Free American Craftsmen by Tom Doyle Page A

mind, her family only slightly less brutal than Daddy’s work product.
    They had made her wish she could flee her body. One former friend of her father’s was particularly good at this—a true ghoul. A nightmare, but the crazy-people house would have been even worse. So she had endured. She had known by her tormentors’ examples that killing herself would be no solution.
    Finally, as innocently as she could, Scherie had asked her mother a question: “How can I make ghosts go away?”
    Her mother had smiled. “All you have to do is tell the ghosts to go away, and they will.”
    Scherie had taken her mother at her word, and more. She said, “Get the fuck out of my house and out of my life!”
    And the ghosts had left, and had never come back. She had been very young, so eventually they had seemed like a long, bad dream. Now, that dream could only create a minor unease in a beautiful old house.
    Despite her anger at herself for pursuing Dale, by the time she arrived at the mall, she was already hoping that he would call, and not just for a possible romance. She guessed that he had worked covertly in the Middle East, and might be an avenue for her to help her family’s homeland. Her father had given her plenty of military talk and some combat basics, but a veteran covert soldier like Dale might have higher-level skills and contacts to share. If he didn’t call, she might have to pursue him still harder. If she saw any ghosts, she would just tell them to go away.
    *   *   *
    The next day, while I was planning some means of getting to Sphinx, I felt a small uneasiness flow across the House’s ambient vibe, like the play of a summer breeze on my grandmother’s aeolian harp. It wasn’t the curse or the voice; more like the sense of a stare across a room, or across a continent. It was a foreboding of an attack that might lead to my death. No shit, Nostradamus.
    When Hutchinson entered the House, she cut right past our usual soldiers’ bull session. “Why were you trying to shake our tail on the highway?”
    “What did the Gideons tell you?”
    “Shouldn’t I be asking the questions?”
    “OK, here’s what they probably reported. They tailed me from here with the assistance of two mundane agents. I got on the highway, but then it appeared that I spotted the mundanes, and exited to a nearby mall. When the Gideons arrived, I was threatening the mundanes, but then I collapsed for reasons unknown, and all agents were able to escape unharmed.”
    “And that’s not what happened?”
    “They were setting me up for early retirement.”
    “You’re paranoid. Where were you going?”
    OK, I needed at least one ally, and that meant Hutch or no one. “I’ve been thinking more about who called my last mission.”
    “That kind of thinking is outside your pay grade, Morton. Which is discharged .”
    “We’ve got a vermin in the Families.”
    “A craft mole?” said Hutchinson. “High-heeled nonsense. And even if true, it’s not the person you’re thinking.”
    “I was set up, and now they’re trying to finish the job.”
    “That sorcerer was a damned good farseer,” said Hutchinson. “It happens.”
    “Not like this. Hutch, I’d swear those three Gideons are in the mole’s pocket. If somebody wants me out of commission, it can’t be good for craft and country.”
    Hutchinson closed her eyes and spoke quietly through clenched teeth. “If I say there’s a mole, they’ll say it’s you.”
    “I’m willing to take that risk,” I said.
    “I’m not,” she said. She pulled out a long case. “I’ve got something for you.”
    I opened the case with dread. It was the Purple Heart. “But I’m not wounded.”
    “Not where anyone can see.”
    “By that criterion,” I said, “a lot of other soldiers should have gotten this.”
    “Yeah, I know,” said Hutchinson, “Keep it for them.”
    “Yeah. OK,” I said. “You can keep it when I’m gone.”
    “When you’re gone? What the hell is eating