by Vered Ehsani
Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Vered Ehsani
Praise for Where Shadows Dance
Dying
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Free & Discounted Books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright © 2012 Vered Ehsani
WHERE SHADOWS DANCE
Ghosts & Shadows #2
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By Vered Ehsani
Books by Vered Ehsani
SOCIETY FOR PARANORMALS (2015 release dates):
The Ghosts of Tsavo
The Automaton’s Wife
Revenge of the Mantis
The Fourth Mandate
from Africa… with a Bite
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GHOST POST MYSTERIES
Lethal Takeout
Fatal Secrets
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DRAGON & MYTH
Dragon’s Mind
Dragon’s War
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GHOSTS & SHADOWS
Diary of a Part-Time Ghost
Where Shadows Dance
Want a free book & a lifetime of discounts?
Find out more at http://veredehsani.co.za
Copyright © 2012 Vered Ehsani
All rights reserved
Praise for Where Shadows Dance
“This is an awesome book! I love the way Author Vered Ehsani didn't leave my mind hanging for a second. Once I picked up her book I didn't put it down till I was done. Vered opened my mind up to Ghost, I loved it!”
http://bookreviewclub.blogspot.com/
“…there are some big secrets that come to light that almost made my head spin. There are so very many ways this series can go that it's really kinda awesome. Fun with a nice historical twist, the idea that negativity breeds more negativity is still alive and well in this installment.”
paranormalbookreviews-kelly.blogspot.com
Praise for Diary of a Part-Time Ghost
“…a fun, easy, and enjoyable read! It had the right mix of adventure and humor.”
A Flamingnet.com review
“It will keep you hooked until the last page and you certainly don’t need to be a ghost or a kid to enjoy it.”
John Rykken, author of Bloodwood
“I would recommend this to any YA/Juvenile fiction lovers. It's a light and easy read that will surprise you with all of its twists and turns.”
turningthepagesx.blogspot.com
“A very captivating and interesting read, Vered Ehsani has done an excellent job… Genuinely enjoyable…”
paranormalbookreviews-kelly.blogspot.com
Praise for Dragon’s Mind
“When Dragon's true nature comes to light, Myth is forced into a fast paced, exciting rescue mission where she must rely on his disembodied voice to save them. A cast of interesting characters, high tech goodies and humorous banter makes this book fun and fast reading.”
An Amazon.com review
“I really liked the main character Myth. The story itself was very fast moving. What I liked most was the fun interactions between Myth and Dragon. This book had a lot more humor in it than I expected. I recommend this one if you are looking for a fast fun sci fi read.”
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15736525-dragon-s-mind
“The storyline was very easy to immerse myself in, which enabled me to finish it pretty fast. Very enjoyable, and I will be looking out for the sequel.”
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15736525-dragon-s-mind
Praise for Lethal Takeout
“I truly enjoyed reading Lethal Takeout and look forward to reading the next installment of The Ghost Post Mystery series. This book is suitable for adults and YA.”
http://www.booksforreviewbyrobin.blogspot.com
“I enjoyed this book with its light humor and interesting blend of ghost story and mystery. The dialog between the characters and the interactions between the ghosts and the people was snappy and entertaining.”
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15705122-lethal-takeout
“Just reading the title made me wonder, what could be lethal about takeout? As I read this book by talented author, Vered Ehsani, all my questions were answered. The characters in the story are likeable and eccentric. The storyline is crisp and moves at an enjoyable readable pace. There is humor, which is sometime dark, but will have you chuckling out loud.”
http://www.booksforreviewbyrobin.blogspot.com
Dying
Even when you know how it’s going to happen, you’re never really prepared to die. At least, that’s been my experience.
Everything was almost as it should be: the clearing filled with snow, the mild blizzard, the fog full of shapes that could be monsters waiting to cover me in shadow or could just be fog. My soon-to-be murderer was standing in front of me. It was all the way it should be, according to my recurring nightmare, except for two things: no one else was supposed to be there with me, facing death; and I wasn’t ready to die.
That kind of presents a problem, don’t you think? Especially the ‘I’m not ready to die’ thing, because I really wasn’t. And I definitely was not prepared to watch two other people go down with me, even if one of them had forgotten who I was and the other irritated me to no end.
But before we get to that part, way before I marched straight into the clearing where I was supposed to die, we need to go back a bit, so you understand how I ended up in that little dilemma. And the first thing to sort out is how someone can fall out of an airplane, and survive…
Chapter 1
I sat up fast enough to cause my head to buzz and my neck to snap painfully. My eyes were all sticky with sleep and I had to rub my lids open. Automatically, I glanced towards the scary corner of my bedroom, the corner where I occasionally saw the ghost of the girl, but she wasn’t there.
No, of course not. She was in your dream. The ghost girl was in you dream!
I thought about that for a moment. I had been dreaming about a girl who fell out of an airplane into a tornado. What the heck was she doing in an airplane, or rather, falling out of an airplane in my dream? Come to think of it (not something I like to do at three in the morning), she hadn’t just been in my dream. It was more like I had been in her memory, or she’d been in my head, like we had swapped places or something weird. It was almost as nasty as my recurring nightmare, the one with me standing in a snowy, forest clearing, waiting to be murdered.
Ok, on second thought, I really didn’t want to think about it. I sunk back into a horizontal position, all set to fall into a deep, and preferably, dreamless sleep where there were no airplanes or killer shadows. After weeks of mostly dreamless nights (and I’m not complaining about that, let me tell you), I had started dreaming again. And for me, that was never, ever a good sign.
“Go to sleep, Ash,” I told myself. “Just forget about it. Go. To. Sleep.”
Was that ‘falling out of a plane’ event real or just one of my nightmares?
I groaned aloud. I wasn’t falling asleep after all. And I couldn’t stop wondering where my ghost was, the one who’d occasionally pop up in my bedroom just to scare me. Had I just witnessed her death? I’d never dreamed of her before. I hadn’t thought about her at all lately; for a couple weeks, I’d been too busy catching up on homework I’d neglected during my last adventure. The one where possessed shadows chased me, and I got zapped back to the start of the American Revolution where I discovered I could tu
rn into a ghost myself. Yeah, that adventure. But now she’d come back to remind me that she was still around.
On the bright side, at least she wasn’t hanging out in a corner of my bedroom. Nope. Now she was haunting my dreams. Lucky me.
Something fluttered on my desk.
“Great,” I mumbled. “Just great.”
Wearily, I pushed myself out of bed, too tired to react with my normal fear level. I switched on the bedside lamp, wished I hadn’t when I saw all the shadows spring up, and stumbled towards the desk. Summer holidays had just started, so the usual homework clutter was cleared off for a couple months. The only thing there apart from my computer was the Book of History. Yes, I write it in capitals, to show that it’s a pretty important book. It lets me travel through the thin curtain or veil that separates one time period from another. A few weeks ago, I used it to go back to Boston, 1773, just in time to witness the beginning of the American Revolution and save my ancestors.
The fluttering sound repeated.
“Uh… I really hope whatever’s making that sound is a little bird,” I mumbled, still trying to wake up fully. I rubbed my eyes and tugged at my hair nervously. “Or something equally not scary.”
I glanced in the direction of the sound. The heavy leather cover of my crazy book flew open, and pages flapped around, kind of the way my heart was flapping around just then. When my heart and the pages had all settled down, I approached the desk and stared. A painting of a plateau beckoned me in; a bright moon shone down on the smooth, dark surface of a large pond, and skeletal trees encircled the water and cast sharp shadows on the barren ground around them. It looked about as inviting as a deep pit filled with poisonous snakes, but being able to turn into a ghost meant I didn’t have to worry about the snakes or any other biting creature. Besides, I wasn’t going back to sleep and I had nothing better to do.
I quickly changed into jeans and a top and pulled on my sneakers. The last thing I wanted to do was go through the book in my PJs. Not cool. I then sunk my hand onto the page, and the familiar pulling sensation enveloped me. I left my room and entered the veil.
Shimmering, bright light blinded me for a moment as I stood there. I was in a dimension that was in between different places and times. I suspect that the veil actually has no place or time, but even attempting to think about that turns my brain into Jell-O. I automatically glanced around to see if anyone else was there with me. On either side, a silent, empty glowing corridor stretched on forever. Ahead of me, the edge of the veil fluttered like a very thin curtain through which I could see the other side. I floated forward.
And then I was floating above the hard, cracked dirt of a plateau. Ahead of me and towards the edge of the mountaintop, I could see silhouettes of the dead trees. To one side of me lay a chunk of a plane’s wall, complete with a window.
“So it wasn’t just a dream,” I murmured. I focused on making myself solid. My feet touched down and I glanced around.
The ghost from my bedroom corner was crouching a few metres away, holding her stomach and groaning. Then she muttered, “Rule number one: never eat airplane food right before falling into a tornado.” She groaned loudly and then whispered, “Definitely not good. I’m going to throw up.” And she did.
“Going through the veil can do that,” I stated without thinking. Like she would have any idea what I was talking about.
She spluttered and glanced up quickly. She must’ve felt really sick because she hardly reacted to the fact that I had appeared out of nowhere. I had expected a scream, a shout or, at the very least, a gasp. But no.
“You…” She stopped and stared at me like I was the village idiot that she’d really rather not be seen with.
As if to confirm her suspicions, I continued, “So, ah… What’s rule number two then?”
She shook her head slowly as if to clear her vision. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened and closed a few times. Her hands were still clutching at her stomach. Finally, she mumbled, “Can we discuss something else?”
“Brilliant,” she grumbled to herself, rubbing her hands over her face. “Now I’m hallucinating, and about you of all things.”
“Have we met before?”
She ignored me, stood up slowly while she swung a small backpack onto one shoulder, and gazed around, rubbing her stomach. I was amazed at her lack of surprise. I mean, she’d just been sucked out of a plane and I had literally appeared from nowhere. Despite all that, she was acting like she was at the airport, waiting for her luggage to arrive off the carousel. Then again, maybe she was in shock. Or she might actually believe I was just a hallucination? And apparently, she’d had this unwanted vision of me before, if I understood her previous comment. That was a big ‘if.’
“You know, you’re really not hallucinating,” I said eagerly, hoping she’d believe me. She still ignored me and I still persisted on trying to get her to talk. “So, what was rule number two?”
She glanced at me, her eyes narrowing, and snapped, “Number two would be: don’t get in the plane in the first place. Of course, it might help if a parole officer doesn’t force you on board.”
“Parole…” Who the heck was I dealing with here?
That’s when I noticed her shadow.
This is one of those things about the Book of History. Once I started using it, I also started seeing stuff about people in their shadows, like I was seeing some hidden part of them. When people are angry or talking badly about others, their shadows kind of look a bit… scary. And sometimes, what I see isn’t about the people. Sometimes, the shadows take on a life of their own, usually when they’re about to attack me.
The moon was very bright and big as it hovered close to the horizon. The shadows that I could see were dark with crisp edges, and they were all behaving themselves. But her shadow was wilted and pale, like it really didn’t want to be there.
“It looks depressed.”
I didn’t realise I’d said that out loud until the girl turned to me and demanded, “What’s depressed?”
“Your shadow.” I had to be truthful. It was one of the rules of being so close to the veil, otherwise I could mess it up somehow. It was a pretty annoying rule sometimes.
“My shadow is depressed,” she stated slowly before gazing up at the moon. “Well, this is just peachy. So now my hallucination is telling me my shadow is depressed. And he wants me to believe I’m not hallucinating. Right.” She placed her hands over her face and kept them there.
I decided to start over and pretend I hadn’t just made any ridiculous sounding comments. “I’m Ash.” And not knowing when to shut up, I blurted out, “And you’re the ghost from my bedroom.”
I wanted to smack my head against a brick wall. Fortunately, there wasn’t one around.
She slowly lowered her hands and scowled at me. Long strands of brown hair waved about her face, fluttering in her eyes. Her frown deepened; she quickly pulled her hair back and somehow wrapped it up in a ball behind her head, where it stayed. I still don’t understand how girls do that.
“I’m Juna,” she finally responded. “And I definitely am not a ghost. I’d kind of have to be… oh, let’s see now…” She pretended to think about that and then snapped, “DEAD to be a ghost.”
“Yeah, I used to think that, too,” I responded airily, trying to be cool and casual, as if I knew so much more on the subject. Which I kind of did, but like I mentioned before, I don’t know when to shut up.
Her eyebrows rose and I could tell my offhanded attitude irked her. But I was too excited to finally meet not only the ghost from my bedroom, but another person I could share this craziness with. “So, how’d you get here?”
“I…” She paused, looking confused and not quite so high and mighty. I liked her better that way. “I’m not too sure. I think I fell out of a plane.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw you. This is great.” I grinned at her.
Her dark eyes darkened some more. “Which part? The part where I fell out of a plane?”
&nbs
p; “Ah… no. That part pretty much isn’t great. I meant the part where I find someone like me.”
“Yeah, right. I don’t think so.” Her haughty expression snapped back into position faster than a mask on Halloween as she stared down her nose at me. Not that she was really taller or anything. It was more the way she held herself.
I realised I was slouching, and I straightened up. “Well, I do. I can travel through the veil…”
“Veil,” she repeated in a flat tone.
“Yeah, it’s like a thin curtain that separates different places and times.”
“A curtain?” she again repeated, but this time with considerably more interest.
“That’s right. It looks like a really thin curtain, kind of misty and delicate, almost invisible but not quite. I can travel through it, and I think you can, too. That’s how you got from inside a plane to here. Did you notice something that looks like that?”
She frowned and reluctantly nodded.
“Cool. Can you do this?” I began to fade and float up.
“What the…” she screeched. “How the heck are you doing that?”
Ok, so she wasn’t quite like me. I floated down and solidified. “So, did you use a book or something to go through?” I hastily asked to distract her.
“No.” She was studying me with slightly more interest and respect now. My shoulders pulled up a little as I straightened my back further. “I was thinking how much I wanted to get away, and now, here I am. Wherever here is.” She gazed around and started walking towards the pool, her ‘I’m-too-cool-for-this’ mask back in place.
“Wow.” Now I was impressed. I followed her. “You don’t need a book to move through the veil!”
“No, we’ve already established that. And I’m not a ghost.”
“Yeah, that’s what I tell everyone, too.”