Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71312 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71312 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Blinking, I sit up and think about what I just saw. In my dream, I was walking through the bed and breakfast again. The first floor was in the same state of disrepair as I saw it, but it was as if I was walking back in time as I ascended the stairs. I was seeing everything from someone else’s eyes and was walking behind a young woman with shoulder length dirty-blonde hair.
And her name was Allison.
She was a friend, and we were going to spend the summer together in our first apartment. Everything seemed so exciting and promising until hands closed around my throat, squeezing until I couldn’t breathe.
Rubbing my neck, I get up and pad into the bathroom to check for marks. Seeing none, I try to tell myself this was just a dream and not a spirit trying to reach out to me. But I can’t turn my mind off and go back to sleep, so I move into the sitting area of our room and open a notebook. I doodle as I think, getting annoyed because I just know I’m missing something when it comes to who framed Ethan.
I jot down a few different motives and try to go from there. Like most hunters, Ethan has a long list of enemies, but I run into the same problem I did with Sam suggesting a vampire is behind this. Monsters don’t tend to make patient, calculated decisions like this. Most of the monsters Ethan has hunted have been simple minded and lack the cognitive ability to pull something off like that.
Sighing, I close the notebook and put it on the little table next to me. The floor outside my door creaks like it always does when someone is walking down the hall. I don’t think much of it at first, assuming it’s Harry or Saanvi going to use the bathroom. But whoever is in the hall stops right by the doors leading into my bedroom.
The air suddenly feels cold, and I jump up, holding my right hand out in front of me. Embers spark around my fingers, ready to attack if need be. Moving slowly so I don’t make a sound, I twist the doorknob and then throw open the door. No one is in the hall, but out of the corner of my eye, I see a dark shadow move down the stairs.
“Hey,” I whisper-yell and rush into the hall. I’m hit with a wave of dark energy but fight through it. It’s not the first time I’ve walked right through negative spiritual residue like this, if you will. Part of my dream flashes through my mind and my blood runs cold when the vision of a young woman plays out before my eyes. It’s hard to see in the dark, but her face looked bloodied and bruised. I blink and the vision is gone, yet her fear is palpable.
“Wait,” I say, in case the spirit is trying to manifest. I close my eyes and think back to the dream, certain now that it was the spirit reaching out. It’s easier for them to communicate through dreams, and I think I accidentally astral project to the spirit world in my sleep. Another part of my dream comes back to me, and I was able to listen to the woman’s thoughts. They are scrambled and I get little flashes of the library from the bed and breakfast. The shelves haven’t been wallpapered yet, and the smell of cigarettes burns my nose.
A shadow crosses the landing by the front staircase, and I hurry after it, fingers curling in toward my palm, ready to summon fire if need be, though I can’t burn a ghost. Knowing which stairs creak the loudest, I walk down them in a zigzag, avoiding the squeak of century-old wood under my feet.
Chaotic whispers echo around me, coming from the spirit realm. Whoever this spirit is seems to have sought me out, and I can’t dismiss it. I did that once before, missing the warning said spirit was trying to give me.
But I don’t have time for games, and if something is going down, I need to know and I need to know now so I can handle it.
I get to the bottom of the stairs and wait a beat, trying to feel if the spirit is still here. I can’t sense a presence, but something shuffles in the library. The energy shifts and a darkness threatens to take over.
Maybe Keith was right and the spirits in the house were talking about me all along. The timing can’t be a coincidence: his cousin captured that EVP talking about a witch around the same time something tried to get through my warding. And now I’m thinking it could somehow be connected to whoever tried to frame Ethan. Breaking through my warding would be a million times easier when I’m distressed and distracted.