Free Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt

people. I wonder, have you seen the one I’m looking for?”
    He’s the Glass Casket Killer , Billy thought, only somehow he’s lost his casket . Or maybe he really was a magician, and the girl in red was his lovely assistant, but the last disappearing trick went wrong somehow and he lost track of her. Those blue eyes—they were magician’s eyes, for sure. Billy should help Mr. Mancuso. He should tell him anything he needed to know.
    Billy opened his mouth to say, “She’s behind the Safeway, sitting up on a couple of sawhorses,” but then he remembered the tears. The girl in red was crying, even while sleeping, even while seeming to be dead. Was she crying because she was lost, because she wanted the magic trick to be over? Looking at Mr. Mancuso, Billy didn’t think so. She was crying for some other, more through-and-through reason. Crying for something to do with Mr. Mancuso, maybe.
    “I didn’t see anybody,” Billy said. “I had detention at school and then I rode my bike home straight after. I’m going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Mom.” Billy hurried into the kitchen before Mr. Mancuso’s blue eyes made him change his mind. Mom would never let him have a snack so close to dinner time, but she didn’t object, and Mr. Mancuso didn’t do anything more than grunt.
    Billy went around the counter to the kitchen, wishing it was in a whole different room, not just sort of partitioned off from the living room. A pan of spaghetti sauce bubbled on the stove, burning and spattering, and the pot of water with the noodles in it had boiled down to almost nothing. It wasn’t like Mom to leave the stove unattended, even with company here. Billy trembled all over, afraid from his skin to his bones—this was worse than having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night after watching a scary movie, because then he only imagined monsters. Mr. Mancuso was here .
    Billy turned off the burners and went to the cabinet to get the peanut butter, trying to act natural, like he had nothing to be afraid of. His heart thudded like he’d just pedaled his bike up a steep hill, and he listened as closely as he could for the creak of the couch, for any sound to indicate what Mr. Mancuso was doing.
    When Billy turned back around to get the bread, Mr. Mancuso was gone. Billy hadn’t heard the door open. His mom stood up, frowned at the TV, and flipped it on with the remote. She looked at Billy, opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head. “Put that peanut butter away,” she said, walking toward him. “I’m fixing dinner.”
    Billy screwed the lid back on the jar, relieved in some way he couldn’t define. Everything was okay, though his mom frowned at the stove and refilled the pot with water.
    She didn’t say anything about Mr. Mancuso at dinner. Billy didn’t either, though he wondered if the man could really find his dad, really bring him back. Maybe he could. But if Dad had left once, wouldn’t he just leave again? Probably so. Billy didn’t mention the girl in the casket, either. His mom was in a bad mood, smoking cigarettes one after another, not talking much. He’d learned not to bother her when she was in moods like this. She’d just yell, or worse, start crying.
    Billy watched TV with his mom for a while, then did his homework, not thinking about it much, probably getting half the math problems wrong. He waited for his mom to say goodnight and go to bed, then waited a while longer for the light to go off under her door, and then a little longer still for her to get good and asleep. Billy had never sneaked out of the house before, and he didn’t want to get caught. He covered some pillows with a blanket so if his mom came to check on him it would look like he was still in bed. The pillow trick didn’t look as convincing for real as it did in the movies, but maybe it was good enough in dim light. Billy put a flashlight in his bookbag, then crept to the garage. He opened his dad’s little