Page 6 of Soul of Shadow
And yet—
And yet therewasan odd tug inside her. A sort of wire running between her chest and that tree. She hadn’t known it existed, not until now. Until she went looking for it. But all it took was one glance into the forest, and she felt it. A yearning. A call to the wild.
Ridiculous, she thought. She wasn’t an idiot. Of course she would listen to her mother.
“Yes,” she said finally. “Yes. You have my word.”
Her mother exhaled, as if she’d been holding her breath. “Wonderful,” she said, standing up and walking back toward the door. “Oh!” She clapped. “Last thing.” She bent over and pulled a slim object out of the laundry basket, then carried it across the library. “I brought you something.”
She held out a small book. Charlie accepted it, studying the cover.
“With Sin and Roses?” she asked, looking up at her mom. “Seriously? Is this another one of your sex books?”
“They are notsex books,” her mom said, feigning offense. “They’re romance novels. They inspire us to dream of great love and adventure.”
Charlie rolled her eyes, tucking the book into the folds of the armchair. “Thank you.”
She patted Charlie’s head, then recrossed the room and picked up her laundry basket. “Just give it a try,” she said over her shoulder. “You never know; you might like it.”
“Sure,” Charlie said as her mom closed the door to the library.
She reopened her laptop and went back to rewatching Penn and Teller. Every few minutes, however, her eyes darted over to the book stuffed into the side of the armchair.
The truth was, Charlie used to love books like that. She and Sophie used to tear through little-kid love stories about princesses and fair maidens, stacking the finished books on their bedside tables until they formed towers so tall and precarious that the girls were forced to move the books to the bookcase in the corner of their room. As they got older, their interest in books waned, until all that was left of that obsession was a dusty old bookcase filled with dusty old books.
Which, if she was being honest, was the perfect metaphor for her own love life. A dusty bookcase filled with little more than a few dusty, drunken dance-floor make-outs—and that was exactly how she liked it.
No reason to go changing things now.
4
Charlie tried to obey her mother. Really, she did.
She tried when she overheard Mason chatting excitedly about the tree to friends over the phone. When her mom had the news on nonstop. Even when she watched “expert” after “expert” (local university teachers with degrees in God only knew what) try to parse out the Norse symbols. She kept her mind off the mystery. Told herself that the tug in her chest was all in her imagination. That she should’ve never gone out there to begin with.
So, yes. She tried. But all it took was one text. One measly message from Lou that said,Let’s investigate, and she was out the door.
She took the Ford. She knew that she would catch hell from Mason—he was always on aboutseniorityandelder brother’s rights—but it was as much her car as his. Her mom had made that clear on her sixteenth birthday.
It was an old car. A dark-green Bronco, stick shift. The engine made a funny noise when you went over sixty miles per hour, but Charlie loved the car regardless. It held a special place in her heart, her ticket to freedom, even though she still didn’t know what she wanted freedom from. Or for.
“Where’s Abigail?” Charlie asked when Lou got in and slammed the door.
“Not interested in joining us.” Lou fastened her seat belt and slid her shoes off. She lounged backward, putting her socked feet up onto the dashboard. “You should’ve seen the text she sent me. It was allYou’re going where?! But that’s a crime scene, Lou! Do you have any idea how illegal that is?!So I said,Good. I can’t wait to add ‘arrested for obstruction of justice’ to that resume you keep talking about.’ Lou cackled, slapping her knees excitedly. Then she straightened up and shook out her long pale-auburn hair, suddenly serious. “Anyway. Can we get Starbucks?”
Charlie stared at her best friend. “You want to pick up a latte on the way to a crime scene?”
“Obviously.” Lou turned her attention to the road. “This detective needs some caffeine.”
The clearing was fenced in with caution tape. Police cruisers had driven off the road and into the forest, parking as close as they could get to the scene. News vans formed a perimeter at a safe distance away from the police, with reporters holding microphones and speaking into oversize cameras.
Charlie and Lou hid behind two pine trees with a partially obscured view of the scene.
“What exactly is our plan here?” Charlie asked. “We’re not going to push our way onto a crime scene, are we? They’ll never let us through.”
“No, no.” Lou waved the hand that clutched an iced vanilla latte—which Charlie paid for, naturally. “The police are only looking at that one area right now. We’re here to findotherclues. The stuff they might miss.”
“Such as?”
