Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

came in gasps. Each release of air pushed the string of his essence through the weave. Then, slowly, he’d take another and the string of gray would be sucked back. But not very far. Not enough to save him.
    “He’s really sick,” I said.
    Instead of focusing on the death in front of us, Troy stared off into the distance. “Another one. Close too.”
    Amy hovered at Troy’s other side. There was no point in hiding my chagrin; she had eyes only for Troy. She still clutched his hand, making me shiver. Touch here was so personal. Troy never flinched away from her, though.
    I glanced back at Kyle, the guy across the weave. Uh-oh. I knew his name. That was bad. Most of him was already across the line if his name was here. The most important name I had never known upon crossing was my own. I still didn’t know it, and no one else had figured it out either. Everyone just called me Shadow. Usually, as a person’s essence came across, the bits and pieces were accessible to us. No one knew why my name hadn’t come with me.
    Kyle was alone. From the impersonal bed, dresser and television, it was obviously a low-end hotel room. Strange. There was a phone on the table near the bedside and a cell phone on the desk. Why didn’t he call someone?
    We waited.
    Stupid though it was, I wished I could reach through the weave and dial 911. There was hope yet, though. He rallied to almost full consciousness, breathing stronger, pulling his lifeline back. His eyes opened, but they were feverish. He looked right at the weave. There was no way to know whether he saw us there, watching, waiting.
    When he sat up, I folded my hands in prayer. Call someone. I chanted the words even though he wouldn’t hear them.
    Instead of reaching for the phone, he stumbled to the end of the room and stared at a large black guitar case.
    Were there drugs in there that could help him? What was he doing? I didn’t like him wasting all this time.
    Martin suddenly hovered at my side, doing some chanting of his own. Martin showing up meant the life beacon was still very strong on our side.
    I checked. The thread of life was thinner here now that Kyle was awake, but it was still here.
    Call someone.
    He unlatched the tall case and rubbed his hand along the grain. When he touched the instrument, it connected to his lifeline, and all at once I knew what had happened.
    He had fallen off the stage. His head had slammed against the edge of the stage, hard. Someone must have brought him to the hotel thinking he would recover...uh-oh.
    I looked at Martin, hoping for reassurance, but he just chanted steadily. He wasn’t your average ghost. He was calmer than most of us, peaceful unless he was angry. Most of the time Martin resembled a disembodied genie, minus the headpiece. He was all sculpted chest with nothing but smoke below the waist. I’d only seen him fully formed a couple of times, and he was buck naked then. When we first met I thought he was young because he showed no signs of wrinkles, but after getting to know him, I realized he had died older, maybe at sixty or seventy.
    The musician’s lifeline, now that I knew what to look for, showed the bleeding. It was too late for him to figure it out. He had already stumbled back to the edge of the bed, sweating, holding his guitar case and staring at the cell phone.
    But I had seen too much to hold out hope.
    He reached for the cell, nearly toppling over. He lay back down, the guitar clutched in one hand as though he were about to take it out of the case.
    He never placed the call.
    Maybe I only felt the ones who died before their time. I’d like to think my clock hadn’t run out and that maybe I’d actually still had some purpose. I was still angry that my time dirt-side had been cut so short. Kyle was angry too.
    There were four of us nearby when he and his grief hit the airwaves in the gray.
    Martin was there, still singing in his monotone way. He never had answers to the “why?” of things, but he was there.