Read Online Dead Lucky by M.R. Forbes - Free Book Online Page B

look on his face.  
    "What be wrong, child?" Mother asked.
    He looked at me, and then at Marie. "Olivier is dead."
    Marie gasped. Mother didn't react at all. All three of them looked right at me.
    "It couldn't be helped," I said. "In any case, he was already dying." I looked right at Mother. "A necromancer, like me."
    I thought maybe she would be surprised. He had been hiding himself from her after all. She pursed her lips and nodded. "It be the will of fate." Her eyes passed over her children. "Marie, go downtown. You be needed there soon, to help work things out for dear Olivier."
    It seemed like an odd request to me. What would she be able to do at this hour? Marie didn't question it. She stepped towards me cautiously, and then put her arms around me.  
    "Thank you again," she whispered in my ear.  
    Then she was gone.
    "How do you want to do this?" I said, turning to Mother. "There's the matter of the hex you cast on me, too."
    "I be lifting the hex once the trade is done. Lucian, show him the money."
    Her son balanced the briefcase in his arms and flipped the latches. He opened it enough for me to see it was filled with cash.  
    "Now, you hold out the dice. Lucian, hold out the case. Once the exchange is done, you and yours be free to go."
    I nodded. I gripped the dice harder, and they grew so warm I thought they would burn my hand. I pulled them from my pocket, and started reaching out, at the same time Lucian held out the money.  
    My eyes flicked back and forth, from Lucian's grim frown to Mother's wide, white smile, to the briefcase, to the dice, and back again. I felt the tightness in my chest, the urge to cough. I could almost feel the disease running though me.  
    The dice were getting hotter.  
    They pulsed in my hand.  
    My eyes kept dancing in the same circle. Over, and over.
    My heart started throbbing, in tune to the bone cubes clutched in my palm.  
    Something told me I was making a mistake.
    Something told me I was going to regret this.
    This had never been who I was.
    Was it?
    Without thinking, I turned my hand over, and loosened my fingers.
    I watched the dice.  
    I watched them fall.
    It seemed like forever, but it was more like half a second. They clicked against the hard floor, and bounced onto the white carpet. Two symbols, the same symbols. Simple red smudges on the stained bone.
    I knew them then for what they were. I heard the high pitched whine, felt a sudden chill. My eyes darted to Lucian, his lips moving in a curse, his hands going for the doll tucked into his pocket.  
    They shifted to Mother, who stared at me with a look of hatred and resignation. A stare that bore into my soul, and betrayed me for what I was.
    A coward.
    Without warning, both of them started bleeding. From the eyes, the nose, the mouth. Anywhere there was an opening. It wasn't a trickle either. It was a torrent, as though every drop of blood in their body was being pumped out of them.  
    Lucian fell in seconds, his dark skin a sick shade of grayish brown. Mother was sitting in her recliner, and she passed almost peacefully, though her gaze remained locked on me, accusing and accepting at the same time.
    The shadow came next. It grew from the dice; a dark, evil thing. It slid along the floor, through the air, distorting the world around it, making itself known and at the same time remaining cloaked. It covered over Lucian, and I heard him screaming as his soul was torn from his body and pulled away, back to the small cubes.  
    Mother was next. She didn't scream when the spirit came for her. She remained peaceful, silent, damning. I watched the darkness bring her in, and then shrink in on itself, inverting back into the dice as though the whole thing was playing in reverse.
    "What in the holy fuck was that?" Dannie said behind me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Flowers by Jack.

    I had known Danelle for three years. Sure, there had been things unsaid, plenty of things. There had been things I had never told her, things I had