Ghost Moon Read Online Free

other. “What is the place where you come from?”
    “It’s hard to explain.”
    When he stood silently staring at her, she answered, “All right. A universe parallel to this one.”
    He answered with a harsh laugh. “You expect me to believethat?”
    “Being a ghost hasn’t given you more knowledge about the universe? You didn’t . . . go to an astral plane or somethinglike that?”
    “Astral plane? What is that?”
    She struggled to remember the lessons she’d learned in school. “It’s a place of the mind and spirit—outside the physicalworld. Living people can sometimes go there to meditate.And there are other beings there—spirits.”
    He flapped his arm in what looked like exasperation. “No. I have been here the whole time. In this forest.”
    “And you saw me come . . . out of a cave.”
    “Yes. I know you didn’t go in there. But you came out. Then later you went back in and vanished.”
    “Yes, I crossed over from my world—and went back there.”
    “ This is the world.”
    “There are others. Only a thin . . . wall separates them, if you know how to find it.”
    She considered how much to tell him about her friends, Zarah and Griffin. She’d met Zarah when they were both slaves, and the other woman had been sent to spy on Griffin, a powerful council member in Sun Acres.
    But everything had changed soon after they’d come to the city. Griffin had ended up freeing them both—and then he’d married Zarah. Now he was under attack by another council member: a man named Baron, who wanted to rule alone.
    Griffin was prepared to fight him, but not to put his wife in danger. So he’d had his most talented adepts open a portal from his world to this one, and soon Quinn would bring Zarah through.
    Trying to convey her sense of urgency, Quinn spoke from her heart. “The woman I’m helping is with child. Her husbandhas enemies, and he sent me to find a place where she will be safe until the crisis is over.”
    “Why you?”
    Raising her chin, she said, “I’m her best friend. Both of them trust me to bring her to safety. And they know I have the skill and the courage to do it.”
    She waited with her heart pounding, wondering if he would accept that.
    Finally, he said, “I hear the truth of that in your voice. And I have seen your courage for myself.”
    “Thank you.”
    She would have sworn she heard him swallow hard.
    “You can go—if you promise to come back and see me again.”
    “If I can,” she answered, wondering if she was telling the truth. He had frightened her. Touched her. Stirred something inside her that was better left unstirred. At least with him.
    When she started to take a step away, he held her with his gaze. “Tell me your name.”
    “Quinn.”
    “That’s not a woman’s name. Women have names like Helen or Betty or Doris.”
    “Where I come from, my name is fine!”
    “All right, Quinn. Go. Before I change my mind.”
    HE was the one who vanished.
    One moment she was standing in the forest talking to the ghost of Caleb Marshall. Then he was gone. To his grave?
    She shuddered. It was a disturbing notion.
    She hated to think of him as a dead man in his grave. And maybe there was a different explanation for where he had come from. If he’d simply flickered into existence, then disappearedfrom the scene just now, maybe he was only “here” when he wanted to be.
    She shook her head and backed away from the clearing where they’d been talking, then made a circle around the area, finding her way back to the trail that she had used previously.
    There were places like this in her world. But around Sun Acres, much of the land was empty of life and littered with ruined buildings that had been destroyed in wars over a hundredyears ago. And forests near the city had been cut down for wood to heat houses and cook food.
    She hadn’t known much about the history of her universe when she’d come to Sun Acres. That wasn’t something they’d taught in school. Maybe because