Cinder by Jessica Sorensen Read Free Book Online Page B

the dead person enters the classroom, glancing around at the art on the wall with a perplexed look.
     
    Again, Mr. Morgan seems oblivious. His forehead creases and then scurries over to his desk. “How about I show you,” he says as he opens his desk drawer. He retrieves a pencil and paper from the drawer and starts sketching while the dead girl just stares at me. There is a mark on her neck like a rope burn, the tips of her hair stained with blood. As I look closer, I recognize her features as one of the girls I saw in the newspaper; one that was murdered a week ago, her body found near the forest.
     
    “Help me,” she says in a haunting hollow voice as she stares at me with a distant expression. “Help us… free us from the pain. He’s got our souls trapped, Ember. And he plans on trapping a lot more and then destroying us all.”
     
    I want to ask her what she’s talking about, but what about Mr. Morgan? What would he say if I started talking aloud? If I told him I could see the dead?
     
    Debating what to do, I start to open my mouth, deciding that looking insane might be worth the risk to find out what’s going on. But as soon as my lips part, she disappears, vanishing into thin air without so much as a sound.
     
    “I’m much better at drawing what I mean than trying to explain it,” Mr. Morgan continues to talk, while I stare at the spot where the girl vanished.
     
    He’s got people’s souls trapped? Like someone is stealing souls and keeping them? Or is it something different? And who’s he?
     
    As my thoughts keep racing, Mr. Morgan glides the pencil effortlessly across the paper. He makes one last stroke then drops the pencil down on the desk before holding up the drawing. My jaw just about hits the floor, but I smash my lips together to conceal my shock. It’s a drawing that looks almost identical to my grandmother’s necklace; the one Cameron has and swears my Grandmother stole from him. The problem is, I have no idea what the color of it is, so I can’t be one-hundred percent certain.
     
    A warning goes off inside me not to utter that I know where or what it is. “So it’s a necklace,” I state the obvious.
     
    He nods and hands me the drawing. “It’s believed to have the blood of the original leader of the Grim Reapers, Altarius Vinceton. He created it to protect himself from his own kind, making it out of Chrysoprase and sealing it with the blood of himself, which was the more powerful of the two elements so it made the green in the Chrysoprase turn a dark red.”
     
    Dark red. I stare at the drawing, the lines forming a near replica of the necklace I once owned. It has to be my grandmother’s necklace. “But why would this Altarius guy need to protect himself from the Reapers if he was the leader of them? Wouldn’t that make him the boss?”
     
    “If only things were that easy,” he tells me. “If being the leader meant you never had to worry about anything, but unfortunately for Altarius, he knew the evil within himself and therefore understood the evil that lay in Reapers, all of them. No matter what they tell you.”
     
    What a convenient little story he’s got going on here. The abrupt reappearance of Cameron’s voice startles me so badly that I jump.
     
    Mr. Morgan gives me a startled look. “Are you okay?”
     
    “Yeah, I’m fine.” I tuck a fallen strand of my hair behind my ear, giving myself a moment to get myself together before I speak again. “So, you think this ambulate umbra could protect me from the Reapers killing me? Or is it going to protect me from something else because I thought they couldn’t kill me.” Only drive me crazy. Or if the book I was reading is right, steal my soul.
     
    Not all Reapers want to drive you crazy, Cameron says. I want your mind completely intact. In fact, I find you very fascinating… now stealing your soul on the other hand. Please tell me more about this because I’d love to try.
     
    Like you already don’t