Dead Spell Read Online Free PDF

board and planchette from her bag and set it up on the jacket.
    Brea looked up from her portfolio and her breath caught. She dug her toes into the mud and the surface roots of weeds that she briefly imagined were the tendons and sinew of some half-rotten soul.  “I don’t want anything to do with that thing, Harmony.”
    “Stop it. It’s nothing.” Harmony lit three black candles on a nearby headstone and set her fingers on the planchette’s edge
    “It’s not nothing.” Brea stuffed her shaking hands into her sweatshirt pocket. “You tell me about the things Tom does to you and you expect me to use that thing willingly? No, thank you.”
    Harmony lit her cigarette off one of the candles. “You know what? Your mother’s turned you into a real chicken shit.”
    Brea felt like she was about to be sick.  “If anyone scared me off that thing it was you.”
     “Come on, Brea. Do this with me, please? It’ll be fine. I promise.” She drew an “x” over her heart with her finger and smiled innocently.
    “I’d really rather not.”
    “Buck-buck-bgawk.”
    “Fine.” Brea set her portfolio on top of a large, flat monument and sat Indian-style on the coat.
    Harmony snuffed out the remaining half of her cigarette and put her hands on the planchette.
    Brea’s hands were shaking so bad that she knocked Harmony’s off the planchette.
    “Easy, Goliath.” Harmony laughed. A sudden gust of wind extinguished the candles. “Ah, shit.” She fumbled through her bag for her lighter and a thick tree branch snapped in the distance.
    Brea screamed and covered her mouth.
    “Freeze, right there.” A white light blinded them.
    “Harmony, what’s going on?” Brea whispered.
    “Is that Brea Miller?” asked a second, familiar male voice “Jim’s going to love this.”
    The flashlight lowered and she saw Mike and Pat’s faces. They were officers in her uncle’s precinct that she’d known her whole life. It took them only about a second to figure out what was happening.
    Brea thought about her mother, how she didn’t know she’d been sneaking out, and how insane she was going to be when she found out. Panic set in and the world started spinning.
    “Harmony Wolcott, you are under arrest for auto theft.” Mike lifted Harmony up by the crook of her elbow and cuffed her hands behind her back. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.”
    Brea teetered, half-dazed and disbelieving, listening to Harmony being read her Miranda rights.
     “Do you understand each of these rights as I’ve read them to you?”
    Harmony puffed out her chest and lifted her chin. “Yeah. I get it.”
    It wasn’t her first time being arrested.
    Brea was in awe of her cool. She took a series of long, deep breaths and leaned on the Riley monument until the worst of the lightheadedness passed.
    Pat and Mike watched and waited.
    “Brea, I have to ask you to come with us.” Pat ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and grimaced.
    She knew he’d let her go if it was up to him, but Mike wouldn’t let him take “no” for an answer so she had little choice but to agree to go with them. Besides, she didn’t want to walk home, and even if she did, her uncle would have called her mother before she even hit the front door. It was better to face her mother in a public place and under police protection.
    “Grab my stuff,” Harmony said to Brea as Mike led her away.
    Brea put the board in the bag, picked up her portfolio, folded the muddy coat inside out over her arm, and followed Pat to the small parking lot where Lance’s Grand Prix was already on a flat bed headed for the impound.
    Mike loaded Harmony into the back of his own car, ducking her head so she didn’t hit it. She pulled away from him and got in by herself.
    Brea watched Mike close the door and looked at Pat. “I don’t have to ride in the back, do I?”
    Pat shook his head and opened the passenger’s side door; a courtesy, she knew.
    The silence in the