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

not look like a card that boded well.
    “The Shadow Mystic,” she whispered. “You have walked the line between life and death more than once. It is a path you cannot get away from.” She tapped the card with her slim fingers. “Have you ever felt like you destroy all you touch?”
    “Yes,” I replied. I didn’t mean to play along in such seriousness, but for some reason I couldn’t dismiss her the way I did old toothless who’d been selling so-called haunted items.
    “Hmm.” She turned over another card; the first one on the right. This card was of an angelic-looking woman surrounded by rays of light, holding a jeweled chalice in both hands above her head. However, below her feet was darkness and tendrils of it were reaching for her.
    “The Grave Martyr,” she said. “You will fight, sacrifice, and lose in order to win.”
    A chill went through me. That pretty much summed up my life these past few months. She wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already experienced. She’d probably seen me on the news so she knew what to say about my life.
    “One more,” she said. She turned over the one next to the Shadow Mystic. The top half was of a human woman, but the bottom half looked like the tentacles from a black octopus. All around her there were creatures that looked like half one thing and half another.
    “The Changeling,” she said. “You will evolve. Many around you will stay the same, but you will become a vessel, one that can either destroy—” she tapped the Mystic card, “—or save—” she tapped the Martyr card. “Though you may not be able to save yourself. Which path will you walk?” Her voice was a bare whisper.
    “Thanks for your time.” I quickly got up. Her fortune telling had been generic—life, death, power, paths to choose from, but this entire exchange had unnerved me in a way I could not explain. This woman’s aura seemed to draw me in and that was scary.
    I had never come across an Underground worker like her. Maybe she was one of the rare Rune Tellers who were legit, maybe she just put on a good show. Either way, I had wasted enough time here.
    I walked away and she said nothing. I could feel her eyes on my back, but I didn’t turn around. I felt out of sorts. Even though I wasn’t near her any more, I felt her presence as though she’d been stamped on me and now I had to carry her everywhere. I shook my body out as though that would fling this uncomfortable feeling off me. What a weirdo .
    Time to move on to another station. After walking about halfway through, I stopped abruptly in the middle of the tunnel. Some distance away, a ghost was staring at me, and the reason I stopped was because I felt as though I recognized him. But for the life of me, I could not place him. He was good-looking, had hair on the long side swept back into a loose ponytail, and a faint stubble of facial hair. Did I know him? From the way he stared at me, it certainly seemed as though he knew me.
    Well, I wasn’t going to just stand in a dark tunnel and have a stare down with a ghost. I started walking again, but between one blink and the next, the ghost was gone. Guess he wasn’t interested in saying hello. I shrugged. Ghosts acted strangely sometimes, and who could blame them?
    An hour later, I was doubling back after going as far as I felt I should go. I was exhausted from all the walking and discouraged over the fact that I had not found Ethan or anyone who had seen him. I showed his picture to as many people as I could get an answer from without having to bribe them, and the response was the same across the board. No one had seen him. I guess I wasn’t going to find him around these parts.
    The tunnel I was currently in was darker than the others because there was more distance between stations. I hoped the flashlight on my phone didn’t die on me, meaning that my battery didn’t die. At some point I started to get the feeling I wasn’t alone, which wasn’t cause for panic seeing as