Texting the Underworld Read Online Free PDF Page A

cripes’ sake. It’s freezing out and I’m in my pajamas.
Something fell over again out back, and the forbidden word made it through the closed window.
    First a dream, then Grump in the backyard. What a crazy night. And a
school
night, for cripes’—
    The cupboard door creaked. Out crawled the banshee.
    Conor’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. The banshee yawned and settled into the beanbag chair. Conor breathed in and out, very slowly, very carefully.
    â€œYou people don’t sleep much,” Ashling said.
    She’s a dream. Dream, dream, dream. I’m dreaming.
    Ashling yawned so loud this time she sounded like a hyena.
    â€œShhh.”
Okay, she’s a noisy dream
. “You’ll wake up my little sister.”
    â€œAh. So we are supposed to be asleep now. I wondered.”
    â€œI
have
to go to sleep,” Conor said. “I have school tomorrow. Today.”
    Ashling’s face lit up. “School! Sock hops!”
    â€œShhhh. Wait . . . what?”
    â€œSock hops. You dance.”
    â€œI don’t know what a sock hop is.”
    â€œI know everything about school. You take off your shoes and dance jitterbutt.”
    â€œI think that’s when Grump was a kid.” Conor clambered off his bed to the floor near Ashling, so she’d remember to whisper. “And I think it’s jitter
bug
.”
    â€œHow old is this grump?” She was not whispering.
    â€œShhh. Eighty-one.” No more swearing from the backyard. Maybe the camp stove was behaving itself.
    Ashling shrugged. “Not so old. There could still be jitterbutt.”
    â€œAnyways,” Conor said, “school isn’t about dancing. We learn stuff.”
    â€œI learned to tend cattle, the best in my whole family. When the beasts saw me coming,
ach,
how they—”
    â€œWe don’t have cattle around here. We buy meat in the store.” Maguire’s Market, three and a half blocks due east. It was on his map, lying on the floor by the window seat.
    â€œStore! You trade with coin, get a hi-fi and a smart phone!”
    â€œKeep your voice down.”
    â€œAnd some gee.” She peered to see his face in the moonlight. “You are wondering how I know so much. I got it all from talking with the Dear Departed. I have an unquenchable thirst for learning, the Lady says.”
    â€œWhat . . . what is
gee
?” Conor asked.
    â€œYou wear it on your legs. Blue gee.” She eyed his red pajamas, with the hole where he’d cut away the Space Rangers emblem the day he turned twelve. “Not like what you have on.”
    He wished he still had that Space Rangers emblem on him. The years before age twelve seemed so orderly and safe. “You mean
blue jeans
?”
    â€œI don’t know. Do you have coin? I would like to see coin.”
    He pointed at his dresser, where he put his change. Ashling jumped up, took a quarter and sniffed it. “Silver, yes?” She came back and held it under his nose until he took it. It was a Mississippi state quarter, with magnolia blossoms on it.
    â€œNo. I think it’s made of nickel. It’s not that valuable in itself. It’s . . .” He searched what he remembered from social studies. “It’s a unit of exchange.”
    â€œWhat’s that, then?”
    He gave the quarter back to her. “I don’t really know.”
    The light went out in the backyard. The door slammed again.
    Ashling paid no attention, tracing the magnolias on the quarter with her finger. “Beautiful craft. I once knew someone who could work like this.” She sighed. “Gone now. Gone, gone.”
    â€œKeep it,” he said. She was making him sad, for no reason he could identify.
    She shook her head and put the coin back on the bureau. “The craft of this World prevents me from becoming a wraith when I am supposed to. I must not have Worldcraft on my person when the Death