Bone Cold: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 2) by Cady Vance Read Free Book Online

meant. But right now wasn’t the time to explain our whole history to an almost-stranger, and I hoped Laura would keep her mouth shut as well. There was something off about George. That much was very clear from her interaction with Wanda.
    Maybe I could try to get Wanda to share her intel the next time I visited the shop. She clearly knew something about this girl that she wasn’t letting on.
    “Sorry, we’ve gotta run,” I told George, pressing a palm against the rough door to exit the shop. “Something’s come up. It’s urgent.”
    “Yeah, I heard that. It has to do with what happened to that chick last night, doesn’t it?”
    “We can’t really talk about it,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
    George crossed her arms over her chest and jutted out her chin. “You brought me along and had me get a tarot card reading from her .” She yanked her thumb at Wanda, who was watching the exchange with hawkish eyes. “The least you could do is fill me in on whatever the hell is going on in this town. And don’t tell me it has nothing to do with the dark arts, because I sure as hell won’t believe you.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “The dark arts?”
    “Magic, sorcery, alchemy, whatever you want to call it.” She waved a finger back and forth between me and Laura. “I heard about your ghost business. You know they call you the Queen of Weird? Anyway, Laura let it slip that she was in on the whole thing. And by whole thing, I mean that your business was a massive con.”
    Eyes wide, I whirled on my friend. “Laura, what the hell?”
    “I don’t know. It just came out.” Laura nibbled on her bottom lip. “She already kind of suspected something weird was up, so all I did was confirm it.”
    Sighing, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe Laura. First, she’d told Nathan way before I was ready to share, and now George was in on it, too. If she kept up the secret blabbing, everyone in school would know I was a total con artist by the end of the week. We barely knew George. How could we be certain that she’d keep this information private? Not that it really mattered now, I had to remind myself. Mom was back, and I didn’t need to rely on my fake spirit business anymore.
    And I sure as hell didn’t miss the thrill of the con. Not one tiny bit. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.
    “Don’t worry,” George said before I could form a coherent response. “I won’t tell anyone. Just as long as you let me come with you to put out this raging fire you’re running straight into.”
    I cocked my head. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you want to come along to a con? Because we don’t really work that way.”
    “I don’t care about your so-called cons.” George tugged on her cross necklace and motioned toward the door. “So, lucky for me, this isn’t one.”
    I opened my mouth to speak, but I was at a loss for words.
    “How do you know that?” Laura asked in a low voice.
    “Intuition.” George grinned and shoved past me and Laura, pushing open the heavy door. Wind gusted into the store, icy droplets peppering my skin and clinging to my hair. The door slammed shut behind her as she stepped out into the storm, and Laura dug her nails into my arm.
    She hissed when she spoke. “George isn’t a shaman. Unless my powers have stopped working.”
    “No, she isn’t, so what the hell is she?”
    One of our many powers is the ability to identify a shaman the second we lay eyes on him. It’s a strange tugging sensation I barely notice now because I see Laura and my mom on a daily basis. But I know when it’s there, and I’ve never felt that sensation when I’ve looked at George. Or Wanda for that matter.
    “I know what she is,” Wanda’s voice slithered the short distance across the store. I’d been aware of her eavesdropping on every word of our conversation. I just hoped she wouldn’t start passing on the rumor that Holly Bennett was a con artist, following in the footsteps of her fugitive