A Gift of Grace by Sarah Wynde

Author:Sarah Wynde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rozelle Press

20

Dillon

“We need to talk,” Rose said.

“Yeah,” Dillon agreed, but he was watching Grace. She was turning around to face Noah, tucking her legs up before swiveling on the seat, her paddle braced behind her. The kayak rocked precariously and Dillon held his breath, but Noah compensated perfectly, leaning forward and shifting until they were balanced again.

Grace laughed. “Not up for a swim?”

Noah grinned at her. “Not sure I need to meet any alligators today.”

Dillon wanted to tell him how unlikely that was. Not that there weren’t alligators in the St. Johns — there definitely were, loads of them. Any body of water larger than a puddle in Florida could have an alligator in it. But most of them were small and they avoided people and they weren’t likely to be leisurely swimming near a kayak in the middle of the day in February. Maybe in May, when it was warmer. Or at dusk, when they typically hunted.

Instead, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. It was weird being out on the water like this, no boat involved. It felt familiar yet wrong. When he was a kid, he and Grace and his grandfather had come kayaking most weekends in the winter. He wished he could tease her right now, reminding her of all the times they’d overturned kayaks when he was little. Sometimes Max had dumped them out on purpose to teach them how to recover, but sometimes they’d tried to bounce one another out.

And then sometimes they’d gone in the water completely by accident. One time they’d been eating lunch while floating along one of the local springs. He and Grace had spotted a turtle at the same moment and they’d both leaned too far. He still remembered the shock of hitting the cold water before coming up to see Max calmly treading water while taking a bite out of his peanut-butter sandwich. He wondered if Grace remembered that day.

“What did you tell them?” Rose asked.

“Not to talk about it,” Dillon answered her.

With the exception of Rose, the ghosts had all gotten dragged along to General Directions with Noah. Dillon wasn’t sure whether that meant his theory about the accumulation of spirit energy creating the attraction was wrong or not. Some of the ghosts — the singing lady, the guy with the peanut allergy, a few of the white balls of light — were gone, lost to the vortex, but enough were left that the pull might still be caused by having too much spirit energy in one place. Or maybe it was something about Noah, as they’d been thinking before.

Either way, Dillon had strongly suggested that they stop talking about it, at least until they’d all had a chance to calm down. The last thing any of them needed was for emotional conversations about their imminent permanent destruction to lead to exactly that.

Rose had finally caught up with them at GD just as Grace and Noah were leaving to go kayaking. They’d all stayed quiet in the car, but now some of the ghosts were exploring, others floating along the surface of the water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.