Predictably, Eve spoke first. “If you think about it, this wasn’t really about us being able to trust you, Logan. It was about you being able to trust us.”
Adam nodded. “And I think we all know where we stand now. Lesson learned. No more secrets. Ever. At all.”
Dominic looked Logan in the eyes. “You chose us. Up there. In the end. That’s what matters.”
“Yeah, and honestly, after that, I trust you more.” Alex smiled, but her eyes looked troubled. Somehow Dominic knew that it wasn’t about Logan but about her dad. Something would have to be done about that soon.
Logan took a deep breath, his eyes oddly shiny. Dominic looked away just as little footsteps pattered on the linoleum behind him.
“Can I come out here?” Sam was holding a handful of trucks and wearing a grieved expression. “Darcy won’t play with me. She won’t even answer me. She’s just sitting on the bed reading that book.”
“I knew it!” Eve shouted.
Logan was grinning. Alex and Adam traded a high five.
Dominic smiled as he watched the others gather around Sam and his toys on the floor. They might just look like seven kids holed up in a cheap trailer, but they were still together, and what they had here was strong.
And the Circle was growing.
Afterword
Logan held the scrap of paper in two fingers like it was going to bite him. “And you just found this?”
“It was stuck to that big tree in the Clairi village. Stuck there with this feather, straight into the wood like a nail.”
Logan ran a finger over the feather. Like any feather, it was soft along one edge, but the spine was as hard as steel. He shook his head.
“Have you showed the others?”
“I thought you should see it first.”
“Thanks.”
Logan realized that his hand was trembling and gripped the paper tighter to steady it. To buy himself a minute, he read the page again. He still had to squint to bring the words into focus.
Dom,
Found them. Not close. Someone will come to you. Don’t know when.
One thing can’t wait: That circle would have turned L into a Breaker. They’ll explain later, but there’s no doubt. When it didn’t work, her goal was to end him. Permanently. Probably a knife or a cliff. BE CAREFUL.
-Ben
“I guess it was even closer than we thought,” Logan tried to keep his voice light, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded.
Dominic’s look told Logan he saw right through him. “It didn’t happen. That’s what matters. But no one goes anywhere alone now. We’re with our families or we’re with each other.”
Logan glanced over at the couch where Darcy sat rereading the first stories in the Book of Sight. He had been so happy when she had understood it. She was like a different person since that night. She didn’t pick fights anymore. She helped him take care of Sam and keep his mom from finding out about his eyes. She read the Book out loud to him every night after Sam was in bed until his sight was good enough that he could read for himself.
Logan felt sick, thinking of how much danger he had put her in.
Dominic saw where he was looking. “We’re going to be okay. We’re not the only ones who are afraid. They’re scared of us, too.”
Logan nodded but the dread didn’t go away.
After a minute Dominic said, “She was already in danger. Our families were targeted the minute we first read the Book. We just didn’t know it. At least now she can see the danger for herself.”
Logan took a deep breath. It’s better to know. It’s better to see than to walk around blind. He was proud of how firm his voice sounded when he spoke. “We should make the rounds. This can’t wait. The girls are at Maddie’s. Eve is hoping that she can convince Maddie to give her book back today.”
“I need your pump to fix my tire. I hit a rock on the way over. Bring the kids. ”
Logan’s insides twisted, but he just nodded again.
Dominic was at the door when he jerked his head towards Darcy. “Some things are worth it,” he said as he slipped out.
Logan felt that old familiar argument inside. He agreed with Dominic. Life was dangerous. Their life was more dangerous than most, but that was because they were living more than most. Still…
You won’t be living more if someone takes one of you, said the other voice in his head. They could have killed you. They still might. Any one of you. And now that means Darcy, too. If something happens to her it will be your fault.
His brain showed him pictures of Darcy wandering alone, Darcy falling off a cliff, Darcy with a knife in her back.
A loud snap jolted the images from his mind. Darcy had closed the book but was still sitting and blinking. Logan knew she was slowly coming back from wherever the story had taken her. He had felt that same dazed feeling so many times himself. When she finally looked over, Darcy smiled, but Logan could see tears in her eyes. He swallowed hard and smiled back.
Logan made a decision. With an effort, he pushed the voice in his head into a tiny room and locked the door. He could never, never regret putting that look on Darcy’s face. He could never second guess making her feel what he knew she was feeling right now.
He would take care of her. He would watch over her. They all would. They would keep her safe.
He was done with hesitating. He was done with looking back. This was his life now, their life, their awesome upsetting spectacular dangerous life, and he wasn’t going to waste it being afraid.
Continue reading
for a sneak peek of
The Secret Source
Book 3
of The Book of Sight
Now available in paperback and e-book
1
Dog Whisperer
If Eve Sloane had known that the neighbors’ Doberman loved mysteries as much as she did, she wouldn’t have been so afraid of him when she was younger.
“The thing is,” she said to her best friend, Alex, who had come over to hear more about Eve’s discovery, “barking isn’t exactly easy to understand. In barks, ‘Hey, let me out of here so I can track down clues,” sounds exactly like, ‘Hey, I want to tear your face off.”
Alex laughed as she leaned her bike against the side of Eve’s garage. “Who knew? And all that time he wasn’t a guard dog at all, just a frustrated detective.”
“Exactly.” Eve led the way around to the side gate and into the backyard.
“So he’s like a little doggy Sherlock Holmes?”
“He’s not little. And he actually learned it from watching Hitchcock, not Sherlock.”
“Ha! Of course he did. And you found this out by talking to him?”
“Yeah. And don’t even look at me like that. I know it sounds crazy.”
Alex just shrugged. Considering that she and Eve had become friends by reading the same magical book and then having two years’ worth of impossible adventures, this didn’t seem that weird. “Would I ever call you crazy? I just came from having a conversation with a tree stump. It only makes sense that a talking dog would be next.”
“He doesn’t exactly talk. I talk. He barks and wags his tail and stuff.”
“So where in there did you pick up on the love for old mystery movies?”
“That was a total accident.” Eve gave a piercing whistle. “I was out here the other day trying to read, and my mom came out all freaking because she couldn’t find her new sunglasses which she claimed she had left on the back porch and now they weren’t there and they cost ten million dollars and blah, blah, blah. Naturally she thought I’d taken them. Which, why would I? But that’s not the point.”
Eve broke off as a scary-looking black dog stuck his head up over the top of the privacy fence. He was standing on his hind legs, and that made him impressively tall.
“Hey there, Prince. How’s it going, boy?” She reached up and scratched the top of his head.
“So, I noticed that Prince was looking over the fence and watching
this. He was listening. I could tell. And just as my mom hit full stride, he starts barking, and I knew he was trying to get my attention. Of course, my mom was just ranting on, ignoring him, but I saw that he was looking at the flower beds over there. So I looked over, and sure enough, there were the glasses. Obviously, I knew better than to find them myself because she’d be convinced I’d put them there and probably ground me or something, so I just asked if maybe she’d been wearing them when she was weeding there earlier, and she looked over, and sure enough, she remembered. Crisis averted. All thanks to Prince.”
Eve paused long enough to give Prince another good scratch behind the ears.
“When she left I started talking to Prince. I got up on this chair so we could see eye to eye, and believe me that’s the first time I’ve come close to this fence since they got a Doberman, but I could just tell that he knew what I was saying. I said he was good at finding things, and he got really happy and started running back and forth between the fence and the house, and I knew he was trying to show me something. Inside they had the TV running. It basically runs 24/7. They weren’t even home. Maybe it’s to keep out thieves or something, who knows? Though why they would need that with Prince, I have no idea. They’re kind of paranoid, I think...
“Anyway. The TV was on, and an old Hitchcock movie was playing, and Prince just sat down, watching it through the window and wiggling his little stump of a tail around. I asked him if that was his favorite show.”
Alex laughed again. “And he said yes?”
“Pretty much.”
Prince cocked his head to the side and stared at Alex.
“See!” Eve said. “He thinks you’re making fun of him, and he doesn’t like it. I told you he could understand.”
Alex stepped up on the chair. Eve had to admire her courage, since Prince wasn’t looking particularly friendly at the moment.
“I’m sorry, Prince,” Alex said seriously. “I wasn’t making fun of you. I’m just not used to dogs being detectives. It’s very nice to meet you, though, and I’m really glad you could help Eve out.”
Prince tipped his head slightly. Alex scratched the top lightly. Then Prince jumped down from the fence and frolicked around the yard for a minute.
“Nice work,” said Eve, joining Alex on the chair. “You guys are friends now.”
“I hope his owners don’t see him do that,” said Alex. “He doesn’t look like much of a guard dog at the moment.”
“Don’t worry,” Eve said. “He’s never like that when they’re around. They wouldn’t dream of making friends with him.”
“Not the friendly type?”
Eve snorted. “Let’s just say I’ve known Prince’s name since they got him five years ago, but I still can’t remember their names.”
Alex grinned, but the look in her eye as she stepped down off the chair was serious. “So. You can communicate with the dog. And you definitely knew what that freaky creature in the woods last year was wanting us to do. This has to be the Book of Sight, right?”
Eve had given it a lot of thought. When they first read the mysterious Book of Sight, she and her friends had started seeing all sorts of things in the world around them. Little people that lived in the woods outside of town. Stone statues that moved all by themselves. Pictures in the clouds that warned them of danger. The sorts of things that you really couldn’t miss.
It had taken longer to notice the other changes. It was hard for all of them to admit things about themselves that weren’t quite the way they used to be. Hard to explain how you could know things you shouldn’t have been able to know. How you could receive messages in your dreams or sense when danger was coming or know what other people were thinking?
Seeing Alex’s expectant look, Eve nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s got to be that. I mean, it’s totally weird. It’s not like I’m this huge animal lover. I’ve never even had a pet. Can you imagine my mom letting an animal live in her house? But I just started noticing things, the way everything has a way of talking…I mean not with words but still saying things, you know?” She shrugged again. “It’s kind of like what Logan does with faces, right? He says he doesn’t read your mind, he just notices little things people say without words. Only for some reason, I can’t do that with people, only animals, and not even all of them. Just a few of them…I don’t know…make sense to me.”
“Ben said there were all kinds of special gifts people get from the Book,” Alex said. “This seems like a pretty useful one to me.”
“I hope so,” Eve grinned. “Knowing about Prince should be handy. We’ve definitely got enough mysteries to solve. And he’s really good with clues. I didn’t even get to tell you what he did yesterday, which was when I really knew…” Eve broke off suddenly as Prince began to growl from the other side of the fence.
The girls froze and looked at each other. Prince’s growling got louder. Slowly Eve walked over to the fence and climbed back up on the chair. Prince was standing by the front gate of his yard, hackles raised, body tense, staring intently at something on the street.
Eve felt a tingle of fear shoot down her spine. She couldn’t see anyone out there, but she trusted Prince. If he was worried about something, it was real.
“What is it, Prince? Can you smell something out there?”
Prince’s only answer was more growling.
Eve felt the chair sink a bit as Alex stepped up beside her. “What does he see?”
“I don’t know. He’s looking out front, but I can’t see anything. Maybe he just heard a weird noise…” Eve trailed off as Prince pressed himself closer to the fence, snarling.
A sick feeling twisted Eve’s stomach. She knew from experience that there were plenty of dangerous things that couldn’t be easily seen. She thought of the terrifying pilpi monster which blended into shadows and moved in complete silence but had powerful tentacles for stealing in the dark and wrapping up its enemies tightly. She had been in its grip once, sure that she was going to be suffocated. Picturing that dark cave, Eve struggled to breathe again.
Alex’s hand touched Eve’s shoulder, and the air flooded back into her lungs. She shook off the terrible memory. She was here, under the sunshine, with her best friend and a dog who clearly meant to protect them. Eve’s heartbeat steadied.
“Something’s out there,” Alex said calmly. “Maybe it’s just a stray dog or cat or something, but I don’t think so.”
Eve nodded.
“A muxen, maybe?”
Alex whistled shrilly, and both girls looked around. On more than one occasion they had been spied on by a muxen, a tiny gecko-like creature that completely blended in to its surroundings unless a shrill noise caused it to turn fluorescent pink. Eve didn’t see any pink now, though.
The whistle hadn’t distracted Prince, either. He was still staring intently at something through the cracks in the fence, low growls rumbling in his throat.
Eve took a deep breath. “Could she be back?”
Alex didn’t ask who Eve was talking about. They all knew that the ruthless assassin who had posed as Logan’s next door neighbor all last year was still out there somewhere. They had rescued Logan from her just in time, but she had gotten away. That had been almost a year ago, but Eve knew the evil woman was still looking for a way to attack them, probably scheming to get one of them alone and vulnerable.
As if she had read Eve’s mind, Alex said, “At least we’re together.”
Eve smiled shakily. “And we have Prince.”
“I’d feel a lot better if the boys were here, though,” said Alex. Eve raised one brow at her. “Just because then we’d all be together, I mean. Geesh.”
Eve laughed. It made her feel more like herself. “Let’s go find them, then. If there’s one thing we know about these…people, it’s that they like to do things in secret. I doubt anything will come at us in broad daylight while we’re together on a public street.”
Alex nodded and immediately hopped down from the chair. Eve stayed a moment lon
ger, watching Prince, wishing there was some way to comfort him, but he wouldn’t even look in her direction. Suddenly, she realized that she was in the wrong place.
Eve jumped down and followed Alex out the front gate, but instead of heading straight to the driveway, she turned toward Prince. Placing herself right in front of where he stood growling, she crouched and held her hand up to the fence where she could just see the dog’s nose pressed to the gap.
“It’s okay, boy. I’m here. You smell me? You know me. Relax. Whatever else is out there behind me, we’re going to take care of it. All of us together. Alex and I are going to go get the boys, and we’ll take care of it. Okay? You’re going to be all right, and so am I.”
The growling stopped, replaced by the sound of Prince sniffing at her hand. He let out a little whine.
“That’s right, it’s me, Eve. It’s okay. I’m going to check out what’s bothering you. You stay here and watch over my house, too, okay?”
Prince gave a short bark of agreement. Eve relaxed.
“I’ll be back soon. I’m going to go get some help.”
As she walked away, Eve heard Prince whine one more time, but the growling didn’t start up again. He had understood.
In the driveway, Alex was standing next to her bike. “Let’s just walk for a minute, okay? Until we get a couple of blocks away? I’d rather have my feet on the ground.”
Eve laughed, but only out of habit. She knew exactly how Alex felt. Flipping up her own kickstand, she wheeled her bike down to the street.
The Broken Circle (The Book of Sight 2) Page 25