Miles to Go Read Online Free PDF Page B

plastered now in the summer heat against his forehead. He had cute ears. She noticed that in passing, not letting herself smile at the thought. His attention was on whatever was touching her, talking to it, listening to the hot whisper that she didn’t dare listen to, or she would turn to look at it, and she knew if she did it would be over, she would freak, she would break her promise to Danny, and right now that promise – that she would follow, and she would tell him everything, and he’d find a way out of the nightmare of her vision, was all that was keeping her intact.
    “ Feel your core ,” Genevieve had told her. “ Reach in, down into where you feel the most centered, the most real and shove your hands into that, feel what’s there.”
    Ellen’d spent so many years being told she was crazy, just looking for attention, imagining things…. When the Central Park cult leader had told her she was special, that she had something, and then cast her out, Ellen had decided that they were all right, that everything she felt, everything she saw, thought she’d seen, just meant she was crazy, broken.
    She still wasn’t sure she wasn’t. But when she breathed deep and reached, the way Genevieve had taught her, the static prickle of warmth and comfort that greeted her, stinging up her arms and spine, down her legs, connecting her to every inch of her body and the static waiting beyond….
    It made her feel like broken was another word for amazing.
    And then the thing touched her again, and her eyes went wide, instinctively falling into her core the rest of the world fading to a blur of grey sounds, wrapping herself in the static, the current that rested inside her, and suddenly she could see the three teens again, the blue tinge of their skin, the dampness of their clothing, the faded, haunted expression in their eyes, not hurt or angry but lost, so lost, and she needed to find them, she needed to wipe that look away and if she just reached, she knew that she could find them, could-
    “Ellen.”
    She opened her eyes, not remembering having closed them, and Danny’s hands were on hers, his face inches away, his eyes intent enough on her to be scary. The thing behind her was gone, she knew that without looking.
    “It wasn’t going to hurt you. It was just curious. You’re strong, we can all feel that. Some of them get a little grabby, but… ”
    She almost couldn’t remember what he was talking about. “I saw them again.”
    He pulled back, his expression changing from concern to something sharper, more hungry. “Another vision?”
    “Not a new vision, it was… I saw it again, only closer, clearer. More details, things I missed last time.”
    “Is that normal?”
    She almost cried at the absurdity of the question, and his face changed again as though realizing that yeah, she had no idea. It was subtle, something around his eyes and mouth, the way they tensed and relaxed, but she could read them like signposts, and somehow that let her breathe more easily.
    “You’ll remember it now, though?” he asked.
    “I…yes.” Before, the visions had been like nightmares, fading wisps that couldn’t be clutched at, disappearing almost the moment she became aware of them. This time it was different.
    Different worried her, but she thought maybe it was the way Genevieve had said, that the more control she got, the better she’d be at this, more able to control it. Control was the name of the game.
    Danny stood up, slipping sunglasses back on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose and looking away, over across the water. “My snitch confirmed that several merfolk disappeared from here, so we’re on the right track.”
    “Mer…mermaids?”
    “Don’t ever call ‘em that if you want to step into the ocean without fear, ever again. Merfolk, or mers.”
    She nodded, storing that information away with everything else she’d been learning. “They disappeared from here?”
    “Under this very dock, it says.”
    It