Free Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) by Daryl Banner Page A

sweet lady at a desk before quite suddenly giving up. I’m so depleted of fight lately, I’ve noticed. I’m so done with fighting and fighting and fighting.
    “She’s Winter,” the other one says, casual as a shrug.
    “ The Winter? No she isn’t.”
    “Yes she is! Look at her hair.”
    The boy named Freddie takes a look at my infamous hair. Then he looks back at his friend. “Even if she is Winter, I’m not scared of her.”
    The sandy-haired boy leans in to his friend and whispers, though I hear every word: “ She eats people! ”
    Who the hell are these kids?
    “No she doesn’t.” Freddie laughs at me again. A city full of thousands of things to do, and these kids find me to be the most entertaining option, sitting here on the curb as bored as a tombstone. “That was the Empress that ate people and she only did it once.”
    “Twice. And my mommy said to stop calling her the Empress. Titles give people power,” the sandy-haired kid insists, sounding smart and smug. “My mommy calls the Mayor just Megan, but not to her face.”
    “That’s stupid.”
    Alright, my curiosity is piqued. “Who’s the Empress?” I ask, lifting my chin.
    The two kids start laughing again. Then Freddie says, “Do you like spiders?” The other laughs even harder, then adds, “Do you like really biiiiig spiders?” The two of them can’t stop laughing. Their every laugh unsettles me more. “Hey,” one yelps at the other. “Why do you still call her Empress then? Why not call her by her real name: Shee?”
    My eyes flash open. “Shee??”
    “If you don’t call her Empress,” the sandy-haired kid says, “the Empress’s spiders crawl into your house when you’re asleep and they pull you apart, limb by limb, until there’s nothing left of you but your eyeballs !”
    “That’s a lie .”
    “No it’s not!” Freddie takes off. “Hey, come back!”
    The two of them chase off into the dusty distance. I’m on my feet now and only follow for half a block before I lose sight and sound of them entirely. I grunt in frustration, give up all over again, and drop back to the curb to sulk some more. Delightful news. Shee still exists and may or may not have eaten two people and wants to be called Empress. Of all places to learn such curious facts, it’s on the street by two random Living kids.
    Oh well. When time passes, stuff’s bound to happen. I’m certain time has far more surprises stuffed up its twelve-year-long sleeve, whenever I bother enough to find them.
    When night has fallen—or so say all the Humans who have ended their days’ work in the fields—I am fetched at my apartment by a stern-faced Helena. “Time.”
    “For?”
    “Your surprise party you don’t know about.”
    “Oh. That.”
    “Can you try to act surprised, please? Marigold will be devastated if you aren’t.” Helena puts a hand at my back, guides me out of my despairingly undecorated room. We spill into the streets where she adds, “Every Living and Dead you know will be there. Or, well …”
    “All the ones still around,” I finish for her. “I get it. The Dead are turning to dust. Megan—sorry, Mayor —let me know that unsettling fact. She was very kind and gentle about it too,” I add sarcastically.
    Helena only purses her lips.
    We walk for an eternity through the winding streets of the Necropolis. It is unsettlingly quiet, I assume because most, if not all, of the citizens are at the location of the welcoming party. “So what’s the pretense?”
    “Pretense? Oh, right, the surprise.” Helena sighs. “I’m just ‘showing you our flower gardens’ and, well, you have to remember to act surprised when everyone leaps out of the rosebushes.”
    “Got it.” We continue walking, the only sound being the clapping of shoes, and I ask a very overdue question. “Will … my mother be there? I heard she was given a face and a name and no one knows who she really is.”
    Helena sighs. She’s been sighing a lot lately. “I’m