her - and looked, and drank her in.
Finaly he had her; her picture had firmed-up, taken on life. And she wasn't so much the looker that Harry and George Jakes had thought she might be. But undeniably attractive, yes - even to the point of magnetic. Those eyes of hers, their oh-so-slight slant -and their colour, a deep, penetrating hazel flecked with gold: feral eyes. Her ears, large but not obtrusive, flat to her head and elflike with their pointed tips, not quite hidden in the swirl and bounce of shining hair. Her nose, tip-tilted but by no means 'cute.'
And her mouth: too ample by far, yet delicious in the curve of its bow. As for her teeth: the Necroscope couldn't remember seeing teeth so perfect or so white!
But she had been studying him, too. 'Funny eyes,' she said. 'Well, not funny . . . strange. Like someone else is looking out of them.'
Harry could have answered that one, but he kept silent as she went on: They look sort of sad, compassionate, and ... I don't know, trustworthy? But deep down, maybe they're a little cold, too. Maybe you've been made cold, Harry. Have you led a strange life?'
'What, have you been reading my palm?' He smiled his sad smile, which was always a part of him and couldn't be changed, not even by Alec Kyle's face. 'Maybe you've missed your calling, BJ. Maybe you should have been Gypsy Bonnie!'
'I... fancy I might have come from Gypsy stock at that,' she answered. 'But how close was I, really?'
'Maybe too close,' he answered. 'Maybe right now, you're too close.'
Showing feigned alarm, she drew back a fraction. 'Oh? And are ye big trouble, Harry?'
'I hope I'm not going to be,' he told her, honestly. 'And I hope you're not going to be. I do need to talk to you, BJ.'
She drew back more yet, and meant it this time - not away from Harry, but from the man who had spoken to him just a moment ago from the end of the bar. He had finished his drink and now knocked a bar stool aside in his stumbling approach. There was an unpleasant something on his face: a question - an accusation - aimed at B.J. but intended for Harry. Now he gave it voice. 'Is this creep botherin' ye, hon ...?'
And Harry thought: Protective? More the possessive type, I'd have thought. And seeing the ugly glint in the man's eyes, and weighing him up: Two hundred and twenty pounds if he's an ounce, and every ounce a pain in the backside!
HOME WITH BONNIE JEAN
III
HOME WITH BONNIE JEAN
And: Sergeant, said Harry to a good friend of his, well over a hundred miles away in the cemetery in Harden, / believe I have a problem. His dead friend, an ex-Army physical training instructor, and an extremely hard man in his time, was into Harry's mind at once, looking out through his eyes and reading the picture he saw in the bar room. The thing is, Harry went on, while Sergeant got acquainted, / don't want too much mess.
Step away from the bar, Harry, 'Sergeant' Graham Lane told him. This lad's big and bold, but he's getting old. What, forty-five?
And look at his gut: he drinks too much, and he's had too much tonight, too. The next time he speaks to you, if he really means to have a go, is when he'll make his move. Let me take it from there ...
Harry moved away from the bar into open space, heard B.J. saying: 'Look, Big Jimmy, we were only talking. I've the right to talk to people in mah own place, have I no'?'
'It's the way he was lookin' at ye, lass,' Big Jimmy answered, speaking to her but narrowing his eyes at Harry. 'I just dinnae like his attitude, his flashy answers!' (Here it came):
'You!' Big Jimmy rasped, turning more fully to Harry. 'So ye're a live one, eh?' And he started his swing. 'Well, not for long, ye fucking pipsqueak!'
Sergeant was right there in the Necroscope's mind, directing him, almost controlling him. So Harry let him handle it his way.
The bar was on Harry's right, and Big Jimmy moving along it from the left, still knocking aside bar stools. The man had swung with his right hand, a lumbering blow with lots of weight but nothing of speed. The Necroscope stepped forward inside the arc of the fist, caught Big Jimmy's wrist in both hands, turned and bent forward