Twice Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

sure, but this barely contained temper was more like, well, me. Her voice wasn’t even squeaky at the moment. I blinked at her. “The judge called you Gildamina.”
    “Don’t use my name!” A nerve twitched under her eye.
    Then she took a deep breath, released it, and tugged on her coat in a stiff movement. “I’ve read that shifters have no true names, so you wouldn’t understand.” She frowned at me, her eyebrows cinching together. “You shouldn’t have been able to hear my true name.” Her scroll appeared in her hand. She jotted something down.
    “Why not?”
    She didn’t bother looking up from her notes, but asked, “Bobby, what’s my full name?”
    Bobby, who’d been hanging back against the wall, shrugged. “Gil.”
    Huh? Hadn’t he heard me say…
    “See, Kita? A mage’s name is protected. Only I can choose to share it.” Gil tapped the feather of her quill against her thought-pursed lips. “So how did you hear it?” She cocked her head to the side and her eyes popped wide. “The Judge’s mark. It must be.” She scribbled something in her scroll, mumbling to herself. “The bond his mark created must have formed a link, a magical transference that allows you to access information the judge has mystical clearance for. I wonder if there are any similar cases.” She looked up. “This could make a fascinating paper.”
    Right. Something else interesting about me for her study. I guess that was, technically, a good thing. After all, as long as I was useful as research material, she’d help me keep my protected, ‘Rare Species,’ status.
    Gil vanished her scroll and looked around, probably for the first time since she’d popped back into the human world.
    “Well, I can look into names later. I need your assistance with something.” She ran a hand through her dark curls and glanced over my bare feet and skin-tight tiger outfit. “You might want to change.”
    Let me think. Stay here and wait for Nathanial so he could take me to see the vamp council, or go with Gil? What a choice. It wasn’t like the enforcers had given me an appointment time.
    “I’ll grab my coat,” I said and ducked into the bedroom. I stripped out of the costume as I dug through the drawer Nathanial had cleared for me in his dresser. The wound over my collarbone had stopped bleeding, so I pulled a sweater on and slipped into a sensible pair of jeans before stepping back into the hall. “Where are we going, anyway? And for that matter, how are we getting there?” The cabin wasn’t exactly close to anything but acres of woods.
    “Like this.” Gil’s hand shot out. Magic charged through the air as her fingers landed on me.
    Then the hall disappeared.
    A darkness surrounded me, a darkness so complete it burned away memories of light. The inky nothingness had no sound, no scent, as if I’d been swallowed by a black hole. I could see my feet but nothing below them.
    “Gil!” The air was too thick. I couldn’t draw breath.
    “Bobby?”
    I swallowed the nearly solid air, gagging. What had Gil done? And more importantly, was this what she’d meant to do? Or did I get sucked into the backlash of a botched spell?
    I needed to scream, to move.
    I couldn’t.
    Blood roared through my ears—the only sound in the darkness. I hung suspended in nothing. Crushed by emptiness.
    Then light burst through the dark, burned my eyes. My hands flew up, blocking out the light. No resistance met my movements. Crickets chirped. Tires crunched over pavement.
    Wind tickled across my skin.
    Slowly, I lowered my hands and risked peeking through my eyelashes. A dozen pinpricks of light met my limited gaze, none bright enough to be blinding. I opened my eyes the rest of the way, staring at the star-filled sky. I blinked. I could feel the ground and soft grass—not snow—beneath my back. My heart gave up its mutinous attempt to desert my torso, and I drank in a deep breath that tasted of spring and green life.
    Where am I?
    And better