Read Online Darkside Sun by Jocelyn Adams - Free Book Online

neighbors.
    Everything about the other two in my room was somehow wrong. Ava held her arms out at her sides for balance, as if she’d never walked on two legs before. Baldy stretched his neck out, something inside him clearly uncomfortable in its people costume. A knot of cold in my chest told me they both had wraith riders, something I didn’t understand but knew all the same. Maybe one of those extra senses down in my mind’s archives the book had unlocked.
    Ava cocked her head, grabbed Baldy’s arm, and gaped at me. “Where is the knowledge?” she demanded.
    Knowledge, as in book? Crap . I stared at Asher’s profile, as unreadable as a Chinese instruction manual. “Professor Green?”
    He blinked, turned to me with worry etched into his features. Did he not hear me come in? “What are you doing? Get out of here. Now!”
    Ava laughed, deep and throaty. If the swamp thing could laugh, it would sound like that. “You bring us an unbound guardian, sentinel? How terribly thoughtful of you.”
    I had no idea what she was talking about, but it meant something to Asher because those scrolling blue tattoos lit up under his skin, turning my room into a Northern Lights show and making him even more beautiful than usual. I blinked. He grabbed my arm, and I ended up on my butt in the hallway with the door slammed shut in my face.
    Brightness flared out from a crack under the door, but no noise came with it. The lack of sound pummeled my ears as if I stood in an invisible bubble. Could the wraiths do that, too? Was that why nobody but Asher and I had heard her scream?
    My breath no longer turned to snow, but they were still in there, the wraiths. That pearl of cold in me had faded a little, but it was still there. Asher had done something to contain whatever he was doing inside.
    A small amount of blue light still shone under the door, but not as much. What was going on in there? My pulse jumped in my neck as I considered what Asher might do to Ava and her guy. Shove me out, would he? Screw him.
    I unlocked the door again and rushed inside. Baldy lay unconscious on the floor in a pile of snow, wraithless, I thought. Maybe that was why the cold in me had faded a bit, because there was only one of them left on our side of the veil. Asher had a knee pressed into Ava’s chest, a hand on her throat. Her dark hair lay in a frizzy mass around her face. Her eyes were wild, and instead of their normal brown, they were almost white. She—it—seemed to be cursing at Asher in another language.
    “What are you doing?” I asked between panted breaths. “Stop it!”
    “I can’t pull it out,” he said. “It’s the highest of the common castes, and I can’t pull it out.” Something in his voice—sorrow, old and aged—tightened a screw in my heart. He twisted his head to look at me, still struggling with the girl he held down. His eyes were beacons, lit from within. As I watched, they grew empty, the man draining away to leave nobody home. Did that mean he had to …?
    “Oh, God. Asher, you can’t!” I screamed. “She can be a pain in the ass, but she’s somebody’s family.” I rushed forward, but he shoved his free hand out and pushed me back on the bed.
    “There’s no other way. This level of wraith can take over the body in a matter of days and use her energy to be reborn here on our plane. And it knows what you are. My duty is to the Machine first. Close your eyes, Addison. Listen to me.”
    I shook my head, trying to convince myself he wouldn’t do it. Professors didn’t kill people. It was all just a bad dream. Wake up, dammit, wake up!
    He pulled a sleek, black gun from the back of his jeans.
    “Please don’t,” I said. A tear crested my lashes. Everything seemed to slow down, become unreal, like in a nightmare when you’re trying to haul ass but your legs won’t work right. It seemed to take forever for him to move that gun to point the barrel at Ava’s head. “Asher.”
    His intense stare never strayed