Free Tapping the Dream Tree by Charles De Lint Page A

I’ve got my own debt to his wingless angels. I just hope they don’t try to collect because I don’t have what could even remotely be called a decent singing voice.

The Words That Remain
    â€œNot yet,” she said. Her voice was measured and calm, calmer than she’d ever thought she’d feel when this time arrived. “Give me a little longer. Just long enough to know who I am.”
    But Death had not come to bargain that night and took her away.
    â€œThis place is haunted, you know,” the night clerk told him.
    Christy stifled a sigh. Normally he was ready to hear anybody’s story, especially on this sort of subject, but he was on a book tour for his latest collection, and after today’s long round of interviews, signings, drop-in visits to bookstores and the like, all he wanted was some time to himself. A chance to put away the public face. To no longer worry if he’d inadvertently picked his nose and someone had seen and made note. (“While the author’s premises are intriguing, his personal habits could certainly stand some improvement.”) He needed to get back to his room and call home, to let Saskia’s voice remind him of the real life he led the other fifty or so weeks of the year when he wasn’t out promoting himself.
    But he felt he owed it to Alan, not to mention his own career, to do what he could to promote his books. Ever since the surprising success Alan’s East Side Press had had with Katharine Mully, particularly her posthumous collection
Touch and Go,
the media had taken a serious interest in what Alan liked to call their contemporary myth books, said interest translating into better coverage, more reviews, and increasingly lucrative deals for paperback editions and other subsidiary rights. Alan considered Christy’s and Mully’s books to perfectly complement each other, rounding out his catalogue, the urban myths and folktales Christy collected telling the “real story” behind the contemporary fairy tales Mully had so effectively brought to life in her fiction.
    He approached the various readings and signings with a genuine fondness for the readers who came to the events with their own stories and enthusiasms, and he made the rounds with as much good grace as he could muster toward those media types who sometimes seemed to be less interested in the actual work than they were in filling a few column inches of type, or minutes of airtime. Still, at the end of a long day, it was wearying and hard to maintain the public persona—not so much different from his own, simply more outgoing. Right now he seriously needed some downtime.
    But, “Haunted?” he said.
    She nodded. “Like in your books. There’s a ghost in the hotel.”
    Christy could believe it. There’d been a mix-up with his reservations so that when he’d arrived from the airport to drop off his bags, he’d been shunted to this other, smaller hotel down the street. Truth was, he liked it better. It was an older building, its gilded decor no longer the height of fashion, furnishings worn and decidedly frayed in places, but no less charming for that. If there weren’t ghosts in a place like this, then they’d certainly drop by for a visit. It was the kind of hotel where bohemians and punks and open-minded businessmen on a budget could all rub shoulders in the lobby. The staff ran the gamut from the elderly man in a burgundy smoking jacket who’d checked him in this morning to the young woman standing on the other side of the counter at the moment. Earlier he’d heard the big band music of Tommy Dorsey drifting from the small office behind the check-in desk; tonight it was the more contemporary sound of Catatonia.
    Leaning against the counter, Christy made note of the woman’s nametag. Mary, it read.
    At first he thought the name didn’t really suit her. Mary struck him as a calm name, a little on the conservative