All The Pretty Ghosts (The Never Series Book 1) by Jamie Campbell (my miracle luna book free read .TXT) 📕

I was seeing. All the adults had died. The Event had wiped them out wholly and completely. Seeing them was… impossible.

Completely and unequivocally impossible.

“I know, right?” Jet said, laughing. “It blows your mind.”

“How…? How is this even possible?” I stammered out the question, trying to remember how to speak again. It had been a year since I had seen an adult that wasn’t a spirit.

Wait.

I knew what I was seeing.

They had to be spirits.

“You can see them?” I asked before he could start to reply to my original question.

Jet’s brow wrinkled with confusion. “Of course I can see them. I’m not blind.”

“They’re alive?”

“You betcha. Alive and kickin’.”

I couldn’t stop looking at them. Their ages ranged from twenties right up to the elderly. There had to be a dozen of them. Seeing anyone over the age of nineteen now was impossible. I couldn’t get that word out of my head.

Impossible.

“How are they alive?” I asked.

Jet started chewing on his bottom lip again as his gaze returned to the cavern below. His arm was still stretched out in front of me, preventing me from taking a tumble over the edge.

“Jet? How?” I prompted. There were so many questions floating around in my head that it was swimming with nothing else. All my aches had dulled and given way to my confusion.

His eyes remained fixed. “I don’t know. They’re here and that’s the end of it. Nobody knows for sure.”

“But you have a theory.” The words for sure at the end of his sentence screamed he had all kinds of ideas about how the adults were still alive.

Jet shook his head, returning to his casual self. “If the world could heal with theories, we’d all be in utopia.”

“You know something,” I stated. It wasn’t a question because I was certain he did know something. Something he didn’t want to share with me, obviously.

“I know nothing.”

I noted it for later, in case I got to have the chance of living later, and left it alone. Provoking my captor probably wasn’t the smartest way to get back above ground. I would never be able to find my own way out again.

Instead, I switched topics. “Why do they hide down here? They should be above ground, helping everyone.”

Jet snapped his gaze back to me like I had said something wrong. “Why would they do that?”

“Because it’s freaking chaos up there. They might be able to restore the city back to what it was.”

“You really think a few adults could do that?”

“They could try. Down here, they’re doing nothing.”

“That’s not true,” he replied stubbornly. “They’re surviving. Isn’t that what we’re all doing? Both below and above ground?”

“But there are kids dying.” An unwelcome image of the charred little boy from the previous day entered my mind. “Kids that need adults.”

Jet didn’t have anything to say about that. He just stood there, chewing on his lip like he didn’t have a care in the world. It was impossible having a real conversation with him, I shouldn’t have tried.

I shifted, ready to take my chances on the tunnels alone, when Jet stopped me. “They’re scared,” he said quietly, like the effort cost him something.

“Yeah, so are the kids.”

“They’re scared of being killed. If they set foot above ground, what’s to say they won’t die like the rest of the adults did?” Jet stared at me, waiting for an answer.

An answer I didn’t have.

“So they’re just going to hide down here forever?” I demanded.

“You’d rather they go up and die? How would that help anyone?” Jet’s voice was filled with anger too, matching mine now.

“It’s not like they’re helping down here.”

“How do you know?”

I didn’t. Jet knew it better than I did.

The idea of having some adults left in the world, even just a handful, was a miracle. It sparked some hope that maybe everything wasn’t lost with the Event.

What about if there were more?

I stared at the faces below, looking at the adults and remembering what it used to be like to have them everywhere. They used to run the world, raise their children, keep order in a disorganized society.

Seeing them now was like looking at some rare and exotic animals that you could only see in a zoo. They went about their business with no idea I was staring at them, no idea how in awe I was of their mere presence.

Adults.

Real adults.

Impossible.

“They’re alive,” I muttered under my breath to myself.

While watching them, a thought struck me. They were alive, just like everyone else I had seen in the tunnels. There wasn’t one spirit amongst them.

Why weren’t the dead down here?

Every inch of the world was covered in spirits, I had never gone so long without seeing one before. Normally I had to strain to see the living more than I did the dead.

I hadn’t seen one since I was surrounded by the mole people above ground. The more I thought about it, the more I knew it was true.

But I couldn’t believe it.

There I was, seeing those that should have been dead alive. And those that were actually dead were nowhere in sight. There was something strange going on down here. Not only with the adults but with the spirits, too. I just didn’t know what exactly it was.

“Come on, I’ll take you back,” Jet said, turning away from the cavern. The fire below illuminated his features, creating shadows in the curve of his nose and forehead. He looked dangerous, even though his gaze was soft.

“Back where?” I asked.

“Where do you think?” He dodged my question before heading into the tunnel again. It only took a few feet to lose sight of him altogether, making me run to catch up.

After I