Read The Devil's Backbone (A Niki Slobodian Novel: Book Five) for Free Online Page A

human.” And then his eyes were looking through me, and I let myself be pulled across the world. To the dead.
    * * *  
    I felt a shiver wrap around my whole body as I emerged into the World. The pull felt violent now and I let it pull me forward. The grass under my feet was frozen and crunched as I walked forward. It was a park of some kind, blindingly bright from snow that was half melted, sun glaring back up at me from below. I looked up and felt the sun hot on my face from a clear blue sky, seeming to finally win over the frigid breeze that had now abated. Blinking away the spots swimming in my vision I looked around. I realized that the tall trees lining the park were palm tree, hanging with icicles, slush falling from the fronds in clumps.  
    She had been here, but she was gone now. I caught my breath as I followed the pull. There were so many dead. I was almost afraid to see.
    I walked over a low stone wall and emerged through the trees onto a long white beach, the bathers that crowded the wet sand on towels and folding chairs too still to be alive. Forms walked slowly around the bodies, some crying, some just looking around in shock.  
    I approached the nearest body, blinking in the sunshine, thinking there was something wrong with my eyes. But it wasn’t my eyes. The body was tinged in blue, from her painted toes to her bleach-blonde hair. Makeup stood out on her face, which was a chalky pale blue underneath. Her lips were darker blue, and her fingertips and the tips of her toes were almost black. Her spirit lingered nearby, unable to tear her empty eyes away from her own corpse. Silvery tears ran down her face.
    “What happened here?” I asked her. She didn’t respond. I stood in front of her, careful not to touch. “Please,” I said, louder. “Tell me what happened.”
    She looked slowly up to meet my eyes. The sorrow seemed to fill her up. She shook her head.
    “I don’t know,” she said, her voice quavering, lip trembling. “I don’t know what happened. Can you put me back? Take it back. Please. You can do that, can’t you?”
    “No,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I reached out and touched her shoulder. She imploded into tiny whirlwinds of dust and then was gone.
    It was the same all across the beach. The snow was gone and the air was moist and smelled of the sea and suntan lotion. Each spirit was in shock. They had all just been killed, just like that, for no discernible reason, in their eyes.  
    The pain was easing in my chest after some time. I had taken dozens of spirits, confused and overwhelmed by the tragedy of their own deaths. There were still so many to go. It was exhausting trying to speak to them all, but I had to find out what I was dealing with here. I’d nearly given up hope, when I came across a middle-aged Asian woman, kneeling down by the water. I might have thought she was alive. She was different than the others. She didn’t quail over her body or wander around looking helpless. She just crouched down looking out at the bright turquoise water. I approached her. She looked over at me, unsurprised.
    “They’re all gone,” she said. “But you know that, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “My children, my husband.” She closed her eyes. “Even me. All of us.”
    “So why are you still here?” I said.
    “Did any of it matter?” she said, seeming not to hear my question. “We went to church, we were good people. Did any of that matter?”
    “I don’t know,” I admitted.
    She looked over at me. “You’re not what I expected. I thought there would be a bright light. Or angels. I don’t know. Something beautiful to make up for the end of things. It is the end, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t know that either,” I said.
    “You’re not very helpful.”
    “Did you see?” I said. “When it happened. No one else saw what did…this.” I gestured to the beach packed with blackened and blue bodies.  
    She shook her head and didn’t speak for a long time. I thought