THE SHADOWED ONYX: A DIAMOND ESTATES NOVEL Read Online Free PDF

on the bed, his size-twelve Vans rumpling the covers.
    Raven sat cross-legged on the floor with her eyes squeezed shut. Candle flames still flickered in the circle around her.
    What was that smell? A floral note mingled with scrambled eggs … or more like rotten eggs. Joy opened her mouth to ask Raven, but the scent was gone as quickly as it had appeared. Probably just her imagination. Looked like she really was losing it after all.
    “You okay, Joy?” Raven’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.
    Um … seriously? Joy stood rooted in position. She didn’t know what to do, who to talk to, how to recover. How could she possibly be okay? Didn’t they get it at all? “I have to know. Did all of that really happen? For real?”
    Raven opened her eyes and held Joy’s gaze. “Yes. That actually happened. For real.” She smiled softly, like it was no big deal. Like a parent soothing a child afraid of clowns at a circus. This was far more serious than that.
    “You’re telling me that I just heard from my dead best friend?” Joy shot her glance from Raven to Lucas. “From beyond the grave?”
    Lucas bobbed his head a single time. “Yes.” He rolled onto his side, balled the pillow under his cheek, and yawned.
    One fog lifted and another settled as a shiver ran from the top of Joy’s head through the ends of her toes. No matter what, she couldn’t let anything like this happen again. Joy had seen the movies. She knew what became of people like her who messed with this stuff. It never ended well. “Okay, I’m out of here. I can’t handle this. Not that I even believe it.”
    Raven peered through her thick lashes, her eyes laced with something that looked like compassion. “You believe it. I can tell you do. You wouldn’t be so terrified if you thought it was all fake.”
    Raven had her there. Joy shrugged. “Fine, but I’m out. I don’t believe in this stuff—I mean, I guess I know it happened. But I can’t embrace it…. It’s not … I don’t think it’s right. It’s not like, God’s plan.”
    Eyebrow cocked, Raven waited.
    The instant they’d left her lips, Joy’s words had sounded absurd even to her. God’s plan? What of the past couple of weeks was His doing? At the funeral the pastor had said nothing happens that doesn’t pass through God’s hand first. Well, if that were true … if He could have stopped Melanie from taking those pills, but didn’t…. Unthinkable. Was that the kind of God she wanted to follow?
    And on top of it all, now Joy had to deal with the fact her dead best friend could speak to her from the other side. If it had actually happened, then what did it all say about heaven and the afterlife? About everything she’d ever believed in? About her own eternal fate?
    Too many questions. Not a single answer.
    “I have to go.” Joy scooped her purse, keys, and cell phone from Raven’s bed then jerked the arm of her hoodie from under Lucas’s sleeping body.
    He twitched and let out a snore.
    Raven opened the door for Joy then grabbed her wrist until Joy looked her in the eyes. “Don’t worry about anything. I know this is tough to accept, but we can help you through it. Luc and I.” Raven stretched an arm across the bed and shook Lucas’s body. “Right, babe?”
    He grunted what might have been interpreted as an agreement of some kind. Whatever. Not feeling all that reassured.
    Raven reached out and patted Joy’s back. “You have some thinking to do first, then when you’re ready, we’ll teach you. There’s no hurry. We’re not going anywhere.”
    That’s what Joy was afraid of.

Chapter 4
    P eople didn’t usually cut homeroom—why would they? No lectures. No assignments. No homework.
    Well, most people didn’t share their homeroom periods with Austin. Besides, there was a first time for everything. And after last night, Joy couldn’t take sitting in that classroom for one minute. Joy pulled the hood of her black, threadbare hoodie over her head, stepped out