Free Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 by Witchlight (v2.1)

on Greyangels Road, don't you,
ma'am?" Sullivan said. "I don't know much about it myself," he
went on, "it's more a local thing, and Dad just moved up here in
'eighty-seven. The old-timers say there's supposed to be angels haunting this
part of the Hudson Valley. Like ghosts, you know, only good—most of the
time." How appropriate, Winter
thought to herself. "Gray ones?" "I guess so." Sullivan was
dubious. "All I know is, I've never seen them—but we do get pretty heavy
fogs from time to time, being so near the river and all. Maybe that's them.
Here we are."
                 She
could always call for another cab if the loaner car failed to materialize, so
Winter sent Tim Sullivan on his way after assuring him she really had meant him to keep the fifty dollars.
Walking around the building, she found Dave Kelly out in back, leaning into the
engine compartment of a car that had rolled off the Detroit assembly lines five
years before Winter had been born, in the company of a boy who was a younger,
slenderer version of himself.
                 "Hi,"
Winter called.
                 Dave
straightened up out of the engine. "Oh . . . hi." He didn't look
particularly happy to see her. He wiped his hands on a rag. "You just keep
after that, Paul; I've got to tell this lady about her car."
                 The
body under the hood made a noise that might have been either sympathy or
contempt. Winter followed Dave back around to the front of the garage, thinking
that if she didn't get a chance to sit down soon she'd probably fall down.
                 "It's
like this," Dave began, and sighed. "BMW's a damn fine car; German
engineering and all. I've had it up on the lifts, and I don't know what the
hell happened, if you'll pardon my French, Miz Musgrave, but there's not a thing I or anybody else this side of Bavaria can do
with it. Only time I've ever seen anything like what happened to your
electrical system's on a car got struck by lightning up in The Angels a few
years back."
                "The Angels?" Winter
asked. Anything to avoid a discussion of what had destroyed her car. She was
afraid she knew.
                 "Local
mountain range—well, foothills, really, but high enough; me and my boy Paul go
rock-climbing there weekends. It's called The Angels; the first guy to get
this far upstate was French; the original name was Aux Anges ."
                 Aux Anges —the
Heights. And The Angels was simply a
mistranslation into English. Maybe the explanation for the Grey Angels Tabitha
Whit-field had mentioned was as simple.
                 "So
that's what I'd do, if I were you," Dave finished, and Winter realized
with a pang of alarm that while she'd been woolgathering she'd missed
everything he'd said.
                 "I'm
. . . sorry?" she said hesitantly.
                 "I
said, if you want a rental you're going to have to go all the way down to Poughkeepsie to get it. It's going to be at least a
month before you can get an insurance adjuster up here, and all he's going to
tell you is the same thing I have. When the battery melted, it ruined just
about everything else in the engine that hadn't already fried. They might not
even pay up; you know how those insurance guys are."
                 And what do you think melted my engine, Mr.
Kelly ? The twee little fairies in the bottom of the
garden? Winter drew a deep breath. "Okay." So they don't pay. I can take that hit. "I'm going to need
something to get around in until I can get down to ... Poughkeepsie ?" Winter said, stumbling over the
outlandish and unfamiliar name. "Tim Sullivan said you might have some
kind of a loaner car?"
                 "Nothing
I really want to offer a lady," Dave Kelly said. "Because it isn't
fancy, and it isn't what I'd call dependable, either."
                 "I've
got to have something," Winter said desperately. "Look, I'll buy