Shadow of the Moon Read Online Free PDF

she led the others away.
    “Thrilling Thursday?” Daniel asked with a dark eyebrow raised.
    “Yeah, Lisa has a name for every night of the week. Manic Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wicked Wednesday. You get the idea.”
    “Sorry I missed Wicked Wednesday.”
    It was difficult to stay annoyed with a guy who could flash a grin like Daniel could, but I resisted returning the smile, and even managed to narrow my eyes. “So how long have you been here?”
    “Arrived this morning. Tell me about Out of Bounds.”
    “Not much to tell. It’s a club. ‘Out of bounds’ is a ski term that refers to areas where it’s illegal to ski…. Well, it’s supposed to be a place for rebels.”
    “And you’re a rebel?”
    “I have my moments,” I said, slightly insulted that he’d question me. After all, I’d run away, hadn’t I?
    “I noticed a burger place—conveniently named the Burger Place, by the way—at the end of the street,” Daniel said as we walked around the building, back toward the main part of the village. “I could use some meat.”
    “I’m a vegetarian.”
    He jerked his head around, and his green gaze homed in on me as if he thought I was joking. Or suspected me of lying.
    “I’ve eaten there before, though,” I told him. “They have a grilled cheese sandwich, so we’re good.”
    As we stepped onto the boardwalk that lined the street, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and said, “I’ve never heard of a Shifter being a vegetarian.”
    “Well, I’m not your ordinary Shifter.”
    “So I’ve been told.”
    I rolled my eyes, wondering exactly what the other Dark Guardians had said about me and my abilities. “I’d rather be normal.”
    I couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of my voice. Maybe that was the reason that he didn’t talk as we walked along the street. Or maybe he was trying to figure me out as much as I was trying to discern why a wall existed between his emotions and mine.
    The elders were able to block their emotions from me, but they were the elders. They could do all sorts of stuff. They’d tried to teach me to block the emotions coming at me, but I’d had absolutely no success at it. I wondered if they’d given Daniel a crash course in holding back his emotions that he’d actually managed to master. Sometimes at school a teacher could explain a concept multiple times and I couldn’t grasp what she was trying to teach, but the student sitting next to me could lean over and explain it—and it suddenly made perfect sense. I wondered if this might be the case here as well. Maybe he could explain blocking feelings in terms that I could more easily embrace. If Daniel could block his emotions, could I do it—but in reverse? He was keeping his emotions in. Could I do whatever he was doing to keep emotions out?

    “So what do you know about me?” I asked.
    We were sitting across from each other in a corner booth. I’d decided to go with a garden salad instead of a grilled cheese. He’d ordered a double-meat cheeseburger and onion rings. Hardening of the arteries wasn’t a concern for us. When we shifted, our bodies naturally healed all ailments, including all the pitfalls of eating unhealthy foods.
    “I know you have a gift,” he said.
    I stabbed a crouton. “It’s not a gift.”
    Taking a bite from his burger, he studied me for a moment. He swallowed, then said, “Yeah, I can see how it wouldn’t be.”
    I didn’t want to like him, but his empathy was another new experience for me. He sounded as though he truly understood what burden I carried. Naturally no one at the boarding school knew that I was an empath because I couldn’t tap into their emotions so it had seemed pointless to explain what I couldn’t demonstrate for them. They were all Statics. I certainly wasn’t explaining Shifters to them. That would have brought other complications. So at school I was blessedly normal.
    “It’s the reason I sought out a place where there were only Statics.