Read Online Chasing Midnight (Dark of Night Book 2) by Ranae Glass - Free Book Online

my life. It had been everything from a jewelry store to a travel agency to an exterminator, but now the glass proudly bore the words, “Psychic Emporium and Palm Readings” in bold, white letters. The actual window was covered inside by brown paper,signaling that they were not, as of yet, open for business. But there was a smaller sign with a phone number on it that read , Call to schedule your appointment toda y . I shook my head. Until recently, my flighty baby sister had been a teenage runaway. I always imagined her on the streets somewhere living like a homeless person, but the truth was much different. Heather had been traveling the world, exploring what she called her psychic gift. Since she was back, she’d been determined to open this shop. She was going to sell herbs, crystals, and other things as well as do palm readings and other sorts of weird psychic stuff.
    Call me a skeptic, but it was all just a little out there. But she was home and she had an actual goal, so I wasn’t about to rain on her parade. Much anyway.
    She still wouldn’t fess up to where she got the money for the venture, except to assure Mom that she didn’t rob a bank or anything else illegal. Tapping on the glass door, I heard a rustle of paper as her single brown eye peeked out. I heard the click of a key in a lock, and the door swung open. Duke and Phoebe were sitting in the middle of the floor strewn with brown paper as they devoured a meat lover’s pizza. There was a half-eaten thin-crust veggie pizza on the counter beside the antique register that had to be Heather’s. She was the only person in the family that would dare taint a perfectly good pizza with vegetables and what might have been chunks of tofu.
    “Alright, I’m here. What’s going on?” I asked, eyeing the devastation.
    The shop was supposed to be open by Monday, a Halloween grand opening, and there were only a few shelves up. They had obviously been painting judging by the smell and the pans of lavender-tinted latex near the big window.
    “Duke and Phoebe have been helping me get ready for my grand opening,” Heather said, beaming.
    Duke rubbed his hands on his light blue jeans, getting the pizza mess off. “Yeah, but there’s not going to be an opening if I don’t get the rest of these shelves up.” He leapt onto the balls of his feet, rocked forward to plant a kiss on Phoebe, who blushed furiously, and then wandered off to open a tall box of premade cabinets. It was hard not to watch him walk away, earning me a playful slap from Phoebe.
    “What? I was reading the back of his T-shirt.”
    “It says, thou shalt not ogle your sister’s boyfriend,” she said with a snort.
    “I wasn’t ogling, I swear!” I held my hand up in a Girl Scout salute.
    Heather raised her hand. “Um, I was ogling.”
    We erupted in a fit of laughter. Phoebe lowered her gaze and undid the top button of her petal pink peasant top. Wagging her eyebrows suggestively, she bounded off to help Duke.
    Heather grabbed my arm with two hands and pushed me to the back. “I want to show you this.”
    She forced me into a smaller room in the back. It was separated from the rest of the shop by a thick, wood-bead curtain that sounded like a waterfall when I ran my hand across it. Once I pushed my way through, I saw that the walls in here were red—dark, rich velvety red—and were covered with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. In the center of the room was a round table that had been draped with layers of bright fabrics, the top one being creamy gold satin. There was no crystal ball, but otherwise, it looked just like something I’d seen in a traveling circus once. There were small, wooden chairs all around the table, seven in total, all painted the same red as the walls, which made them sort of blend in to the background.
    “What is this room for? The ritual sacrifices?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light and joking.
    She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is for palm