Free Sleeping Late On Judgement Day by Tad Williams Page A

light.
Vaya con dios
.”
    â€œYou too, man.” And I meant it. I wouldn’t have wished George’s curse even on Donald Trump, and George is a really nice guy.
    The client I’d been called to argue for was a nice old lady named Eileen Chaney who had just died in Sequoia General an hour before I got there. When I stepped Outside she was patiently waiting for me, and seemed completely unsurprised by any of what was going on, except that I didn’t have wings.
    â€œHaven’t earned them yet,” I said, which might not have been the exact truth but was at least simple.
    â€œI’m sure you will, young man.” She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You have a nice face.” Okay, so death hadn’t improved her vision, but I still resolved to do my best for her. Turns out there wasn’t much to do. Mrs. Chaney had nothing shocking in her background, Hell’s prosecutor was comparatively new and only offered the most perfunctory case against her, and so the whole thing was over in what felt like half an hour.
    When Mrs. Chaney and the judge disappeared, I was left alone with the prosecutor for a moment. Except for the whites of his eyes, this demon (who went by the charming moniker “Shitsquelch”) looked like a statue carved out of a giant peeled purple grape. He stared at me with unhidden interest.
    â€œI’ve heard about you, Doloriel,” he said.
    â€œYeah. People get bored, my name comes up.”
    â€œSeriously. Some of the folks on my side really don’t like you. Like, they’ve got plans. If I were you I’d get into a different line of work.”
    â€œIf you were me, your friends would have killed you a long time ago,” I said.
    While he was puzzling that out, I split. I was afraid he might ask me for my autograph or something.
    It was about seven-thirty in the morning when I got back to the apartment house, an ugly time of the day for any sane person but especially for someone with as many sore parts as I had. I parked across the street and looked around carefully before leaving the car. In the building lobby I ran into some neighbors, two young women who lived down the hall. We’d seen each other a few times but never spoken. I thought they were probably a couple, because I only ever saw them together. One was tall and lithe and dark, the other only a little shorter, red-haired and impressively muscular without being particularly big. They were dressed to go out running. I stepped aside to let them by, and the redhead stared at my face.
    â€œOh!
Z vami vse garazd?”
she said. Sounded like Russian. “Are you quite right?”
    I assumed she meant, “Are you all right?”
    â€œI’m okay, thanks. I was mugged.”
    â€œ
Bozhe mii!
” She said something else that I couldn’t understand to her dark-haired friend, who shook her head gravely. They walked past me with sympathetic looks on their faces.
    â€œTake careful!” the tall dark one told me as they went out. She too was pretty obviously another non-native speaker.
    Sam was gone, off to save the world or buy more ginger ale. I was on my own. I tried to catch up on a little sleep but I was too wired to relax, not to mention my ribs and skull felt like they’d been run through an industrial stamping press, so I got up again, swallowed about eleven ibuprofen, and checked out the directions Edie Parmenter had given me the night before. Her employer, this Doctor Gustibus, lived a good distance out of the city, over on the coast side of the hills, but I didn’t mind a little thinking time.
    As I headed toward the freeway on-ramp I called Alice and asked her to take me out of rotation for a couple of hours while I handled some personal business.
    â€œYou can call it what you want,” she said. “Me, I’d just be honest and say ‘Staying home to watch game shows and jerk off,’ but I’ll pretend if you