Never to Sleep Read Online Free Page B

hearing him say it. “My point is that this isn’t a fair trade no matter how the U.S. dollar stacks up against whatever the Netherworld currency is.”
    Luca exhaled softly, and his hand tightened around mine. “Sophie, we are the Netherworld currency.”
    My heart did a somersault in my chest. “What does that mean?”
    “That means that we aren’t safe. I don’t know what you are, but I can’t actually control the dead, no matter what people think about necromancers, so we—”
    “Whoa.” I pulled him to a stop again, frowning up at him. Maybe I wasn’t the crazy one at all. “I only understood part of that sentence, but it sounded like you said you don’t know what I am .”
    Luca stared at me through narrowed eyes, like he was studying me. Just like he had when he’d pulled me off the floor at school. At my real school. “You don’t know either, do you?”
    “I don’t know anything right now, except what I am. I’m a sophomore, and a dancer, and a student council member, and a dance committee member, and—”
    Luca laughed. “Sophie, you’re much more than all of that.”
    “Um, thanks.” I guess . “What does that mean, exactly?”
    “I don’t know.” He frowned. “I’d hate to guess without more information, but I can tell from touching you that you’re not human.” He held up our joined hands. “Not entirely, anyway.”
    I pulled my hand from his grip. “Okay, being hot will only get you so far, and you should know that telling a girl she’s not entirely human is not considered a compliment. At least, not in my world.” Though I was seriously starting to doubt he was a native of my world. Or even planet earth.
    “Sophie, look around. Pay special attention to the man-eating vines and the fact that we’re no longer in your world. Think back to the man with no eyes. With all that in mind, does it really seem so crazy to think that you may not be entirely human?” He shrugged, and though his eyes sparkled, his grin looked almost shy. “I’m not.”
    “You’re not…human?”
    “Well, I am human. But I’m more.”
    More? “What are you?” I wasn’t convinced that “more” was even possible, but the evidence slithering across the floor toward us was pretty damn convincing of…something. Maybe we were both crazy. Maybe we were really sharing a delusion in some real-world psych ward. Maybe my ex-boyfriend was in the room next door.
    Maybe Kaylee was actually the sanest person I knew.
    I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head—that was the scariest thought I’d ever had.
    “I’m a necromancer,” Luca said, and I opened my eyes to look at him. “But that doesn’t mean what most people think it means.”
    “Well, I’m not most people. I have no idea what that means.”
    Luca chuckled, and we started picking our way down the hall again, carefully avoiding vines. “Thanks to movies and popular fiction, most people think necromancers can control the dead. Of course, most people also think necromancy is fiction.”
    “But it’s not?” Control the dead? What did that even mean? How can you control something that isn’t even alive?
    “Necromancy is as real as I am.”
    I lifted one brow at him and stepped over a tangle of vines wrapped around something still squirming within the knot. “I’m kind of questioning my own sanity at the moment, so I’m not convinced you’re real right now either.”
    Another laugh. “Necromancy is real. I’m real, you’re real, and all this is real.” He spread his arms to take in the deadly vines, their rank, leaking juices, and the building they seemed determined to take over from the inside out. “Normally, I’d try to acclimate you to this new reality slowly—well, normally, I wouldn’t have told you any of this—but since we’re here, obviously, I think we’re in a sort of deep immersion situation. Like when you move to a foreign country, to learn the language.”
    “Okay, so what is a necromancer?” That word had