A Trace of Moonlight Read Online Free PDF Page B

It sucked.
    Forget the white clouds and the tunnel with light at the end of it or whatever concept you like, because for me it seemed to involve a shitstack of pain.
    And memories. A flood of them, crashing into my mind with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head. They flickered past me as though I was watching a faded movie screen, complete with dramatic slow-motion after school special moments and hyperspeed bursts until I was nearly screaming. And still they poured in, each piece captured and observed like I was catching mental butterflies.
    Some I released.
    Some I pinned.
    Some grew teeth and devoured me.
     . . . I pirouetted upon the stage and everything was shadows and light, my limbs moving with the liquid grace of water . . .
     . . . Mother, her life shattered in my lap, pain flooding limbs grown cold and broken . . .
     . . . me, trapped in a crippled body, trapped in a painting, trapped in my own stagnation . . .
     . . . I was signing a TouchStone Contract, the pen scratching into the parchment as I traded seven years of my life to Moira, the Faery Protectorate . . .
     . . . I was a KeyStone, the echo of TouchStone bonds vibrating as they snapped into place. I could see each connection like a nick upon my soul, the OtherFolk hooking their essence into mine. I was the anchor, their lives blown over the CrossRoads like falling leaves . . .
     . . . Dark skin sliding over my shoulder, clawed and possessive, hot breath in my ear and the promise of an otherworldly pleasure like no other . . .
    And then nothing at all.
    I jerked into consciousness, a detached calm settling over me. Whatever those memories contained no longer concerned me. My time was done. A thin mist rose up in the darkness that reminded me of the CrossRoads, though there wasn’t a road to be found here. Or much of anything, for that matter. I glanced down to see if I could see my body below me, but there was a big fat nothing anywhere as far as I could tell.
    Overall, death was rather boring.
    Something jingled in my pocket. I patted down my dress, frowning when I found the bells from my dream. “And here I thought they said you couldn’t take it with you,” I muttered.
    “Sometimes they’re wrong,” a voice whispered behind me. A frown twisted my mouth as I tried to place it. There was something clinical in the way I accessed the memories, sorting through them until I found what I was looking for.
     . . . Painter . . .
     . . . Cancer . . .
     . . . Betrayer . . .
     . . . he was taping my eyes shut, thrusting me into a vat of . . . succubus blood? Painting my essence onto canvas, trapping me a world of nightmares . . .
    “Topher?”
    “In the flesh, so to speak.”
    Shuddering, I stepped away from the sound, though I couldn’t see him anywhere. “You’re hardly one of the five people I thought I’d meet.”
    “You’re not in heaven,” he countered. “Yet.”
    “Neither are you. In fact, you sound pretty good for someone I thought had been turned to dust ages ago.”
    A ripple in the mist shaped itself into a humanoid form, the shadows darkening into a semblance of . . . something. Topher’s voice may have remained the same in the afterlife, but what was left of his body looked like it had been dragged behind a taxi during rush hour. I struggled not to flinch. I’d seen worse, after all. Maybe.
    “My punishment,” he murmured, motioning at the whole of himself with a severely broken arm. “Sonja has a rather interesting sense of justice. Not that it was undeserved,” he admitted with a sad sort of resignation.
    The name rolled over my tongue.
    Sonja. Succubus. TouchStone.
    He had been her TouchStone, bound by Contract, allowing her to feed from him in return for . . . inspiration.
    I swallowed hard. The succubus had always been friendly enough to me . . . but then again, I’d helped save her . . . from this asshole, in fact. Who’d murdered at least