning of the word moderation.
        Long morning shadows grew shorter before my eyes, retreating from steadily warming lawns, from broiling blacktop, from concrete sidewalks as suitable for the frying of eggs as the griddle that I would soon be attending.
        The air lacked the energy to move. Trees hung limp. Birds either retreated to leafy roosts or flew higher than they had at dawn, far up where thinner air held the heat less tenaciously.
        In this wilted stillness, between Mrs. Sanchez's house and the Grille, I saw three shadows moving. All were independent of a source, for they were not ordinary shadows.
        When I was much younger, I called these entities shades. But that is just another word for ghosts, and they are not ghosts like Penny Kallisto.
        I don't believe they ever passed through this world in human form or knew this life as we know it. I suspect they don't belong here, that a realm of eternal darkness is their intended home.
        Their shape is liquid. Their substance is no greater than that of shadows. Their movement is soundless. Their intentions, though mysterious, are not benign.
        Often they slink like cats, though cats as big as men. At times they run semi-erect like dream creatures that are half man, half dog.
        I do not see them often. When they appear, their presence always signifies oncoming trouble of a greater than usual intensity and a darker than usual dimension.
        They are not shades to me now. I call them bodachs.
        Bodach is a word that I heard a visiting six-year-old English boy use to describe these creatures when, in my company, he glimpsed a pack of them roaming a Pico Mundo twilight. A bodach is a small, vile, and supposedly mythical beast of the British Isles, who comes down chimneys to carry off naughty children.
        I don't believe these spirits that I see are actually bodachs. I don't think the English boy believed so, either. The word popped into his mind only because he had no better name for them. Neither do I.
        He was the only person I have ever known who shared my special sight. Minutes after he spoke the word bodach in my presence, he was crushed to death between a runaway truck and a concrete-block wall.
        By the time I reached the Grille, the three bodachs had joined in a pack. They ran far ahead of me, shimmered around a corner, and disappeared, as though they had been nothing more than heat imps, mere tricks of the desert air and the grueling sun.
        Fat chance.
        Some days, I find it difficult to concentrate on being the best short-order cook that I can be. This morning, I would need more than the usual discipline to focus my mind on my work and to ensure that the omelets,