Dark Demon Rising: Whisperings Paranormal Mystery book seven Read Free Page B

I’d forgotten
Royal sat at the bedside, sunk in his own misery.
    “Can
I get you a cup of coffee? A soda?” she asked as I imagined her salivating over
him.
    Damn
woman. What a nerve, looking at Royal as if at a juicy steak while he sat next
to his nearly dead girlfriend.
    He
blinked as if waking. “Thank you. If I want anything, I can get it.”
    “Yes,
it’s good to stretch your legs.” Her gaze went to his thighs. “But if you need me,
use the buzzer and I’ll be right in.”
    Yeah,
I bet.
    She lingered another minute, though, before
leaving.
    “Well, my love,” Royal began with a weak smile,
his voice rough and so low I leaned in to hear. “You have stumped them. They
will run more tests but do not believe they will tell them anything more than
they already know, which is next to nothing. They can find no reason you cannot
function without these machines.” He closed his eyes. “Although it has only
been three days, they say if your condition does not improve I should consider—”
    The nurse came back in. “Knock-knock!” She went
to the bedside and got her laptop. “Silly me, leaving this here. Sorry to
disturb you again.”
    She waited, smiling down at Royal but he didn’t
acknowledge her. Her smile turned sour. She jogged one shoulder and strode from
the room.
    The doctors said Royal should consider what? Pulling
the plug? We made wills naming each other beneficiaries and agents for our
Living Wills. Royal was my health care proxy. I shot upright. “Over my dead
body!”
    I expected my roommates to laugh but they
waited silently. Mel’s lower lip trembled.
    “Royal,
no! Maybe I can. . . .” What, get back inside my head, my body? A sense of
horror shivered through my nonexistent self. If Royal let them disconnect me
from life support, what happened to me when my body died? Although a boundary
confined me and I couldn’t touch anything solid, I wasn’t a shade like Jack and
Mel; I didn’t linger because I died violently. Perhaps my living body tethered
me and I’d be whisked off to the great beyond when it died.
    I never should have made the dratted Living
Will.
    “How
long can I bear to see you like this?” Tears oozed from the corners of his eyes
and dribbled on his cheeks. He sniffed, and brushed them away with one hand.
    My
heart broke. Royal, the strongest, most self-contained man I have ever known, fell
apart before my eyes.
    I
ached to comfort him and desperation manifested as a deep, throbbing pain in my
chest. He needed me, but I could only watch him suffer.
    I
looked away and a pleading note crept into my voice. “What’s happened to me?”
    Mel
shrugged one shoulder. “No idea. But we don’t know everything about life and
death.”
    “If
we did, we wouldn’t have been trapped in your house for decades,” Jack added.
    “The
thing is, what if Royal cuts off life support?”
    Jack
stroked his nose. “Nothing, I imagine. You’ll still be a shade until whoever
shot you dies.”
    “For
the last time, I can’t be a shade. I’m an intangible something-or-other outside
my living body. But you could be right, I’ll likely become a shade if
Royal lets my body die. Unless I can get back in it.”
    “I
should think the first thing is make Royal understand what’s happened so he
doesn’t do anything foolish.”
    “And
how are we supposed to do that?”
    “Don’t
ask me.” Jack made a face. “I’m not Mister Know-It-All.”
    “You’re
not?” Mel sniggered. “And all these years I thought you were.”
    Jack
gave her a curled lip. “We can’t do anything stuck here. If we go with him when
he leaves, maybe something will come to us.”
    “I’ve
tried it, Jack,” I told him wearily. “I can’t get out.”
    “As
I said before, the room must be your boundary.”
    “Lovely.
You get an entire house, I get a hospital room.”
    “You
know how it works. Grab him when he leaves.”
    “When
we began teaching shades to move I never imagined you’d be one of them,”