Free The Death Catchers by Jennifer Anne Kogler

street if I hadn’t called out her name.”
    â€œYou were goin’ to warn her about your specter, weren’t ya?” Bizzy asked sympathetically.
    â€œI wanted to watch her and make sure she didn’t cross the street without looking,” I explained. “I wasn’t going to tell her anything specific.”
    â€œI shudda explained it better. The thing with a specter …,” Bizzy said, struggling to find the right words. “The thing with a death-specter is that tellin’ the subject of the specter about what’ll happen or tryin’ to hint they should change somethin’ that might kill ’em has the opposite effect you want it to. Try an’ tell a person to avoid a place she’s s’posed to meet her death and that’s exactly where she’ll end up.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œFate,” Bizzy said, “adjusts quicker ’n a hungry dog can lick a dish.”
    â€œSo why do we see death-specters if we can’t do anything about them?”
    â€œThere’s always somethin’ to be done! Think of a death-specter like it’s a garden weed. You cut what’s above the surface, and it’ll grow back in no time, bigger ’n ever. So you gotta get at the root to make sure it’s gone for good. When we’ve got time on our side, the best we can do is figure out the root of why the person ends up in harm’s way and fix that.” Bizzy took a breath and continued. “I certainly don’t have all the answers, Lizzy-Loo. But as far as I can tell, we only see unjust deaths. Deaths that are unnatural. If we figure out the why , we can do something about ’em.”
    It sort of made sense, but the heavy responsibility of it all was overwhelming.
    â€œWhen will it happen again?” I asked.
    â€œDepends on the person,” Bizzy said, shrugging her shoulders.
    â€œHow often do you see them?”
    â€œWhen you get to a certain age, you stop havin’ ’em as frequently.”
    â€œHow did you know that it was going to be my first today?”
    â€œThe first is always on a girl’s fourteenth Halloween—the day the world of spirits connects with the world of mortals,” Bizzy said matter-of-factly.
    â€œSo, I’ll definitely see more?” I asked, my anxiety growing. “There will be more names on my hand?” Bizzy looked at me and her eyes shifted back and forth in their sockets. I had never seen her so uncertain.
    â€œThere will be more, yes,” she said with her head down.
    â€œIt can be anyone?”
    â€œI only see the names of those I care about,” Bizzy said.
    â€œThat little girl from the accident … in the black dress. Who was she?” I thought of the tiny girl with the white hair. Her unearthly scream had given me chills down my spine.
    â€œThat weren’t no girl at all. That was a screamin’ banshee.”
    â€œA screaming what ?” I couldn’t stomach the thought that there was more to this new life I had to try to understand. It was too much.
    â€œBanshees … are creatures from beyond sent to usher souls from this world to the next,” Bizzy said.
    â€œSo the girl was a spirit? Like the grim reaper or something? Because she sure didn’t look like a grim reaper.”
    Bizzy closed her eyes, sighing. “The thing about banshees is,” she began, “they’re escorts who come to usher a newly dead soul from this world. Whenever we save someone who was previously scheduled to pass on, a banshee arrives, like usual. Only, because we’ve saved the life, there is no soul to collect. A banshee is like a petulant child in that way. If it don’t get what it was sent after—the soul of the recently departed person—it throws a tantrum. Turns into a fiend. When this happens, banshees let off that piercing scream. But it’s not just painful for us, Sweet Pea, it’s more than