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The Tenth Man
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The Tenth Man
by Tamara Sheehan
Torquere Press
www.torquerepress.com
Copyright ©2008 by Tamara Sheehan
First published in www.prizmbooks.com, 2008
NOTICE: This eBook is licensed to the original purchaser
only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email,
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violation of International copyright law and subjects the
violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This notice
overrides the Adobe Reader permissions which are
erroneous. This eBook cannot be legally lent or given to
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This eBook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.
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The Tenth Man
by Tamara Sheehan
CONTENTS
* * * *
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The Tenth Man
by Tamara Sheehan
Chapter 1
Change should have been coming. He'd given the pet shop
lady a twenty, and the cost of the thing was somewhat less
than that.
The thing—a perfectly still, grayish lump in a cardboard
box—resembled nothing so much as a boiled pudding. Fifteen
was ridiculous, but seventeen was an outrage. There was no
way the pet store clerk was going to get twenty out of him.
He waited, hand out, because change should have been
coming.
The clerk shut the cash drawer with her hip. She turned
her great, bespectacled eyes on him and raised an eyebrow in
the direction of his upturned palm. "That's the last one I
have," she said. "In Italy they sell them for $5.90 per pound.
You got a steal."
Holding his palm out with the thing sitting immobile in the
complimentary cardboard box, Saul began to feel
embarrassed. "It would seem," Saul mumbled and put his
hand back in his pocket.
The clerk smiled. "So, you're just starting out then?"
Just starting out? What an insult. Saul wanted to tell her
that he was a professional and had been for years. He wanted
to say this was, in fact, his second familiar, but then would
come all those inevitable, uncomfortable questions that
people always asked. What happened to the first one? What
were you doing in the Janion, anyway?
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The Tenth Man
by Tamara Sheehan
"Just starting? No, I've been at it for a while." He patted
the greasy, fleshy lump in the box and his hand came away
smelling like cabbage.
"Oh yeah?"
Saul dug a crumpled business card out of his pocket,
smoothed the corner, and offered it to the clerk.
" Hornsby Magic. Locate Lost Items—Reasonable Rates.
Oh." She looked him over again, squinting through her thick,
black-rimmed glasses. "Are you taking new clients? Because
I've lost something and I really need it back, and all the other
psychics are sort of creepy."
He laughed. The other psychics are sort of frauds, he
thought. "Sure, I can take on a new client."
He retrieved the day planner from his coat pocket. "There's
an opening at 5:30 tomorrow, if you want it."
"Perfect. How much?"
He considered his usual rates, and then he inflated them.
"Twenty would do."
* * * *
The air was blustery and unseasonably warm, and the sky
had gone from gray to slate blue. The clouds cut off the view
of the distant Shier Mountains and turned the towers and
minarets of the city battleship gray. The rain came down like
a curtain as Saul crossed the street from the pet shop,
blackening the asphalt, soaking his hair and the cardboard
box. Gutters gurgled. Streetlights flickered on and off. Saul
hurried among businessmen in black suits, pensioners, and
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