Dweller on the Threshold Read Online Free Page B

fault—”
    “My daughter, can you—”
    The voices swelled as the ghosts’ emotions mixed with the pain of the wounded. The combined weight took me to my knees, the crack of bone on the hard floor loud despite my jeans. My senses began to shut down out of pure self-preservation. In the back of my mind, I heard Fred yelling, heard Phro cursing…
    I managed to look up only to see larvae, the lowest of the low on the spirit food chain, hovering over the more devastated of the victims. Fury galvanized me into fighting the empathic weakness as I slowly climbed to my feet and fought to rebuild the mental shields I usually kept in place. I waved off an orderly who had rushed to help me.
    “Hey you two, ignore those spirits, because there are worse ones.” I pointed up and watched as Phro and Fred both scowled and began shooing the larvae out of the hallway. A few larvae in a hospital were normal, but the number of creatures here alarmed me. Psychic buzzards, bubble-shaped and a sick-colored grey, the relentless beings formed a specific function in the spirit realms—feeding on the scraps of magical waste, much like worms in the physical dimension. But they also liked to attach themselves to sick humans and hurry the process for the dying. “Come on. Let’s find the witch and bring her back to spell the larvae out. I don’t want them munching on my sister.”
    “Nasty little buggers.” Fred shuddered, pushing away from the hand of a beseeching ghost. “There shouldn’t be this many lost spirits, either. I want out of here.”
    I tried to shake off my anger as we left the hospital. The fresh air and warm sunlight helped. I needed to focus.
    Elsa once told me she thought I’d been given extra strength to fight the monsters. That I’d been given the ability to peel dimensional layers to see them. My sister had always believed it my job to find the bad guys, like some comic book superhero.
    At puberty, when most girls were going through the normal routine of bodily changes, I went through those and so much more. I became something other than human. So I sought out the lower rungs of hidden society because somewhere out there, one of the creatures had to know what I was.
    I sure as hell didn’t.

Chapter Two
    Tracking the witch turned out to be easy. I found her trying to climb Elsa’s stockade fence. In the daytime. When anyone could see her . I didn’t know it was her at first so I climbed out of my Jeep, stalked over and yanked the woman down just before her leg swung over.
    I found myself looking at the most pale, delicate person I’d ever seen. The tingle of electricity in my hands told me right away that she was a being of magic.
    “Oh goodness.” She sputtered and struggled briefly, then began muttering under her breath, all the while staring down at me with huge, curious eyes. They were so wide they took up most of her face—the kind of eyes that made grown men weep and buy stupid flowers.
    I didn’t like her.
    But I did put her down just as a small flame burst to life in a patch of grass next to my right foot. I stomped it out quickly before the unusually hot sun and dry conditions could spread it. I lifted a brow as the woman kept muttering. A spell no doubt. And not a very good one. Ignoring the witch for a second, I looked over her shoulder and narrowed my eyes to let the veil between worlds slide apart. It was like peeling an orange. I kind of folded back this layer of reality to look into the next. I could keep going if needed, but I didn’t have to go very far to meet the gaze of the small woman’s spirit guide.
    “Hey! What are you looking at?” The witch actually managed to sound both indignant and demanding. She had wispy yellow hair, stood all of five feet, and despite her delicate appearance, was seriously curvy. She reminded me of a painting I’d seen of a Victorian maiden draped over one of those ancient, puffy chaises.
    Phro snorted, loud and unladylike.
    Miss Big Eyes actually