The Keeper by David Baldacci Page B

don’t hurt nobodys.”
    Quentin’s book had said hobs would help you. All you had to do was give them little presents from time to time, though I had no inkling what an appropriate gift might be. “I’ve heard that of hobs,” I said. “Do you live in this cave?”
    “Till I moves on.”
    “It’s stormy outside,” I said.
    “Storms and storms let a hob roams and roams,” he said nonsensically.
    “Do you live in the Quag?”
    “What, this here place, you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    He gave me a crooked grin, revealing misshapen teeth. “Where else would I live, dearie, dearie?”
    “You can just call me Vega.”
    “I could if I would if I could.”
    My head started to throb.
    “You says you’s a Wugmort? What’s that, dearie, dearie?”
    “Wug for short. It’s what we call someone from Wormwood. It’s a village. The Quag surrounds it.”
    He nodded, though I wasn’t sure he even knew what I was talking about.
    “Look,” I said, “I have a friend, Delph. We were sitting together a ways from here when a dark cloud came down and covered us. When it lifted, he was gone. Can you help me find him? I have to find him. I have to.”
    Instead of answering, the hob turned his back on me and ventured farther into the cave. I hurriedly grabbed my tuck and lantern and Harry Two and I followed him deeper into the bowels of the place.
    We came to a little chamber that was outfitted with a couple of crates, a rolled-up blanket, a bucket and two lighted candles perched on rocks.
    I looked around and set my tuck and lantern down and then sat on a crate. It was cold in here and winds from the storm were managing to reach us even this far, causing the candles to flicker. I shivered and drew my cloak closer around me. The next moment I felt terrible guilt. Poor Delph might be out in the storm with nothing over his head.
    “You cold, dearie, dearie?” asked Seamus.
    I nodded.
    He sat down on a crate, drew his hand in his cloak pocket, and what he pulled out of it made me fall backward off my seat and caused Harry Two to start barking.
    Seamus ignored this commotion and placed the small ball of blue fire he held in his hand on the dirt, sprinkled a bit of something he had pulled from his other pocket on the tiny tendrils of flames, and they immediately grew to over a foot in height.
    I regained my seat and said, “How did you do that?”
    He looked up at me with an innocent expression. “Do what?”
    “Pull fire from your pocket?”
    “I pulls it, I does. Does yousey?”
    “No, I does notsey,” I said before catching myself. “I mean I do not. I can’t . Where did you learn to do it?”
    “All hobs cans pull fires from their pockets. We just cans, dearie, dearie. We just cans.” He finished this statement off with a cackle.
    I drew closer to the flames and felt immediate and deep warmth even though it was not a large fire. Flashing through my mind was a remembrance from many sessions ago.
    My mother and father and my brother were sitting in front of the fire back at our modest digs in Wormwood. We had eaten our usual small meal. We never had much in terms of things. But I remember sitting on the floor in front of that fire and looking around at each of them, my father with his ready smile, my mother with her kind ways, and my brother staring at a spider in the corner of the ceiling and silently counting its legs, and thinking I was the luckiest Wug there ever was.
    The memory faded and I refocused. “Can you help me find my friend?” I said again. I pulled some tins of food and a jug of water from my tuck. “Would you like some of my food and water?” I asked. I had no idea if this would constitute a proper gift, but I had to try.
    “What you gots, dearie, dearie?”
    “Smoked meat, cheeses, breads, fried pickles, vegetables and some apples and pears, among other things.”
    He looked disappointed. “Is that alls?”
    I looked down at my foods and wondered how there was nothing he fancied. I rummaged around in