The End of the World As I Know It (The Ghosts & Demons Series Book 2) Read Free

my attention to the hole in the floor. It was filled with a golden, liquid light. “How’s this thing work, exactly?”
    “It can give you the answers you’re seeking, if you ask the right questions. I can’t find the demon what killed your first love — ”
    “My only love,” I said.
    “You’re young yet.”
    I sighed. “What’s the right question?”
    “That’s up to you,” Rory said. “Excuse me. Developments in Munich are calling me away.”
    “Wait!”
    “Must go. I don’t care for the energies here. The frequencies disturb my equilibrium.”
    I blinked and he was gone. I was alone with the hole in the floor, bathed in shimmering light. If a ghost doesn’t care for the energies of a place, you can bet it freaks out the average human.
    I had asked a powerful Wiccan — a Preceptor of the Spellcasters Brigade — about the sounding chamber. She was a tiny woman from the Philippines named Chumele. She said the sounding chamber focused all the energies from words spoken over the dead.
    “The most powerful sounding chambers lie deep beneath graveyards,” Chumele said. “Since the battle with the demons and our many losses within the Keep, the sounding chamber is more powerful than it has been in a hundred years. It feeds off our tragedy.”
    We had lost many in the attack. Everyone remembered my induction into the Choir because the demons chose that moment to attack. I’d lost two singers I’d considered friends. If something more, something good, could be gained from their deaths, I was eager to exploit the advantage over our enemies.
    I tried to get more information from Chumele, but she just shook her head and told me to go ask my questions in the sounding chamber. “Rory will guide you. You’ll find the entrance to the tunnel behind the oldest suit of armor in the Blade Room.”
    “Who do I ask questions of, though?”
    Chumele patted me on the shoulder. “The Well of Sorrows, of course. If the subject of your query is connected to you personally, and if you ask the right question, the answer will be dredged up from the Mindfield.” She waved me away and went back to chanting protective spells over the entrance to the C&C.
    Lesson 93: In my experience, people involved on the magic end of the Choir’s business are always unnecessarily vague and mysterious. I think it’s in the Magicals’ nature to be annoying. Manny says it’s just that they reflect Nature.
    I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. Then I started quizzing the Well of Sorrows about my boyfriend’s murder.

Chapter 3
    Lesson 94: What you turn your thoughts to is what you manifest. That’s why every great invention begins with one obsessed person. Every terrible idea starts the same way.
    Lesson 94 sucks if you happen to be in a Sounding Chamber staring into the Well of Sorrows. Across the shimmering surface I saw the love of my life, Brad Evers, die again. I didn’t want to see that, so I closed my eyes. I listened to the pulse in my ears and waited for my heart to slow its slamming against my sternum.
    The right question is… what?
    I struggled with that for a while, mostly because I was crying about Brad. Even a glimpse of the murder scene set me off.
    Here’s the short story, minus the gory details. Through some magic detective work using the light cast from the lamp of Tighloon, I saw capital E Evil at work, killing my high school sweetheart. Skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead and bam, here I am in the Choir Invisible.
    If we used ranks like the military, I’m kind of a sergeant, I guess. Manhattan calls me a legacy kid when she’s annoyed and wants to needle me. Since Peter Smythe was one of the founders, my official rank as his child is Scion of the Choir. We’re supposed to be all about saving mankind, blah-de-blah, rah, rah, rah…the same speech I gave to the noobs. However, I wish my title wasn’t linked to the man who killed Brad. Sometimes I think my mission would be complete if I killed my