Free Agyar by Steven Brust Page A

me?”
    “Some children have shown up to see if they could spend the night in the haunted house.”
    Kellem laughed.
    “Not so loudly, if you please,” I said.
    She nodded, still grinning. “Is your ghost friend doing anything to their poor, dear heads?”
    “No; he’s showing great restraint.”
    “What are they doing now?”
    “I’ve been out. When I left they were lighting a fire in the fireplace and talking about telling ghost stories. I wonder if they’ll notice that the fireplace has been used lately.”
    “I doubt it.”
    She looked around at the yard, so overgrown with weeds that one could see them above the snow, surrounded by a faded, rotting fence that had once been painted red, featuring, on one side of the now invisible walk, a single apple tree of the variety someone had once called Mushy Rome Beauty, and, on the other, a catalpa with enough twists to give the place a creepy feeling even if it didn’t have Jim to lend it authenticity. “A nice place, actually,” said Kellem.
    “Yes. A good location, too; not far from St. Bart’s, not far from the Tunnel, a couple of parks nearby. It was
built by a professor of one of the colleges, I forget which, right around the turn of the century.”
    “Why was it abandoned?”
    “Last family to buy it thought it was haunted. They wouldn’t live there, and refused to sell it to anyone else without the guarantee that it would be torn down. The Historical Society wouldn’t let that happen, even if they’d found someone stupid enough to do it.”
    “So here it sits,” she said.
    “Yes. From time to time the city comes in and cleans up the yard and sends the owners a bill. As long as they pay the taxes, no one cares.”
    She looked at me fully. “What do you want?”
    “I would like,” I said, “to negotiate.”
    “Pardon me?”
    I repeated myself.
    She shook her head. “I don’t understand. For what?”
    “Eh? For my life.”
    It seemed to get through at last, and she looked like she didn’t know if she ought to laugh or just look perplexed. “What would you have that I might want? Or that I couldn’t get anyway?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Can we discuss it?”
    “You’re wasting my time.”
    “I just want—”
    “Quiet,” she said, and I was quiet. Her eyes pinned me in place, then forced me down, first to my knees, then onto my face in the snow. It was very cold, and it came to me with a sense of rage that I would not be able to stand in front of the fire because of those damned children. I should have liked to have slaughtered them, but Jim would never have forgiven me.
    “You have nothing to say to me,” said Kellem. “I have decided your fate, and that is an end of it. You will wait, no more. That is all.”
    When I looked up she had gone.
    I was, as I said, unable to type yesterday because of the children, so I may have left out some details. In any case, they were gone when I awoke, and I trust they will not return.

FIVE

    en⋅er⋅gy n. 1.a. Vigor or power in action. b. Vitality and intensity of expression. 2. The capacity for action or accomplishment: lacked energy to finish the job .
    AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY

    I’ve been sitting here remembering things.
    The last time I saw Laura Kellem was in County Mayo, Ireland, perhaps a score of years ago. I had been living in London, which seems to be the place in all the world I keep coming back to. I don’t remember exactly where I’d found digs, but it was probably either Soho or the East End, because that’s where I’ve been most often.
    I remember that for several months I’d been feeling listless, careless, and generally uninterested in life. I didn’t know, then, that I was, to some degree, subject to whatever moods Kellem might be having, at least if they were intense. If I’d known that, I’d have probably been expecting something like what happened. As it was, I didn’t even realize what was happening to me until much later, when I reconstructed the