Spirits in the Park Read Online Free

opening in pain, before falling over to land face-first in the dirt. There, he lies still.
    The world slows around her as her beloved bleeds into the ground before her. In the center of the busy traffic circle stands a man with a pistol in his hand, the horse-drawn carriages passing in front of him, hiding, then revealing him, over and over again. The smoke from the gun obscures his face, but something about the way he carries himself is familiar to her.
    â€œMeester,” Tackapausha whipsers next to her, his fierce voice promising murder or worse, and she realizes that the man behind the pistol smoke must be Harry Meester, who had always been her friend. So many betrayals, it tears at her heart . . . but at the moment she cannot think about the man with the pistol. She needs to get to her husband. But before they can cover two feet, a brilliant blue light shoots up before them, cutting off their view of the city. They bounce right off it as if it were stone. Throwing themselves against the barrier, she and Tackapausha hammer and shout, but they cannot break through. The trap has been sprung and she is caught in its snare. She drops to her knees, reaching up to clutch at her wampum necklace as the tears begin to fall unchecked . . .
    The roaring returned, drowning out that heartbreaking sight as Rory was pushed onward. In the midst of his sorrow at the murder of Olathe’s beloved, a glimmer of recognition beckoned. He’d heard of Kieft’s midnight trek into the park before; the magician Hex had tried to trick Rory into opening the Trap just to get at that same secret. And this woman knew where it was hidden! But he barely had time to dwell on his discovery before he tumbled into the final memory . . .
    She runs through the woods, the necklace dangling from her hands. The man chasing her is near; she can hear the disturbance in the brush behind her. She does not have much time. She knows it will be her death if he catches her. She has uncovered Kieft’s secrets and her life is forfeit. If only she had understood what she had seen up there on the mountain. She thinks of the sheet of parchment she took from the cave, the one treasure she had recognized. Before the man chasing her gets too close, she can use the magic it teaches to protect herself. But the price is steep and she might not even survive the invocation. Yet she can think of no other way out.
    She never should have set out from the Munsee camp alone. But she couldn’t stay there. No one seemed to blame her, but they couldn’t look at her, either, and she understands why. Tackapausha had sunk into a deep depression; the death of his son and the betrayal by his friend hit him hard. He had begun to speak bitterly about revenge, which made Olathe unbearably sad. Through the gods’ treachery, the wars between Munsee and Newcomer will come again, laying waste to Mannahatta. Maybe Kieft’s secret hidden in the high reaches of the Great Hill, incomprehensible as it may be to her, would be the key to averting catastrophe. After all, it seems a bit too coincidental to her: Kieft hides his boxes of strange items in the cave the night before all of Central Park is encased in an impassable barrier? Far too convienent for her liking.
    But the frightening truth is that there is no one left for her to tell about what she’d seen up on the mountain. She is all alone now. She grasps at one slim hope, the last resort of last resorts before she turns to the parchment in her hand. She will leave a trail behind for the one person she swore never to talk to again: her father. Perhaps when the Trap is opened, whenever that may be, he will come looking for her. It is unlikely, given how the two of them left matters, but it is all she has to hold on to. After everything, she still loves him; maybe he still loves her as well. It isn’t much, but she knows no other option with her pursuer so close behind.
    She closes her eyes to concentrate, setting a