boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

Sriberdegibit 125
tail twitched, then slowly began to reach out. Linda fought to repress a scream.
“Wait.” Iles had never spoken so fast under such difficulty. “Suicide is a sin,
right?”
“Right.”
“If I refuse to commit a sin, I die, right?”
“Right.”
“If I die through my own deliberate act, that’s suicide, right?”
“Right.”
“Then if I refuse to perform my daily sin, I am committing suicide, which is a
sin. There, begone!”
The tail hesitated a fraction of an inch from Iles’s throat. A very slow take spread
over the demon’s shifting face. He twanged his tusk twice. Then, “Why I … I’ll be
God blessed! ” he said, and vanished.
“You know, darling,” Linda said later, “it hasn’t been so bad after all. You can take
your vacation now and get all healed up again and then you’ll never know you were
ever cursed. In fact you’ll be better than ever, because now you’ll drive carefully and
you won’t spread scandal and you won’t do anything shady in your profession and—”
She paused and stared at him rapturously. “My! I have a brilliant husband!”
He nodded inarticulate thanks.
“That was the most beautiful thinking. Why, now there won’t be any stopping
you. You’ll go on and you’ll be attorney general and governor and a justice of the
supreme court and— No. No. I don’t really want that. I wish—”
“Oh, oh!” Gilbert Iles groaned warningly.
“I wish,” she continued unchecked, “that we could just go on living quietly, but
very, very, very happily.”
There was a wimp present.