Krysta's Curse by Tara West Read Free Book Online

glowing eyes nearly jumped out of his
sockets. “Oh, no. We ain’t goin’ anywhere near that coffee
house.”
    “Why not? She might need someone to talk
to.”
    “Honey.” Brow’s raised, Gertrude shook her
head. “We spirits ain’t all the same.”
    “You’re not?” Scratching my head, I wondered
why. I mean, weren’t they all in the same ghostly dimension?
    Ed held out his palms. “Gertie and me, we
died natural-like. We was expectin’ ta die.”
    “That girl, though.” Scowling, Gertrude
shook her head. “She didn’t die like us.”
    “Why should that matter?” I was majorly
confused. It shouldn’t have mattered how they died. Ed and Gertrude
could still go comfort her.
    Looking at each other, they both nodded
before turning back to me and answering simultaneously. “Well, I
guess you’d have ta be dead ta understand.”
    Then Ed did something I’d never seen a ghost
do. He started pacing, hands clasped behind his back. I felt like a
little kid about to get a big fatherly lecture. “Ya see, Emmy, she
wasn’t ready ta go, so she’s not takin’ death real well.”
    Gertrude wagged a finger. “She’s in a real
dark place and we ain’t goin’ in there.”
    “A dark place?” What was this dark place
like? Was it cold, lonely, scary? My heart clenched, thinking of
Sunny’s bleak existence in the afterworld. “How do I get her
out?”
    The ghosts shared a nervous glance.
    Ed shrugged. “The thing is…we don’t really
know.”
    Chewing on her lower lip, Gertrude turned to
me with grim determination in her iridescent eyes. “Maybe if we
punished that boy who kilt’ her, that would be a start.”
    ****
    “Hey, how you doing?” Lying supine on her
bed, AJ tossed a softball into the air. The ball barely scraped the
ceiling with each throw before falling straight in her outstretched
palm.
    AJ had a gift for making the ball go
wherever she wanted. Sometimes I thought she inherited a little of
her grandma’s gift for teleporting objects. Unlike Sophie and me,
all of the women in AJ’s family had some kind of gift. Actually, I
never knew any women in my family. It’s been just Dad and me. My
worthless excuse for a mom left us last summer after the money
started running low. Her leaving wasn’t much of a loss, anyway. She
was never really a loving mother. I could count on one hand the
number of times she’d hugged me.
    But all of that seemed so long ago, so
unimportant now that I had much bigger problems.
    “Not so good.” Slumping into AJ’s bean bag
chair on the floor, I rubbed my throbbing skull. The pain spread
through my shoulders and neck to the back of my head. Every nerve
in my body felt like a coiled spring.
    I rested my head against the wall. Looking
toward the ceiling, I thought AJ had installed some new kind of
lighting. I blinked once, before realizing I was looking at two
pair of dangling legs. Then I remembered Ed and Gertrude said they
were going to tag along. They bent over and waved at me, two huge
goofy grins plastered on their faces.
    You know, I was really starting to like
them.
    AJ stopped throwing the ball and sat up.
    I gasped, thinking she was seeing ghosts,
too.
    “Want to talk?” Looking straight through
their legs, AJ leveled me a stare that showed concern in her
crystal blue eyes.
    She wasn’t seeing them; she was just
concerned for my problems.
    “Where do I begin?” I threw up my hands,
trying my best to keep my focus on her and not the two dead wall
fixtures.
    “I tried texting you.” The pitch in her
voice rose and she sounded like her mother right before an
explosive ‘nag session’.
    “Well, not that it matters since my dad
still hasn’t paid the phone bill, but he took away my phone.” I
shrugged. “He doesn’t want me talking to the cops if they
call.”
    Her brows dipped into a frown. “Why?”
    I exhaled a heavy sigh. “He’s mad at me for
telling the cops about Sunny’s boyfriend.”
    Although he pretended he was worried about
me, I