Legions of Bone: Dragon Rider Book 3

Chapter 6: Glimpses of Black

Norah's main mood this chapter

Norah

Norah hated ghosts but she would never tell Dagen that. He would only say he told her so.

    He always did.

They were everywhere, always there, always watching. Over the past few days, Norah's learned that the ghosts collect in the rooms with the most living bodies. So Norah stayed away from the first floor, which meant staying on the second, lounging in the office, in the guest bedroom (which had been turned into her room), or in the bathroom. And when Norah wasn't hunched over the toilet, she perched by the window drinking in the vitamin D. She still tried to read, the Hollands had a beautiful assortment of books ranging from thick books full of medications and the latest surgery innovations to numerous volumes on student drills and battle strategies. Norah even found more recently acquired books about mages, two of which were on frost mages.

Norah had wanted to read those the most, to see if there was any insight into what made frost mages frost mages, even if she already sort of knew.

    But the words on the texts always wiggled across the pages. Or floated. So she'd given up and gave Dagen The Shadow Wars book to read again. But he was a slow reader and getting information came days apart. Which meant that when she wasn't talking to Rima or peering into the neighbors' houses, she was watching shows on her phone.

    She still didn't sleep, mainly because it was what Holland and Riveta wanted. But Norah no longer saw the point in forcing herself to stay awake. Etin came in and out of her mind as he willed. Sleeping or awake, it didn't matter, he was there.

"Crying isn't going to make your cake cook any faster," she scolded the reality tv star, curled in the corner of the couch with a blanket wrapped around her. "Oh my gods, how does she have any tears left? Just remake the cake, you have time."

    "You know," Holland called from the table, never looking up from his work. "For someone who knows nothing about baking, you sure do an awful lot of criticizing."

    "At least I know that if my batter's wrong, remake the cake instead of throwing it in the oven and then crying when it comes out grainy. I don't even know why Jasmine's still on the show. She's so rude and a terrible sport and she cries too much."
    She could feel Bronn's gaze on her from the kitchen. Questioning. Like he didn't know if he should say something. Mercifully, he didn't but Dagen did, glaring at her from the table. "Someone's grumpy  today."

"Says you." She didn't bother to look at him. "You've been brooding over there for three days."

    "It's because Bram made you come downstairs, isn't it?" Bronn said and heat blazed like fire in Norah's chest. She had been perfectly fine watching tv upstairs in silence while Holland worked on the papers for his new pencil pusher job for the factions. But Holland needed more room to work and he said Norah needed to interact with humans and ignore the ghosts, so Norah came downstairs.

    "Why are there so many anatomy and romance books? Where are the adventure ones?" The ghost she referred to as Lacy asked, kneeling before the bookshelves in a white, satin dress, her blonde hair pinned back into a messy braid.

    "Why doesn't she get off her ass?" M snapped. He was tall and slender for a dragon rider with sun-kissed skin and golden-brown hair. His shirt was soaked in red, puncture marks littering his body. M had followed Norah to the shower this morning before she conveniently changed her mind and gave it to Cody.

    The ghosts had not given their names and Norah wondered if they'd been dead so long they'd forgotten them. But she noticed that the ghosts didn't give names to the living either, just nicknames.