October Girls: Crystal & Bone Read Online Free Page B

kept his hand on her arm, letting the heat flow from his palm and into her body. She tried to focus on Pettigrew’s face, his boyish grin beneath the cock-eyed baseball cap, the green eyes that sparkled. But all she could see were the half-moons of grease under Pettigrew’s nails.
    Dempsey was a glossy Goth, the kind of man who ordered products out of Gentleman’s Quarterly and knew how to use them. This dude was no dude. He was an
auteur
.
    “My mom’s waiting for me,” she said, pushing away from the table and heading for the door.
    His touch lingered on her skin. Somewhere above her came the silver tinkle of a spider’s laughter.

Chapter 4
     
    “U nlawful possession,” the Judge intoned.
    The tomb was dank and mossy, but a cool wind passed through and stirred the stale air. Sconces filled with burning oil dotted the stone walls, and the firelight licked at the darkness as if it were a foul-tasting liquid. The odors of mushrooms and rot were accented with a sweet tinge of roses and carnations. Flowers could never mask death, no matter how high you piled them.
    “I was only over for an hour.” Bone blinked, with gossamer eyelids. She was tired of gossamer. It was near the top of the list of things she hated about being dead. Gossamer was so hard to accessorize.
    “Second offense.” The Judge’s face was hidden inside a dark hood, and he wore a monk’s robe billowy enough to hide his true shape. She wondered whether he was naked underneath, or if he was even there at all. He sat behind a tall podium carved of oak and alabaster.
    “Well, I only had a narrow crack, and I had to hurry,” Bone said. “They told me I could skip back and forth as much as I wanted until my trial was over.”
    “Duly noted.”
    “And because the crack was closing fast, I couldn’t get all of me through there, so I jumped into the spider.” The excuse sounded lame even to her.
    The Judge, who sounded a bit like James Earl Jones on helium, shuffled some papers that crackled like sheepskin. Apparently computers hadn’t made it to the afterlife yet. “Bonnie Faye Whitehart, you are trying the patience of this court.”
    “Look, it’s not like I possessed a human,” she said. “This is the spiritual equivalent of jaywalking.”
    “Just because you’re a Tweener doesn’t give you the right to play God.”
    Score one for Shadowface.
“The jury said I had a free pass.”
    “This is a probationary period,” the Judge said in his ominous squeak. “You’re not innocent yet.”
    “I thought they called this ‘The Graveyard of Second Chances.’”
    “Which is why you should be on your best behavior.”
    Darkmeet has no trouble sending poor lost souls like me to burn in hell for an eternity. But slip into a spider for a few minutes and you’d think the golden stairway was crumbling and St. Peter was asking Judas for his hand in gay marriage.
    “Okay, let’s plea bargain,” she said.
    “You have nothing to offer the court.”
    “Hold on a second.” She rummaged in her purse and brought out the pack of Milk Duds she’d swiped from the Tan Banana & Movie Emporium. “Processed sugar, milk chocolate, and caramel. Sinfully delicious.”
    The mouth inside the hood audibly licked its lips. “Smuggling contraband across borders is a serious crime.”
    She cracked the small cardboard box and let the chocolate aroma drift in the chamber. “I’d sure hate to be sent gently down the stream without sharing these.”
    “Up the river, you mean.”
    “Whatever.”
    She popped a Milk Dud in her mouth. The sweetness flooded her tongue, almost making her sick. She smiled despite the nausea, smacking her teeth. “Mmm. Nothing says ‘All is forgiven’ like a Milk Dud.”
    The Judge leaned forward, sniffing the air. “Perhaps we could show some leniency. You were a hit-and-run, after all. Still figuring out your way around.”
    She palmed three of the caramel doots and gave them a little toss. The hood tilted up and down,