Read Shadow & Soul for Free Online Page B

you be in school?”
     
    “Minimum day.” She walked around to face him. She was dressed like she usually was—jeans, brown engineer boots, and a snug t-shirt that didn’t quite reach the low waistband on her jeans. So unfair. He willed his cock to behave. It ignored him. “Why are you standing in the middle of the lot? You look like your download froze.”
     
    He smiled, and she smiled right back, her eyes dancing with light and color. “Sorry. Just trying to work something out.”
     
    “What’s the troub, bub?” She slid her hands into her front pockets, which pulled her jeans down even farther. Demon looked up and out over the lot, to La Cienega Boulevard.
     
    Knowing he should blow her off and send her on her way, he said, “Hooj gave me a list for salvage, but the van’s out. Flatbed, too.”
     
    Faith actually bounced. “Pik-A-Part? I love that place! We can take Dante!”
     
    That was a terrible idea. There should have been brakes squealing in his head. Better to face Hoosier’s wrath when he found out he had to wait until the van got back than to go with Blue’s little girl off the compound lot and all the way to the Valley.
     
    Demon knew that to be true. But the switch people had that made them stop before they did something stupid—his didn’t work. He had the switch that told him it was stupid, and the switch that told him he should stop, but the switch that would stop him was badly broken. Sometimes, it was like his own life was playing out on a screen, and he was just sitting there, powerless, watching with his fingers splayed over his eyes.
     
    “That’d be great—if you don’t need to be anywhere.”
     
    “I’m a free agent. And Pik-A-Part is better than fucking Disneyland. Let’s do it!” She threw her keys at him, and he caught them. They headed off together toward Dante.
     
    She hadn’t done much more to her car with markers—just, as far as he could tell, the side mirrors and the full rear bumper. She’d told him that she did it when the mood struck her, when she saw whatever belonged wherever it belonged. She’d had a few people sign it, he’d noticed, and then she’d drawn around the signatures to incorporate them into whatever it was she was making.
     
    He really did think it was cool. Like something he’d do, if he had a talent like that—to just see something and then do it, to follow the impulse. That generally meant trouble for him. But Faith had talent, so her impulses became art.
     
    His just became trash.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    Pik-A-Part was a junkyard that let people scavenge at their own risk. You went through, driving anywhere you could get your vehicle through, and just dug into the junk. There was a vague kind of organization—Fords in one general direction, Chevys in another, bikes sort of on the side, and so on—but for the most part, you just scavenged, doing what you had to do to get the part you wanted. Sometimes, you had to dig under rickety piles of rusty metal; sometimes you had to climb on top of those piles. Sometimes the part you wanted was sitting right there on the ground like it had been set out special, just for you.
     
    When you had what you wanted, you went back up to the front, where a Quonset hut served as office and shop, and you dickered your way to a price for your loot. The club had an account, so all Demon, wearing his kutte, would have to say was that the stuff he’d gotten was for Hoosier, and it would go out for cost.
     
    He’d gotten everything Hoosier wanted—or he was pretty sure. Some of the parts were a little rough, but they were original stock parts, which was what Hooj was after. Everything was in Dante’s bed. Now, though, Demon was busy having a heart attack because Faith was climbing through the carcass of an old Plymouth Fury, which was perched on top of a stack of old carcasses. Even with all the climbing and moving around she’d been doing, nothing had moved, so it seemed pretty stable. Still,