Fairy Thief by Johanna Frappier Read Free Book Online Page A

face – and gasped.
    Through the ghost’s head, Saffron saw the rounding flash of a far-off lighthouse. She craned her neck and got into the face of the ghost girl, moving as close as she possibly could without teetering over the edge. Both girls — one dead, one alive — were now on the precipice, inches away from indifferent boulders, jagged rock and ravaging sea.
    Saffron was almost nose-to-ear with the ghost when she yelled, “Hey!” The wind blustered through Saffron’s hair and pitched her towards the cliff’s edge. She stretched one foot out quickly to widen her stance and keep her balance.
    The ghost didn’t respond.
    Saffron screamed right at her again, with such force she tasted copper in the back of her throat.
    Nothing.
    Saffron slumped. What could she do? It’s wasn’t like the ghost was ignoring her. Saffron could tell — the ghost was far away. Even though the spirit girl with the raggedy dress and hanging arm was right there – her consciousness was a hundred years gone. “I’m so sorry,” Saffron muttered, but the greedy wind took her words and swallowed them. She put her hand over her mouth and finally let herself cry as the ghost girl’s pain sucked her in.
    The ghost had been staring down. She seemed terribly mesmerized by the turbulent waves. Suddenly, she gasped. Her head shot up.
    Static prickled the air and left an acid tang on Saffron’s tongue.
    The ghost girl’s head swiveled around on her neck. She looked straight into Saffron’s eyes.
    Saffron cried harder. “Oh, I’m so, so sorry.” She fought the urge to run with everything she had in her. She struggled not to be consumed by the bottomless, edacious black eyes that threatened to overtake her as they studied first her body, her hair, then eye-to-eye. Saffron almost buckled under the heavy scrutiny. She held her hands out to the ghost in a placating manner. She whispered, “You don’t have to be like this.”
    The spirit didn’t blink, but her glance shifted almost imperceptibly from Saffron’s eyes to her lips, as she watched the words form.
    “ You don’t have to suffer anymore. You’re like, suspending yourself in time, or something, and you don’t have to. Look at you, in agony – you don’t have to feel like that! I know what I did back then was wrong, but you don’t have to suffer now.”
    The ghost blinked once.
    Good, Saffron thought. She can hear me. She can understand me. “I can…. I can…. I can feel your pain! I want to help you. I need to tell you — you are…dead. You don’t have to be like this anymore. You can get a new life. A better life.” Saffron grimaced. “And I won’t be in it. You don’t have to worry about me screwing up your life again. You should go now – you’ll be so much happier….”
    The ghost raised an eyebrow. Her lips parted as if to speak, then closed again as she continued to stare silently at Saffron.
    “ Look, don’t ask me how I know all of this. But you can trust me this time. You need to…. Whoa – whataya doing?” Now Saffron held her hands out to stop the ghost.
    The girl had stopped listening to Saffron and had taken a step towards her. If the ghost girl had any substance, they could’ve touched noses. She was staring past Saffron, over Saffron’s right shoulder, at the forest. Her tears had mercifully stopped flowing and the expression of unmitigated torture had lifted at last.
    Saffron saw the tiniest pinpoint of light reflected in the girl’s eyes. The light grew larger, until her pupils were no longer black, but two great mirrors of light. Saffron spun around. What was that? What was out there?
    The ghost moved through Saffron to get to the forest.
    It was a sensation Saffron would never forget. First, she felt all the air being sucked out of her body. Then she felt the girl inside her, and every emotion the girl had ever felt filled Saffron’s soul and poured out of her skin. Then Saffron smelled cut green grass, and hot sulfa, followed by