Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

London tonight. It’s late already. You do appreciate the importance of keeping the girl safe, Ephraim? You are of course aware of what’s at stake?”
    “Of course I do, Lilith,” the old man said angrily.
    The tall woman nodded, and then, seeming ly satisfied, turned back to the car across the courtyard.
    The old man hung his head sadly and watched the car spin out of the courtyard and ride away into the night through the storm. With a sigh, he shut the mighty door and turned to the young girl that now occupied his hallway and who looked very wet and very out-of-place.
    “You’re safe now, Megan,” he said and she looked up at him and into his eyes. He took a step back as he gazed at her. He rubbed his face gravely as he studied her forlorn figure. Caught between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
    A solid ghost.

Chapter 8
    By 7.00 am Ash Fielding had run two and a half miles from the comfort of his own living room. If he wanted to, he could have monitored his heart rate and blood pressure, designed his own course with inclines and descents and seen a graphical representation of his progress across the electronic terrain, but he had no idea how to do any of these things. An enigmatic array of buttons and dials flashed and beeped in front of him. He imagined this was the sort of control panel US astronauts used on the Apollo missions.
    One of the buttons on the display slowed the tread to an eventual stop to allow him to dismount safely. He had no idea which button this was so his morning training exercises were usually brought to an end by jumping off the moving tread and falling into a pile of dirty washing. Sensing the sudden loss of weight, Apollo 19 would then bring the tread to a n automatic stop. On his dismount today, Ash managed to maintain his balance and, after turning to look at the contraption with a bitter degree of distrust, made his way into the kitchen where he poured himself coffee from a percolator.
    After a shower he dressed: plain white shirt, waistcoat, suit trousers, no tie. The colour of the suit was awkward to describe. A sort of soft blue, Italian cut; the sort of thing an older man might wear with a garish handkerchief protruding out of the breast pocket to match the tie. There is a fine line between stylish and complete wardrobe malfunction. Ash’s suit was on the line.
    He didn’t shave. He didn’t trust his stubble. He was 35, one of the youngest DIs in the South West, and he didn’t trust his stubble. Beard growth didn’t interest him – beards were the talisman of philosophers, hippies, leprechauns and serial killers. But he had the feeling that, if he wanted to grow a beard, his stubble would let him down and he would end up with facial hair that looked like it was pulled out of a clogged up Dyson.
    But aside from his youthful complexion, Ash wasn’t an ugly man. His cheekbones were strong and defined, jutting down from a mop of mousy brown hair that fell across his eyes when he moved his head too quickly and which he frequently had to sweep back to see anything. He was less fit than his morning routine would suggest and much less fit than he would like but the move from DS to DI last year had meant more paperwork and less running around Bristol catching bad guys. Not that he minded much.
    After he was ready, he picked up a load of washing of assorted colours and threw them into the machine. He was vaguely aware that clothes came with tags that contained directions for washing which ought to be considered but he took the view that life was too short to spend it trying to decipher small Chinese images of baskets with numbers in them. In any event, he had no idea how to change the temperature on his washing machine. So in they all went. As varied a topography of garments as was ever conceived.
    As he threw the clothes in, something fell to the floor. He picked up the small piece of pink paper and opened it. I love you, it said. The word love was replaced with a