Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

aims the shotgun at her, and she takes a deep breath, waiting for him to pull the trigger. She always thought she’d be relieved in that moment but instead she feels the most intense regret.
    She’s spent too much time scared. She should have gone to West Virginia with Sally. She shouldn’t have locked them in a cabin she knew would one day fail to protect them.
    She thinks of all the notebooks filled with her sister’s handwriting. The trips had always been a lie.
    Calvin stares at Margie. “You care about me?”
    She doesn’t answer, just clenches her jaw as her cheeks burn with her own stupidity for trusting a stranger.
    He steps closer to her, urgent. “Would you kill me for her?” He says it like they’re the only two people in the room. As if one brother isn’t dead and the other asking for her and her sister’s murder.
    Margie doesn’t have to think before answering. “Yes.”
    Calvin pulls the trigger. Outside a few birds scream and scatter into the trees.
    “They wouldn’t have,” Calvin finally chokes out. “I’ve never meant enough to them. Ever.” Smoke twines around him, pungent and sweet. “Jeremy was wrong. It should mean something. Killing someone—I need it to still mean something. Or else everything in the world falls apart.”
    Next to Margie, Sally rolls to her hands and knees and beats at Beard’s shot-shredded chest, blood splattering her fists and arms, caking her hair. It’s not enough she’s given up the world because of the dead, but to have been asked to give up this place, and the dreams it held, because of the living is too much.
    Margie stares at Calvin. He pushes the gun into her hands, guiding the barrel until it’s wedged into the hollow of his collarbone. She doesn’t understand how everything’s changed again. How one minute she was death and then she was life and now she holds death in her hands again.
    “I understand,” he says. “I know you’ll never trust me now. I understand that, and maybe that’s the way it goes. My death can mean something too.”
    He pushes her finger onto the trigger. Behind her Sally finally sags against the wall, sobbing as her fingers curl on themselves, slick and bright.
    Margie climbs to her feet, shoulder screaming as torn muscle protests the movement. Clutching the gun, she walks to the table where the maps are spread out, blood now spattered along the mountains and towns. She tries to wipe it away, but only ends up smearing them red.
    She’d wanted to keep her sister safe. She’d wanted to keep a part of the world the way it was, before the change time, for Sally.
    But she knows, now, there’s no escape from the monsters. They’ll always be there; you just choose to live with them or not. Sometimes you have to plan for another day—sometimes that’s all you have. “You said you’ve been to West Virginia,” she says. “You’ll show it to us?”

Red Run
by Kami Garcia
    o one drove on Red Run at night. People went fifteen miles out of their way to avoid the narrow stretch of dirt that passed for a road, between the single stoplight towns of Black Grove and Julette. Red Run was buried in the Louisiana backwoods, under the gnarled arms of oaks tall enough to scrape the sky. When Edie’s granddaddy was young, bootleggers used it to run moonshine down to New Orleans. It was easy to hide in the shadows of the trees, so dense they blocked out even the stars. But there was still a risk. If they were caught, the sheriff would hang them from those oaks, leaving their bodies for the gators, which is how the road earned its name.
    The days of bootlegging were long gone, but folks had other reasons for steering clear of Red Run after dark. The road was haunted. A ghost had claimed eight lives in the last twenty years—Edie’s brother’s just over a year ago. No one wanted to risk a run-in with the blue-eyed boy. No one except Edie.
    She was looking for him.
    Tonight she was going to kill a ghost.
    Edie didn’t realize how