Read Online Platinum by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - Free Book Online Page A

singer of a rock band. “You don’t wonder about the point. You define the point, you finesse the point, you manipulate it to suit your own little devices, but you don’t wonder about it.”
    I had to remind myself that he wasn’t really there and that I didn’t need him. He wasn’t helping me with a problem. He was the problem.
    “Like you know me,” I said, staring him down. “Need I remind you that you’re dead? And even if you weren’t dead, I am so totally out of your league.”
    He smiled, and I gritted my teeth. Didn’t he know when he’d been dismissed?
    “I’m not dead” —his face was almost expressionless, but his voice was mocking— “not interested, and not really sure you’re worth helping in the first place.”
    “Helping?” I asked with a snort. “You call this helping?” He was a ghost, and I was…well, I was a retronitioner. Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be helping him? As if he even deserved my help.
    “You can see me. You’re the first one who’s been able to.” He leaned back on my desk, his eyes on mine. “I’ve been stuck in the same place, the same time, for fifty years, and you’re the only one who’s ever seen me before the fact.”
    “I suppose you want me to ask ‘before what fact?’” I said, my voice bordering pleasantly on sarcasm.
    “Before someone dies.”
    “So you’re admitting you’re dead….”
    “Are you trying to be dumb?” he asked, raking his hand through his thick hair and turning away from me. “I said I’m not dead.” As he spoke, his shoulder muscles tensed, pulling at the tight white shirt he wore. “I don’t die. I never die. I just wake up day after day, doing the same thing, trapped in the same moment, but every once in a while, the other players change, and when they do, someone dies.”
    “How?”
    “How?” He shook his head and turned back to face me, his eyes piercing mine through the hair that fell into his face with the motion. “I kill them.”
    And then, just like that, he was gone.
    “Figures,” I muttered. “It’s just like him to show up, go all ‘people are going to die’ on me, and then leave.”
    What was I saying? My ghost had just told me that he killed people, and I was irritated that he’d left without saying goodbye? Clearly, my mother’s news on top of everything else had made me completely delusional.
    I took a deep breath and forced myself to strategize. Worst-case scenario, this Sight thing was here to stay. If I couldn’t make it go away, the only option was to figure out a way to use it that would help me, rather than force me to acquire a Lissy-esque twitching problem.
    At that exact moment, because fate hated me and had decided I deserved to suffer, someone knocked on my door.
    “Still don’t feel like talking!” I yelled, my voice painfully pleasant. “When I want to talk about it, trust me”—I spat out that last phrase—“you’ll know.”
    Logically, I knew that using my rarely harnessed but incredibly potent Threat Voice on my mother wasn’t a good idea, but since I was obviously delusional anyway, I cared about logic about as much as I cared about the chess team’s win-loss record or Lissy’s love life.
    “I have your phone.”
    Why was it that every time I thought about Lissy James, even for a second, she showed up?
    “Keep it,” I told her through the door. When she didn’t respond or show any signs of leaving, I forced myself to come up with something mean enough that once I said it, she’d leave me alone. “Shouldn’t you be off somewhere doing the whole ‘woe is me, do I like him or don’t I?’ thing over your surly little boytoy?”
    Why wasn’t she leaving? What part of “I don’t feel like talking” plus the absolute snarkiest comment I could manage didn’t she get?
    Lissy cleared her throat and spoke again. “So I guess you heard about…” Wisely, she didn’t finish the sentence. “Grams told me about your…” She trailed off