Free Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) by Gail Roughton Page B

sat, struck by the word ‘ we ’ .
    “Are there others? Like you?”
    “Oh, I’m sure there must be, somewhere, or have been in the past. All the legends start from something. But the eating and drinking—I just do that ‘cause it tastes good. I don’t have to eat and in fact, sometimes I’ll go for days without it. I just enjoy it. Especially the variety the world has now. Imagine, having ice anytime you want it! Which you’ve had all your life. The luxuries people take for granted now.”
    “What do you do for money?” Ria asked, a tad of hesitation in her voice. “I mean—”
    “Well, life’s been a great deal easier since they invented ATMs and the internet,” he said, and grinned. “I used to have to bank by mail and that was really the pits. And I’ve had some lucky hits on the stock market. Managed to get in very early with some very lucrative companies. And I do mean early.”
    Ria laughed. “ As in you own a lot of original blue-chip stock?”
    “Y es, ma’am.”
    Ria laughed. “I didn’t see a computer anywhere.”
    “Well, I cheat a little on some things. I can ge t in the library anytime I want you know , and before the smartphone era, I’d use their computers. And I check out library books without a card, but nobody’s ever objected. Had to slack off on buyin g ‘em, place is getting crowded. You’ve no idea how many books have just appeared as donations on the library counters one morning over the years , hope they got used. ”
    “You own original blue chip stock and you’ve got a smartphone. Dracula never had it so good.”
    He grinned and shifted and pulled it out of his pants pocket. “Right here. Latest version. I love gadgets. ”
    “Where do you charge it?”
    “I only use it for quick surfing, most of the time it’s off. When it needs charging, I plug it in at the cemetery gatehouse before I, ah, turn in for the day, loose wall board up there I hide it behind, nobody’s ever noticed.”
    “And what else do you cheat on?”
    “Showers,” he said without hesitation. “Hot showers are the single greatest invention of the Twentieth Century. Always an empty hotel room around somewhere. I sort of consider things like that Macon’s compensation for past services I rendered the public a good while back. Nobody knows about it, of course. The past services I mean. And damn lucky for the town it doesn’t.”
    “And that past service would be?”
    “I guess you want to hear all the gruesome details?”
    “Every last one.”
    Paul sighed and settled back against the stone he was using for a backrest.
    “You live in my house and you’ve seen my family. So of course you know Joshua.”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, Joshua fell into some very bad company.”
    “And you decided to do something about it.”
    “I’ve always been a bit impulsive.”
    “You charged into the middle of something dangerous enough to turn you into this for a servant? A houseboy?”
    Paul’s laugh floated out over the Ocmulgee.
    “I see the house didn’t give up all the family secrets. Joshua wasn’t my servant. Or my houseboy.”
    “Then what was he?”
    “My brother.”
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Thirteen
     
     
    T he turbulent events of the summer of 1888 broke and swirled around a boy named Joshua Devlin . Insofar as the Devlin family was concerned, anyway. It was the hottest summer many Macon residents could recall, though fortunately for them, few of them had any idea of just how much hotter, metaphorically speaking, it almost was.
    In that summer of 1888, Joshua was sixteen years old , a slender handsome boy caught in the hormonal imbalance of adolescence. Back then even the medical doctors didn’t understand the extre me physiological changes of puberty. Certainly Jo shua didn’t know his exuberant ups and his crashing downs were the common lot of all teenagers and nothing unusual at all .
    He damn sure knew t he structure of his entire world shatter ed and re-form ed when he was twelve