Wraith (Debt Collector 10) Read Online Free PDF Page A

grumbling.  I haul myself to my feet and stumble toward him.
    He’s huddled up against the corner of the wall and the street. When I lift away his box, he yelps and scuttles back from me, grinding through the grime. His hands fly in front of his face, his incoherent mumblings taking a higher, more terrified pitch. I can’t get a good shot at his forehead, so I simply grab his two hands and hoist them into the air. I stand over him, straddling him like I did Odel, only this time my hands are laced with the junkie’s, making contact palm-to-palm. He protests, but I’ve got a grip on him. I trickle in life energy before he can decide to fight me too strongly.
    The frenzy inside me quiets as the energy starts to flow from my palms to his. A clean burning fire sparks deep in my chest. It’s not the rush of energy and righteousness that I pulled out of Odel. This mercy hit is good in a clean way, a pure way—it burns bright at my core. For a moment, feeding life energy into this hapless junkie on the street blasts away all the dark spots on my soul. It empties me in a way that fills me with goodness.
    With as many times as I’ve been to that glory place, I know the fine line when I’ve paid out too much. I ease back, pulling the junkie up from the ground. He’s the jittery one now, so I wait until he’s steady, then release him. The dark shadows are gone from his face, and his eyes shine with their own light. As if he’s had a solid meal, a good night’s rest, and all he needs now is a shower to look respectable again.
    I step back and nearly go down when the nausea hits like a linebacker.
    I double over, heave, and this time I’m sick all over the wall of Madam A’s brothel. The junkie comes to my aid, but I wave him off. The sickness will pass. I’m still burning with righteousness on the inside, and that’s all that matters. Even though the shakes are worse than before, the agitation is gone. The sloshing pool of life energy inside me has quieted. I straighten and lumber away from the alley, the addict, and Madam A’s house of lost opportunity. I’ve only paid out a fraction of what I took from Odel, but it’s enough to hold me. I’ve bought myself time to figure out what the hell I’m going to do next.
    I hold my stomach with one hand as I hail a cab with the other.
    I need to get home before I do something even crazier than a random payout on the street.

The view from my office is disturbingly similar to Odel’s. Same hundred-floor rise above the smog. Same city laid out at my feet. The early-morning sun gives a flash of brilliance to the mirrored high-rises of the city and a pink hue to the cancer-inducing pollution that curls below. The symbolism doesn’t escape me: it’s easier to paint the impoverished streets in a rose-colored light than to face what really happens down there.
    Damn, I’m tired. I’m starting to get maudlin.
    Normally, I pay out a collection and ride the high of the mercy hit all the way home. Then the nausea and shakes take hold, and I’m out until the next morning when my driver rings the bellman to see if I’m dead. This time, there’s no rest for the wicked—holding all that energy inside is like riding a windstorm, all jitters and turbulence. And no sleep. The small mercy hit last night only took the edge off. By morning, I was shaking so badly, I could barely dress myself. I look like a street junkie in a corporate uniform: pencil skirt and designer blouse by someone famous out of Taiwan, heels that are ill-suited for hunting but perfect for corporate games, and the hand-jitters of a palsied ninety-year-old woman. My collector suit sits in a bag on my desk, a shadow puddled at the bottom. The scrape on my leg looks like I’ve been mauled by wild dogs—it took a whole box of Nu-skin to cover it. The wound itches like crazy, but it’s nothing compared to the spine-cringing need to pay out the energy inside me.
    I’ve never carried a collection this long. And it’s