Read Online Ghost Shadow (Moon Shadow Series Book 4) by Maria E Schneider - Free Book Online Page A

in the gray too long?
    The dark shadow drifted away from the tug; the call from dirt-side wasn’t a death so the spirit couldn’t wallow. It fed on misery the way most of us ghosts subsisted on discarded life energy.
    I resumed hunting the pull along the edge. The scent of life was easy to follow once you were in the current because the edge accommodated, shifting.
    The walls that came into focus were the same blank concrete as the other hospital rooms, but there was no patient this time. The dead guy caught my attention first because his energy was similar to my own, borrowed; not that of a living soul. He was in blue nursing scrubs, standing across the room from Martin’s two friends. Roberto was the short Hispanic guy who had talked to us and given Martin the bloodstone. The other guy had to be Lynx because the ghostly image of a cat with long tufted ears hovered around his face. While his eyes shifted between the yellow glow of a cat and those of a human, both were filled with the spark of life.
    “Martin says the girl doesn’t belong there. We need to find her body here and call her back. I thought you could cross because you’re already dead. You could ask her questions to help us locate her on this side,” the cat said. “Why wouldn’t it work?”
    The dead man in nursing smocks had a ghostly image of his own. The image around him was a humanoid shape, but leathery as though mummified. The human form had hair neatly tied into a ponytail. In the ghost image, his head was rippled black skin with short, shiny hair so tight across a bony skull, it was nearly invisible. His bat ears were enormous, and I couldn’t tell if the wings across his back went with the human form or the other creature because they seemed to belong to both. Part of one wing was missing, and the human was minus most of one arm.
    “There is no way I can cross.” The dead man’s voice was elegant but clipped, matching his cold black stare. Since he was dead, he could probably cross easily. Of course, once he was In Between, I doubted he could find his way back over to the side of the living. Even with the gentle winds crossing the open weave right now, the weave encouraged me to stay away. It wasn’t yet painful, but the pressure was a headache building across every part of me.
    Roberto’s voice was the easiest to understand. Like the cat, his hair was black or close to it, but his was longer, instead of a buzz cut. The thick part on top stood nearly straight up from the breezes crossing into the weave. “What’s your name?” he asked me. Unlike the others, his pleasant tenor came right through to In Between as if he were standing in both places at once. He was easily able to see me, just like when Martin had spoken to him.
    “I don’t know,” I answered. “Everyone calls me Shadow.”
    “Roberto,” he introduced himself. “That’s Lynx and Patrick.” He pointed to the cat and then the dead guy.
    “Patrick can cross, but once here, I doubt he could cross back,” I told Roberto.
    There might have been a flicker of surprise in the dead guy’s eyes. He gave me a nod of either welcome or acknowledgment. “Is that so?”
    The cat half hissed, but sounded more excited than angry. “When Roberto does his thing, it’s as if there is a window. She found us!”
    I had been drawn here, much like other places in the hospital. “Why are you looking for me?”
    “We saw you with Martin when you helped tear him away from Roberto. Saved both their asses, if you ask me. Martin said we need to locate you on this side. Patrick is a vamp so we figured since he was dead, he could cross and ask you questions without it killing him.” A Cheshire grin stretched across both the ghost cat and the human. While there was no sound of laughter, there might have been a ghostly purr.
    My attention flicked to Patrick. I hadn’t believed in vampires when I was alive. Now, it wasn’t even a slight stretch. “A vampire? You use the energy from blood