Midnight Soul Read Online Free

startling
light-blue eyes on me.
    “Nope,” he stated.
    “Nope” I had learned through the fullness of
our discourse these past hours in his world meant “no.”
    Incidentally, we’d had a good deal of
whiskey.
    We’d also finished all the wine.
    And I was sure I was likely to lament how
deep in my cups I was at that present juncture.
    I just didn’t have it in me to care.
    “You can speak to any being you want in the
entirety of your universe, as long as you have this… number you describe? By just entering it into a gadget and putting it to
your ear?” I asked.
    “Yep,” he replied. “And as long as they also
have a phone.”
    “Yep” I’d learned meant “yes.”
    So did “Yup,” but we had that in my world
too.
    I examined his face.
    He looked relaxed and amused.
    He did not look as if he was dissembling.
    Even so, he had to be dissembling.
    Therefore, I moved back an inch on my
accusation. “You lie.”
    He shook his head, leaning forward and
reaching behind him, stating, “Nope.”
    He then pulled out a thin, rectangular piece
of what looked like metal and glass. It had rounded edges. It was
simple but somehow exceptionally handsome.
    He leaned toward me, holding this thing my
way, and as I watched the little window illuminated, showing a
variety of tiny pictures on it, all lined up precisely in rows, up
and down.
    “By the gods,” I whispered, reaching toward
it but stopping, struck immobile by the fantastical.
    “Yep,” he said, moving his thumb on the
window. A white screen came up with a listing of text. “That’s
email. You can send mail to anyone too, if you have their address.
And it gets to them in a couple of minutes. Of course I can’t do
that now, seeing as I’m way outside service. But if I
wasn’t, I could call ’em, mail ’em, text ’em.”
    I turned my gaze from his gadget to his
face.
    “Text them?”
    “Type in a message,” he said, my eyes dropped
back to his contraption as his thumb moved over it. “Hit send, it
goes to someone else’s phone, bings, they get the message within
minutes. Seconds even.”
    “That’s extraordinary ,” I breathed,
reaching out yet again but stopping before I touched the little box
of magic.
    “You can take it, Franka. It won’t bite
you.”
    Laughter laced his words and I again looked
at his handsome face.
    I didn’t take his gadget.
    I asked, “Is it magic?”
    “We don’t have magic in our world like you
do.”
    I sat back in shock. “How bizarre.”
    “We do,” he went on to clarify. “It just
isn’t out . As in, practiced openly.”
    He could not be serious.
    “That’s very dangerous,” I stated primly
(perhaps in order to hide I also did it uncomfortably).
    “It probably fuckin’ is,” he muttered.
    “You should do something about that,” I
informed him with authority. “It’s my understanding you’re in the
city guard. You should speak to your constable. Perhaps he can
speak to your…whatever title your ruler bears. They can surely do
something about that. And as you can imagine with your activities
here, it’s advisable.”
    He shook his head. “If the president went on
record making folks come forward to register that they’re witches
and sorcerers…or whatever…he’d be removed from office in about
twenty-four hours.”
    “That’s ludicrous.”
    A small grin flirted at his lips as he shook
his head again. “It’s the truth.”
    “Odd,” I murmured, looking back to
his… phone .
    He shook it side to side in a coaxing way.
“Take it, babe. You can’t hurt it. It can’t hurt you. There’s games
on it if you want me to show you how they work.”
    I again caught his eyes. “Games?”
    This time, he nodded. “Solitaire. Tetris.
Trivia Crack. Think there might be Fruit Ninja on there still.”
    “Fruit… ninja ?” I asked the question
like I was trying out the words.
    He simply chuckled at that, but he did it in
a way I knew he was being gracious for he appeared to be fighting
roaring