Read God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel for Free Online

the first time since rolling out of bed.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey,” AJ said.
    “Hey yourself.”
    “It’s AJ.”
    “I know. How are you doing?”
    “I’m okay, you? How’s your mouth? Your lip, I mean. Where you got hit?”
    “Oh, it’s not bad. My roommate had some Vicodin, so I took a couple of those. How are you holding up?” Clover asked.
    “I’m just…I dunno. I really wanna get out of the house. Wanna meet for coffee, or something?”
    “I do, that’d be nice. Where do you wanna go?”
    “I could do with some breakfast, actually,” AJ said, realizing as he said it that his appetite was coming back.
    “It’s almost two, man,” Clover said with a laugh.
    “Oh come on, you telling me you couldn’t go for some waffles right now?”
    “Actually, yeah, that sounds kinda great. There’s this great little spot near me, they do breakfast all day, and it isn’t an IHOP or anything.”
    “Let’s do it, my treat.”
    * * * * *
    After giving the name of the little cafe to AJ and agreeing to meet him there an hour later, Clover swiped her phone closed and smiled. She took a long moment, closing her eyes and marking it in her memory. Right then, she was happy. While she knew very well she had a life that was inconceivably privileged and rich and easy by the standards of most of the world, it had been a far from perfect life. Growing up in the shadow of her parents’ religion—their mania --had been a long and arduous task. She recalled one afternoon in particular, during her freshman year in high school, when her mother had beaten her for catching her wearing a different change of clothes than what she’d left the house in that morning.
    The clothes her parents made her wear were all dull browns or boring dark blues, no hemline that stopped anywhere north of her knee, no sleeve that was not full-length. Though Clover had been there to try on nearly all the clothes her mother had purchased for her, and knew they were brand new, they still looked grotesquely old-fashioned and conservative, which, Clover supposed, was probably the point.
    Her parents would not allow her to do anything with her hair besides pull it back into a ponytail. She was not allowed to use product in it or even a curling iron. Forget makeup, too.
    Clover had experienced many a tearful morning before school, staring at herself in the mirror and thinking she looked like a casting call reject from Little House on the Prairie or something.
    Angie had been her savior. They’d lived down the street from one another as kids and they were still roommates now. As early as third grade, when what you wore to school became suddenly and inexplicably important to the other kids, almost overnight, it had seemed, Angie had begun sneaking clothes to school for Clover in her backpack.
    Freshman year it went like this: Clover would walk down to Angie’s house in the morning, where she would change into the clothes they had picked out the night before, and then Angie would help her with her hair and makeup—nothing much, usually just lip gloss and a little eye shadow or something. After that, they rode to school with Angie’s older brother, Mark, who was a senior and on whom Clover had once had the world’s biggest crush.
    Her freshman year had been perfect for this, as she’d had gym last period, so she was always able to hop in the shower and wash off her makeup and undo whatever Angie had done to her hair that day, change back into the clothes her mother had laid out for her that morning, and her folks were none the wiser.
    This system worked like a charm until the first really perfect day of spring that final quarter of her ninth grade year. Mid-May, this had been, the gloom and rain of April having stuck around a little longer than anyone would have liked. The sun had been bright and strong in the cloudless sky that day and you could tell it was going to be perfect.
    And it would have been, if she’d been able to wear something not full-length