Free The Infernals by John Connolly Page B

blindness, an occasional inability to remember his own name, and explosive burping, which had led to one of the incidents of alleged arson after he belched a little too close to a naked flame.
    So Mumbles, Angry, and Dozy held on tightly to their glasses of ale (particularly since Spiggit’s, if spilled on skin or clothing and allowed to remain there for more than five seconds, tended to burn) and wondered how they were going to be able to afford to eat, or drink, without Mr. Merryweather to help them. There was a certain urgency to this, as they had only twelve cases of Spiggit’s left in the back of the van, along with two boxes of potato chips and a couple of sandwiches that appeared to be on the turn. It had been suggested that they dump the two boxes of chips in order to make room for more beer, but wiser counsel had prevailed, and they had dumped just one of the boxes of chips, and kept the sandwiches.
    “That’s the end of us,” said Angry. “I’ll have to go back to my old job.”
    “What was that?” said Dozy.
    “Not having a job.”
    “Take up much time, did it?”
    “All day. I had weekends off, though.”
    “Well, you would. You’d exhaust yourself otherwise.”
    “What about you?”
    Dozy shuddered. “Doesn’t bear thinking about. Children’s television.”
    “No!”
    “Yes. Remember that show
Beefy and the Noodles
?”
    “The one set in the bowl of soup?”
    “That’s the one. I was Percy Pea.”
    “Don’t remember you saying much.”
    “I was a pea. Peas are among your quieter vegetables on account of there not being much air in those pods. You can’t get a carrot to shut up, and don’t get me started on broccoli. I hated being a pea. And the suit smelled funny. The previous Percy Pea died in it.”
    “Really?”
    “Contracted something from the soup. We spent hours in that soup. It was horrible. Anyway, he caught a disease from the soup, and he died, but they didn’t find out until after the weekend. They thought the suit was empty, so they just pushed him back into his pod and left him there. That suit never smelled the same after.”
    “It wouldn’t, would it?” said Angry. “You can’t leave a dead person in a pea suit for a weekend and not expect it to smell a bit. Stands to reason. A day, maybe: you can get rid of a day’s dead smell, but not a weekend’s. What about you, Mumbles, what did you do?”
    “Vovos,” said Mumbles.
    “Oh,” said Angry.
    “Missed that,” said Dozy.
    “He says he did voice-overs,” said Angry, who tried to hide his confusion by looking more confused. “You know, for commercials, and movie trailers, and the like.”
    There was a pause while the dwarfs took this in.
    “Nice work if you can get it,” said Dozy, eventually.
    “Have to have a talent for it,” said Angry, who had developed an extra wrinkle in his forehead as he tried to figure out the precise trajectory of Mumbles’s career path.
    “Anglebog,” agreed Mumbles.
    “Indeed,” replied Angry, neutrally. “Good pronunciation would be the key.”
    “What about you, Jolly?” said Dozy. “What will you do?”
    “Do?” said Jolly. “Do? Listen to you lot. We’re not finished yet. We’ve been through worse times than this. We’ve been arrested, deported, and almost sold into slavery. You have to be optimistic. I guarantee that opportunity lies around the next bend.”
    He was so convincing that they raised their glasses and cheered.
    Opportunity did not, in fact, lie around the next bend. What did was an unmarked police car, in which Constable Peel and Sergeant Rowan of the Biddlecombe constabulary were checking the speeds of cars and drinking tea from a thermos.
    “Lovely tea, this,” said Sergeant Rowan. “How do you get it to taste like that?”
    “Honey,” said Constable Peel.
    “Fantastic. Never would have thought of it.”
    “Honey,” Constable Peel continued, “and … elves. With beer.”
    Sergeant Rowan sniffed his tea. “No, I don’t get any