The Night Train: A Novelette (The Strange Files of Modesty Brown Book 1) by Evelyn Archer

start.” She feels strange, standing over him, but
there is no way she is going to sit down.  And she can’t really understand
what he’s saying. She understands each individual word, but together they’re
not making sense.
    “Smart.
Right. I like a gal with sass. But all you had to do was sit there, and carry
your case off the train, and you’d never have known what I was up to.”
    The
green flames sputter up and she can finally see what it is he is working on.
There on the ground, is her typewriter. Or at least, what’s left of it. He
takes hold of his pliers and snaps off the P key. On the ground in front of him
are three others. N. O. D. And her body fills with NO again. She lunges for
them, her hand going straight through the green flame, which feels painfully
icy on her skin, and blooms a yellow bruise.
    He
slaps her injured hand, scoops the keys up like jacks, wags his finger back and
forth. “Nah-uh-uh! I need these.”
    “For
what?!”
    “Like
I said. I was going to meet with Mrs. Fong, plead some innocence, try to get
her to cut me a break, maybe trade a favor to her, couple years off the end of
my life, something she could really use. But then I see you. Just as fresh and
full of promise as moonlight in a martini. In your new coat and your mended
over dress, clutching the handle of that case like it contained state secrets.
Like I said. Best timing of any dame I’ve ever met.”
    He
holds up the O key, like a street magician with a ping pong ball. Nothing up my
sleeve. He closed his fingers around the key, the fingers fluttering with
performance level precision. He opens his hand. The key is gone. Then he snaps
his palm on his mouth, making an exaggerated popping sound, and there is the O
key, in his rotten stinking mouth. He lets it drop into his meaty mitt, holds
it out to her, snatches it away and drops it in the cup on the green fire.
    “This?
This is what’s going to break this fucking domino curse. I’m going to be fine,
and go about my life. You’re going to be…whatever you are… I don’t really care.
As long as you keep your nose out of my business.”
    “Go
ahead,” he continues. “Give the dominoes back to Mrs. Fong. She won’t care
about you. You’re nobody. You haven’t played anything with them, so your soul
is just fine. Mine however, is not. And from where I’m sitting, mine is more
important than yours.”
    He
tosses one of the keys into the cup. Next to him she sees her poor typewriter,
beheaded strikers sticking up like rib bones.
    She
does not tell him that she has no idea what his business is, that she doesn’t
give a rats ass about whatever this guy had up his sleeve: whether it was petty
crime or grand larceny or 1 st degree murder. She wants her
typewriter back. And she’s not leaving without it.
    “No,
Franco. That’s not going to happen. You’re going to stop what you’re doing,
give me that typewriter, and disappear into the night.”
    “Oh
really?” He laughs. It was shrill and sharp, a metal spike. It’s the laugh of
somebody who doesn’t have anything left to lose. And Modesty knows the danger
in this.
    “I
don’t think so sweetheart? What are you going to do? Overpower me with jujitsu?
Call the cops? You’re the one walking around with 236 cursed Chinese Dominoes
in a typewriter case? Me? I’ll be winging it out of here in another fifteen
minutes.”
    He
rises, gaining steam. As he shakes the pliers at her, Modesty sees that he is
shaking.
    “What
you don’t seem to understand here sweetheart, is that I’m an important guy. I
have connections. And you know what? Besides that? I have been known to be
prone to violence. Shapeshifters often are, experts say. And I don’t think
anyone would miss you. I don’t think anyone would think twice about the body of
a girl in a new red coat with her throat torn out by wild dog in the woods. Now
be a good girl, you’ll turn that pretty fanny around, get back on the train,
keep your yap shut, and we can