Free Frost by Harry Manners Page B

they’re brought here. We’re about to toe a line I’m bound not to cross, so be ready.”
    “For what?”
    Barry headed away towards the counter.
    Jack huddled so close on his heels that he was sure he might rob Barry of a shoe. He tried to keep watch about himself, but the room seemed to loom over him and press his gaze to the tiled floor, as though sensing that it was not for his eyes; an organism rejecting a foreign body.
    Barry strode a little too purposefully, like a man whistling in the dark, and pulled out a chair at a table close to the counter. He sat with a deliberate air and pressed Jack down into a seat beside him, folding his hands and looking at the menu.
    Suddenly he seemed very interested in the selection of tea. “Get reading,” he said. “And choose well.”
    He silenced Jack’s retort before it could start forming in his head with a sharp look, and they both fell to reading.
    Good god, it’s endless , Jack thought, perusing dense palette descriptions and serving suggestions of myriad artfully-named teas.
    The gentle tinkling became the screech of claws on a blackboard to his tortured ears. It was hard to see straight, let alone read. Yet amongst the menu’s items, his eyes fixed on one close to the bottom, leaping out from the blur to grab him by the lapels.
    Autumn Jasmine: a charming infusion of Jasmine and Ginger, with adventurous notes of sarsaparilla, white chocolate cookies, and a hint of spring-time Minnesota.
    Jasmine and Ginger… his grandmother’s house had always smelled like that. Sarsaparilla: the thought of it brought flashes of his father cracking open a few beer cans in their darkened living room, his flabby face illuminated by the blue glow of the TV. Those flashes gave way to the sight of half a white chocolate cookie in his lunch box one spring… back then, they had lived in Minnesota.
    There had been a post-it stuck to the cookie: Don’t get beat up again. Love Mom x
    Guess I know what I’m having. At least, what I’m meant to have. Christ, I sound like a loon.
    Jack shivered as a rush of something cold passed by. The primal sense that told somebody they weren’t alone piqued, and cloth rustled close over his right shoulder.
    “Does anything catch your eye, perchance?” sighed a smooth and musical voice.
    Jack caught a squawk of surprise between his lips, just.
    A tall man dressed in an extravagant purple coat stood over them, lurking between their shoulders and peering at the menu with a critical aloofness. He turned his eye on Jack, revealing an aquiline face studded with enormous bushy, grey eyebrows that extended up in rigid shafts almost to his hairline. “ Ginger? Sarsaparilla? Strange, wouldn’t you say? Almost like it was made for you.”
    His eyes twinkled, not encouraging nor frightening, somewhere lost between friend and foe. Jack started as, for an instant, his irises might have illuminated in a flash of violet. The Man in Purple winked.
    Barry’s rumble struck up from the other side of the man’s head. “Stop being an arse and sit down.”
    The Man in Purple’s eyes narrowed in an instant. “You should not be here, Kaard,” he said, staring blankly.
    “Well we’re here.” His voice was rough cut as ever, but the slightest edge of uncertainty—almost pleading—crept into it. “I need your help.”
    “I talk with whomever I must. I council those who are meant for it. You are not among them.”
    The Man in Purple straightened, once again loomed at their backs. Jack could sense his hand resting upon the back of his chair, delicate yet enormous, radiating waves of weirdery that threw Jack’s divining rod into another retarded spiral. He fought dizziness, watching Barry closely.
    “I’m not leaving until I get answers. This world is on the bloody knife-edge.”
    “That is not my concern.” The Man in Purple’s voice throbbed with unearthly bass. “I swore neutrality long ago. The Web takes no sides.”
    “Don’t give me that horseshit!