Read Online Twilight by Meg Cabot - Free Book Online Page A

About Paul.”
    “What’s that little pisser been up to now?”
    Clearly there is very little love lost between Dr. Slaski and his grandson.
    “Nothing,” I said. “Yet. At least, so far as I can tell. It’s what he says he can do.”
    “What’s that, then?” Dr. Slaski asked. “And this better be good. Family Feud comes on in five minutes.”
    Good God. Was I, I wondered, going to end up wheel-chair bound and addicted to game shows when I was Dr. Slaski’s age? Because Dr. Slaski—or Mr. Slater, as Paul wanted everyone to think of him—is also a mediator, one who’d gone to the ends of the earth looking to find answers about his unusual talent. Apparently, he’d found what he was looking for in the tombs of ancient Egypt.
    Problem is, nobody believed him. Not about the existence of a race of people whose sole duty it was to guide the spirits of the dead to their ultimate destinations, and certainly not that he, Dr. Slaski, was one of them. The old man’s many writings on the subject, most of them self-published, went ignored by the scientific and academic communities, and were now gathering dust in plastic bins beneath his grandson’s bed.
    Worse, Dr. Slaski’s own family seem to be trying to sweep him under the bed, as well, Paul’s father even having gone so far as to change his name to avoid being
    associated with the old man.
    And what had Dr. Slaski gotten for all his efforts? A terminal illness and his grandson, Paul, for company. The illness, or so Dr. Slaski claimed, had been brought on by spending too much time in the “shadowland”—that way station between this world and the next. And Paul?
    Well, he had brought Paul on all by himself.
    I guess he had a reason to feel bitterly toward the human race. But why he felt that way toward Paul, I was only just learning.
    I tried to start out slowly, so he’d be sure to understand.
    “Paul says mediators—”
    “Shifters.” Dr. Slaski insisted people like him and Paul and me are more properly called shifters, for our (in my case, newly discovered) ability to shift between the dimensions of the living and the dead. “Shifters, girl, I told you before. Don’t make me say it again.”
    “Shifters,” I corrected myself. “Paul says that shifters have the ability to time travel.”
    “Indeed,” Dr. Slaski said. “What of it?”
    I gaped at him. I couldn’t help it. If he’d hit me in the back of the head with a piñata stick, I could not have been more surprised. “You… you knew about this?”
    “Of course I know about it,” Dr. Slaski said acidly. “Who do you think wrote the paper that gave that fool grandson of mine the idea?”
    This is what I got for not paying more attention during my mediator sessions with Paul.
    “But why didn’t you tell me?”
    Dr. Slaski looked at me very sarcastically. “You didn’t ask,” he said.
    I sat there like a lump staring at him. I couldn’t believe it. All this time… all this time I’d had another skill I’d known nothing about. But what would I have ever needed the ability to time travel for, anyway? I guess there were a few bad hair days I wouldn’t have minded going back and fixing, but other than that…
    Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit me.
    My dad. I could go back through time and save my dad.
    No. No, it didn’t work that way. It couldn’t. Because if it could… if it could…
    Then everything would be different.
    Everything.
    Dr. Slaski coughed, hard. I shook myself and touched his shoulder.
    “Dr. Slaski? Are you all right?”
    “What do you think?” Dr. Slaski demanded, not very graciously. “I’ve got six months to live. Maybe less, if those damned doctors have their way and keep bleeding the life out of me. You think I’m all right?”
    “I…” It was selfish of me, I knew, but I didn’t have time to listen to his health problems. I needed to know more about this new power he—and possibly I—had.
    “How?” I demanded eagerly. “How do you do it?