All The Pretty Ghosts (The Never Series Book 1) Jamie Campbell (best life changing books .TXT) 📖

is nobody maintaining the gas pipes. It only takes one little fault and the entire building goes up. It’s been happening right around the city.”

All those explosions I had seen from the house on the hill. I had always wondered. The reality of seeing the destruction and aftermath was horrifying. I ached for the safety of my house, my hill, my sanctuary.

“It could happen to other people,” I stated, it definitely wasn’t a question. This building was not the first, it wouldn’t be the last either. There would be more people burned beyond the limits of humanity.

“We should go,” Oliver said gently. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

I couldn’t move. All the faces around me were as haunted as I felt. We were momentarily united in shock and grief. I made the mistake of looking at one of the spirits.

“You have to help me.”

Ignoring her was my best option.

Until all the others noticed.

“I think my daughter was in there.”

“Forget them, I need to talk to Fleur. Can you find her?”

“She needs to help me. Not you.”

I started backing away until I hit the fence of another building. They swarmed around me, yelling for help I could not give them. They just wanted so much, there were too many of them. It was impossible.

Lilia appeared in front of them all. She looked up at me with her sad little face and deep green eyes. “There are so many of them, Everly.”

“I know,” I replied. If I focused on her, they dulled a little. She was my lifeline in the sudden ocean.

“What are you going to do?” Her voice was so innocent, laced with genuine curiosity.

I wished I had an answer for her.

I closed my eyes and tried to push them all away, reminding myself they couldn’t physically harm me. I needed to go with Oliver, then we could leave the hopeless street. It wouldn’t get rid of the spirits but he would give me the strength I needed.

Pushing past the spirits, coldness shuddered down my spine. Oliver was nowhere in sight. That only left me one option.

I ran.

My feet pounded on the cement, stumbling over the debris from the building. I rounded every corner I could find until the stench of acrid smoke no longer filled my lungs. The smell lingered on my clothes, but it wasn’t invading me like it had been.

The thought of entering a building that could explode at any time was impossible. Instead, I found an underpass and curled up in front of a drain grate. Pulling my legs to my chest, I tried to erase everything I had seen.

The burned little boy refused to leave my mind. He should not have had to die such a horrific death. The world was no longer the gentle place it once was. Left in the Event’s wake was nothing but pain and suffering.

“Everly? Are you okay?” Oliver’s soft voice carried into my thoughts, shaking me from the darkness.

“Are any of us okay?” I asked as he settled himself on the ground next to me. He was always just out of reach, making it impossible for me to fall into his arms like I would have liked at times.

He stared at me intimately with his dark green eyes, a thousand thoughts running through his mind.

I couldn’t take his silence. “Go on, say it. I know there is something you are holding onto.”

Oliver let out a long sigh. “You don’t have to save them all. It’s not up to you.”

“Then why can I see them and no-one else can?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lilia was there, she was scared,” I said before I could stop myself. “She wanted to know what I was going to do about them all.”

Oliver shook his head. It was the slightest movement but it conveyed so much. “Do nothing. Just survive.”

“But you said-”

“I was wrong. Everly, I was wrong. Go back to your house on the hill if you want to. Just do whatever you have to so you don’t end up like them.”

The pain in his eyes hurt me too. I had known Oliver so long, I thought I knew everything about him. But this? This resignation was something new.

And it felt like a thousand daggers pierced into my heart.

“What about you?” I asked. “If I hide away, what will you do?”

“I will be fine.”

“So it’s just me that can’t look after themselves, then?”

He moved closer. Just for a second, I thought he might reach for me. I pictured myself curled up in his lap, holding onto his muscled chest like he was an anchor that would ground me forever.

In the next second, it was gone. He crossed his arms, holding them tight against his body. Whatever he was going to do would never be known. Especially not to me.

“I know you can look after yourself,” he finally muttered. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You could come to the house with me? We could live there together with nobody to bother us.”

“That house is your refuge, not mine.”

I didn’t know what else I could say and I didn’t have answers for any of our problems. The weight of the day was bearing down on me like a heavy boulder resting on my shoulders. I tilted my head against the wall, closing my eyes.

Before I knew it, I was asleep.

Ghosts didn’t plague my dreams that night, but the smell did. In the thick fog of my nightmares, I was choking on the dense smoke. No matter how many times I gasped for breath and fresh air, it wouldn’t come.

I woke up gasping equally as hard. It took a few moments for the nightmare to dissipate around me as reality sunk in. I was in an underpass.

Safe, but alone.

Oliver was