Free Savannah Sacrifice by Danica Winters Page B

do I have, Jasper?” She could have been hurtling toward her death, but if she didn’t act, she would go crazy. “I can’t quit now when I’m so close.”
    “Do you really think you can trust Gracie? How do you know she isn’t trying to lure you into a trap?” Jasper looked around like he was waiting for the ghostly child to kick him in the shins. “You said the spirits have been threatening you. Not everyone is good.”
    She reached over and took Jasper’s hand. “And regardless of what you may think, not everyone is bad. Sometimes you just have to have faith that everything will turn out all right.”

Chapter Nine
    The wind kicked up, sending a damp chill through the graveyard. Yet the chill on his skin was nothing compared to the chill in his soul. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find Starling’s spirit of hope. Everything wouldn’t turn out
all right
. It never did. No matter how hard you tried to avoid trouble or keep people safe, bad things always seemed to have a way of happening—but not this time.
    “You can’t go down there, Starling. You need to stay here, where it’s safe.”
    She stared at him like he had lost his mind. “You can’t tell me what to do, Jasper.”
    “I’m not telling you anything,” he said, looking down at the way her hand fit perfectly into his palm. “I want to keep you from getting hurt, that’s all. I’ll go down there. You just yell whatever Gracie tells you. That way at least I know you won’t be put into any more danger. Please, can you do that for me?”
    Starling stepped back from the stairs, a look of shock on her face. “I’m only staying up here because you asked like you did. But if I call and you don’t answer, or something happens, I’m coming down there. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Agreed?”
    He let go of her hand. “Got it, but you stay safe, too, okay?”
    “I’m surrounded by my people,” Starling said waving at the rows of the dead. “And Gracie’s got my back. Nothing to worry about. Don’t trip going down the stairs.” She smiled tentatively, but her gaze moved steadily around their surroundings, like she was taking over his job as bodyguard.
    He descended the stairs, his footsteps echoing. “Gracie saying anything?”
    “Not yet,” she yelled down.
    The narrow stairwell smelled of wet decay, like rotting leaves after a fall storm. Was it the earth around him, or the bodies that lay entombed in that ground creating the smell? The thought made goose pimples rise on his arms. It wasn’t death that scared him; no, he’d been around the dying enough to become accustomed to the rainbow bridge. It was something more, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Maybe it was the permanence or the fear of what came after. Regardless, every cell of his body screamed for him to get out of this cellar in the cemetery.
    “Where are the books?” Jasper yelled up toward Starling as he continued downward and deeper in the all-consuming darkness.
    Starling mumbled something he couldn’t quite hear. “Gracie says you need to look in the farthest room. She isn’t sure exactly where.”
    Shit
.
    “Got it.” Jasper took his cell phone out of his pocket and clicked on the light. He reached the bottom and the stairwell opened into a rectangular room that reminded him of the mausoleums they had passed in the cemetery. In the corner of the room was a small basin next to a concrete slab. In front of him, two chairs were set up against the wall, and between them was a wooden door about five feet tall, but the room was otherwise empty.
    For the first time since he’d flown into Savannah, he wished he had brought his gun. Crossing the room was like walking naked through a high school, waiting for the cheerleading squad to spot his pale ass.
    “You okay up there?” he called, trying to ignore his growing trepidation.
    “Yep,” Starling answered in a clipped voice.
    He twisted the door handle. The door opened with a