Read Online The Astral by V. J. Banis - Free Book Online Page A

joke—calling it a Hanukah bush.
    The tinkle of the bell over the door and the familiar blend of flower shop scents, the sweet of fresh and the rotten of aging flowers, welcomed her.
    The pale, blonde woman by the window was new to her however. In the past Rose had always managed the shop alone. “I was looking for Rose,” Catherine replied to her greeting.
    â€œI’m here to help you,” the woman said.
    A new employee, then. Catherine was disappointed. She would have liked to see Rose herself, but Rose was getting up in years and the shop was probably too much for her to handle alone at this hectic time of year.
    â€œI’d like to order a tree,” Catherine said.
    â€œYou must keep trying,” the woman said.
    â€œOh. You mean you don’t have any trees this year?”
    â€œTraveling is like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets,” was the puzzling response.
    Catherine tried to digest that, but could make no sense of it. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand.” Did she know this woman? She looked vaguely familiar, but standing just in front of the window as she was, with the bright sunlight streaming in around her, it was difficult to make out her face. If one were fanciful one might almost imagine that the light made a halo about her head.
    â€œI’m sorry about the pain, but it will get better too with practice. It does sort of go with the territory, unfortunately. You were shot in the head, after all.”
    Catherine gasped. “How could you possibly know...?” she started to ask, taking a step towards this strange woman.
    â€œMrs. Desmond! Catherine!” Rose Leiberman came through the curtained doorway from the back room. “What a wonderful surprise.”
    Catherine turned to greet her and was swallowed up in a determined embrace, crushed against Rose’s enormous bosom. “I was so sorry, so very, very sorry,” Rose said. “You poor darling.”
    Catherine felt a cold draft across the back of her neck. It was a moment before she realized the shop door had opened and closed behind her. She jumped back and looked around. The woman had gone.
    â€œOh, wait,” she cried. She ran outside and looked up and down the street. A huffing Springer Spaniel impatiently tugged along a thin man on the end of a leash. Two boys tossed a football back and forth, and a young woman in purple Spandex that ought to have been too skimpy for the chilly day teetered perilously on a pair of inline skates. The woman was nowhere to be seen.
    Rose looked at her curiously when she came back in, the bell over the door jingling. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    â€œThat woman. She just disappeared. I wanted to talk to her. Did you know her?”
    Rose looked around the shop, confused. “Woman?”
    â€œShe was just there, by the window, she was talking to me when you came through the doorway.”
    Rose looked in the direction of the window. “Oh, I suppose she was just a looky-loo, we get lots of them this time of year.” She dismissed the subject with a shrug and turned her friendly smile back to Catherine. “Let me guess, you’ve come for a Hanukah bush?”

CHAPTER SIX
    At home, Catherine poured herself a glass of wine and, kicking off her shoes, curled up on the sofa in the den.
    She could no longer ignore the fact that something peculiar, something downright weird, was happening to her. But what, exactly? What had that woman at the flower shop meant, about traveling? Hadn’t someone said the very same thing to her previously?
    She tried to think back over all of it. The nightmare. On the face of it, there was nothing peculiar about that. Why wouldn’t she have a nightmare about the men who had kidnapped her daughter?
    It had been so real, though: the shaved-off beard, the face. Had the mole been removed? She wanted so desperately to tell Agent Chang about those changes in his