To Kip, who stands beside.
—JKP
To my sweet, beautiful daughter and my strong son. May your lives be filled with adventures and become legendary tales full of sweet and happy moments worthy to be told in books of lore.
—JK
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Grey Lore
Jean Knight Pace and Jacob Kennedy
Copyright © 2017 Jean Knight Pace and Jacob Kennedy
All Rights Reserved
Book cover designed by Deranged Doctor Design
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
Printed in the U.S.A, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-7332550-2-8
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
www.jeanknightpace.com
Prologue
It was not a bad part of town, but even if it had been, the tall, well-dressed Italian would not have cared.
Above him the moon was a golden fruit—round and perfect in the midnight sky. It made him feel safe. And hungry. He rounded the corner and there, at the dark edge behind the restaurant, stood a scrawny figure wearing a dingy pink sweatshirt, with the hood up.
The beggar was thin and pallid, skin smeared in grime and bent in shadow. He held a small tin can with a lone piece that jangled inside, while the other hand remained tucked in his pocket.
The Italian flicked his hand dismissively and tried to walk past.
The beggar cleared his throat and took a gun out of his pocket.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the Italian said, almost laughing.
The pistol was old—antique with mother-of-pearl grips and a barrel engraved in a filigreed pattern; tarnished, but elaborate. It was unlikely that it could fire properly, but even if it could, the Italian was not concerned. Not tonight.
“It’s coming,” the hooded beggar whispered—the voice high and strained as he waved the old gun.
“Is that so?” the Italian said, stepping closer.
“My time,” the beggar added, hand tightening around the handle of the gun. “Though yours is ending.”
The brawny Italian narrowed his eyes. “I’m not worried about your grandma’s gun.”
The thin beggar stepped forward and the Italian sneered—his white teeth sinister and gleaming in the moonlight. The Italian reached out a thick hand to grab the hooded man, but the beggar took a surprisingly quick step to the side, and cocked the gun.
The Italian jumped forward. “You can’t kill me,” he said, tearing his suit at the shoulders as he jerked the hood from the ragged beggar’s head. Their eyes locked for only a moment before the Italian gasped and glanced down at the tin can to see that the silver piece was gone. He was too late.
The bullet moved gracefully through the layers of the Italian’s skin, the muscles of the chest, shattering a rib, and then piercing his heart, before exiting through his back. He gasped only once before crumpling to the ground.
In the morning when the garbage man found him, his wallet and cell phone were still in place, but his teeth were completely gone.
Chapter 1
“Once…”
Ella had been dreaming of the word for days.
Once upon a time.
Once there was a boy.
Once upon a midnight dreary.
Once.
It was a word with promise. A word that implied there would be a twice. Maybe a thrice. Stories that started with once often led to a forever, a forever after, a happily forever after.
The stories her mother had liked to tell had always started that way—once—a beginning. And now they were ended.
Forever.
Forever after.
But not happily.
The mortuary was white as sun-bleached stone.
Ella walked, with the aunt she’d just met, through the halls and into the chapel where a simple brass urn sat at the front like a museum piece.
Because of the accident, there would be no body. The doctor had explained that, over the last nine days, her mother’s face had swelled under the bandages almost as much as her brain had swelled under her skull. Head injuries weren’t pretty. But it still seemed impossible—the silent urn, the fact that Ella would not be able to see her mother again.
Nine days. Nine days Ella had waited for the woman who had been her mother to shake herself awake and open her eyes. Just like the movies. Ella replayed the scene as it should have been. Lashes flutter, eyes open. Lashes flutter, eyes open. Lashes flutter—
Ella stopped, batting back the tears. It wasn’t a movie.
Her aunt stood behind her and put a cool hand on her back as mourners began to enter. A trickle at first—soft padding feet that formed into a steady, slow river of people. There would be no other family among them. Her aunt Vivian—or Vivi as she’d asked to be called—had told her that her mother’s parents had died years ago, and there were no other siblings.
Ella looked at the urn behind her. All her mother’s secrets burned back to dust.
Now her aunt stood beside her as people greeted them. The social worker who’d found her aunt. Several of the waitresses from the restaurant where her mom had worked. Even her mother’s boss, who walked toward Ella and pressed a twenty-dollar bill and a smooth, oval stone into her palm. “Your mother gave me this stone when my husband was going through chemo. Said I could rub it whenever I got worried. Which happened a lot.”
Ella’s throat ached as she nodded at the woman.
Other people came through the line, saying nice things as well. Her mother had once given all her tips to a waitress whose son was in rehab. She’d stayed late to bus tables when another
broke up with her boyfriend. She’d been so kind to customers that a few of the regulars even showed up to pay their respects. Several of them handed Ella money or cards or earthy-blue stones her mother had given to them in times of sadness or need. Labradorite, lapis, kyanite, chrysocolla, larimar.
Stones.
For her mother’s last birthday, Ella had made her a necklace by setting a loose stone from her mother’s jewelry box in a funky wire, and then hanging it on a sturdy silver chain. The stone had been her mother’s favorite—shiny gray with an almost metallic quality. Beautiful and offbeat, just like her mother.
Ella looked at her aunt who smiled at each of the people who came through the line. Ella had spoken to her aunt only three times now: once the day the social worker had called with the news that they had located her; once two days ago discussing the details of Ella’s upcoming life; and today. Vivi wore a tailored black dress with a simple gold bracelet and ring. Ella looked at her thin, smooth neck and tried to picture her mother’s chunky necklace on it. She couldn’t.
The line snaked forward, the chapel door opening and closing. Opening. The doctor who had treated her mother came through in a trim, gray suit, waiting neatly in line.
Ella looked at him and paused. Her mother had not worn the necklace often, but she’d been wearing it the day she died. Her mother’s other personal items—her wallet, keys, and ugly brown shoes—had been given to Ella in a sterile white package, but the necklace hadn’t been with them.
Maybe the necklace had come off in the crash. Or been lost in the shuffle. There certainly had been a lot of shuffle. Two ambulances at the intersection just down the road from their apartment. Her mother had been flown thirty minutes away to a trauma center with a prestigious neurosurgeon.
The man in the gray suit.
Ella’s neighbor, Rosetta, limped toward her with a fat wad of tissue and pink-rimmed eyes. Ella felt her insides relax a little. She’d been staying with Rosie while her mother lay in a coma in the hospital.
Rosie gave her a huge hug. “Oh you sweet little thing,” she said, looking her over. “And your sweet, sweet mama.”
“Thanks for helping me out these last few days,” Ella murmured.
“Ah, now,” Rosie said. “Wouldn’t of had it no other way. You know your mama brought me dinner every night when I had the flu last winter and couldn’t hardly get up?”
Ella shook her head. It made her feel good to hear it. But strangely sad too—had she known her mother at all?
And then the doctor stood in front of her. He was pale with a bolt of gray hair that sat impeccably in place like an obedient pet. Ella fought a sudden urge to reach out and mess it up.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, hoping he’d leave quickly.
He didn’t. He stepped a little closer, and when he did Ella could smell just a hint of something sour on his breath.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Ella stepped back, bumping her aunt who stood behind her.
After staring at her for several uncomfortable seconds, the doctor said, “You look uncannily like her. Fair skin, dark hair.”
Ella did not want to talk about this. She pressed her lips together, remembering her mother’s necklace.
“Dr. Murray,” she asked quickly, “my mother was wearing a necklace before the accident. It wasn’t with her things. Do you know…do you have any idea what might have happened to it?”
The doctor looked at her for another long moment. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, looking into her face with his own dark hazel eyes. They were swampy and rimmed with a firm line of gray, and when he talked, Ella felt like she was drowning. “Such things are often lost in cases like these. Perhaps it got caught up with her clothes.” He paused. “Which couldn’t be returned, of course, on account of the…stains.”
He nodded to her aunt like he’d just made a comment on the weather, and then finally walked away. It was the first time Ella had met someone so much like the sky before a storm—calm, quiet, and perfectly terrifying.
It wouldn’t be the last.
Chapter 2
Sam had lived in fourteen states in the last three years. And he wasn’t an army brat either. At least in the army you got some sort of two-year commitment. His life held no such promises. His dad sold vacuums. Badly, it seemed.
This time they’d be staying in the Montgomery Mansion Trailer Park. That was better than their van, which had been their last residence. Apparently, the bright blue mobile home they now occupied only cost a few hundred bucks a month. On account of the fact that this spot had been hit by two tornadoes in the last five years.
Despite Sam’s impressive track record with moves, he’d never lived in tornado country, so that was something.
The mobile home had come “furnished.” That meant when Sam sat on the old brown couch, a puff of dust rose up around him. His father smiled and went to the car to get out his demo vacuum. At least when the next tornado came through, the place would be clean.
While his father vacuumed, Sam went outside to walk around the trailer park. The breeze felt good, and he shook off the smells of the muggy trailer. His father had promised to buy a window AC unit after he made a few sales, but one week into August, the trailer was hot as Satan’s spit. It didn’t help that his father kept all the windows closed, so not even a whiff of air could blow through.
“Think,” his father had said, “of what would happen if someone came in and stole the vacuums.”
Sam snorted, walking along a crumbling curb where a line of ants marched by carrying crumbs. He’d thought about it plenty, and it sounded awesome. Maybe then his father would settle down and get a normal job. Maybe then they could stay in one place for more than a few months at a time. Maybe then Sam could start and finish school in the same place. What would that be like?
Sam stepped over a faded yellow speed bump and passed two empty lots where his beer-gut neighbor claimed the trailers had been lifted off the ground by a tornado. The lots looked so plain and uninteresting—like empty parking spaces, instead of the site where someone’s life had ripped off the ground and spilled out somewhere else.
Sam rounded the corner. The road ended and a twelve-foot gate loomed in front of him with not one, but four chain locks to keep it closed. Behind the gate were trees—oak, maple, and ash. It marked the edge of the nature preserve owned and “shared” by the heir of the founder of the city, Charles Napper.
Sam had only been here for a day and a half, but he’d already seen Napper’s name smeared all over everything—park benches, hospitals, elementary schools. The nature preserve that was Napper’s back yard ran for several hundred acres through the middle of town. Sam had heard people refer to it as The Property.
In fact, any time anyone gave directions, it came up. “Oh, that’s just about four miles west of The Property.” Or, “You’re going to get to The Property and then make a sharp left.” And here it was—the epicenter of the town, as well as the point that delineated the mostly rich parts of town from the poorer quarter on its south side.
Sam held one of the locks. Apparently this was what rich old Charles Napper thought of the trailer park that bumped up against his property. It’s not like Sam had ever met the guy, but he had a hard time with someone who could plaster his name all over half the town without ever seeming to care about the children who went to Napper Elementary or the finches who roosted in the Napper Bird Sanctuary, or the crazies who made their home at the hulking Napper Psychiatric Institution.
It was like having an uncle who sent you fifty bucks on your birthday, but never bothered to show up for the party. Not that Sam would know what that was like either.
Past the gate ran a little footpath. For a minute Sam considered climbing the fence and finding out where it led. But the gate was definitely too high and, although Charles Napper hadn’t topped it with barbed wire, it was made of pointed cast iron rods that didn’t look very friendly.
Sam rested a hand on the warm metal o
f the gate, and stared through. There, at the edge of the trail, sat a tiny orange tabby cleaning her paws. When she noticed Sam, she turned and pranced up the path. Her tail had been cut clean off and was now just a furry stump.
As Sam watched her walk away, he noticed a building through the trees—a shack or camper or something sitting there at the edge of The Property. Maybe it was a groundskeeper. A weird, hippy groundskeeper with nothing to do but move tree trunks out of the hiking paths and maybe practice camping songs on an old guitar.
Sam envied him. On Sam’s side of the gate were three huge garbage cans. And they stank.
Chapter 3
The drive from Indianapolis to Napper was quiet. Ella got the feeling her aunt wasn’t exactly thrilled that she was now the guardian of a sixteen-year-old girl. Ella didn’t blame her. It seemed pretty normal to not want to leave your comfortable single life to raise a stranger of a teenager.
The composite of Ella’s life sat in the trunk, packed tightly into two suitcases. One with Ella’s clothes, some books, and her journals. The other held a few of her mother’s belongings: her mother’s favorite jeans, her wallet, keys, a photo album, and a dark wooden box her mother had used for jewelry and her prettiest rocks. Ella had always loved the box, which was carved on the top, rustic and ornate.
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