Read Online Shadowcry by Jenna Burtenshaw - Free Book Online Page A

when to speak. A lesson you would do well to learn.”
    â€œWhat do you know about them?” demanded Kate, but a look from Silas was enough to silence her.
    â€œWhat I know is irrelevant,” he said. “All that matters now is what you know, and what you can do.”
    A long silence followed.
    Silas stood beside the open window, not caring that Kate was left shivering in the dark. She sat down at the desk, trying to prize her wrist cuff open on the corner of the wood, and was just about to ask Silas for the woman’s name, when a sudden pain burst between her eyes, like needles piercing the skin. A bright light flashed in front of her: pure white light, there and gone again in an instant. She blinked it away and had gone back to the wrist cuff when it happened again. The light shone more intensely this time, lasting for a few seconds and never weakening, even when she closed her eyes.
    Silas glared at her with suspicion. “What is it?” he asked.
    â€œNothing. It’s nothing. I—”
    â€œThe Skilled have far greater senses than ordinary people,” he said. “Those senses can create visions of things the eyes cannot normally see. Tell me what you saw.”
    The pain stabbed again and the light flashed once more, sharpening into a vision of something that Kate knew should have been impossible.
    She was looking out of a carriage window toward the arch that divided the Western Quarter from the Southern. It was the same route that Silas’s carriage had taken, but she was not looking at a memory of her own journey. The carriage window was arched, not square, and the curtains were pulled wide open.
    â€œWhat do you see?” Silas demanded.
    Kate did not know what was happening. Icy cold surrounded her hands, chilling them until they were so frigid it felt as if her bones might snap. She tried to stand up, but she could not move. She tried to speak, but her throat made no sound. She could only sit staring at the same point on the wall, eyes fixed in silent terror as her body refused to obey her.
    Her first thought was that she had been poisoned, but Silas had not given her anything to eat or drink. She had not felt the prick of a needle or smelled gas in the air. The cold spread along her arms, numbing them completely as a thin layer of frost traced across her fingers. After that, all she saw was darkness. Deep blackness, more complete than any darkness she had ever known. She felt lost within it. Held tightly in one place. Unable to move or speak or scream. All she had was the pulse of her blood racing through her veins to let her know she was alive, but even that was slowing down. Becoming fainter. Weaker.
    Silas’s voice spoke close by. “All Skilled have the ability to see into the veil,” he said. “The boundary between this world and the next is opening around you. Let it happen. It will become as easy as breathing, given time.”
    Kate could not have stopped it if she tried. The cold was so intense that she became numb to it. Then the vision returned and this time she was glad of it. Anything to force the terrifying darkness away.
    She was back inside the carriage, traveling swiftly beneath the arch. She tried to look around, but her view was fixed upon the window as the dark stones that made up the archway blackened the glass, forming a mirrorlike reflection within it. Kate focused upon it and found herself looking at a face. A woman’s face that was not her own.
    Then everything stopped.
    The vision froze around her and everything was still except for the face: the face of a woman who had sensed something other than herself inside that carriage. The cold eyes within the glass began to smile and the finely painted mouth whispered a word. “Kate.”
    The shock of hearing her own name made Kate heave in a sudden breath. The vision broke and she was back in the boardinghouse with Silas standing right beside her. The frost melted quickly on her