Dead to Me Read Online Free PDF

just barely see the ends of it.
     
    “Nice souvenir of a standard op.” He sighed. “As if I didn’t feel old enough! Well, as least I’m a White Stripe now…”
     
    Saying he felt old was ridiculous. Connor was only ten years older than me, although I don’t know how I would have reacted if I’d been striped. Hell, there was still a chance it might happen before the night was through.
     
    “We wrap this up soon,” I said, mustering the little bravado I could, “and I’m buying the drinks, ’kay? Maybe it’ll cheer you up…old man.”
     
    Connor winced at my words and I started to laugh—but quickly slapped a hand over my mouth. Luckily, Other Division had started me out with a pamphlet entitledWitty Banter to Ease Any Paranormal Situation. In unpredictable and potentially life-threatening circumstances like this, levity really helped an agent concentrate.
     
    “Kid, this job is going to make me old before my time,” Connor said.
     
    “Oh, who are you kidding?” I said. “You’ll be dead long before you get old! Now, c’mon!”
     
    I took the lead and crept down the alley toward the weird crashing sound. Connor groaned and played catch-up along the opposite wall.
     
    Something very close to me rustled—much closer than I thought it would be.
     
    “Incoming!” I shouted.
     
    Something closer to living fog than human flew out of the darkness toward us, and it was only my foolish vanity that saved me.My hair , I thought, and back-peddled up the alleyway, narrowly escaping the phantasm’s touch as a crackle of electricity from its clawlike hands passed inches from my face. The smell of burning ozone filled the air, and I shuffled farther away.
     
    The barest hint of facial features—deep hollow eyes and a gaping mouth that hung low—floated where the creature’s head should have been. Its dead eye sockets bordered on hypnotic. This creature craved the life emanating from me—I could feel it—and it surged with great power toward me. No longer concerned about their breakability, I threw my shopping bag full of the console and games at the creature, and pulled the retractable bat from my belt. With a click of a button, I extended it and swung wildly, but it did no good.
     
    All I could do was stare. Through the ghostly form, I could see Connor standing directly behind it. He was fumbling something out of his pocket, but I had no idea what it was. I was too busy backing away to care.
     
    As I continued, my foot hit something solid, and my arms pinwheeled as I fell. My ass hit the ground hard, and my palms scraped against the pavement. The wetness of the puddle beneath me soaked through my clothes and the clamminess chilled my skin. I crab-crawled backward as fast as possible but it was no use. This monstrosity was going to overtake me.
     
    I waited for its chilling touch, but instead the overwhelming smell of patchouli oil washed over the area…and the phantasm’s smoky form turned from spectral white to reddish brown. It stopped moving and froze in place inches from my face and I wasted no time scuttering out from underneath it. Connor still stood on the other side of it with an empty vial in his right hand. Tendrils of smoke were drifting like a net around the now-still spirit.
     
    He shook the last of the vial over the creature. It wasn’t moving, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. Connor stepped closer to examine it.
     
    “I don’t get it,” he said, stepping back. “It’s gone totally feral. Usually when a spirit lingers, the humanity in it begins to stretch, become almost cartoonish. I can barely make out the humanity here. I don’t know what would do this to a spirit, what would cause that much degradation. Unless it has something to do with all those broken clay pieces…”
     
    I grabbed one off the ground and handed it to him. He gave it a cursory once-over and slipped it into his pocket.
     
    “Thanks,” he said, circling carefully around the