The Bone Conjurer Read Free Page A

person could drown in less than a foot of water.
    Utilizing a death grip on the backpack strap, she struggled to release his other lifeless arm.
    A wince let out her last ounce of breath. Thanks to some trapped air, the backpack floated and Annja hooked it over an arm and bent her elbow. Kicking, she headed toward the surface, but quickly decided to change course for the murky shadows to her right.
    Surfacing under the bridge, she gasped. The icy air pierced like needles at the back of her throat. Spitting out water, she sucked in just as much. Sputtering, she bit on a nasty piece of something she didn’t care to identify.
    A kick of her legs slammed her against the slimy log bulkhead hugging the bridge girder.
    Shivering, she pushed the hair from her eyes. She wanted to climb out, but didn’t know if the sniper would still be watching. Of course he would. Whoever he was. Was he allied with Sneak? If so, then someone wasn’t playing nice.
    She couldn’t risk the chance of emerging in plain sight. She’d have to swim downstream as far as possible.
    “Should have stayed home and popped in an episode of Supernatural, ” she grumbled.
    A cup of hot chocolate sounded too good to be true right now.
    Her words stuttered from the cold. But the sound of her voice reassured in a strange way. The sting on her neck had subsided. The bullet must have only skimmed flesh. She was alive, which is what mattered.
    Submerging was a difficult choice, but she took a deep breath and let her body drop into the dark, muffling depths.
    The murky water and her position under the bridge made it impossible to see. But she didn’t need to see. It wasn’t as though she’d run into a boat or shark down here. Though a whale had been trapped in the canal a few years back. It wasn’t so much taking a bite from a fish that Annja worried about, as the raw sewage in the water.
    A slight lightening in the waters signaled she’d cleared the bridge. Keeping close to what she felt was the shore, though her shoes didn’t touch bottom, she kicked swiftly and stroked with her free right arm, while maintaining a secure clutch on the backpack with her left.
    A muffled horn honked as a car passed over the bridge. Annja was surprised to hear sound at all. The reminder the real world was so close again bolstered her confidence and made kicking in the cold waters easier.
    A branch snagged her ankle. She kicked frantically, briefly panicking. Bubbles of air escaped, and she had to surface to gasp in air. She didn’t bring up her shoulders, only the top of her face. Sucking in the cold November air, she then inhaled deeply and went under.
    While she hadn’t planned for an adventure swimming the depths this evening, Annja could only fault herself for not expecting it. When did the world just leave her alone and allow her a normal day?
    Finding a surprise smile, she soared forward, turning in the water, to tilt her face to the surface. The world could mess with her all it liked. She was up for the challenge.
    Paddling her hands near her thighs to keep her body under as much as possible, she managed to break the surface with only her face. A scan above the lumber edging the shore spied rooftops where she guessed the sniper had shot from.
    A gulp of air, and she again submerged. She was on the wrong side of the river. But she wasn’t about to cross it. The current would carry her the way she’d come. Which meant she’d have to go another hundred yards at least, to put her out of sight of the buildings.
    What seemed like an hour in the water was probably more like fifteen minutes. It was fourteen minutes too long.
    Emerging, she dragged herself up along a mooring of old timbers lashed together with slimy rope. Slipping around behind the mooring put her next to a dock. The backpack no longer floated. It snagged on a branch—no, it was a hook of iron rebar.
    Annja tugged, but the rebar held her prize securely. It was close to the surface. Deciding to get out from