Trick or Treat: A Spade/Paladin Conundrum: Spade/Paladin

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The teenage girl wrapped in a sheet calls herself Casper (as in "The Friendly Ghost"). But Secret Master of Fandom and private detective Spade doesn't find her friendly, and she's definitely not a ghost. Still, Paladin demands that Spade babysit Casper, and Spade never says no to Paladin. Even when it comes to babysitting on Halloween weekend, while Spade runs the second most important convention of the year. Because Paladin doesn't ask favors; she solves crimes. And apparently, she—and Casper—need help only Spade can provide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386573623

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

Book preview

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat

A Spade/Paladin Conundrum

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing Inc.

Contents

Trick or Treat

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

Trick or Treat

SOMETIMES IN THE mundane world, I feel like a fish out of water. But on that Halloween day, driving my Lexus SUV in a part of San Francisco I had never seen before, I felt like a whale covered in bling with a target on his back—and, oh yeah, in need of water Real Soon Now.

It was my own fault. Over the years, I’d driven all over San Francisco in search of convention hotels—approving, disapproving, looking for bargains, seeing why the hotels really were bargains—and I knew better than to drive a high-end rental in certain parts of the city.

The problem is that I usually need high-end rentals for their size. I’m 6’6" and four hundred pounds on a good day. After the month I’d had, I was probably four hundred and forty pounds because I’d had to buy new jeans and haul out the XXXXL T-shirts that I’d packed away for emergencies.

And now things could get worse. The last thing I wanted was some gang to car-jack me at an intersection. I had no doubt that they’d toss me out of the SUV (shoe-horn me out of the SUV?), but I suspected they just might shoot me when they saw the shirt. It had been a giveaway from the twenty-year anniversary promotion of the movie Alien, and it had a little rubber alien head bursting out of the chest.

I was wearing the shirt with two conflicting expectations. First, I hoped that the folks at the shelter would think it was a great (if subtle) Halloween costume; and second, I figured Paladin would force me to wear the shelter’s service T-shirt whether I arrived in a tux or arrived in my underwear. I had volunteered at shelters on special occasions in the past, and they almost always had special clothing requirements (usually that I had to purchase).

If I had given this little detour more thought, I would have dressed a lot more sedately and I would have borrowed some book dealer’s ratty van. Paladin was asking me to help out at a shelter, for godssake, which meant that by definition I was heading to a relatively crappy neighborhood.

But I was preoccupied with my role as Savior of Alternate Pro-Con, which wasn’t really the name of the convention or my real title. If you’re involved in science fiction fandom, you know which upstart pro-con I’m talking about, but for the rest of you, here’s a bit of a clue.

There are only a handful of pro-cons every year