Demons of Christmas Past: A Hidden Novella by Colleen Vanderlinden

Author:Colleen Vanderlinden [Vanderlinden, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Peitho Press
Published: 2016-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

We spent the afternoon exploring a city I’d always known, and yet, everything was new. Nain took me to the Fisher Building site. The outside, with its art deco marble stonework, was complete, but work was still going on inside. I knew that very soon, it would have a ceiling that visitors marveled at every time they walked into the building, arching above like something from a fairy tale. The walls inside, like outside, were solid marble and granite, and there were craftsmen at one end of the building grinding and polishing the marble floors. Everywhere I looked, there were hints, shadows of what was to come, but right now the building was raw and unadorned, and I knew I’d always remember it looking like this. It was like a gawky teenager who grows up to be jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The possibilities are there. I had always loved this building, even before I’d known Nain’s hands had helped build it. Now, I knew I’d love it even more.

Nain pointed up, drawing my eye to the top of the scaffolding set up further down the lobby. At the top, a dark-haired man carefully set tiny tile into the arched ceiling.

“Geza Maroti,” Nain murmured in my ear. “He’s responsible for all of the mosaics. Designed the frescoes, too.”

I stared as Maroti worked. Soon, the ceiling of this center part of the arcade would be full of birds of paradise on branches, surrounded by a ring of eagles with their wings outstretched.

“What’s he like?” I asked Nain.

“Quiet guy,” he answered. “He was a carpenter before he went for training in art. Says he’d be able to retire happily on what the Fisher brothers are paying him for this job, but he doesn’t want to.”

“This is crazy,” I whispered, still looking around.

“Hard to believe it eventually looks like the building we know, huh?” Nain asked as he stood beside me, waiting as I took it all in. A few workers had walked by and recognized Nain, greeted him and given me curious looks. He seemed generally well-liked, but he didn’t talk much to anyone. As with the Purple Gang and his landlord, he’d slipped into his old French accent again, and I realized that there had always been hints of it, still there, just below the surface when he spoke. I’d never connected it, that he’d spent most of his existence as a Frenchman.

“Why did you start with the American accent?” I asked him as we walked through what would one day be the lobby, heading toward where the Fisher Theater would be.

“After the second World War, people around here started looking a little closer at anyone with an accent,” he said. “Poles, German, Irish were used to it. They’d gotten it before the war. After, just about anyone who didn’t sound ‘American’ had it harder. Southerners were coming up for the factory jobs, and it was one more accent to be suspicious of. I’d been hearing that flat American accent for so long it was easy for me to just start using it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.