The Kingdom. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ attention back to the road. As we passed a gray stone building shrouded in vines, I noticed several girls dressed in the same uniform as Ivy and Sidra ambling out a side door.

       “Is that your school?” I asked.

       “Oh, damn!” Ivy slid down in her seat. “Hurry and get past before someone sees us. We’re supposed to be home sick.”

       “Both of you?”

       “There’s a bug going around. They were sending kids home all day. We left after lunch.”

       “Pretending to be sick?”

       “It’s easy enough to fake illness when the school nurse is half-blind.” She laughed at her own cleverness.

       “So where did you go?”

       “We’ve just been hanging out. But if Sid’s mother finds out we didn’t go straight home, we’re dead.”

       “She probably already knows,” Sidra said gloomily. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into leaving school, much less going up there—”

      “Shush.” Now it was Ivy who issued a warning look. “At least you won’t get expelled.”

       “I almost wish I would,” Sidra muttered.

       “Why would one of you get expelled and not the other?” I asked.

       “Sid’s mother is the headmistress at Pathway,” Ivy explained. “A real witch, if you know what I mean. She’d like nothing better than to get rid of me. I’m such a bad influence and all.”

       “And you left school, anyway? That was brave.” I glanced in the mirror to gauge Sidra’s reaction to such a harsh critique of her mother. She looked agitated, but I didn’t think the name-calling had much to do with it.

       “It wasn’t brave, it was stupid,” she said.

       Ivy shrugged. “No one twisted your arm. And, anyway, I don’t care if I do get expelled. I’ll just call my father. He’s a very important man. One of the most powerful lawyers in the state.” The last was said for my benefit, I was certain.

       “Pathway is a private school?” I asked.

       “Private and très exclusif,” Ivy said. “The local kids who can’t afford the tuition have to ride the ferry across the lake and catch the bus into Woodberry.”

       So there was no public school, no veterinarian clinic and no supermarket in Asher Falls, but the withering town could support a private school for children of the privileged. The place was getting stranger and stranger by the minute.

       We rode in silence after that until Sidra said from the backseat, “That’s my house on the corner. The white one.”

       I pulled up to the curb in relief, and as the girls climbed out, I lowered my window to admire the three-story Victorian with spindle-work trim along the veranda. The garden was still lush and green, but the witch hazel had started to turn, and I could see squirrels foraging for fruit in the silver bell tree that grew at the corner of the porch. As my gaze lifted to the front gable, I saw a blonde woman in one of the upstairs windows a split second before the lace curtain fell back into place.

      Uh-oh. The girls had been made, it seemed.

       After a muttered thank-you, Ivy strode up the walkway without a backward glance, but to my surprise, Sidra came over to my window. Her eyes were very clear and very blue, her alabaster skin almost translucent in the afternoon sunlight. She wore no makeup, nor did she need any. Cosmetic enhancement would have only detracted from the ethereal quality that made her so arresting.

       “Did you forget something?” I asked.

       “No…I need to tell you something.”

       Her gaze met mine and I felt a prickle of foreboding. “What is it?”

       “You’ve seen the old clock tower in the square?”

       “Yes. It’s very beautiful.”

       “It’s built on hallowed ground. A battle was fought there or something. Anyway, I thought you should know.” She turned to scurry off.

       “Wait! How do you know the ground is hallowed?”

       Pausing on the walkway, she glanced over her shoulder, her expression enigmatic. I would never know what she intended to reveal, though, because just then the woman I’d seen at the upstairs window came out on the front porch and called to her.

       Sidra froze.

       “Is that your mother?”

       “She’s home early. Now she knows we didn’t come straight home.”

       “Will you be in much trouble?”

       “I don’t know. I’d better go in.”

       The girl looked terrified and no wonder. As the woman’s gaze met mine, I felt an awful chill go through me.

      Eight

      Could Sidra see ghosts? Why else had she felt compelled to tell me about the clock tower? And why else would she have waited until Ivy was out of earshot? If she could see ghosts—or something—that required her to seek hallowed ground for protection, she might not want anyone else to know, especially her mother, given everything I’d observed. That I could understand. The fact that she’d shared the knowledge with me should have been a comfort, but instead I felt uneasy and more out of my element than ever.

       And yet as I drove back through town, I had a vague sense of familiarity, of destiny, as if maybe I’d been brought here for a reason. Which didn’t really make sense because I’d never been to Asher Falls, and I’d never met anyone from here. It was a lonely place, isolated by a haunted lake. Was it any wonder the people were so strange?

       As I turned onto the highway, my gaze lifted to the distant mountains where a dark cloud had formed against the blue haze. As I watched, the cloud drifted lower, swooping down over the treetops until I realized it wasn’t a cloud at all but a flock of blackbirds flying south for the winter.

       There was a nip in the wind that blew in through my open window. Despite the warm days, fall was just around the corner, and I dreaded the loneliness that winter always brought. I wouldn’t look ahead, though. What was the point? Right now, it was still hours until twilight, the road was empty and I was free to let my mind wander.

       I forced my thoughts back to Sidra and Ivy. What an odd pair—Sidra, with her cropped, silver-gold hair and waiflike demeanor, and Ivy, with her hard edges and exaggerated ennui. I wished now that I’d pressed them for more information about the falls. I really wanted to know why people were afraid to go up there, especially since Luna had recommended that I make the trip. Was that where they’d gone today? I wondered.

       I knew all about thin places, of course. Those in-between times and landscapes where the veil between our world and the spirit world was at its thinnest. The Celts believed those places were not only passageways for ghosts but also for demons. On the night of Samhain, they donned horrific masks to placate the forces of chaos. As I dredged up all СКАЧАТЬ