Free Picking the Ballad's Bones by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page B

presence, then give me the ashes
as evidence I can show my friends that the job is done and I've
taken care of them, just as you take such good care of your people.
Do you understand?"
    He nodded, still sweating, still not
daring to pull away from her charnel-house breath and fog-cold
embrace.
     
     

CHAPTER 9
     
    Julianne took a hot bath at Hy
MacDonald's house, or as much of one as she could get for the ten
pence the heater took. She emerged from the tub wearing a T-shirt
and jeans that belonged to Hy, the jeans a little big and held up
with a woven band he'd bought at a crafts fair and thought might
come in handy as a guitar strap. "Willie," she said, "I just wanted
to thank you for—you know—helping me get away from that
guy."
    Willie waved his hand negligently and
looked uncomfortable. He thought it was all very well that she
thought he was good wolf-scaring material, but he actually much
preferred the role of the wolf. Why should she need protecting
anyway? She was a grown woman and had been away from her mama for
quite a while.
    She saw his impatient expression and
added, "I was caught off-guard. I thought those folks would be fine
since Torchy took me to them. I know you're getting close to her,
Willie, but she's got really strange energy, y'know?"
    He did know. Maybe he was mad at Juli
partially because he was mad at Torchy, trying to make lion food
out of him when he thought they had been getting along so well.
Damn, it always seemed to be something with women, and sometimes he
wasn't sure which kind griped him more, the ones like Torchy who
were wild and sexy but treacherous as rattlers or the kind like
Julianne who said they were independent and wanted to make up their
own minds but still expected a guy to risk his neck defending them.
He missed the fact that Juli had just been warning him about
Torchy, not realizing that the redhead had already betrayed Willie.
Juli thought that in warning him she was paying him back, somehow
protecting him.
    When Willie didn't respond, she smiled
uncertainly at Hy MacDonald, who came out of the kitchen with a
tray full of fresh drinks. Hy hadn't heard her. He was preoccupied
with an entirely different issue.
    "I wish I could be of more help," Hy
was saying. "It's been very good to see you. I needed someone to
keep me from drinkin' alone, y'know. But the timin' is a wee bit
awkward as I've got this new job. Taxes have hit me very hard and
my brother has pulled quite a few strings to get me on the North
Sea oil rigs. I'm hoping, of course, to pick up a bit of change
entertaining on the side but we'll see how that goes."
    "But don't you see?" Gussie asked him.
"It's the same thing that was happening to us at home. It's
these—these critters trying to run you folks away from the music
just like they did us."
    The banjo, propped up in the corner,
played a tune Gussie recognized as some old Irish exile song, one
of those with the general theme of "the landlord wants his rent,
the tatties have gone bad, you're pregnant once again, and I'm
outta here, my lassie-o."
    "Yes, I do see," Hy said. "But I don't
much fancy bein' one of the first casualties, like Hawthorne and
Nedra and them, d'ye see? I can let you look through my record
collection and books if that will be any help at all, and take you
'round to Sir Walter Scott's old place, since that's where you said
the Randolph couple planned to go. There's tour buses in and out
all the time so I'm sure you could pop back up here on one of them.
You might find it all very interesting anyway. Sir Walter built his
estate from the lands once roamed by Thomas the Rhymer—his turf, I
suppose you could call it. And there's all the auld lit'rary places
from the books thereabouts, and the Wizard's grave over at
Melrose." He cast a rather nervous glance at the banjo mumbling to
itself in the corner of the living room. "Perhaps your instrument
could get old Michael Scott to exhume his magic book for you and
give you a wee hand, eh?"
     
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