Free The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) by J.P. Sloan Page A

knowing smile and withdrew to attend to another customer. I watched him work for a while. He was terrifyingly out of shape. He was the kind of man you could imagine dining on two slices of bread soaked in bacon grease every night with a pack of cigarettes and a nightcap. He always listened to me, and he never withdrew his approval from me. Even during all the unpleasantness with Carmen.
    But I hadn’t realized how much I cared what he thought about me until I had someone for him to meet.
    I retired to the room for a bit of brain-numbing conversation with the others. I stumbled into a deep, emotional argument over the proposed gas tax, and managed to stay far from mayoral topics. Though I could tell from keeping my ear pressed to the ground why Julian had been avoiding the Club. This had become Sooner’s audience in a big way. Happily I wasn’t publically linked to Sullivan. Hopefully it would remain that way.
    After draining my wine glass, I wandered back to the bar to get my own refill. The girls were giving me a wide berth, and for good reason. Their new house mother had warned them about what had happened between Carmen and me. It seemed I was on a blacklist among the working girls in the Club, and it suited me fine. That particular service of the club hadn’t been sitting well with me for a while now.
    I stepped past the dark side of the room before the single lamp lit inside registered in my brain. A chill trickled down my neck as I stopped mid-stride. Backing up a couple steps, I spotted a familiar figure seated in one of the wingbacks, smoke from his cigar wreathing his head.
    It was the man I called Mr. Brown. I’d had run-ins with agents of the Presidium in the past, but Mr. Brown was the only bona fide Presidium member to date who had spoken with me in person.
    If he was here to see me, I couldn’t ignore him. I set the wine glass down on a planter and ventured inside the dim room.
    “Have a seat, Mister Lake.”
    I complied, trying not to give Brown any reason to take offense.
    “How have you been?” I asked, dutifully weeding out any trace of sarcasm as I took a seat across him.
    “You’ve kept us busy as of late, Mister Lake.”
    “Have I?” A little sarcasm may have crept into that one.
    He stared at me from beneath those snow white eyebrows, a sneer creeping onto the mouth buried inside his ivory beard.
    “The Baltimore mayoral campaigns don’t garner much attention inside the Capitol Beltway, which is good news for you.”
    “Then this is a social visit?”
    “As I’ve said before, there are associates within our organization which feel you represent a real opportunity to forward our mission. There are others, however, who consider you to be reckless in the extreme. Stubborn. Arrogant. And dangerously uninformed.”
    “I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek.” Okay, I couldn’t fight the sarcasm anymore. He was starting to piss me off.
    Mr. Brown’s eyes bored holes through my head, and I shifted in my seat.
    “Also, callously flippant.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Until recently your affairs haven’t compelled us to take action. Hence our relatively benign conversation. The regrettable fact is this all could have been avoided.”
    “What could have been avoided?”
    “Oh, where to begin? You’ve insinuated yourself into the election of a major public figure. You’ve met in broad daylight with the Deputy Mayor on more than one occasion to discuss sensitive esoteric matters. Trading with inconsequential corporate accountants is one thing, but a man who is viewed as holding the political marionette strings for a major U.S. city is quite another. And when faced with a genuine metaphysical crisis, rather than coming to us, you’ve resorted to your own paltry miseducation and fly-by-wire hermetic gimmickry. On what level did you feel we were ever going to ignore this?”
    My blood pressure raquetballed from vessel-bursting anger to piss-my-pants fainting levels.
    “The Presidium is getting