Regina's Song by David Eddings Page B

all across campus—but don’t worry, I’ll try to hold up our reputation.”
    “I’m sure that if I’m patient, you
will
start to make some sense here.”
    “I wouldn’t count on it, Doc. It’s been a pretty scrambled summer. I think I’ll go hide in the library for a couple of weeks to get my head on straight again.”
    “That sounds like a plan,” he said sarcastically.

    I spent the rest of the day in the library, and I didn’t get home until about eight that evening. Trish got on my case for missing supper, but after some extensive apologies, she relented and fed me anyway. The mother instinct seemed to run strong and deep in our Trish.
    After I’d eaten, I went into the living room to use the community telephone. I dialed Mary’s number, but it was Twink who answered. I heard some weird noises in the background, and at first I thought we might have a bad connection.
    “No, Markie,” Renata said. “It’s not the telephone. I’m listening to some music, that’s all.”
    “It doesn’t sound all that musical to me, Twink. What’s it called?”
    “I haven’t got a clue. Somebody—maybe even me—taped something and forgot to label it.”
    “It sounds like a bunch of hound dogs that just treed a possum,” I told her.
    “I think they’re wolves, Markie—at least on this part of the tape. Later on, the wolf howls gradually change over and become a woman’s voice.”
    “You’ve got a strange taste in music, Twink.”
    “Would you prefer some golden oldies by the Bee-doles? Or maybe ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Clown-dawg’ by Olvis Ghastly?”
    “Try the Brandenburg Concertos, Twink,” I suggested. “Avoid teenie-bopper music whenever you can. It’s hazardous to your hearing, if not your health. Did your aunt go to work already?”
    “She’s taking a bath. I’ve got an awful headache for some reason.”
    “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”
    “Fun-
nee
, Markie. Funny, funny, funny. Go away now. My wolves want to sing to me.” Her voice sounded sort of vague, but there was a peculiar throaty vibrance to it that I’d never heard before.
    Then she abruptly hung up on me, and I sat there staring at the phone and wondering just what was going on.

CHAPTER FOUR
    James woke me at quarter after seven on Tuesday morning. “Breakfast,” he announced. “Oh, right,” I said, coming up a little bleary-eyed. It was obviously going to take me a while to get used to regular hours. For the past couple of years, I’d eaten whenever it’d been convenient, but now I was living in a place where the meals came at specific times and were served in specific places—breakfast in the kitchen and dinner in the dining room. Lunch was sort of “grab it and growl,” largely because our schedules wouldn’t match once classes started.
    I got dressed and staggered to the bathroom to shave and brush my teeth. Then I followed my nose to the kitchen. I really needed some coffee to get my engine started.
    The girls, still in their bathrobes, were bustling around preparing breakfast, and they looked terribly efficient. Evidently, when the Erdlund aunt had been running the house, it’d been one of those “kitchen privileges” places where the boarders were permitted to cook their own meals, since there were still two refrigerators and a pantry. You almost never see pantries in contemporary housing. Like sitting rooms and parlors, they seem to have fallen by the wayside in the twentieth century’s rush toward minimal housing made of ticky-tacky.
    The cupboard doors, I noticed, were a little beat-up, and the linoleum on the floor was so ancient that the pattern had been worn off in places where there’d been heavy traffic. The worn places looked almost like game trails out in the woods.
    “Mark!” Trish snapped at me, “Will you
please
get out from underfoot?”
    “Sorry,” I apologized. “I think that after the bookshelves, we might want to take a look at this kitchen. It’s seen a lot