Free Almost Dead (Dead, #1) by Rebecca A. Rogers Page A

that possible?”
    “I can sense any spirit within my region. Other spirit guides aren’t able to sense you two, just as I can’t sense theirs.”
    I have to give Sara credit. She’s very patient when it comes to Laney. If it were me, I would’ve left her spirit wandering by the cliff. But that’s why I’m not a guide, I guess.
    “So , there’s more than just one of you?” Laney inquires, picking at a stone on the fireplace.
    To my surprise, Sara giggles. “I can’t take care of the dead on my own. Think of the multitudes that pass every day. How could I be with each? It’s not possible . So, yes, there are more of us.”
    “Oh,” Laney states. She continues using her neon-pink fingernail to pick at the stone. I don’t know what she’s doing. Biding time? Looking for answers? Sara’s already told us what will happen.
    “How much longer?” I’ve never wanted someone to die so badly in my life, but now everything depends on death.
    “There is an elderly man in his home. His last breath will be within the next hour,” says Sara. She stands at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, gazing out at the fog that never stops moving.
    I stare at her. “What?”
    “I can sense when humans are about to pass, when they’ve passed, and when they’ re lost.” She says it so easily that it’s as if she’s clarified her job duties for hundreds of years. Maybe she has. Who knows?
    My stomach gnaws on itself, and I think I might puke. Soon, I’ll be able to see Mia again. Even though she won’t know I’m there, how badass will it be to scribble a note and watch her wig out?
    “Can you kill someone as a ghost?” Laney asks out of the blue.
    Sara fumbles for words, opening and closing her mouth, but finally settles on affirmation. 
    I snort. “You plan on killing your pageant competition?”
    Laney makes a big display of stomping across the living room and plopping down on the couch. “No, Flora , I’m asking in case someone doesn’t kick it soon. What if I’m stuck here until I die?”
    “Wait… you want me to kill someone?”
    She smiles. “Not exactly kill them with your hands, but, you know, scare them a little. The older the better. It wouldn’t take much for an eighty-year-old to have a heart attack.”
    “Not going to happen.”
    “Why not?”
    The poor thing. She’s convinced herself it’d be better to murder a living soul than to wait in the afterlife. I respond, “Because I have one reason to be up there, and it doesn’t include freaking out nursing home residents.”
    Laney scowls. “Whatever.” She mumbles, “I’d do it for you,” in route to one of the guest bedrooms.
    What? She slams her bedroom door shut, and I stand rooted in place, dumbfounded. Who is she, and what has she done with Laney Tipps?
    Sara pleads to me with her eyes, as if I’m the latest serial killer of the elderly. Yeah, right.
    “I’m not going to do it,” I tell Sara, but she gives me the same look again. “I’m not! I swear. Maybe she would…” I motion toward the general vicinity where Laney disappeared.
    “ I’m going to reiterate this one more time to both of you.” Sara raises her voice so Laney can hear, too. “You don’t have much time. When you use energy to warn your families, it drains you. If you can’t convince them to search for your bodies, you’ll be stuck in the afterlife forever. If I were either of you ladies, I wouldn’t spend my time bickering. I would spend it making myself useful, practicing for what lies ahead.”
    I nev er think about what lies ahead, to be honest, but I guess now is a good time to start.
    “ Less than forty-five minutes.” Sara turns back to the window, where the fog curls against the glass. I might be wrong, but I swear I can see faces in the mist. “He’s fading much quicker than I anticipated,” she says, and I’m positive those words are only meant for her ears.
    “What , exactly, causes the haze?” I question, hoping to pull her out of that