Read Online Inbetween (Kissed by Death, #1) by Tara Fuller - Free Book Online Page B

else it could be.
    I gave my head a little shake and stomped out the feeling of hope. I couldn’t start thinking like that. I wanted to look at this as some kind of proof. But I couldn’t. Thinking like that would just land me back in Brookhaven Psychiatric Hospital listening to the real crazy people scream themselves to sleep at night. I closed my eyes against the shiver rolling down my spine and when I opened them again, I did my best to seem indifferent.
    “I haven’t exactly been to any haunted hospitals lately,” I said. “These were taken all over the place. School, my house, by the lake even. Explain it now, Professor Paranormal.”
    Cash leaned forward and gave me a crooked smile. “Maybe it’s not the places that have a ghost attached to them. Maybe it’s you.”
    Maybe it’s me … Uneasiness and excitement bubbled in my stomach. I jumped off the bed and headed for the hall. “Hang on a minute. I’ll be right back.”
    If it was me, there would be more orbs. There would have to be. I dug through the top of Mom’s closet and pulled down the big photo box that said “Emma” in purple scrapbook letters. She used to always put every photo in a scrapbook, but since Dad died, she hadn’t kept up. Most of the pictures didn’t even make it into an album now.
    I dropped the box on my bed and dumped the pictures into a four-by-six-glossy pile of Emma. Cash picked up a few and laughed.
    “Holy shit, I completely forgot how nerdy we used to be.” He flashed a picture at me. “Dude, check out your sunglasses in this one.”
    I grabbed the picture and looked at it. Nerdy sunglasses, check. Orb, no. I threw it back in the box and pulled out a few more. All from before Dad died, none with orbs.
    “What are we doing?” Cash asked.
    “Looking for…” I switched to a more recent pile and stopped. I’d found one.
    A glowing white orb hovered over my shoulder in a picture of me at last year’s neighborhood block party. I handed it to Cash and found another. And another. I sat down, trying not to hyperventilate. Goose bumps rose across my skin as I stared at all the orbs that lay across my bed at that moment. What were they? Who were they?
    Something inside me told me I should know.
    “They’re in, like, half of them,” I whispered. “But there aren’t any in the pictures from before.”
    “What?”
    “Orbs.” I tossed a few more pictures into his lap. “Look at them.”
    Cash stared at the pictures in his lap. “So, you think all of these are ghosts? You think you’re being haunted by a poltergeist or something?”
    I allowed myself to think the thoughts I’d kept locked up tight for the past two years. Like someone wanted me dead. Like someone else wanted me alive. Sometimes everything went cold, like ice under my skin. Other times a sensation so warm and safe swept over me that I could hardly believe it was real. It was when I felt both, like today at the school, that everything seemed to go wrong. In those moments, I almost believed I was crazy. It felt like there was this invisible battle being fought around me and I was continuously caught in the crosshairs.
    And it had all started the day my father died.
    “I don’t know what I believe,” I said. It had only taken my saying how I felt once for them to lock me up and double my therapy sessions. I wasn’t stupid enough to say it again.
    “Hey,” Cash leaned over and rested his elbow on my knee. “It’s just the camera, okay? Your camera is busted. That’s it.”
    “Then explain the other pictures. The ones Mom took. And there aren’t any in the pictures before my dad died. None.”
    “Fine. It’s not the camera. But Em…you can’t do this. Not again. If you start talking like this again, they’re going to put you back in Brookhaven. So, I’m asking you to drop it. Please.”
    It wasn’t in my head. I had to prove that to him. I bit my lip. “Or I could get a Ouija board?”
    When he didn’t say anything I peeked at