Read Unnatural Occurrence (An Anna Morgan Novella (Part 1)) for Free Online Page B

smiled. I was going to try to be. Once Christopher was off on his beverage mission, I began wriggling my way through the throngs of people and over to the long hallway that I watched the girl go down. I made it down the corridor and successfully avoided several groping couples before coming to the bend in the hallway. It was much less crowded here. There was a single guy heading back to the party from a small bathroom and then a couple halfway to consummating their relationship right in the hallway. They yanked each other into a door that I sincerely hope led to a bedroom. Ick.
    I followed the red-carpeted hallway several more feet before realizing that I had no clue which door the girl had gone into. There were four doors past the bathroom and the door the couple had stumbled into. I stood outside of one and , judging by the grunting and little sounds of pleasure coming from behind it, I could safely deduce that wasn’t the one the girl had slipped into. One door down, three to go.
    I walked over to the next door and put a hand on the door knob. If someone found me, I could always say I’d gotten turned around and was looking for a bathroom. Yeah, that sounded good . I turned the knob on the door and slowly pushed it open. The room was dark, but from what I could tell it was a small library. An empty library. I glanced around the room a final time, a little uneasy, before closing the door and walking across the hallway to check another door. A bedroom that looked like a true dorm room, but a bit nicer. Empty.
    B y the time I checked last door only to find the same thing, I was feeling aggravated and tired. I put a hand out and steadied myself on the wall. I held my arm in front of myself and saw what was left of Christopher’s aura beginning to dissipate very quickly. I had no idea what my own aura looked like. For some reason, I’d never been able to see it, but I felt different. Lighter somehow in the corporal sense, and yet slower and more sluggish, like I was having to pull myself through the muck and mire of the blackness and evil that clung to this place. I was past ready to hightail it out of this god-awful party.
    As I stepped past the door to the little library that I opened just a few minutes before I paused. On a whim, I opened the door once again and quickly stepped inside. The darkened room wasn’t menacing, but if it were at all possible, the malevolence that coated the air thickened—an almost tangible thing. I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose for a few seconds. Once I opened my eyes, I took in the sights and sounds of the room again, this time allowing myself to tap into my extra awareness. It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at. Even though I saw the same darkness, the same blackness swirling in the rest of the house, it was more concentrated here. Not only that, but it also seemed to move in a pattern . The smog swirled and twisted together and it all seemed to move toward a particular spot in the room.
    I forced my feet to move in the direction of the flowing darkness across the room even though I felt on the brink of unconsciousness. I stopped in front of the wall on the far side of the room, raising a hand in front of me to touch the spot. I ran my fingers along the wooden paneling, feeling the cool wood beneath my palm as the darkness swirled around my arm. Nothing felt out of the ordinary to me and yet I still pressed and prodded the paneling, unsure of what it was I was even looking for. When my hand stilled, I could feel a buildup of energy in the spot where it rested. I immediately applied pressure to the area. A panel shifted and groaned as a small opening in the wall appeared. If I ducked, I’d be able to go through the passageway easily. I swallowed and moved forward. As soon as I stepped inside the interior of the passageway, the paneling shut behind me with an ominous click .
    I glanced over my shoulder as I moved along the narrow opening. The wraith of