SHADOW-TRUTHS LAST THE LONGEST

 A bit more of my WIP, SAME AS IT NEVER WAS

BE CAREFUL WHO YOU LOVE

"The lessons one learns at St. Marok’s are not always the ones this school thinks it’s teaching."

– Richard Blaine

 

Miss Mayfair shook her head as if by doing so, she could shake loose the attacking thoughts stinging her mind.

“Enough of that. I truly wonder if Miss Treadwell graduated from an accredited college at all, judging from the way she used, or should I say, misused the Dewey Decimal System. The books in this library are all terribly misplaced and sorted.”

She looked at me impishly. “You do know the Dewey Decimal System, do you not?”

I returned her look. “It’s one of the few systems I live by.”

“Well, then, you go to the far end of this library, and I shall start here by the desk rearranging the books properly. We will meet in the middle as do all intelligent people.”

After only a few minutes, it was plain her plan would not work, and she muttered, “This is horrendous. Why did Stearns hire her if she knew so little about library science?”

I did not think he hired her for her brains, but I kept that to myself. It might lead her to thinking how he had tried to “sell” her to one of the houses of prostitution around this orphanage for her body. Least said, least egg on my face, and one less foot in my mouth.

I smiled and said nothing. I caught my heart beating faster as I walked closer to her. I frowned. First love is dangerous only when it is also the last. Sadly, first love is only slightly less perishable than human life here in the French Quarter.

I was surprised to see the thin, stiff-bound “On the Perceptual Content of Quantum Theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics” by Werner Heisenberg in my right hand. Though it had been written in 1927, I still found it fascinating.

Miss Mayfair’s face went suddenly pale as she looked over my left shoulder. La merde. I turned around, expecting the worst and getting it. “Bent” Murcham.  

Where the late unlamented Donny Jenkins liked to hurt people. “Bent” liked to kill them. He had proven more useful to Stearns than Donny.  So much so that the Headmaster had gotten rid of all his victims, not just the ones Stearns had pointed out to him.

"Bent" flashed a shark’s smile. “You never made it to your cot at the dorm last night, Dickie boy. And we had such a nice party planned for you and everything.”

His eyes grew as cold and flat as wet stones on the beach. “Me and the boys liked Donny and Stearns.”

“No, you feared them.”

His face grew as remote as a surgeon's face might just before he amputated a leg. "You should fear us."

"I do ... like I do coiled rattlers."