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

readings. Listen, I had to talk to you. I was doing a reading for you today—”
    I stopped her there. “ A readin g ?”
    “Yes. A Tarot reading. Anyway, I saw something strange.”
    I pulled out a chair and flopped down. Had I really raced across town for more of her cryptic psychic crap? “Let me guess—you saw death all around me,” I said, pursing my lips, squinting one eye, and wiggling my fingers.
    She slapped me in the arm. “No. Though, you know, I do see that quite a lot.”
    “Duh, Heather. I live with a dead guy.”
    “Oh, Shane isn’t dead. Can’t you tell the difference?” she asked as if I were being silly.
    My left eye started to ache. “Right, whatever you say.”
    “So I was doing your reading, and everything went fuzzy. I had this vision. I saw you, in a cemetery, doing a séance.”
    Okay, that shut me up. She must have read the surprise in my face.
    “You aren’t going to do anything stupid like that, are you?” She took a seat across from me, scowling.
    “Um, yes. Maybe sort of?” I proceeded to spill the beans about Patrick, Nana Elsie, and what she claimed she saw.
    “And you believe her?” Heather asked when I was done.
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I feel like I owe it to her to at least go.”
    “Wait here.” Heather motioned for me to wait before disappearing through the curtain, returning a few minutes later with a pamphlet. It was from the Haunted Tours office next door.
    I held it up. “What’s this?”
    She snatched it from me, and read it aloud. “ Saint Philip’s churchyard is one of the most haunted locations in Charleston. Many claim the ghost of Sue Howard Hardy roams the cemetery. She died six days after she gave birth to a stillborn baby. People often see her spirit walking through the cemetery, crying at her child’s grave. Her history is violent and sad. Terrible things are said to have befallen any who have witnessed her spirit roaming the grounds.”
    I snatched it back from her. There was a photo of the cemetery on the cover. “So, Heather. What do you think? Are ghosts real?” I asked, stuffing the flyer into my purse.
    She made a sound that was suspiciously close to a snort. “Of course they are. What do you think Shane is?”
    Was that a trick question? “Um, a vampire.”
    She rolled her eyes again.
    “What?” I demanded.
    She leaned forward. “What is the difference between a zombie and a vampire?”
    Okay, it was for sure a trick question. “Um, vampires are real?”
    She shook her head. “Think about it like this. People are made of two pieces. Their flesh selves and their spirit selves. Some people possess the power to reanimate the dead. They are called necromancers. They can animate dead bodies. But they only control the empty flesh. The spirit is something completely different. Vampires are spirits who were able to reconnect the two parts of themselves. Their bodies aren’t really dead, which is why they don’t rot. So the spirit slips back inside, none the wiser. Spirits can’t live inside of dead bodies, only in living ones. I actually think that’s kind of what a vampire does when it changes someone. Something, whether it is magic or science, changes their body, effectively making it hardier, so the spirit can stay in it indefinitely. It’s why they seem immortal.”
    I stared at her, blinking and staring into space, deep in thought as I tried to take it all in. “So what you are saying is that a body can be reanimated without a spirit in it, and if a body can exist without a spirit, then a spirit can exist without a body?”
    Now I was just confused.
    “Kind of. The spirit is different. It is transient, sort of made to move on. It’s the truly immortal piece of us. When our bodies die, the spirit moves on to whatever comes next. But sometimes, they don’t. Sometimes, spirits have such a powerful connection to a place or an object that they choose to linger. It is, despite what people might think, very