Shadowlands 01 - Shadowlands by Kate Brian

Author:Kate Brian [Brian, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

My feet pounded against the pavement as I sprinted downhill toward town. If Tristan lived all the way up here, why the hell was he lurking in the house across the street from mine? Was he there just to watch me? Was he some kind of bizarre stalker keeping an eye on the new girl? And who the hell had been watching me from his actual house? I wanted answers, and I wanted them now.

I crossed through town, zipping past our favorite local musician in the park, who was jamming on his guitar with his eyes closed and a smile on. Near the far corner, I caught a couple of disturbed stares from an older couple chilling on a bench. Not that I was surprised. I must have looked like a crazed lunatic, sprinting for all I was worth and completely ignoring the sidewalk. I just hoped Olive hadn’t thought I was nuts when I’d blurted that I had to go and taken off, leaving her behind to stare after me.

I ran down the diagonal cut-through street, purposely averting my eyes from the rundown park, and took the corner onto our block, skidding so hard I almost hit the dirt. I was about to beeline it for the gray house, when I saw something hanging off the gate in front of our place across the way.

I stopped short and gasped for breath. It was a gray canvas messenger bag with a frayed strap. Exactly the same bag Steven Nell carried to school every day.

The air was cold and the ground wet against my back. Pine needles pierced my arms. The clouds parted overhead. A perfect half moon and Steven Nell’s sadistic smile, his watery eyes, his thin, dry, lips.

A bell trilled and sucked me back into the now. The warm sun tickled my flesh. I blinked as the middle-aged man with his surfboard rode by me with a smile. Aside from him, the street was deserted, but that bag was still there. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real.

Part of me wanted to turn around and run straight to the police, but what was I going to tell them? That someone had left a bag on our gate? I was just going to have to deal with this myself. Maybe it was nothing.

Defiantly, I stormed across the road and over to the bag. The flap hung open, practically daring me to look inside. But what was I going to find if I did? A threatening note? A severed hand? What?

Holding my breath, I yanked the bag open. I blinked, surprised. It was filled to the brim with model lighthouses of various sizes. The smallest one was about two inches high, carved of stone and meticulously painted. The largest was about six inches tall, made of crappy plastic and topped by a tiny light that illuminated with the press of a button. There were dozens of them, each with a Juniper Landing swan stamped on its walls.

“Hey.”

I whirled around, dropping the bag back where it hung, letting it slam against the fence.

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