Dread Nemesis of Mine Read Online Free

imagined Elyssa's athletic curves pressing
tight against the scant outfit and felt a blush creeping up my
neck. "Um, actually I was thinking of something else."
    " You want to try it on?" She winked.
"I'm sure you'd look sexy."
    I laughed uneasily. "Exactly." I took her arm
and led her down the sidewalk and away from the distraction.
"Actually, I remembered something you told me about this place when
I first arrived. About how this place exists in our world and
somewhere else."
    "What about it?"
    "Nightliss's people—angels, or whatever you
want to call them—built the framework for this place, right? And
supernaturals have added to it over time? What if the Grotto is
partly in the same place the angels come from? What if that out
there"—I jabbed a finger at the sky—"is the realm of angels?"
     
     
     

Chapter
3
     
    It was Elyssa's turn to stop dead in her
tracks. She flicked her gaze to the innocent-looking sky
overhead.
    "Freaky, right?" I said.
    She nodded slowly, eyes never leaving the
clouds, as if waiting for a host of angels to burst from behind
them and yell, "Surprise!"
    "If the environment we see outside the Grotto
really belongs to their world, it must look a lot like our own," I
said.
    Elyssa recovered and motioned me to follow
her. "Even if we are partly in their plane, the Grotto is
barricaded off from it. I read the history of the place. Looked at
images with only the original buildings here. When you get to the
edges of the Grotto, there's endless water to the north side, and
thick forest on the others. A magical barrier won't let you go any
further. The Arcanes tried for years and never succeeded. They
ended up using an obfuscation spell so gray mist hides most of the
view, supposedly to keep people with more curiosity than brains
from trying to break through."
    "Or to keep anything on the other side of the
barrier from looking in? You said this place is a nexus, like a
bubble in between." I imagined it as a full-scale snow globe with
alien eyes peering in at us.
    She looked inside a dress shop as we walked
past it, her eyes settling on one of the complicated Victorian era
dresses inside. "I guess it's like a pocket dimension. Maybe this
place isn't even visible from the other side."
    "Or maybe the sky and everything else is
illusion. For all we know, we might be on the moon."
    She chuckled. "I guess we're safe then."
    "So there's no danger of an invasion sweeping
through here?"
    "Not unless they built in a back door we
don't know about." She shrugged. "Anything is possible, I
guess."
    I grimaced, imagining an army of insane
blonde women like Daelissa lining up to raid the Grotto. "The other
thing that occurs to me is how you called this place a nexus . Didn't you tell me Daelissa blamed the destruction of
the Grand Nexus for turning her people into those creepy cherub
things and stranding her here?"
    Elyssa threw up a hand as if warding the
memories away. "Ugh. I really don't want to talk about the husks,
cherubs, whatever you want to call those nasty little things."
    The husks—or cherubs as I called them—were
the creepy infantile remains of the angels caught up in the
destruction of the Grand Nexus, according to Vadaemos. They wobbled
around on nubby feet, like toddlers with oversized, ungainly heads
and little T-rex arms. But the shiny pitch black skin and nearly
featureless head hid horrors beneath. Sometimes when they shrieked,
the outline of a face seemed to appear beneath the surface.
    I shook my head to clear the images of our
last encounter with the cherubs and found my way back to the point
I wanted to make. "What makes this place different than Thunder
Rock or El Dorado? Was it not connected to this Grand Nexus of
theirs? And what about La Casona and the other functioning
relics?"
    Elyssa quirked an eyebrow. "I have no idea."
She tapped a finger to her chin. "But I have a feeling we should
pump Nightliss for answers the next time we see her. After all,
Foreseeance Forty-Three Eleven