Read Online The Twilight Prisoner by Katherine Marsh - Free Book Online

her finger in the direction of the door.
    Jack began to feel exasperated. He took a deep breath. “Euri, I’m alive. You have to understand—”
    â€œYou’re not really alive,” Euri interrupted, her voice growing louder. “You can fly by yourself. You can see ghosts. You’re a freak! But have it your way.” Her pale eyes filled with tears. “Because I’m going!”
    â€œEuri,” Jack protested. But it was too late. With an angry swing of her ponytail, she flew out through one of the windows.
    Jack floated back through the office door to Cora.
    â€œWhat happened to Euri?” she asked.
    â€œShe left,” he said, absently. For a moment, he felt guilty. Euri had been loyal to him, waiting for him to come back, and he had abandoned her for a living girl. But then he thought about what Euri had said—how she had called him a freak. Was that really what she thought of him?
    â€œWe’d better follow her,” said Cora.
    Jack cast an annoyed glance back over his shoulder. “Why?”
    A worried furrow appeared in Cora’s brow. “Do you know how to get back to that stream?”

X | The Haunted Tenement
    As they flew over Central Park after Euri, Jack silently defended himself. I’m not a freak . But he didn’t feel reassured. The starless sky glowed a faint, eerie pink from the city lights and, as he skirted the tops of trees, racing to keep Euri in sight, flocks of starlings burst from the branches, their wings beating in a collective panic.
    â€œIt’s me,” Cora said. “Euri thinks we’re—”
    â€œNo,” Jack interrupted. “It’s not that.” Cora was right—of course Euri was jealous. But he couldn’t bear to hear Cora dismiss the idea of them being together before he had the chance to tell her he liked her. “She’s just being ...” He hesitated. “Euri.”
    â€œHow did she die?”
    â€œShe killed herself.”
    He thought Cora would be surprised, but instead she just sighed. “I could never do that to my mom.”
    â€œYour mom?”
    For a moment, Cora looked flustered. “I mean I wouldn’t do it because I like being alive. But my mom, she’s . . . It’s just the two of us. My dad left us when I was little.”
    Jack nodded, hoping Cora would say more. He realized that he had never met her mom—he had only heard Cora talk to her on the phone.
    A pained look crossed Cora’s face. “If anything ever happened to her, I’d die. I’d keep on living, because that’s what she’d want me to do, but inside I’d be dead.”
    Jack thought about his own mom. “For a little while you’d feel that way. But not forever.”
    â€œMy mom was the one who found out about Chapman,” Cora interrupted, as if she hadn’t heard him. “She told me I was smart, that I could go to school anywhere. She even called Mr. O’Quinn and told him that they should recruit me. She would do anything for me. She’s the only person in the world I can say that about.”
    Jack looked at the string of streetlights below that illuminated Literary Walk—a long tree-lined promenade south of Bethesda fountain—and made it look like a tiny landing strip. He wished they could touch down there and he could tell Cora that he would do anything for her, too.
    â€œWhy did Euri kill herself?” she suddenly asked.
    Jack thought for a minute. “She didn’t get along with her parents.”
    â€œA lot of people don’t,” said Cora sympathetically.
    â€œBut that doesn’t sound like enough of a reason to kill yourself.”
    Jack had to admit that Cora was right. He had always thought there was more to Euri’s story. “I guess she’s a bit of a mystery.”
    â€œIs her name really Euri? Like Eurydice?”
    â€œShe took the name after she died,” Jack explained.