Messenger of Fear Novella #1 by Michael Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

peak. I started a pot. “But allergieslike that hit fast. So the coroner would know what was in her stomach and thus what had killed her.”
    â€œIndeed. The answer was chocolate.”
    â€œChocolate shrimp?”
    â€œShrimp inside a chocolate.”
    This unappetizing thought stopped me from insisting on breakfast. I did, however, drink my coffee. I took it black because he did, or maybe just because in this world I now inhabited, cream and sugar seemed trivial. We had very serious business, and somehow I felt that demanded black coffee.
    I had managed four blessed sips before Messenger relocated us. Messengers are given certain powers that they are to use only in pursuit of their duty, which is a very good limit to impose, since among those powers is the ability to move effortlessly from place to place, and even from time to time.
    Thus did I find myself in a two-story brick Colonial in a pleasant but not wealthy suburban neighborhood in Alexandria, which is just outside Washington, DC.
    I saw a woman with straight blond hair parted in the middle—a cadaverously thin woman, but not anorexic, more just like one of those people who are very intoexercise. She had a high, intelligent forehead and wore oval glasses.
    She was alone, in a tiny home office, hunched over a laptop, in the act of reading what looked like essays. To her right was an open box of See’s Candies. About half the box was gone, and my first thought was to wonder how this woman could manage to be this thin with such an appetite for sweets. I admit the idea made me jealous.
    Understand that Messenger and I were not visible or audible to Lisa Bayless. And the office was so cramped that Messenger and I stood with half our bodies literally inside the wall, so that only our faces, chests, and hands were in the room. Understand as well that yes, this was extremely weird for me, but I was slowly adjusting to the oddness of my occupation, and since I had moved through solid objects before, this was merely a new wrinkle on an existing weirdness.
    As we watched, Lisa reached without taking her eyes off the screen, fumbled for and then found a roundish dark chocolate, and popped it into her mouth.
    She chewed, then made a face, obviously tasting something odd, something unexpected. But then shecontinued working for another few minutes.
    And then, I saw her mouth working as though she was still tasting something unpleasant. She felt her lips with her tongue, and then touched her fingers to her lips, and all at once: panic.
    Lisa leaped up from her chair, pushed open the door, and raced through the kitchen. But by the time she reached the stairs she was wheezing, and her face was puffy, as if her skin was a balloon being slowly inflated.
    Halfway up the stairs she tripped and gasped, and her face turned pink. She sucked air with all her might but nothing came. Yet she climbed and turned onto the upper landing. But now walking, let alone running, was no longer possible. Still, she crawled, hands and knees along the carpeted hallway, into the master bedroom, and from there across the tile of her bathroom floor.
    The medicine cabinet was above her, and she was desperate by this point, desperate and terrified. Her eyes were squeezing shut, and I don’t believe that by the time she managed to drag herself to her feet she could see at all. It was with blind fumbling that she ransacked the medicine cabinet, knocking pill bottles and toothpaste onto the floor.
    I saw the moment when she realized that what she was looking for was not there.
    â€œAn EpiPen,” I muttered. “She’s looking for an EpiPen, the injectable adrenaline you keep if you’re severely allergic.”
    Messenger said nothing. When words are not absolutely necessary, Messenger does not like to spend them.
    I have by now seen death, most terribly the suicide of Samantha Early. This death lacked the blood and gore of that earlier one, but no amount of exposure can ever