Blurred by Tara Fuller Read Free Book Online

putting out a lit cigarette on my arm.
    I grabbed a few books, leaving behind the ones I’d read the day before, let my backpack slip off of my shoulder, and sat in the floor. I didn’t know what I was looking for yesterday, and still didn’t. A handbook for how to deal with cheating death? A spell to ward off demons? It sounded so freaking stupid when I put the thoughts together like that, but I couldn’t sit around doing nothing, waiting for some dead guy to show up who might have answers.
    I zipped my coat up to fight off the chill consuming me, despite the fact that it was at least eighty degrees in this sweatbox of books, flipped through the two mythology books, and found nothing. Nothing real that applied to me, anyway. Then again, who was I to say what was real? Nothing felt real anymore. For all I knew, Zeus himself could have been laughing down at me right now, a vampire at his side as they plotted the zombie apocalypse.
    I squinted into the last book and found a section on demons. A few sketches. A couple of eyewitness experiences. I froze and ran my finger over one of the drawings. It was one of them. A shadow demon.
    Shadow demons are often associated with poltergeists. Not considered to be ghosts, these demons are generally described as black, shapeless, shadowlike entities that appear quickly out of the corner of your eye. Some people have reported the appearances of shadows like these hovering next to their bed while they sleep. These particular demons tend to feed off of emotions. Fear. Depression. Anger. They—
    I rubbed my eyes and blinked when the letters started to melt together. They what? I looked down at the page again and the words blurred out of focus.
    “Damn it.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting off the headache creeping up on me. A cold prickling pain spread across the inside of my chest, my skull, the walls of my throat. What was wrong with me? I leaned my head against the stack of books behind me and stared up through the towering shelves. One of the skylights was just an aisle over, so you could see the dust motes twirling through some of the stray rays of sunshine that made it over into my section. If only those rays would bring a little warmth my way. I was starting to wonder what it was going to take for me to shake this chill.
    My phone started to buzz in my pocket and I flinched. I looked at the screen and sighed. Shit.
    “Hey, Dad,” I said.
    “Hey, Dad?” he seethed. “Where the hell are you? I know you’re not in class. Your principal just called me. Again.”
    I let the back of my head thump against the shelf of books behind me. “I’m…at the library.”
    “Don’t lie to me, Cash.”
    “I’m not lying,” I said. “I really am at the library.”
    “I don’t care if you’re in church talking to the pope. You are supposed to be in class.” Something slammed down against his desk on the other end and I flinched. “Richard’s son got accepted to Harvard today. Harvard. And what is my son doing? Acting like a lunatic. Skipping school. Pissing away every opportunity to have a successful life that I give him.”
    My jaw clenched until my teeth hurt. “Maybe you should adopt Richard’s son, then. You guys could swap since I’m so disappointing.”
    Dad’s chair squeaked and he sighed. I could picture him leaned back in his leather chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he couldn’t endure another second of listening to me. “Trust me, Richard wouldn’t put up with your shit like I do. You’d be in a military academy by Monday. Hell, maybe that’s what I should have done a long time ago. Maybe I’m the failure here.”
    “Look, Dad—”
    “No, you look,” he said. “We had a deal. You broke it. I’m calling Dr. Farber.”
    I sat up. “The shrink?”
    “Don’t start with me. You’re going.”
    “But Dad—”
    “Get to class.”
    I opened my mouth, but he hung up on me before I could get the words out. I stared at my phone for a