Monster Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

did they send you?” I
asked when I couldn’t take his stares anymore.
    Did they really think I’d hit a child?
Or maybe they’d sent a child in so I wouldn’t hurt anyone
else?
    “ I volunteered,” he said
with a sharp-boned shrug. “No one else wanted to do it. They don’t
like you much.”
    Good . I don’t much care for them
either . Except for maybe this kid. I liked
how he stared without blinking, refusing to miss a single
thing.
    “ Did you make this
sandwich?” I held up the PB&J. The white bread had soft
impressions of tiny fingerprints.
    He nodded. “My mom used to make them
for me when I was little.”
    The hollow-toned way he spoke of her
told me she was dead.
    “ Thank you,” I
said.
    He scuffed one of his mismatched
Converse sneakers against the floor. His jeans, thin from too many
washes, hung loosely on his slight frame. A leather string served
as a belt. He wore a buttoned-up short-sleeved shirt with pink and
white vertical stripes.
    “ Does it really not hurt?”
he asked. “You can’t feel anything? Like, at all?”
    “ Nope.” I can’t feel a thing. Nothing hurts
me.
    “ Wow.” His mouth formed a
perfect round O ,
his chocolaty brown eyes big as saucers.
    “ What’s your
name?”
    “ Ghost. Not like the
movie.” He pulled a face. “That movie was awful. Reece made me
watch it. It’s ’cause of my hair. They say I must’ve seen a ghost
and it scared me so bad my hair turned gray, but I’m not
scared.”
    I almost—almost—smiled, but it was
only a thought, not a physical thing. Not even a real desire. “So
you’re a halfling then?”
    “ Are you really Irena’s
daughter?” he fired back.
    The question felt like jumping into an
icy lake, where the water was so cold it stole your breath and
stopped your heart. “I’m a lot of things.”
    Irena’s daughter. Hex’s daughter. A
halfling. A killer. A monster. I hadn’t had enough time in Barrow
to figure out whether I hated myself. I had the time now, but not
the strength.
    Ghost nodded at my answer like he
understood. “Everyone is out hunting. They leave me to watch the
place.” He squared his shoulders a bit at that, his chin lifting.
“I can show you around some if you feel like it.”
    “ Are you supposed to let
me leave this room?”
    “ Thad says you’re not a
prisoner.” He smirked. “But I bet Lauren would shoot you in the leg
if you tried to leave. Probably best if you avoid her for a while.”
He tapped his nose, his smile deepening into one of great pleasure.
“She’s really pissed about her face.”
    My mouth twitched. “I like you, Ghost.
I can tell we’re going to get along just fine.”
    I scooped up my sandwich and followed
him to the door. My body moved like a rusted hinge. I practically
heard my bones squeaking in complaint, but I pushed myself forward,
following Ghost into the hall outside my room. The scrubs I wore
barely offset the chill in the air. The concrete picked at my
socked feet with every step. There wasn’t much in the way of
decorations. Like my room, this place seemed to adhere to the rule
that if it wasn’t purposeful, it wasn’t needed.
    A thought weaseled into my mind: Was
my mother a practical woman? Did I not know her at all?
    “ How many halflings are
here?” I asked as we passed door after door. Most were closed, but
through some cracked openings, I spotted more bedrooms. They were
smaller than mine, but littered with clothes and rumpled sheets and
the smell of skin and shampoo.
    “ About forty.” The number
floored me, but Ghost went on, unfazed. “The members of Hex’s pack
mostly stay in the other buildings. A lot of these factories were
too damaged after the earthquake in sixty-four and were just
abandoned. Reece says some of them are haunted, but I think he’s
just messing with me.”
    I’d seen Hex’s pack once before while
on a hunt with Luke and Hatter. I’d stood between them, ready to
fight, with one small knife in my hand. It was the first time