Saint Odd Read Online Free PDF

be drawn to them. Or they to me. I didn’t know these three people, wasn’t thinking about them before they arrived; nevertheless, here they were. This might have been unconscious psychic magnetism—or mere chance.
    “Who has her ashes?” the woman asked.
    “I don’t know. Several possibilities.”
    Their footsteps retreated from the ice-cream shop, and distance dimmed the lights they carried.
    I came out of hiding, rose to my feet, and hurried to the gate at the end of the counter. Regardless of the risks, I needed to know more about those people.

Four
    Revealed only as shadowy forms wielding swords of light, the trio moved leisurely toward the north end of the mall, pausing to fence with the darkness and illuminate one point of interest or another.
    I dared not switch on my flashlight. Their conversation gave me some cover, but if I followed blindly in their wake, I was likely to step on something that would make enough noise to attract their attention.
    My dilemma was resolved when a hand laid on my shoulder made me turn my head, whereupon I came face-to-face with a softly glowing man
who had no face
. Eyeless sockets regarded me from a mask of bullet-torn flesh and shattered bone.
    After so many years of supernatural experience, I was by then immune to the sudden fear that others would have experienced at the unexpected touch of a hand in the dark. Likewise, the hideous face—or the absence of one—inspired no fright, but instead sadness and pity.
    I could assume only that here stood the spirit of Rob Norwich, who had died in the ice-cream shop almost two years earlier, thefather of six-year-old Emily, who had also died. If the child had moved on from this world, her father had not.
    Never before had a spirit appeared radiant to me, and I thought he manifested in this manner so that, by accompanying me, he might serve as a lamp to reveal the way. Aglow or not, he could be seen only by me, and the light that he emitted, although it revealed the floor around us, most likely also remained invisible to Wolfgang and Jonathan, and to the nameless woman.
    His face in death resolved into the countenance he possessed when alive, the wounds closing up. Rob had been thirty-two, with receding blond hair, pleasant features, and eyes the soft green of cactus skin.
    He cocked his head as if to inquire whether I understood his purpose, and I nodded to confirm that I did and that I trusted him. The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.
    Quickly he led me to the nearby escalator, which was powerless now, only a staircase of grooved steel treads that angled over the dry formation that had once been the koi pond. I followed him up to the second floor, for the moment heading away from the creepy trio that interested me.
    I feared that the escalator, so long out of service, would creak or clatter underfoot. The treads were firm, however, and they weren’t littered with debris.
    At the top, I followed Rob Norwich to the right and then north, keeping away from the storefronts, staying near the railing beyond which, had there been more light, I could have looked down into the ground-level promenade. Here and there lay scatterings of trash, but guided by the spirit’s radiance, I was able to step over or around the debris without making a sound.
    On the lower promenade, the suspicious trio halted, flashlightsconcentrated on something beneath the upper concourse on which I stood. Bullet-pocked walls, perhaps. Or an interesting pattern in a spray of blood.
    Hoping that their faces might be at least half revealed in the backwash of light, I leaned against the railing and peered down at the group. But the angle was too severe for me to see much about them.
    I don’t know what gave me away. I’m sure that I didn’t make a sound. Perhaps I disturbed some small piece of litter that rolled between the balusters and fell past one of the men below, because abruptly he turned his flashlight toward me. The bright beam found my face and dazzled