Read Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea for Free Online Page A

the condensed version of the events last night and this morning, leaving out the parts about drinking and working for Hell. “And I went to see Sasha just now.”
    “Will wonders never cease?” she said. “How is he?”
    “He looks terrible. I think they’re starving him or something. And he still doesn’t take responsibility for anything.”
    “Well, what did you expect?”
    “I don’t know. But I did manage to get some information about my case out of him.”
    “That is something,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She opened them again and looked at me.
    “I’m tiring you out,” I said. “I’ll go now. You need your sleep.”
    She squeezed my hand. “Wait. One thing. I have had a vision. Just after we talked on the phone. I do not know what it means, but I had the strangest feeling that it had to do with you.”
    “What is it?” I said. Sofi’s visions were notoriously reliable. She had used her gift over the years to support us doing sittings with clients, at least until it got too dangerous to even think about advertising such things. If only I’d been so careful.
    “It is strange,” she said slowly. “Two lions fighting, both black. A woman in a blue dress, a business lady with little round glasses. Only she has a shotgun and blood on her dress.” She frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why, but I felt I needed to tell you.”
    “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?” I said. “They say those drugs are pretty powerful.”
    “Not a dream,” she said, rising above a whisper. She coughed and her whole body shuddered. I got her some water from a nearby stand and let her drink it from a straw. “Not a dream,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Be careful, Niki.” I set the water back on the stand and turned back to Sofi, but she was asleep.
    I grabbed a cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, then looked for Gage. He was sitting by himself at a big table and had his giant book in front of him. As I approached I saw there was an untouched cup of coffee and an empty plate that used to have something with red sauce on it. He had the same sauce around his mouth. He was flipping through the pages of the book, his face screwed up in concentration. I sat across from him, munching on my tasteless cuisine choice.
    “What are you looking for?” I said. He started, actually jumping about an inch off his chair.
    “Jesus, warn a guy, would you? “
    “Sorry.” I looked at the book. There were strange symbols all over the page and they seemed to be moving. I watched as a set of runic-looking cones moved side to side, then seemed to become far away, then got bigger again. Then they morphed into a different set of symbols that looked like stick-drawings of constellations. “So, that’s why it’s such a big deal to be able to read this stuff.”
    “Yep.” The page started swirling around like water down the drain, then the symbols practically jumped off the page before shifting into another set of symbols again. This time they formed different sizes of spirals.
    “How do you know what it says?”
    “How do you see dead guys?”
    I shrugged. “I just see them. I look at them and know they’re ghosts.”
    “I just look at this stuff and know what it means. Something in my brain is different I guess. Yours too probably.”
    “They say Abnormals came from people eating preservatives and being exposed to radiation all the time,” I said. “Scientists are doing all these studies.”
    He looked at me. “You believe that?”
    “No,” I said after pausing for a moment. “I don’t think they know. Besides, they think we all just popped up one day.”
    “You don’t think so?”
    “I think we’ve always been here. Just no one ever let themselves see us before. And all these other things wandering around, the politicians have never mentioned them.”
    “Like demons,” Gage said.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Like them. Though they sure like to talk about Hell a