Read Last Safe Place, The for Free Online

above large hazel eyes, ho-hum nose, mouth too big, heart-shaped smile and a lone dimple on her right cheek, charmingly asymmetrical. That was gone now, of course. The acid had chewed through the dimple as it ate a hole in the side of her face all the way to the bone.
    Bernie loved her scar, but then, Bernie would have loved leprosy if it made him a buck. He leveraged the disfigurement—a face scarred just like the heroine in her book—and created a marketing strategy around it that helped catapult The Bride of the Beast to the top of the New York Times best-sellers list. Her “Zara signature,” along with a wardrobe of “costumes,” straight black hair with bangs cut into a sharp triangle with the point at the bridge of her nose and blood-red fingernails combined to form an indelible trademark. Rebecca Nightshade, Gabriella’s pen name and alter ego, was a franchise.
    Ty wiggled, his brow furrowed and he rolled over onto his side, then over onto his back again. Another nightmare. Or perhaps a sequel to the first one. He looked achingly vulnerable in his sleep, but maybe even more so when he was awake. He’d insisted on big, round frames for his glasses that made him look like a baby owl.
    She gulped back tears. For the past eight hours, she’d refused to allow her mind to process the greatest outrage of the night, because if she’d thought about it while she was trying to get away, she might have frozen solid from the horror of it, stood like a pillar of salt. But she couldn’t dodge the reality any longer.
    Yesheb had intended to use Ty as a sacrifice! Planned to stab her precious little boy in the chest and drain his life out as a blood offering!
    She bleated a single sob, a little snort that roused Ty. So she clamped her hand over her mouth and merely shook silently as she cried. The sacrifice of an innocent had been her idea, like all the rest of it, the whole sick, ghoulish tale that had caught the fancy of millions of readers. And one of them used it to create his own distorted delusion, an insane fantasy that could very well get her son killed.
    She cried for a long time silently, tears streaming down both cheeks and dripping off her chin. She rubbed Ty’s back as she cried, smoothed his hair, kissed his forehead lightly so she wouldn’t disturb him. Finally exhausted, she eased down from her sitting position and slid into the bed beside him. She slipped her arm under his neck and he rolled to her, his head on her shoulder. She inhaled the precious little-boy smell of him, lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. She couldn’t possibly fall asleep, of course, but she could at least rest for a little while.
    The light is golden and warm.
    Or is the warmth golden and bright?
    Gabriella often wonders that or something like it whenever she is transported to the place she calls The Cleft. She doesn’t know why she calls it that. Perhaps she knew once, but not anymore. The children who stepped into the snow of Narnia from out the back of a wardrobe were in a world that already had a name, and maybe The Cleft has a name, too, and she just doesn’t know what it is. Or perhaps The Cleft is its name. She always has a sense that there is so much more to know about the warm golden world of solace and refuge than she can remember, that the place itself is as old as time and her history with it is far more complicated than she’s ever tried to discover. She suspects the place is magical beyond her wildest dreams and more powerful than any force she’s ever encountered.
    But she doesn’t really care. It’s not important to her to know. She is content to stay here in the warm, golden glow because it is above all else profoundly good. And safe. Here no harm can come to her and that in itself is all the mystery and power Gabriella has ever needed.
    She was only a child when she first came here. She has come dozens of times in the years since and the place has changed in those years. Or perhaps it is that