Read Online March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) by Deirdre S. Hopton - Free Book Online

around her neck; there was abject terror in her eyes when the librarian walked through him.  He realized she truly had no idea what was happening, and no idea what he was.
                  “What the hell is happening?” she whispered.
                  “I was hoping you could tell me.  I guess we should talk,” he said, squatting so he wouldn’t be towering over her.  “Are you okay?”
                  “No.” She said it so quietly he barely heard her.
                  “Fair enough.  I’m sorry I choked you.  I thought you were…. Someone else,” he said lamely.  She stared blankly at him, and the librarian came rushing back over and threw an arm around the woman’s shoulder.
                  “It’s okay, honey, they’re on their way.  You’re very pale; I don’t know what to do.  What are you feeling?” the librarian asked the woman.
                  “Honestly… I don’t know,” the woman said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.  She spoke to the librarian but she was staring at Steven.  “I think I’m seeing things.”
                  “I’m real,” Steven said, helpfully.  “It’s just that no one else can see me.  Or hear me.  Or touch me…. Or anything me, really.  I’m not sure why you can.”
                  “And hearing things,” the woman murmured.
                  “Look at me, Deanna, look at me,” the librarian said, grabbing the woman’s face in her hands and jerking it toward her so that the woman looked at her eyes.  “Your eyes look funny, and you’re a little clammy.  I think you’re going into some kind of shock, Deanna.  Do you understand?  Do you hear me?” 
                  “Uh-huh,” Deanna mumbled, her eyes wandering back to Steven. 
                  “Deanna, huh?  That’s a pretty name,” Steven said.
                  Deanna’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted, moments before the ambulance arrived.  Steven decided to ride along; he didn’t want to lose the strange woman before figuring out why she could see him despite the SmartWand’s cloaking settings.  Also, he was feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing for some reason.
                  “It wasn’t really my fault,” he thought.  Nonetheless, he climbed onto the ambulance, unseen by the EMT’s, and rode to the hospital with her.

Deanna
     
                  Deanna opened her eyes, disoriented.  There was a man in a blue jacket over her, saying, “Talk to me, hon.  You with me?  You take anything?”
                  She tried to answer him but there was an oxygen mask over her mouth, so she just shook her head.  She felt like they were moving.  The last thing she remembered was thinking her heart should not, could not, beat as fast as it was beating… at the library.  Yes, she had been at the library.  It was all coming back now.  The man in black, Barb walking through him, the realization that she was hallucinating.  It had been unpleasant.
                  Feeling very clichéd, she asked the man in the blue jacket, through her oxygen mask, “Where am I?”
                  “We’re going to the hospital, hon, you’re gonna be fine.  What happened?  You sure you didn’t take anything?”
                  “I’m sure,” she said drily, wishing she could take the mask off.  “I had… some kind of an attack.”
                  “Okay, they’ll fix you right up at the hospital.  You sure you didn’t take anything?”
                  Another voice, an all-too-familiar voice, said, “For fuck’s sake, she didn’t take anything.”  Deanna’s eyes widened and she felt her heart start to race again.
                  The man in the blue jacket, the EMT, continued as if he had heard