Read Online Second Skin (Skinned) by Judith Graves - Free Book Online

if the demon was one of the bounty hunters, and if so, figure out who had put the contract out on my head. We also needed to kill the night mare or banish it from this place for good. That meant we were all on research duty today.
I’d agreed to see if the shelves of Redgrave High’s library held any clues.
It was either that or go with the guys and discover what Marie had to say on the subject of night mares. Alec’s mother was the last person I wanted to see. Especially after Alec told her he’d had a vision and experienced the dastardly deed himself in 3D. Heya, how’s about sharing vital information with the girl who will be responsible for your son’s death?
Awkward.
Sure, she’d helped Matt to pull me through a nasty werewolf gouging during our showdown with Logan, but she didn’t have any attachment to her handiwork. She’d take me down to protect Alec. We knew where we stood with each other, and standing in the same room for an extended period wasn’t part of the deal.
In fact, after I’d recovered and glossed over exactly who and what I was, I’d taken Marie aside and told her to melt a special round of silver bullets just for me. Just in case.
They were already made. She’d even showed me the rounds.
A few hours in the library seemed like a cakewalk in comparison.
I tilted my head, listening for movement in my cousin’s room next door. Nothing. No angry rev of her diffuser. No country music blaring. I kicked the covers off and let the comforter fall to the floor. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I shuffled down the hall and into the bathroom. The cold tiles on my feet jolted me more awake, but the empty bathroom was even more jarring. Paige wasn’t hogging it. The cultured marble countertops glistened under the vanity lights, like a brand-new showroom. No plethora of hair care bottles and makeup cluttering each available surface. The bathroom was spotless.
I met my reflection’s eyes in the mirror. Gave myself a wide grin. Yet another of Paige’s new, Kate-inspired personality quirks. Unnerving, but rather pleasant.
Twenty minutes later, my hair arranged in funky, but no fuss, low-hanging pigtails, minimal makeup, and standard hoodie/ jeans combo, I entered the kitchen. Uncle Marcus had assumed his usual position at the head of the McCain table, reading through an assortment of legal-sized documents. Aunt Sammi stood at the island, organizing a boxful of orange and black pipe cleaners, pre- cut bat wings, and ghosts ornaments made from toilet tissue.
Ah, just another breakfast at the McCains’ freakishly normal house of horrors.
“Morning, Eryn.” Sammi shot me a wide smile. “Don’t you look beautiful today. Doesn’t she, Marcus?”
My uncle grunted, but didn’t glance up from the legal documents he was reading. Marcus was a real estate lawyer who’d recently taken on a class action suit against Harbinger Properties. To a lot of folks in town, he’d become a knight in shining paperwork armor, out to protect the farmers who were being chased off their land by the condo-constructing conglomerate.
Say that five times fast.
Only problem, Harbinger was owned by the one and only master vampire, Logan, although you’d never find his name on any of the land claims. But Marcus knew the truth, and my kind- hearted uncle was a major thorn in Logan’s undead side, making it difficult for him to buy land from hardworking humans and sell it to flesh-eating paranorms.
Not that Marcus really understood the evil behind Harbinger. My job was to keep him from stumbling on the truth. The only thing preventing Logan from striking Marcus down was my promise to locate and hand over my father’s Frankenstein-ian anti- paranorm formula. The same one Brit wanted to use on Blake to see if it would bring him back.
But I had to find it first.
Which meant I had to start looking.
Something I had yet to do. Besides, now we had the night mare and bounty hunters to contend with. Of course, in a town like Redgrave, there