The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

probably right, Kelsey. I’ve known you long enough to have caught on by now if you were psychic. And if it was anything else…you’d tell me, right?”
    “I would tell you, but I swear it was just a dream. A really odd, coincidental dream, but just a dream.”
    Angelica sighed and dropped her gaze again. “Having spent so much time around Landon, you probably had a connection to him on a psychic or spiritual level and you felt it when he died.”
    The idea of me having any sort of connection with Landon grossed me out, but it was less frightening than the idea of Landon being able to enter my dreams. “Do you really think that’s possible?”
    “Anything’s possible. We know you didn’t kill him yourself, so the knowledge of his death must have gotten to you somehow.” She sighed and shook her head. “Anyway, it’s girls’ night. Let’s go out tonight and pretend like none of this is happening.”
    For the second time that day, I felt as though I had been injected into a new, unknown reality. For a few moments, I had been capable of a psychic connection to a dead man and, just as abruptly, Angelica was acting as though everything was perfectly normal. “I don’t know, Ang. Right now, I need to get out of my own head and go for a run.”
    “Great idea, I’ll come with you.”
    I didn’t often tell her no, and it made me sad to do so now. “I’m sorry, Ang, but I need to be by myself right now.”
    She nodded and smiled as though I had every right to request a private run. “I understand. Just know I’ll be here if you need me, and that I’m taking you out and getting you drunk tonight.”
    “We’ll see,” I said.
     
    In several layers of clothes—leggings, t-shirt, sweatshirt, hat, and gloves—I ran away from my apartment and from town, toward the mountains, quiet now in the lull before ski season really got going. I popped in my earbuds and my favorite running mix pounded into my brain, beginning with Slipknot’s, “Psychosocial.” I ran hard for the first mile, until my lungs stung and my thighs ached. I slowed down only when I felt I might fall over if I didn’t get a long, deep breath. Even then, I reduced my speed to a jog just long enough to breathe easily again.
    I didn’t slacken my pace again until my playlist switched from metal to more mellow alternative rock. I dialed down to a jog to match the rhythm of Blue October’s “Hate Me,” because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it back to my apartment if I kept up my starting pace. A part of me still wanted to run so fast and hard that all I could think about was the ache in my lungs and putting one foot in front of the other. Instead, I focused on the music and on keeping my rhythm even. The thought of Angelica and the way she had looked at me still made me want to cry but, as long as I didn’t think about her or Landon, I felt moderately calm, almost normal.
    I reached the base of the mountain and ran down the street dividing the slopes and the condos from the shops and the bars. Most places were closed and empty, but I heard music from a bar at the end of the street, O’Leary’s Irish Eyes. O’Leary’s was the only bar in town that still allowed smoking and catered to people whose main interest was drinking. It had no pool table, no stage, no dance floor, not even a dart board; just a bar and a few tables. Despite its lack of entertainment offerings, or maybe because of it, O’Leary’s was the only resort bar more popular with locals than tourists. For the most part, locals kept to the downtown bar scene and the tourists frequented the venues closest to their resort condos, but O’Leary’s appealed to the older locals who were just looking for conversation, booze, and a place to smoke.
    As I neared the bar with its cheesy, four-leaf-clover neon sign, a man stumbled out the door and right into my path. I dodged him without looking at him, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me to a definite stop. I jerked my arm free,