“No, it isn’t. Because it’s the truth.” Grace cupped her hands under her elbows, feeling sick. “Jackie told me that Mercy’s goal was to get you guys to banish the spirits from the house and break the bond holding her. So, Mercy possessed Nellie and used her to convince me that the house was haunted so she could bring you guys in.”
Understanding flashed over Ian’s face. “It was Mercy all along. She used Nellie and created just enough chaos to keep us here, until we found a way to finish it. Getting her spirit out of the house wasn’t good enough. She needed the bond that tied your family to the house to be broken. And we did it.”
Grace nodded. “But she tricked us, Ian. She tricked me. She made me care for a lie and then she took it away from me.”
Sympathy softened his features. “We all fell for it. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”
She shivered, knowing he was right. “Either way, at least she’s gone. I don’t even want to hear that name again.”
“You and me both.” He reached for her, dragging her against him. He breathed her in and exhaled, his eyes closing. “God, I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” She buried her face in his neck, savoring the warmth he offered. It soothed her frigid, brittle bones and quieted the icy rattle of her heart. “Thank you, by the way. For coming. I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“You scared the shit out of me with that message,” he admitted, pulling away to meet her eyes. “Don’t do that again, okay?”
She laughed, the sound breaking as a sob built in her throat. “I won’t. I need to tell you something even scarier though, so don’t be mad. Just take it like a man.”
“What’s that?” Amusement flickered in his eyes as he brushed aside her bangs, his hand coming to rest just below her jaw.
“I love you.” Her lips curved in a relieved smile, and he marveled at it.
“Is that right?” He ran his thumb along the curve of her lower lip. “That is pretty scary.”
“Isn’t it? I must be crazy.” She shivered from his touch, leaning closer to him. “I’ll feel better if you say you love me, too.”
“Christ, you know it’s true.” He captured her mouth with his and gave in to the wash of relief. He held her close and ran his hand along the skin of her neck.
“Then say it. Please,” she whispered, blood shimmering like wildfire under her skin. Her heart skipped and danced with a joy she thought she would never feel again.
“I love you.” His eyes found hers, and he cupped her face in his hands. “You won’t convince me to leave you again, Grace. It’s not happening. I’ll follow you to Chicago if I have to.”
“You don’t.” She let out a shaky laugh, biting her lower lip. “I’m not going back there. I want to come with you. And when we’re not on the road, I want us to stay here.”
“You have this all figured out, don’t you?”
She reached for his hand, pulling him with her toward the house. “Plans change, people change. I realized the new me couldn’t live without you.”
“Lucky for me, then.” He followed her, leaving the dock behind.
“Besides, ghost hunting is a lot more fun than I realized. Maybe I can be the medical expert for your new show and give insight into how the people may have died.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“I know.” She beamed up at him. “I told you that you would need me.”
“You have no idea.”
As they walked up to the house, they missed the violent war being waged beneath the surface of the harbor. Where the rotted legs of the dock met the rocky sand beneath and clumps of seaweed and scuttling crabs thrived, a woman fought against the bonds that held her.
Mercy twisted and writhed with fury and pain, her efforts wasted. She was trapped, unable to move on.
With black hatred in her soul, she tossed her head back and screamed.
EPILOGUE
“Here’s a good one. Name the infamous home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker.”
Grace sighed. “I don’t know, Pluto?”
Alex smacked his forehead and groaned. “Oh, Grace. Your lack of nerd knowledge is killing me. It’s Tatooine.”
“Hey, I only watched that movie for Harrison Ford, okay?” she shot back, snatching the bag of Doritos from his hands. She crunched into a chip and eyed him from the front seat. “How about I ask you some medical questions? Like, what day of the week are you most likely to have a heart attack?”
Alex grabbed the bag back from her with a devious grin. “Monday.”
“Lucky guess.” Grace rolled her eyes and turned to Ian, who was busy driving. The road ahead of them was dry and dusty, nothing visible for miles around but lonely desert. She couldn’t even remember the last time they’d seen another car. “At least you’re not a nerd.”
Ian bit back a laugh as Alex erupted in the back seat. “Wait till you hear about his collection of Dungeons and Dragons cards.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Shut the hell up, Alex,” Ian replied, a warning tone in his voice.
“What? It’s true.”
“So is your unhealthy obsession with Spiderman comics, but you don’t see me bringing that up.”
“You just did, thanks.” Alex sat back in his seat, pouting.
Jackie curved into him, tweaking his nose playfully with her finger. “I always loved Spiderman.”
“Yeah?” He wrapped his arm over her, then looked triumphantly at Ian. “See? You can’t bring me down, man. This nerd’s got game.”
“Somehow,” Ian mumbled, shaking his head even as a slow smile spread over his lips. He felt Grace’s hand trail over his thigh.
“You know, when I was a kid, I had a set of those cards, too.”
“Seriously?” He tore his eyes off the road and gaped at her.
She shushed him, then smiled wickedly. “You tell a soul and you’re dead.”
He recovered with a grin. “Your secret’s safe with me, Doc.”
“So, what’s the story with this ghost town we’re headed to?” Jackie asked as Gatsby hopped into her lap. She scratched his ears lovingly.
Ian met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Just a little place called Goldfield, Nevada.”
Her eyes widened.
“I take it you’ve heard of it?” Alex asked.
She nodded. “It’s notorious.”
“Why?” Grace turned in her seat, confused. When the three of them exchanged knowing looks, she sighed. “Okay, seriously. Tell me.”
“The buildings there are some of the most haunted locations in the country. Every crew that goes there captures incredible evidence,” Ian told her, adrenaline bringing a fierce smile to his face. “I want my shot at it.”
“Let’s just say the likelihood of us bringing a pissed off spirit home with us is pretty high.” Alex put in cheerfully.
Grace fought back the uneasiness his words gave her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Damn right I would.”
Ian’s hand found Grace’s and squeezed, urging her to look at him. “Still sure you’re up for this?”
“Absolutely.” A determined fire chased away the anxiety in her eyes. “Bring it on, ghost hunter. I’m ready.”
* * *
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”
–William Shakespeare
COMING HALLOWEEN 2017
The all new sequel novella to So Fell The Sparrow…
OF THE ASHES
A year has passed since banishing the spirits inside The Sparrow House, and the team is as solid as ever, with Grace and Jackie now an important part of Great American Paranormal. They travel to haunted Savannah, Georgia, to save a bed and breakfast plagued by something much worse than ghosts. Between Ouija board portals, a surprise encounter with a woman from Ian’s past, and in
ner turmoil Grace just can’t shake, will the team make it out of Savannah alive?
Available Halloween 2017 on Amazon
ABOUT KATIE JENNINGS
Katie Jennings is the author of the popular fantasy series The Dryad Quartet as well as the award-winning romantic family drama series The Vasser Legacy. Her paranormal romance, So Fell The Sparrow, won an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards. Her bestselling contemporary romance, Things Lost In The Fire, is a semi-finalist in romance in the Kindle Book Awards. A Los Angeles native, she now lives in beautiful North Idaho with her husband, who thinks she’s the biggest nerd ever. She’s a firm believer in happy endings and loves nothing more than a great romance novel.
PREVIEW OF UP IN THE PINES
CHAPTER ONE
“THE BODY’S THIS way.”
Deputy Sheriff Lark Galloway stepped nimbly over a fallen tree trunk carpeted with moss, her weathered hiking boots sinking into the rich soil beyond. Faded pine needles and the skeletal remains of pine cones littered the forest floor and crunched beneath her feet.
“You sure you remember the way?” she asked, her breathing practiced and consistent as she navigated the terrain. Her length of dark brown hair was swept back in a neat tail, clear of a long face made masculine by smooth angles and a notable cleft in her chin.
The young man adorned in flashy new L.L. Bean outerwear that she followed wasn’t nearly as capable. He huffed and puffed and shivered with what she imagined were more nerves than a chill, though the October air did have a distinct bite to it. Pieces of black hair poked out from beneath his bright red beanie, a sharp contrast to the pasty white of his face.
He gave a curt nod. “Yep. It was right up here.” He paused, his eyes scanning the expanse of trees. “Somewhere…”
Lark stopped beside him, her hand lowering instinctually to her holstered pistol as she followed his gaze. “You said you found it near a damaged tree?”
“Yeah. The tree looked like it’d been struck by lightning or something.” He glanced up as a light mist began to fall, scrunching his face against the wetness. “Oh, great.”
“Let’s keep moving.” Lark urged him onward, wondering if he was leading her on a wild goose chase. She never knew what to expect with tourists, but generally they were as green as the pines were tall. “Keep an eye out for bears. It’s nearing dusk.”
He faltered. “You really think we’ll run into one?”
She regarded him through heavy-lidded jade eyes, unamused by his lack of preparedness. “This is their home you’re intruding upon, Mr. Lowry. You’d do well to remember that.”
He gulped, but nodded before continuing.
As they walked, she felt the sick feeling in her gut grow stronger. When Kevin Lowry had shown up at the sheriff’s department in a panic declaring he had discovered a body in the woods, she hadn’t really believed him. It was common for tourists’ imaginations to run wild while on a hike through the desolate forests of Montana, leading them to believe they had seen all manner of odd things. She thought she had heard it all. Of course, no one had ever claimed to have found a body before.
In her eight years as a deputy sheriff, the worst she had dealt with were drunk locals starting bar fights and the occasional domestic dispute. She had been trained to handle more, but in the tidy mountain communities of Missoula County life was often quiet and predictable. It suited her, as she valued the constant and the familiar. But every once in a while, she found herself craving a little more excitement.
She was seriously regretting that desire now.
There was a distinct change in the air, like she had walked through an invisible wall. The atmosphere was heavier, charged with an electricity that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. Whatever caused it had her instincts on high alert. They screamed at her to run, to flee to safety. It was exactly the sort of feeling she imagined animals got when they scented the death of one of their own.
Only this wasn’t a smell. It was a sensation. A sudden, tremulous shiver that told her this was the site of something terrible. Something tragic and wrong.
At that moment, she saw the tree several yards in the distance. The lightning bolt had severed the trunk neatly down the center, carving a vertical line of exposed bark. The light amber wood stood out like a flame among the sea of charcoal gray trunks.
Kevin pointed. “There it is!”
He took off at a run, leaving her no choice but to race after him. Adrenaline pumped in her veins, joined by a horrible sense of dread. Her finely tuned body seemed to pull her back, advising her to stay away from her destination. Her equally focused mind wouldn’t let her.
“Stand back, Mr. Lowry,” she ordered just before he reached the tree. He doubled over, panting as he pointed once again, this time at the forest floor.
“It’s there. See it? Sticking up out of the ground.”
She did see it. Tucked into the bed of needles and cones was the perfectly rounded skull of a human being. Beside it, what she imagined to be rib bones and perhaps a leg or arm jutted up out of the earth. One look at the jagged slope of the ground had her determining that rainwater must have exposed the grave some time ago.
Kevin inched closer, his hands shoved deep inside the pockets of his jacket. “See? Told you I wasn’t crazy.”
Lark ignored him and knelt beside the bones, careful not to disturb them as she took a closer look. She was no expert, but she’d wager they had been buried for a very, very long time.
“Who do you think they were?” Kevin wondered aloud.
Lark reached for her radio and motioned for him to stand back. Just as she was about to call her partner to give him her location, she spotted the hole on the front of the skull. Her eyes narrowed as she lowered her radio and shifted closer, needing to confirm what she saw. Though her fingers itched to examine the neat, half-inch diameter circle cut through the yellowed bone, years of training had her resisting. Instead, she rested back on her heels and released a long, unsteady breath.
Kevin’s shaky voice broke the silence. “Wait, is that a bullet hole?”
Not willing to confirm or deny it, Lark raised the radio to her lips.
“Russ, come in.”
“Hear ya loud and clear, Sparky. Go ahead.”
Lark rolled her eyes at her partner’s nickname for her. “I’ve got possible human remains up here on Heller Ridge. Request back up.”
“Hot damn. So the tourist wasn’t kidding, huh?”
“Just get your ass out here.”
“Ten-four. On my way.”
Clipping her radio back onto her belt, Lark refocused on the pile of neglected and weathered bones. She felt the first stab of remorse hit her like an ice pick to the stomach.
There was no doubt in her mind that this person, whoever they were, had been shot point blank in the head. Murdered in cold blood, right in the heart of her forest. At that moment, the how and the why of it were unimportant. She simply took the time to ponder the heavy weight of death and how it would inevitably shake up the remote mountain town she’d been sworn to protect.
Murder, it seemed, had come to leave its mark on Eden Falls, Montana.
THE FORENSICS TEAM combed the area surrounding the body. When dusk set in, the use of high-powered flashlights became necessary. Clad in blue windbreakers and khakis, the team of four broke off on assignments; two to meticulously photograph and exhume the remains, two more to search for shell casings, weapons, or any other sort of evidence that might relate to the case.
Lark stood by with her partner, Russ, at her side, her arms folded and a thoughtful frown on her face. She watched the team with scrutinizing eyes, feeling protective over the dead person not just because she had been the first on the scene, but because this was her hometown. Even if he or she had not been a resident, they still died in Eden Falls. That made the case all the more personal for her.
She could sense Russ vibrating with energy, like a restrained horse impatient for a race. A
s a young rookie just shy of twenty four years old, he thirsted for action like he had seen in the movies. Soon enough, he would see that this kind of thing wasn’t anything like Hollywood made it out to be. For one, in reality, someone actually had to die. While he may not feel the weight of death hanging in the air, she certainly did. And what mattered most to her was not that there was a body in the forest, but that someone, somewhere, was missing a loved one and it was up to her to bring the family closure.
A hand fell over her shoulder, and she turned to face the lead detective of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department, Matt Fisher. He was a tall, mild-tempered man in his mid-thirties with a crop of dusty blond hair and quietly discerning brown eyes. At one time, she had considered him attractive, supposed she still did. But when he had married his high school sweetheart and had a couple of kids that infatuation faded into nothing more than a solid friendship.
“No sign of the bullet just yet,” he informed her. His gaze swept over the area, his lips pressed into a tight line. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
Russ grinned, his thumbs tucked through the belt loops of his beige slacks. “You kidding? This is exciting.”
“Maybe for you,” Lark said drily. She turned back to Matt, all business. “So, what can you tell me?”
“Honestly? Not much.” He paused as one of the crew swept by with a clear plastic evidence bag holding the skull, another crew member following with a bag full of rib bones. They loaded both into a plastic container to be hauled back to the road where the cars waited. “For now, all we can tell is that the remains have probably been buried for twenty years or more. It’s pretty obvious that’s an entry wound in the skull, but until we examine it closer, we won’t know for sure. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for the bullet. It might be buried here somewhere.”
Lark cocked her head. “Unless the victim was killed elsewhere.”
Matt nodded. “That’s a possibility. Unfortunately, given the amount of time that’s passed, there won’t be much evidence to go on. We’ll pick up what we can but the key now is to identify the body.”
So Fell The Sparrow Page 29
