Free Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt Page B

way around the edge of the coffin, tapping his screwdriver, smiling every time at the cracking sound. He’d done one whole side and gotten halfway up the other when he looked back at the girl.
    Her eyes were open, staring at him. “Can you see me?” he asked.
    She nodded, once.
    He held up the hammer and screwdriver. “Am I doing the right thing?”
    She nodded more vigorously.
    Billy went back to work. She’d thank him, and maybe there’d be a reward, and best of all she’d have a story to tell him, how she wound up in the box, what it meant, who’d trapped her and why.
    Billy hit the screwdriver for the last time, on the beveled edge above her head. Then he stepped back, unsure what to do next. If he tried to shove the top of the casket away, the edge would cut his hands to pieces. Maybe he could get a stick, or find some gloves, or—
    The top of the casket rose up, away from the sides. At first Billy thought it was levitation, a magic trick, but then he saw the girl lifting it with her hands and her knees. She shoved the lid aside, and it fell to the ground, shattering with a sound so loud and startling that Billy dropped his hammer and screwdriver.
    The girl sat up. She took a deep breath, then coughed, covering her mouth. Billy thought about the Boy in the Bubble again, and was afraid he’d done a very bad thing.
    Then she laughed, and said, “I haven’t smelled fresh air in a long time.” She croaked more than she talked, but Billy could understand her. He went to the coffin, then wrinkled his nose. The girl reeked .
    She frowned at him. “Try getting shut inside a box for... well... for a long time, anyway, and see how good you smell, kid.”
    Billy nodded, seeing the sense in that, and held out a hand to help her. She ignored his hand, stood up in the casket, then jumped out, landing on the asphalt in a crouch. She stood up, tugged down her dress, and grinned. “I got away from the old bastard again,” she said. “Ha!” She looked down at Billy. “Thanks, kid. Where am I, anyway?”
    Billy just blinked at her. She didn’t sound like a Glass Casket Killer victim, or a magic princess, or anything. She sounded like the girls in the older grades at his school, that was all, a little snotty, like he was just a dumb kid. “How did you—”
    She held up her hand in a gesture demanding silence, then lifted her nose and looked around. “Shit. He’s nearby.” She dug her heel into the asphalt—right on a shard of glass!—and dragged her bare foot along the ground, wincing. She left a little streak of blood on the pavement, like red crayon on black construction paper.
    “What are you doing?” he said, staring at the blood.
    “Making a protective circle,” she said, gritting her teeth. “But it’s too damned slow . Do you have a knife, or something?”
    “Does it have to be blood?” he said, backing away. She had such beautiful white skin, and he couldn’t stand to watch her tear it this way.
    She paused. “No, if this was sand I could just drag a line through the dirt. The circle has to be unbroken, though, and I can’t think of any way to do that here except for blood.”
    Billy didn’t ask why she needed a circle. He knew why, though he couldn’t say how he knew. Maybe he’d seen it in a movie, or maybe the knowledge simply lived in him. They needed a circle to keep the bad things out.
    “Wait!” he said when she started dragging her foot again. He rummaged through the toolbox and came up with the chalk line reel. “Will chalk work?”
    “Perfect,” she said, snatching it from his hand. She knelt, and Billy could see the bottoms of her feet. The one she’d dragged was bloody, but the soles of both feet were covered in thin white scars, like they’d been scratched repeatedly and deeply by knives. She moved the chalk line reel slowly, drawing a ragged circle around herself, Billy, and the remains of the casket.
    “What happened to your feet?” he asked when she’d finished