Shadows of New York

by Heather Fraser Brainerd

  Stelo’s head tilted to the side, and she looked skyward. “No, I feel his existence. He is out there, somewhere, continuing the mission I gave him. Markus will free us. The son of Mira will see that he does.”

  About the Authors

  Heather Fraser Brainerd is a renaissance woman. After earning a degree in Anthropology, she embarked on an incongruous career as a workers’ compensation insurance adjuster. She rapidly climbed the claims-handling ladder before surprising her colleagues by leaving the high-powered world of lumbar strains and carpal tunnel syndrome to run a child care center. Thousands of dirty diapers and gallons of strained peas later, she decided that maybe the insurance industry wasn’t quite as bad as she remembered. Unfortunately, it was. Fortunately, a few years later, she met the most wonderful man in the world. Now a stay-home mom to three amazing boys, she is able, at long last, to focus on her writing. Heather lives in New York with her family and their crazy pug/terrier.

  David Fraser was born on March 25, 1973. March 25, incidentally, is International Waffle Day (Vårfudagn in Sweden) and Tolkien Reading Day (The Ring was destroyed on March 25). Elton John shares his birthday. So next March 25, you should eat a waffle while reading Lord of the Rings and listening to Rocket Man. I know Dave will.

  Before deciding to become an internationally-famous author, Dave held a number of different jobs. He processed small business insurance policy changes, tested software on digital copier/printers, put out little orange flags in pick-your-own strawberry fields, installed internet cable in schools, shelved books in a library, taught college calculus, and handed out raffle tickets at a Barry Manilow concert. Granted, this last job was a one-day temp job, but it was awesome.

  He currently does little fix-up jobs around his house and chauffeurs his kids while trying to find time to write.

  * * * *

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  MuseItUp Publishing

  Dream Shade

  Young Adult Paranormal Mystery Romance by Heather Fraser Brainerd

  As if high school wasn't tough enough, sophomore Sarah Pasmore has one extra little problem: ghosts have started appearing to Sarah and they seem to want something from her. With help from her brainy best friend, as well as a few new friends (including the hottest guy in school), Sarah must solve the mystery of what the spirits want in order to put them back to rest. To complicate matters further, a more evil spirit will go to great lengths to make sure this doesn’t happen. As they investigate the past to unravel this supernatural mystery, the teens learn a lesson in the powers of friendship and love.

  Chapter One

  I could not believe it.

  He was walking over to me. He was actually walking over to me. Panic should be setting in. My breath ought to stick in my throat, and my cheeks should burn. Instead, I felt amazingly calm.

  While I stood at my locker during the chaos between classes, Nate Spencer, the most gorgeous guy in the junior class, cut gracefully through the throng of scurrying students to walk directly over to me, Sarah Pasmore, a mere tenth-grader. His blond hair was perfectly tousled. His gray eyes gleamed from beneath their dark lashes. He smiled as he walked up to me and said, “Hey.”

  Opening my mouth to speak, I wasn’t even sure what would come out, yet I felt utterly confident that it would be the perfect thing.

  That’s when I woke up.

  With a groan, I looked at the clock. Not quite 3:00 a.m. Good; I could sleep some more. Maybe my dream would pick up where it had left off. Not likely, but not impossible. While adjusting the covers and rolling onto my left side, my brain registered a glimmer of movement near the window.

  Scared, I lay as still as possible, my heart thundering in my chest. Looking toward the window, my eyes made out a faint shimmer in the air. Okay, this is freaky.

  The slight luminescence became momentarily brighter, more solid, and then faded entirely. My entire body shivered involuntarily. The room suddenly became ice-cold.

  It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

  * * * *

  Beep…Beep…Beep…Bee—

  Hitting the snooze button, I interrupted my screeching alarm.

  “Dang.” I desperately wanted to snooze for the allotted nine minutes, but having done that twice already, I couldn’t spare any more time. Grumbling, I dragged myself out of bed, practically sleepwalking to the bathroom. While waiting for the shower water to warm up, I stared blearily into the mirror. My long brown hair hung limply on both sides of my pale, white face. My hazel eyes, usually my best feature, were rimmed in red and had dark circles underneath. I usually didn’t mind my tall, thin build so much, but today my reflection just appeared gaunt. In short, I looked like crap.

  It didn’t really matter; no one at school would notice. Not being big on attention, I tried to fade into the scenery as much as possible.

  The shower made me feel a little more human. Throwing on jeans and a random T-shirt, I then headed down the spiral staircase to the kitchen.

  My annoying twelve-year-old brother sat at the ginormous island that dominated the center of the kitchen. Short for his age and a little on the heavy side, Peter was a quintessential techie geek, glasses and all. He watched me hurry down the stairs while slurping his way through a bowl of cereal, sloshing milk all over the granite countertop in the process. Gross.

  “Mom, Sarah’s not even eating yet! She’s gonna be late for school!” he called out with obvious glee. I glowered at him. He returned my glare with a smile, his wide grin making his cheeks appear even rounder than usual. “Wow, you look like crap!” he said cheerily.

  Our mother hurried into the kitchen through the door to her master suite. Her high heels clacked noisily on the etched concrete floor. She wore one of her skirted power suits, as she called them. Her hair was currently curly, blond, and chin-length, though this changed at least once a year. Her makeup was, as usual, perfect.

  “Sarah, honey, did you stay up too late again?” Mom asked as she rushed around the kitchen, gathering the day’s necessities. “You know you need your rest, especially on a school night. If you miss the bus, you’ll have to walk. I don’t have time to drive you today. I have an early meeting.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I wasn’t up that late.”

  She paused her morning routine, taking the time to really look at me. “But honey, you look like crap!”

  Great. It was unanimous.

  “I woke up in the middle of the night and had a hard time getting back to sleep. Must have had a bad dream or something. No big deal, Mom, really.”

  “Okay, then. Grab a protein bar, and I’ll drive you out. Grab one for me, too, while you’re at it, please. The peanut-butter kind.”

  Mom dropped a quick kiss on the top of Peter’s head as she breezed past him. It seemed like each day of my mom’s life was a race. At least she could drop me at the end of our extremely long, rather steep driveway. It snaked through the woods that surrounded our house, making the walk to and from the bus more like a hike. I smiled a little as I thought of Peter hiking it in an hour or so when his bus arrived.

  Mom braked near the road, gave me a peck on the cheek, and told me to have a good day. Hopping out of her silver SUV, I watched as she peeled out of the drive, tires squealing, on her race once more. Shaking my head as her truck disappeared around the bend, I smiled a little, amused by the crazy pace of her life.

  Hearing the bus before it came around the curve in the road, I sighed, dreading its approach. The bus ride itself didn’t bother me, it was what waited for us at the end of the ride: another day in the purgatory known as Frakes Senior High. Our school district was set up in kind of a strange way. Lots of little elementary schools channeled into two junior high schools for grades se
ven through nine, which then congealed into the sprawling senior high where the inmates spent the remainder of our time. So, as a sophomore, this was my first year in senior high. We were about six weeks into the school year, and I still felt completely out of place.

  My friend Anna sat in our usual seat, her nose buried in a book. The curly black cloud of her hair could be seen haloing out around the volume. Fabulous. She’s hooked again. When Anna was really into a book, the rest of the world pretty much ceased to exist to her. Over the summer, she had read Lord of the Rings, and I’d barely seen her for weeks. Please don’t let it be another trilogy.

  I sat down next to her. “Hi, Anna!”

  “Hey,” she muttered distractedly.

  “Whatcha reading?”

  “Twilight.”

  Oh, crap. Weren’t there like four or five huge volumes in that series? She’d be obsessed for the next month.

  “You should read it,” she said without taking her eyes off the page. “It’s really good.”

  “Those vampire books? You know I don’t like horror.”

  “Vampires, yes. Horror, no. It’s more like a love story.”

  “Ugh, even worse!”

  She sighed and put her book down in her lap, glancing at me. “You look awful. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay, just tired. I had a bad dream and couldn’t get back to sleep.” Gazing out the window, I watched the red, orange, and yellow blur of autumnal trees rolling past. “At least, I think it was a dream.”

  “What do you mean, you think it was a dream?”

  I thought about her question while opening my peanut-butter bar and starting to munch. “God, these things are dry!” I grimaced. “Should’ve grabbed a bottle of water to wash it down.”

  “Sarah, stop stalling and answer my question. Either you had a dream or you didn’t. So what’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure. See, I woke up from what was most definitely a dream, a very nice dream—”

  “Featuring Nate Spencer?”

  I blushed a little; busted. “Maybe. Anyway, I saw something moving across my room.” Telling her about it made me shiver. “It must have been a dream, right? Things like that just don’t happen.”

  Anna gave it some thought. I liked the way she really considered a question before giving an answer. Sometimes the wait was a little annoying, but I was used to it by now. We’d been friends for a long time, and I knew that her thoughts were worth waiting for.

  “Well,” she finally said, “It could have been like a dream within a dream. Like, you thought you woke up, but really your dream just shifted. Or it could have been a pre-seizure aura. Is there a history of epilepsy in your family?”

  Where the heck did she come up with this stuff? Sometimes having a brainiac for a best friend could be a little weird.

  “Um, no. No epilepsy.”

  “Well, that’s good. Of course, you wouldn’t have taken any mood-altering substances, so that’s out.”

  “Right. No drugs.”

  “Then maybe…no, it couldn’t be that.”

  “Couldn’t be what?”

  “I don’t want to freak you out or anything.” Her brown eyes intensified.

  “Anna, I know that look. What are you thinking?”

  “I know you don’t like horror. Or anything…supernatural.”

  “Spit it out!”

  Anna gave me a look of utmost seriousness. Her flawless, light brown skin flushed slightly with excitement. Whatever thought was running around that brain of hers, it had her pretty jazzed.

  “It could have been,” she paused, her intense eyes gleaming, “a paranormal event.”

  “A what?”

  “A ghost.”

  My bark of laughter sounded totally fake even to my own ears. “Yeah, right,” I scoffed. Despite my bravado, a shiver ran down my spine.

  Chapter Two

  Dropping gracelessly into a chair at the lunch table, I couldn’t believe I’d made it through the first three periods of the day without falling asleep. The first two classes weren’t too bad, but third-period Economics was quite a challenge. Today’s topic had been the effects of corrugated metal on the shipping industry. Mr. Galpin was a nice, older man who liked to entertain the class with lame jokes whenever possible, but no one could make corrugated metal interesting, despite Mr. Galpin’s assertions that the innovation was “slicker than snot on a doorknob.”

  Staring dismally at my chicken patty on a bun, I felt a distinct lack of appetite. With nothing better to do, I took a bite and chewed forlornly while my friends arrived at the table in twos and threes.

  Oh good, Anna was on her way over and, oh crap, Will Conor glommed onto her and started following her to our table. He was so obviously crushing on her, but she seemed oblivious. Will was a nice guy who had been in our accelerated classes all through junior high. He was good looking, in a nerdy kind of way, tall and lean, with short brown hair that he sometimes wore spiky, and nice green eyes behind cool, retro glasses. If Anna found him the least bit attractive, however, she showed no sign.

  Anna sat across from me as usual. Will took the opportunity to sit at the head of the table, with Anna on his left and me on his right. So much for a semi-private conversation with my best friend.

  “How are you doing, Sarah?” Anna asked with genuine concern.

  “Okay, just tired.”

  She put a diet cola on my tray. “Thought you could use the caffeine.”

  Now why hadn’t I thought of that? Too tired to think clearly, I thanked her and chugged it.

  “So,” Will said, “got any plans for the weekend?” His question seemed a bit premature since it was only Thursday. Maybe he just couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Yes, Sarah and I are having a séance,” Anna promptly replied.

  Will looked slightly taken aback. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. We need to contact the spiritual plane.”

  “We do?” I asked nervously, having no desire to do anything of the sort.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I don’t think we do,” I said quickly.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Uh, sure sounds like fun.” Will sounded totally unsure.

  Anna looked slightly annoyed. “It’s not for fun, it’s for research. Though research can be fun, of course. Like, right now, I’m researching the Underground Railroad for a history paper, and it’s absolutely fascinating. Well, that’s partially because of the family connection, but still…”

  Since this was one of Anna’s favorite topics, I knew that her great-great-great-grandfather, Martin Quincy, had been a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He’d even been a good friend of Harriet Tubman, according to stories passed down through Anna’s family. This was all pretty cool, but the fact that she called schoolwork “fascinating” was a little embarrassing.

  “Um…so…what are you researching on the…uh…spiritual plane, exactly?” Poor Will sounded like he regretted bringing up the topic in the first place.

  “Well, we have to determine if Sarah’s house is haunted.”

  My stomach lurched at the thought of a séance, but I tried to act casual and rolled my eyes. “Anna, I told you, it was just a dream.”

  “No, you told me you thought it was a dream. It might not have been a dream. We need to rule out the other possibilities. Do you want me to sleep over at your house tomorrow night or Saturday?”

  I could tell she wasn’t going to let it go. With a deep sigh, I answered, “Friday. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Great! I’ll bring my mom’s old Ouija board.”

  Will looked back and forth between us during this exchange. “Do you mind if I come over?” he asked. “It sounds pretty cool.”

  “Will, you cannot sleep over at my house.” I can’t deny it was fun watching him squirm a little bit. Why should I be the only one feeling awkward?

  His face flushed slightly. “No, I mean, can I help out with the séance part? I’ve s
een some of those ghost hunting shows.”

  From the look on her face, Anna was clearly about to reject his offer. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, and appeared to be thinking things through. “You know, that would be a good idea,” she finally said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” I said hurriedly.

  “Oh yes, we absolutely need you there,” she told Will.

  “Great!” He grinned.

  “Why?” I demanded. The whole idea was crazy enough without including Will in this nonsense.

  “To rule out the ideomotor effect, of course,” Anna stated matter-of-factly.

  “The what?” Will and I asked in unison.

  “Subconscious movement of the planchette by one of the participants.”

  Will looked to me for clarification. I just shook my head, looking back to Anna for further explanation, which I knew would come.

  She took a deep breath and launched in. “Okay, so a Ouija board—or more accurately, a spirit board—has letters, numbers, and maybe a few words on it, right? The triangular object that moves across its surface, pointing to the letters and numbers, is called the planchette. You know how the people using the board have a couple of their fingers lightly touching that little pointer? Well, the ideomotor effect is when one of them subconsciously guides it to spell out a particular message that is supposedly from the spiritual plane.”

  Will looked as baffled as I felt. “Uh, how am I supposed to help with the idiot-motor thing?”

  Anna graciously let his butchering of her scientific term pass. “I have an idea for that. I think that Sarah and I should close our eyes when we touch the planchette.”

  My panic level rose a bit. “Who said I was touching anything?”

  “You have to,” Anna explained, “because Will is going to be busy recording the séance with his cell phone. We won’t be able to subconsciously guide the pointer because we’ll have our eyes closed. Will can record the whole thing, zooming in as needed to make sure he gets everything, and then we’ll review it to see what was spelled out on the board, if anything.”