Read Online The Neon Graveyard by Vicki Pettersson - Free Book Online Page A

three were telling me this was a bullshit cover. Hunter had been hiding something. If I could find out what, I might be able to get to him.
    I lifted my gaze to Kai’s. “And maybe you could start earning your keep by helping me.”
    Kai shrugged, unaffected as he licked orange fingertips, then pointed to the map on the left. “Check it. So, like, yesterday, before we went off on our latest suicide mission? I was scoping the view with the infrared and then the black light, and then I let the strobes go for a bit because that was totally boss . . .”
    I sighed.
    “What? Anyway, sometimes things are written in, like, invisible ink or black light pens and shit, it’s an old cartographer trick, you know?” But he didn’t wait for my response, instead pulling out a jeweler’s loupe. “And when I put this Betty under the magnifying glass I found this.”
    He pointed to one of the wrongly marked entrances, then handed me the loupe, the same sort I’d used when I was a photographer. Holding it between my thumb and forefinger, I pressed it over the giant dot on the map.
    “A little higher,” he said, crunching. As far as I could tell, Cheetos were his sole nutritional staple.
    Bringing the flashlight closer, I slid the loupe over the paper, pausing when I caught a faint squiggle. One that elongated into an entire word. I drew back. “Pisces?”
    “Don’t look at me, man. I’m a Leo.” He shrugged, then jerked his chin at the marking.
    I bent over the map again. I had a basic knowledge of the Western Zodiac, but those raised in a troop, including Hunter, were ruled by the stars in the sky. Their lineage was tied up with mythology and astrology, as if the constellations themselves were their actual forefathers. If Hunter had tagged the entrance with a star sign—and then erased it—it meant something.
    “So he named the tunnel entrances?”
    “The not-entrances,” Kai corrected. “Totally nutter, right?”
    Totally. Even for an obsessed man like Hunter. “Any others?”
    He pointed to the connecting map. “Here, also erased.”
    I let my eyes travel over the map like a ticker tape, trying to see it, trying not to; moving close, then back again for distance. “What do you think it means?”
    “Dude had a crap sense of celestial navigation.”
    I scowled.
    “I’m serious, man. Looking at this you’d think he couldn’t MapQuest his way through the Universe.”
    I shook my head. “He can map the skies as well as you.”
    He’d done so for me as we lay in each other’s arms beneath a rendering of the constellations. He’d been a bit breathless as he explained about black holes and dead stars and their place in the Universe, and while I liked to think that had a little to do with my naked body warming his, his love for skies had been fierce.
    “Then he was hiding something from someone with full frontal access to that warehouse, man,” Kai said, with a shrug.
    “Warren.” My former troop leader still led the Light—and their campaign against me—even after destroying my life, and Hunter’s. At first Warren had seemed like a sort of mad fairy godfather, but I’d learned the hard way that being Light didn’t necessarily mean being right. Nothing, no one, was allowed to interfere with his troop’s supremacy. He might be on the side of good in this paranormal battlefield, but he was just as ruthless as the Tulpa.
    Then again, Hunter could have been hiding something from Tekla. She was a real Seer; powerful, mystical, and she studied the Universe’s mysteries like medical students studied anatomy. Kai was nothing like her. In his defense, though, he’d never betrayed me like Tekla. She’d recently admitted that she’d been the one to advise Warren to send me to Midheaven—costing me slivers of my soul, my love, and nearly my life.
    “Whatever,” Kai shrugged, popping open a warm can of Mountain Dew. “I done all I can with these. Too bad you didn’t know what your man was up to before you got