Read Online The End of the World As I Know It (The Ghosts & Demons Series Book 2) by Robert Chazz Chute, Holly Pop - Free Book Online

of the sheet as a handle. As I yanked Eldora’s body toward me, her head lolled toward me and her jaw dropped open to reveal a web of semi-congealed blood stretching between her blue lips.
    That was a horror impossible to erase from my brain. I slipped into my happy mind mantra as I did what had to be done. Playful puppies and cute kittens and dancing baby pigs. Playful puppies and cute kittens and dancing baby pigs. Playful puppies and cute kittens and dancing baby pigs!
    I strapped Eldora Clemnan to the gurney with two gray belts that look exactly like car seat belts. Out of habit, I looped the belt around her feet twice before cinching her tight and clicking her in. The gurney’s red and black handles can be tricky so if the head or the foot of the gurney drops unexpectedly, a body can slide around. The looped belt ensures the corpse won’t slip out and slide down a flight of stairs in front of horrified witnesses.
    I pulled the green velvet up around her body and zipped her into the body bag from foot to head. I slipped the nitrile gloves back into the little pocket last. “Tucked in for the night, Mrs. Clemnan.”
    Or so I thought.

Chapter 12
    Lightning strobed the city’s skyline. I looked up just as the power went out and the skyscrapers went black. On any other night, New York City would be pretty. That is, as long as you could watch the worsening storm from inside, preferably wearing a big cozy sweater while wrapping your hands around a steaming cup of cocoa.
    The thunder struck and the vibration shuddered through my chest. It occurred to me that, for all I knew, the power outage was the first step in the D-Day invasion.
    Lesson 116: Don’t underestimate the enemy like I did. Most demons don’t have much to say to humans. They’re all, “ Grr. Arrgh .” But a few demons are very clever and chatty.  
    Sleet cut at me as I wheeled the gurney to the back of the bus and popped the hatch. I positioned Eldora to slide in head first so the Odyssey’s suspension would take the weight, not me. I pulled the gurney’s red handle and its far legs folded up as I pushed it in. I squeezed the black handle and the gurney’s legs unlocked and folded up. An extra two shoves and the gurney was in place on two steel rails. I grabbed the clamp at the end of the rails and screwed it in place so the gurney wouldn’t shift around in transit. A few seconds later I was tearing down Crown Street, heading back to Castille as fast as I dared.
    It seemed weird that Victor wanted Eldora’s body back at the funeral home. If there was some magical rite that would free Rory from his trap, wouldn’t it be more powerful if I headed back to the Keep? You can’t tell with magic, though. Some of it works at a distance. Some of it, you need to touch the person you’re trying to change in some way. I didn’t know much about it. The Magicals mostly kept to themselves, mumbling, fondling beads and sacred stones and runes. The few Magicals I’d spoken to at the Keep also insisted on calling themselves magical folk , not magical folks . Maybe that’s proper, but it sounded annoying and far too precious.
    Manhattan told me she’d hung out with some of them once or twice. “It’s like trying to have a conversation with somebody who is high on acid. It’s not that they’re wrong, necessarily. But they irritate the shit out of me.”
    Everybody agreed the Spooks — the small squad of remote viewers from the CIA — were more annoying. They thought they were better than the Magicals because they were, “bringing science to the mystery,” as they put it.
    The Spooks also thought they were better than the Choir’s singers because most of them came from the “real” military. They looked on us like we were a bunch of amateurs even though they’d never faced a demon in their lives.
    Pop quiz: who is the more badass warrior? The military man or woman who is all trained up and loaded down with survival skills and instruments of death or