Free The Dragon's Tooth by N. D. Wilson Page B

forward, onto the edge of his seat. Reaching out, he set one hand on Cyrus’s knee, and one hand on Antigone’s. “I am going to say something that may initially be perceived as wildly insensitive.” He coughed politely. “There are worse things in this world than your current circumstances. And an entire flock of those worse things—I do profoundly believe this to be the truth—would now be under way if the gentleman called Maxi was now in possession of what you, Mr. Cyrus, have been given. Worse for you, worse for all of us.” He sat up. “Ah, breakfast. And well earned, too.”
    The car swung off the road, bouncing to a stop. Cyrus opened the heavy door and stepped out into a gravel parking lot and the sticky morning heat.
    Antigone followed him, slamming the door behind her. Horace was already hurrying toward a low green-and-yellow building lined with murky windows. Behind it, tangles of brush were swallowing barbed-wire fencing, where a single cow was rubbing its shoulder against a sighing fence post. On top of the building, a large, flaking plywood sign spelled out PATS’ in hand-painted letters.
    Antigone kicked a rock and watched it bounce away. “I couldn’t eat anything right now. Especially not here. Do you think they have a phone?”
    “Who knows,” said Cyrus. The two of them moved toward the door. “Do you think it’s owned by someone named Pats? Or is there more than one Pat?”
    Horace had stopped at the door. Pulling it open, he stepped to the side and smiled. “Mr. Cyrus, I wouldn’t have thought that you would be one to notice—or care about—an apostrophe.”
    Cyrus glared at him.
    “Right. Well, there are two Pats,” Horace said. “And this place belongs to both of them.”
    Inside, Horace hustled all the way down to the far end of the long, dim dining room and squeezed into a corner booth.
    Antigone looked around, irritated. “This place is a hole. Do you see a phone, Cy?”
    Cyrus shook his head.
    An enormous woman rocked toward them between two rows of yellow booths. “I don’t know about ‘hole,’ honey.” She winked. “Some people call it heaven.” Turning to Cyrus, she pointed to the far end. “Go ahead and join your little friend in the corner. I’ll be right back. Menus on the table.” She nodded at Antigone. “Little lady can follow me if she needs a phone.”
    The woman made her way around a small counter lined with stools, and then back toward the sizzling grill. Antigone hurried after her.
    Cyrus inhaled long and hard. The dining room was full of the sounds and smells of bacon frying and diced potatoes hopping in the grease. Only a few booths held customers, and they were all men, each of them alone with their newspapers and toothpicks and trucker hats and coffee cups and grease-stained knuckles. The photo of Dan had wiped away Cyrus’s hunger, but the power of the smells brought it roaring back. His mouth was watering and his stomach was ringing hollow bells. Cyrus’s body needed to eat, and that angered him. Dan was gone. Taken. He shouldn’t eat. He shouldn’t smell. He should be gone, too.
    In his daze, Cyrus nodded at the other customers as he passed, but their return nods were better, more practiced, exchanging respect with only the slightest lift of the head and a glance from unblinking eyes.
    Cyrus slid into the corner booth beneath a low-hanging lamp with a dead bulb. The key ring dug into one leg; the lightning bug glass dug into the other. His neck burned, and his wrist itched. From across the table, John Horace Lawney leaned forward, tenting his fingers. “What will you have?”
    “Anything,” Cyrus muttered. He grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, trying to adjust the contents of his pockets. “Dirt. I don’t care.”
    The large woman was lumbering toward them with what looked like a pint of carrot juice. Horace flashed her a wide smile. She smiled back. According to the plastic rectangle on her shirt, her name was Pat.
    “You