Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) Read Online Free PDF Page A

you. Nothing I said is necessarily true. It is just what I
feel and what I fear. If something did happen to you, to Declan, to
Ada, to… she trailed off and swallowed
hard . Just know I had to tell
you, even if it turns out to be nothing .
    Well, let’s
just hope it’s nothing then , I
said, because honestly,
dealing with this seeing ghost business is hard enough. Thank God
for Dex, because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t know how I’d cope
in this life, always seeing things that others can’t.
    It is lonely.
And I wouldn’t wish it upon my greatest enemy. I felt a life of isolation and sorrow roll off of her and
onto me.
    Suddenly her head jerked up,
and this time there was something to see in the sky. I couldn’t
quite make it out; it seemed to be both very close and very far
away. It looked like a bat, a giant black one, with a wingspan that
grew larger as it grew closer.
    “ Time for you
to go,” Pippa said.
    Everything shimmered, rippled,
a dance of air on a palette of grey.
    Then I was back in the
apartment, standing in the living room in Dex’s t-shirt, my legs
and feet bare and cold. I heard a little snuffle from beside me and
saw Fat Rabbit roll over on the couch, seemingly asleep and
uninterested.
    The fuck just happened? Was I
sleepwalking, dreaming I was in the Veil with Pippa? Or had she
actually, physically brought me there? Wasn’t that supposed to be
dangerous in a way?
    I just know that when demons
get to the other side, they look for a host and they go after the
ones with power.
    I shuddered at her words as
they played over in my head. I’d already faced my demons, I’d
already gone to hell and back. There was no way that could happen
to me again. No way.
    But what
about Dex? asked the voice in my
head. Ada?
    I knew I’d do whatever I could
to protect both of them. But I also knew I couldn’t freak out over
an unsure warning in what might have been just a dream.
    It had to be a
dream.
    I sighed. I headed to the
bathroom to pee when suddenly there was a burst of vibration and a
buzzing sound. With my hand at my chest, I spotted Dex’s cell on
the kitchen counter, dancing and skipping from a muted phone
call.
    I frowned and quickly went over
to it. Not only was it four in the morning, but the number was
1-234-56789123456789, something I had never seen before.
    I picked it up and pressed
answer. “Hello?” I said quietly, not wanting to wake Dex if I
didn’t have to.
    There was silence though I
thought I heard breathing.
    “ Hello?” I
asked again.
    Someone cleared their throat.
“Sorry. I may have the wrong number. Is…is Declan Foray there?”
    “ Declan?” I
asked, always finding it funny when people addressed him by his
full name. “He’s sleeping.”
    “ That’s a
shame,” the man said. I couldn’t really figure out if he was young
or old. He had a clipped way of speaking.
    “ Can I take a
message?”
    “ Who is it
that I am speaking to?”
    I paused, feeling funny about
the whole thing. “Perry,” I said reluctantly.
    “ Are you his
girlfriend? His wife?”
    I would have snorted at that if
I wasn’t so creeped out.
    “ Who is
it that I am speaking to?” I asked.
    “ I must have
the wrong number,” he mused slowly. Then the call went
dead.
    I stared at the phone, trying
to wrap my head around it. Then I shrugged and headed back to the
bedroom. It was time to go back to sleep.
     
    ***
     
    I didn’t really remember
the phone call, nor my dream about Pippa, until a couple of days
later when we were getting ready to leave for Oregon. I left out
the dream since it was probably nonsense anyway—I was under
a lot of stress when it came to seeing my parents, so my mind was
probably concocting a bunch of nonsense—but I told Dex about the
call. It didn’t seem to interest him a bit so I left it at what he
thought it was—a pushy telemarketer in the night.
    “ The dog
sitter will be here in ten minutes,” I yelled at Dex from the
bedroom. He was in the bathroom