The Ravaging in Between (The Reanimation Files Book 3) by A. J. Locke Page A

tease him in some way or another, but never got around to it.
    The man squinted at the screen for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, ain’t seen no ghost like him round here.”
    “OK.” I tried not to be discouraged. It was only one person I had asked and this was only one part of the Underground. If anything, I should be discouraged that if I truly wanted to search for Ethan in the Underground, it was going to take forever and a day. I walked away to inquire elsewhere.
    I showed Ethan’s picture to more vendors. No one had seen him, and I had given out more twenties than a wealthy man at a strip club.
    “Excuse me.” I was walking up to a vendor who’d set up shop in a shadowy corner of the station. While everyone else was practically piled on top of each other, this person had more space because no one else had set up their tent or table too close to her. Good for her, she’d scoped out some prime real estate.
    She wore a dark cloak with the hood drawn over their head, and all I could see of her face were her nose and mouth. There was also a fall of dreadlocks from under the hood that were streaked with dark blue dye. Whoever this woman was, she sure had the enigmatic thing going for her.
    “Greetings.” She tilted her head up slightly as though to look at me, but I still could not see her eyes. A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. A shiver passed over me. There was something unnerving about this woman.
    “Have you seen this ghost anywhere?” I thrust my phone forward, hoping to get a yes or no without having to offer money.
    “If you would like a bit of my time, how about you give me a bit of yours?” She indicated the stool in front of her table. I sighed and took a seat. I’d have to endure her hustle just to get a yes or no on Ethan’s whereabouts. And my hunch said it was very likely to be a no.
    As I looked over her table, I realized that her particular hustle was Rune Telling. From what I knew, there were some necromancers and dead witches who were able to use runes and a person’s energy to make small predictions or assessments about their lives. It wasn’t a talent many people genuinely had, and the majority of people who claimed to be Rune Tellers were fakes. This Teller had a neat row of colorful, round runes. They were pretty, and looked like large marbles with their strands of various colors that twisted around each other within the clear rune. She also had a stack of large, weathered tarot cards.
    She raised her hand and held it out to me. “A bit of your energy?”
    I hesitated. There wasn’t much she could do with my energy, since even if she stored it in one of her runes it would eventually deplete, but I still wasn’t keen on going along with her hawk. It wasn’t worth it just to hear that she hadn’t seen Ethan. I told myself I was just gonna get up and leave, but instead found myself raising my hand and placing it in hers.
    A strange tingle went through my body when we touched, and my breath caught for a moment. Why the hell had I given her my hand? I frowned. Why was she so alluring?
    The woman smiled again, then picked up one of her runes and lightly touched it to my palm. The swirls of blue, yellow, and purple within the rune started moving once my energy touched it. The way the colors twisted around each other was mesmerizing.
    After she took a small amount of energy, she released my hand. My heartbeat had accelerated for some reason, and even though I still wanted to get up and leave, it was as though I was glued to the seat.
    The Rune Teller shuffled her deck of cards then placed a row of eight cards face down in front of her. She moved the rune with my energy over them a few times, very slowly. Finally, she put down the rune and turned over the third card from the left. It showed what looked like a grim reaper holding a scythe. There were grinning skulls at his feet, crows above his head, and lightning strikes falling around him from the gray sky. It did