14 Christmas Spirit Read Online Free PDF Page A

loudly from behind closed lips, her presence pressing down on Darcy, holding her fast.
    When she got close enough, Darcy looked up into the shadows that obscured Megan's eyes.
    Eyes that simply weren't there.
    Darcy screamed and fought as hard as she could to get up, to get away, to pull herself out of the trance.  She tensed every muscle of her body, straining with all her might.
    In her hands, the DVD broke in two, snapping the link she had created between herself and Megan.
    She opened her eyes in a panic, gasping for air, pinwheeling her arms, not sure where she was or what was happening.
    "Darcy!"  Jon's voice.  He was there immediately, holding her, grasping her arms and pulling her into him where he knelt next to her.  "Darcy, be careful.  You'll knock the candles over."
    The candles.  Their living room.  The communication.  She was in her living room still, right where she had been.  She was out of the trance.  Jon was holding her, and everything was all right.
    In her hands she held the DVD of Meet Joe Black , broken into two pieces.
    A furry weight bumped against her left knee. Smudge had come to comfort her as well.  The two most important guys in her life.  What would she do without them?
    "I'm okay, Jon," she told him, hugging him with her one arm, dropping the pieces of her favorite movie.  For Smudge, she scratched around his neck and under his chin, listening to him purr.  "I'm okay.  That was just pretty intense."
    "More than usual, you mean?" Jon asked her.
    "More than some, yes."  She shivered in his arms, then gently pushed him and Smudge back so she could get up.  Jon had to help her get her balance until the circulation returned to her legs.  "I know why our ghost was upset enough to jump into our movie.  Her body hasn't been found.  She's dead somewhere and no one knows where.  For a ghost, that fact can be pretty traumatic."
    Jon managed to look skeptical and squeamish at the same time.  "What?" he asked her when she smiled a familiar smile.  "You know it still weirds me out when you talk about ghosts having feelings.  So she's what, a victim?  Murdered, do you think?"
    Darcy had wondered that same thing.  "I think so.  She's very upset.  And there's something…terrifying about her.  Like, she's terrified, I mean.  Yes.  I think someone killed her."
    FIND ME! Darcy heard those words again in her mind, screamed across the distance between death and life, and another shiver ran up her spine.
    "Well," Jon said, rubbing his chin, "we haven't had a murder in Misty Hollow in a few months now.  I guess we were overdue."
    "Very funny," she told him drily.  "I didn't get a whole lot from her.  She wasn't the talkative type, I guess you might say.  She let me know why she needed help, and she let me know her name.  Then she scared me to death and screamed a lot."
    "All right, let's start with that, then."  He led them both over to the couch and sat down next to Darcy.  "What was her name?"
    She pulled her sweater down further over her legs, over her knees.  She was colder than she realized.  Smudge jumped up into her lap and purred and nestled down into a big round ball, lending his warmth to her.  "Thanks, Smudge.  Okay.  Well, she didn't actually tell me her name.  It was on a tag she was wearing in my vision.  Megan Bortchowski.  That's all I got from her."
    Jon's eyes widened and she could have sworn his face paled by degrees.
    "Jon?  What is it?"
    "You're sure about the name?  Megan Bortchowski?"
    "Yes, I'm sure."  She searched his eyes, wondering what had him so uneasy.  "Why?"
    He nodded, like he should have expected this.  "That's the name of the missing person the Chief asked me to look into.  It's the same girl."

Chapter Three
     
    The Misty Hollow Police Department was a one story building near the center of town, not far from the park and the shops and the Town Hall that was still under reconstruction two months after it had burned to the ground.