Riley's Curse, A Moon's Glow Prequel

by Christina Smith

  Chapter Eighteen

  Creekford

  Present Day

  One crisp fall afternoon I was just arriving home after my run when I heard my phone ringing.

  “Hello?” I asked after I took my cell phone from my pocket.

  “Nathaniel?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Will.” Will was my great, great, great nephew.

  “How are you?” I opened my fridge to take a water bottle out, the door slammed behind me as I walked into the living room.

  “I’m good, but I could use your help with the business, and the charity you started here isn’t doing so well. Do you think you could possibly move back home?”

  I had been living back at the updated cabin in Baycrest, helping out at the store and setting up my charity here. I was considering moving on since I had been here for five years. People would soon start to notice that I hadn’t aged.

  “Sure, I guess I could move home. Is it bad?”

  “Nothing you can’t handle,” he said with a chuckle. Will was one of my favorite nephews, and the most like my brother, his namesake.

  “What about your children?” I asked, sitting down on the sofa and leaning the phone on my shoulder so I could use both hands to twist the lid off of the bottle.

  “I think Lauren is ready. Nathan will learn when he’s old enough.” It warmed my heart to hear the name, he was named after me.

  “There isn’t a problem, is there Will?”

  The line was silent for a moment and then I heard his soft laughter. “Well no, but you’re not supposed to stay longer than five years anyway, and Phillip and I have been fighting over you. He wants you to go there next.” Philip, a descendant of Mary’s, lived in Rockview. I lived there about fifteen years ago and that usually wasn’t enough time: I could still be recognized.

  “I can’t go there, it hasn’t been that long. I’ll talk to Richard tomorrow about my leaving. He’s got everything under control here anyway. And I’ll see you in about a week.”

  “Great, I’ll have your cottage ready for you.”

  “Thank you Will. And I have missed you.”

  He sighed. “Me too. What’s it like to have your family members fight over you?”

  “Annoying,” I grumbled.

  He laughed. “See you next week.”

  I tried so hard to keep a distance from my extended family. But they would not let me. Rowan was ever present in my mind. He was a threat to me and my loved ones. That was proven when he killed my father and then Sadie. I have not forgotten my quest to find and kill him, and with Joe's, and Mile's help we have been searching. But after all this time, we still have found nothing.

  I did what I had sought out to do. I found where Sadie's family had laid her to rest, and filled the empty urn with her actual remains. After that, I found Miles and told him what happened. We grieved together, having been the only friends she had. He made me a promise to help find the man who killed her.

  Joe proved to be a good choice as my replacement. Although I still opened the occasional store, my focus has been on the charity. And I did it in the memory of Sadie Clark.

  A week later, I was sitting on the leather sofa in William’s office inside the mansion that had once been a quarter of its size, as well as my childhood home. “School?” I asked disgusted, sure I’d heard wrong.

  I had wrapped up business with Richard, making sure that Riley House would be taken care of. I appointed Richards’s youngest son, Edmund, to run it. He was just as interested as I was in helping people in need.

  I packed up the cabin that I had fixed up by adding on to it years ago, and prepared to move home. I never lived in the mansion with the family. My father had a small cottage built for me down by the lake. It wasn’t visible from the road, that way no one else would know I was in town. But now that Will was talking about me enrolling in school, the thought of returning to the cabin in Baycrest crept into my mind.

  “Yes, you look like a teenager. If we enroll you in school, you can stay longer,” he explained, leaning back in his leather chair.

  I stood up and paced in front of him. “I’ve worked with other families before and never attended school.”

  “Which also raised questions. How many times was there trouble among non-family members because you didn’t have to abide by the high school diploma rule?” He set his coffee down on his desk, spilling the brown liquid onto his papers. While he wiped up the mess, I considered his words. It was true that some employees were angry with the managers for hiring me when it was against policy to hire people full time that hadn’t finished high school.

  “Fine, I’ll go. As long as you tell Lauren not to acknowledge me. I won’t put her at risk. And I will change my name so no one knows we're related. You know what happened to my father, and Sadie.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell her, but if I do, I’ll have to tell her everything,” he said tossing his gob of wet tissues into the garbage beside his desk.

  “I think she’s ready. She’s known him for a while now. She can be trusted with the secret,” Carolyn, Will’s wife said. She was sitting on the couch and had been silent up until now. They had visited me last year and I instantly liked their daughter.

  I stared at both of them not sure if this was a step I was ready to take on, but when they nodded, I backed down. After all it was their decision.

  The next day I enrolled at Everest High School. It was the biggest school I had ever seen. There were hundreds of kids, with lots of loud voices and strong aromas for my heightened senses. I instantly regretted my decision to listen to Will.

  About an hour into the day, I was sitting in my first class, feeling bored as I listened to a man who was prattling on about the second world war, with facts that were actually wrong. I almost corrected him, when I caught a scent. And I recognized it instantly. It was something I had hoped would never happen. It was a part of my nature that I avoided at all cost.

  I tried to ignore the scent, and the nagging feeling for me to follow it. I struggled for hours, but by midday the wolf inside me seemed to take over, and I followed it.

  I sniffed hard, following the smell down a long corridor. The hall was packed with teenagers. Between the musk cologne, and fruit lip-gloss it was surprising that I had no problem catching the scent I was looking for.

  It was wafting out of a closed door with the word cafeteria written in bold letters. I paused outside, hoping I could make myself turn around, forgetting what the smell meant. But as soon as the door swung open, the scent overtook me, and I could no more resist following it, than I could resist breathing. I walked, as if in a trance to the back of the room, oblivious to what was going on around me.

  Six students lounged around a table. Three boys and three girls all dressed in the school colors of burgundy and gold. Five sets of eyes turned to me as I stood behind a young woman with strawberry blonde hair. I could only see the back of her as she listened to a tall boy with ink-black hair relating a tale of a boring football play. The girl next to her with long chestnut hair and dangling silver earrings elbowed her in the arm. I stood still, unable to move.

  She slowly turned around, and stared at me with bright green eyes. I took in her face: the freckles that dotted her small buttoned nose and cheekbones, her slightly rosy cheeks. Her full pale pink lips started to turn upward into a smile that I would remember forever.

  I finally regained my wits, bolting out of the cafeteria, and out the door of the school. I walked fast trying not to draw attention to myself; needing to put as much distance between me and the girl I knew I had to stay away from. The girl that I later learned was named Megan Banks.

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