Dead Spell Read Online Free PDF Page A

coughed and put on her seatbelt. She didn’t even ask whose car it was. Wherever it came from, she didn’t want to know.
    Harmony lit the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth off the butt of the previous one. “Dragon Lady sleeping?” She reached across the seat for a hug.
    Brea turned her head away and tried not to breathe as she hugged her, cracking the window an inch afterwards and sucking in the cold, clean air. She looked up at her mother’s darkened bedroom window and shrugged. “Looks like it.”
    “Good.” Harmony peeled the wrap off her tattoo. “We need to talk.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    There was a thickness, a heavy presence around them as they climbed through the bend in Orchard View Cemetery’s locked gate. The waxing moon gleamed across the rain-soaked ground.  The only other light was the eternal flame flickering in the distance.
    “So what’s with the tattoo?” Brea asked. “Your mother’s going to have your head.”
    Harmony ducked through the gate, twisting her bag through behind her. “No, that’d be your mother and she’d march you right to confession. My mother won’t even notice.”
    “Well, how’d you get it? I mean, you’re not eighteen and I’m sure Charity didn’t give you written permission.”
    “You know Lance, right?”
    “Lance, from Needles Ink? The drug dealing, walking felony?” Harmony’s smile widened. “Oh, you didn’t.” Harmony laughed. “And that’s his car? Tell me you got permission to take it.”
    “Fine. I got permission.”
    The mud rose over the top of Brea’s flip-flops and rubbed her ice cold feet raw. She wished she had put on socks and sneakers and had a bad feeling that Harmony was lying for her benefit. “Oh this is bad,” she said louder than she intended.
    “Actually, he was not bad at all,” Harmony said, pleased. “That boy has a hell of a grip.” She clenched her throat for effect.
    “TMI, Harmony. TMI. What about Adam?”
    “What about him? He has no idea.” Harmony’s heavy boots sank in the marshy grass past the yellow stitching. “Besides,” she said, scraping the clumps of mud off with a stick, “they don’t run in the same circles. How would he find out?”
    Brea stepped out of her shoes and continued barefoot as they reached the far corner of the cemetery. “You know, this is the worst possible night to be doing this.”
    “Says the girl in the bare feet. You’re supposed to be the smart one?”
    Brea rinsed her flip flops in a shallow puddle and put them in the outside pocket of her bag. She held a black pen light between her teeth casting its glow on one of the older headstones. “Here hold this,” she said the best she could with her mouth full. She gave Harmony her bag and waited for her to find the old tee shirt she used to dry and dust the stone.
     “You sure you don’t have this one?” Harmony handed her the wad of stained white cotton.
    “I’m sure.”
    Brea gently patted the face of the old headstone, careful not to crumble the already fragile granite. She taped a length of white butcher’s paper to the face and made sure it was even. The really old stones were her favorite, but careless vandals had gotten rubbings banned at Oakwood, so she could only do them at night. She took a squared-off piece of artist’s charcoal and gently rubbed along the face of the stone. Her fingertips were so cold that the vibrations hurt.
    “I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the kidnapping, but if you wanted to gloat about screwing Lance or your new tattoo, couldn’t it wait until the morning? And then maybe someplace where I won’t get frostbite or hypothermia?”
    Harmony stripped off Lance’s oversized coat and laid it liner side up on the driest patch of grass she could find.
    Brea darkened the details of her rub and, satisfied with the work, slid the tracing inside her portfolio next to the others.
    “When you’re done,” Harmony said, “come here a minute.”
    She wrestled the Ouija