The Return: Shadow Souls by L. J. Smith

Author:L. J. Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Young-adult Fiction, Dark Fantasy
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2012-08-31T11:51:47+00:00

“They will be having ceremonies somewhere, now that there are this many of them,” Mrs. Flowers said in genteel distress as she and Matt sat and sipped herbal tea in the boardinghouse parlour. It was dinnertime, but still quite light outside.

“Ceremonies to do what?” Matt asked. He had never made it to his parents’ house since he’d left Damon and Elena more than a week ago to come back to Fell’s Church. He’d stopped by Meredith’s house, which was on the edge of town, and she’d convinced him to come by Mrs. Flowers’s first. After the conversation the three of them had had with Bonnie, Matt had decided it was best to be “invisible.” His family would be safer if no one knew that he was still in Fell’s Church. He would live at the boardinghouse, but none of the children who were making all the trouble would realize that. Then, with Bonnie and Meredith safely gone to meet Damon and Elena, Matt could be a sort of secret operative.

Now he almost wished he’d gone with the girls. Trying to be a secret operative in a place where all the enemies seemed to be able to hear and see better than you could, as well as to move much faster, hadn’t turned out to be nearly as helpful as it had sounded. He spent reading most of the time the Internet blogs that Meredith had marked, looking for clues that might do them some good.

But he hadn’t read of the need for any kind of ceremonies. He turned to Mrs. Flowers as she thoughtfully sipped her tea.

“Ceremonies for what?” he repeated.

With her soft white hair and her gentle face and vague, amiable blue eyes, Mrs. Flowers looked like the most harmless little old lady in the world. She wasn’t. A witch by birth, and a gardener by vocation, she knew as much about black magic herbal toxins as about white magic healing poultices.

“Oh, doing generally unpleasant things,” she replied sadly, staring into the tea leaves in her cup. “They’re partly like pep rallies, you know, to get everyone all worked up. They probably also do some small black magic there. Some of it is by way of blackmail and brainwashing—they can tell any new converts that they are guilty now by reason of attending the meetings. They might as well give in and become fully initiated…that sort of thing. Very unpleasant.”

“But what kind of unpleasant?” Matt persisted.

“I really don’t know, dear. I never went to one of them.”

Matt considered. It was almost 7:00, which was curfew for children under eighteen. Eighteen seemed to be the oldest that a child could be and become possessed.

Of course, it wasn’t an official curfew. The sheriff’s department seemed to have no idea of how to deal with the curious disease that was working its way through the young girls of Fell’s Church. Scare them straight? It was the police that were frightened. One young sheriff had come tearing out of the Ryan house to

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