The Specter Key by Kaleb Nation Read Free Book Online

again.
    Help us.
    And then, in a furious scramble of keys:
    There isn’t much time.
    New line. He felt the intensity of the room begin to grow. The page was almost to the end, and he didn’t know how much longer whatever magic was at work would stay active.
    “Who put you there?” Bran asked. Then the keys moved again, typing only four letters:
    Emry
    He blinked at the page, unable to do anything but read the name, twice, a third time, not believing what was there. His heart was racing, his hands shaking.
    What can they mean by that? he thought with alarm. He saw that the typewriter had moved to a new line. They were almost to the bottom.
    “Who are you?” he asked aloud. There was hardly room for one last line on the page. Sweat was gathering on his forehead. He gripped the sides of the chair in anticipation, hoping that it wasn’t too late, staring at the last words on the page. Had the spirits left already?
    But the keys snapped twelve more times. Before Bran could read it, there was one final push given to the page, and the paper went out the top and started to slide behind the typewriter. Bran caught it, bringing it up into the moonlight, so that he could see the final words written there.
    The Specters
    And that was all. The typewriter was out of paper.
    Bran stared at it in his hands, almost as if it wasn’t real, but it was there, as much as he didn’t want to believe it.
    “The Specters…” he said. An abrupt rushing sound filled the room, like a gust of wind, and a great, bright green glow erupted from the paper between Bran’s fingers. It burned to the touch, and Bran reflexively threw it onto the desk. In a second he saw that it had ignited with green fire, eating the page as if a torch had been held to its center.
    The glow blasted onto Bran’s face, and he leapt back, searching for something to throw on it. But in a second he was already too late, and the glow ceased just as quickly as it had started, engulfing the room in darkness once more. All that was left of the page and the words written on it was a crumpled, ruined piece of paper. Bran seized it, but the paper was so brittle it tore into pieces, still hot enough to make him drop it to the desk again.
    He quickly looked to the typewriter, but it was only metal and ink once more; whatever had possessed it had lost its strength and departed.
    ***
    Bran could find no use for the shreds of paper, but he kept them anyway, the darkened edges leaving black markings on his palms. He was bitter that his only clue had just burned itself up. He knew there was magic at work, strong magic, and someone who needed his help.
    He went up to bed, but he certainly couldn’t sleep, so he thought he’d do as usual and sit at his desk for a while until he was over it. However, when he got to his desk, he saw his blanket.
    The box, he thought immediately, sweeping the blanket off. It was still there, the shape of the moon facing up. It felt almost as if Bran had uncovered the face of a corpse instead of a box. He had just brought it home and already strange things were happening—strange magic seemed to surround it, as if something within was trying to break free.
    The Specters. Bran turned it over in his head. There was no disregarding what he had seen. He didn’t exactly know how to react to what had happened. The box could be haunted for all he knew. Perhaps something inside of it was listening to his thoughts at that very instant, waiting to be broken free. The label said Emry Hambric, after all. In one startling thought, Bran wondered if it hadn’t been left for him but contained something cursed from his mother’s criminal past. Perhaps the Specters were actually spirits trying to twist his mind into breaking them free.
    It scared Bran how little he knew. The desperation in the words on the typewriter played on his sympathies, despite the warnings in his head. He repeated what he remembered from them: “She has enslaved us.” If it was someone, or