by Sarah Beth
The Faye’s Secret
A Keepers of Light novel
Sarah Beth
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sneak Peek of The Faye's Keeper
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
The Faye’s Secret
Copyright @ 2018
Sarah Beth
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover Design by: Diana T. Calcado, www.triumphcovers.com
If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, please delete it and purchase your own copy from an authorized retailer. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Sarahbethwrites.com
Dedication
To my mother and father, for without their constant support of my dreams, these words would never exist.
Prologue
It happened every time she closed her eyes.
She found herself standing on an expanse of clouds, as far as her eyes could see. Clouds under her feet and clouds above her head, making it hard to determine which end was up. The first time Abby found herself in the dream, she had walked for what felt like miles and nothing changed. There were just clouds and a breeze that kept blowing her flame red hair into her face.
Then the ghost would appear, and all thoughts of waking vanished with the wind. The ghost was small, ten or eleven years old. Wearing a white lace dress that fell to her feet. Her long raven black hair reached her waist, the front pieces tied back in braids. The girl never smiled, never spoke. Simply appeared out of the clouds and watched Abby wander.
It wasn’t the girl’s staring that made Abby’s heart beat faster, she had grown used to ghosts staring at her over the last few weeks. It was that this ghost was different than the rest.
The eyes that looked out from behind dark bangs weren’t black, but a white so void of color that they shined like miniature suns.
It never mattered what Abby did – whether she ignored the girl or if she stopped to talk to her. The ghost stood there. Never seeming to move a muscle and yet always being a few feet away from her. But then one night in particular, everything changed.
Abby found herself surrounded by gray clouds from every angle, and a creepy little girl staring at her off her left shoulder. After a long day at school, the last thing Abby wanted to deal with was another ghost. With annoyance, she put her hands on her hips and glared at the ghost. She leaned closer, ignoring the goosebumps rising all over her skin and the chill running down her spine.
“Alright, listen you little brat. I’m tired and I am sick of being stared at. So…” She brought her face even closer, “Either say something or get lost.”
“Buern. Faye. Mate.”
Abby jumped back a couple of feet. The girl stayed where she was, mouth shut again, staring as if nothing had occurred. With a deep breath, squeezing her hands tightly into fists, Abby whispered, “What did you say?”
Black hair shifted as the girl tipped her head to the side, the tip of her ear peeked out of her hair. “Buern. Faye. Mate.”
Alright, it was time to wake up.
Thunder clapped overhead, making her jump. That had never happened before. The clouds always stayed quiet and calm. Another clap and a flash of lightning drew her attention up, away from the girl. Darkness hovered above her, threatening black clouds began to close in. Her heart pounded inside her chest. A coldness crept up her arms from her fingertips.
“Buern. Faye. Mate.”
Abby glanced back down to find the girl in front of her, inches separating them. She moved to take a step back, but couldn’t. Her feet were glued to the misty ground beneath them. Panic rose in her chest; her breath came out quicker and colder by the second. She could see it as it left her mouth.
“Buern. Faye. Mate.”
Blackness started to creep in from the edges of the girl’s eyes, overtaking the white irises.
“Buern. Faye. Mate.”
Her voice shaking, Abby asked, “What does that mean? Why are you saying that?”
“Buern. Faye. Mate.”
Thunder; lightning striking the clouds behind the girl’s head. Abby could see the girl’s mouth moving, but thunder muffled the words. All she heard was the beating of thunder like it was happening inside her head, pounding her thoughts to mush. Her knees threatened to collapse.
The girl kept speaking. Her eyes darkened and her eyebrows pulled together.
Another bang of thunder and Abby covered her ears, tears starting to trail down her cheeks. “Stop it! Stop saying that!”
Buern. Faye. Mate. Buern. Faye. Mate.
It didn’t matter that Abby couldn’t hear the girl’s voice anymore, the words repeated in her head by themselves. With tears streaming down her face, her hands still covering her ears, Abby squeezed her eyes shut and screamed, “Stop!”
And everything did.
Abby slowly opened her eyes, her hands falling to her sides. The lightning stopped flashing; the thunder quieted down to a low rumble; and the girl’s mouth froze open. She leaned away, her mouth transforming into a small smile that looked wrong on her stone-like face.
The clouds under Abby’s feet vanished. She was falling. She hadn’t even had time to scream.
Chapter One
❖
Abby
It was impossible to stay focused on her Art History homework with a ghost staring at her. Every time Abby lifted her eyes from the page in front of her, the woman would be standing there, blood covering her white lace blouse.
Shifting her chair so the ghost disappeared in her peripheral, Abby tried to read the words in her textbook. Taking a few deep breaths, she worked to pull her mind away from the pale and sightless woman. But her presence still sent chills up Abby’s spine, making concentration difficult. This was her favorite coffee shop close to the University of Seattle. She would not let a ghost chase her away. No matter how creepy the ghost may have been.
The smells of roasting beans and baking cookies saturated the air; the low murmur of other patrons the constant background music, their voices turning into a muffled sort of hum. Abby had been coming here every afternoon for weeks, ever since she moved into her apartment. The school semester started soon afterward, and she had needed a place to study, one wh
ere her roommate’s loud pop music wouldn’t be able to bother her. The Lava Java was the perfect atmosphere and Abby loved it. Until the ghost had appeared, anyway. Unfortunately, the cafe wasn’t the only place that ghosts were making her palms sweat.
There was one in the university library, in the back room where Abby liked to study for exams. The young man would stand in the corner of the room, staring at her, his sunken black eyes unnerving. Another one, an old man, sat at the bus stop she took to and from her apartment every day. When she had first seen him, about a week and half ago, she had reached out to touch him. She thought he had been a flesh-and-blood old man, who fell asleep while waiting for the bus. It was obvious he wasn’t when her hand went right through him.
At first, she thought she was simply studying too hard, exhausting her mind to the point of lunacy. But then it had gotten even harder to ignore. Like how her normal trek from the university to her apartment was suddenly ambushed by two kid-ghosts.
It happened in the park that sat between the bus stop and her apartment building. It was a perfectly normal October day, the first time she saw them. The sun shone, making the bright yellow, orange, and red leaves dance in the breeze. She was strolling around a small pond, covered in green algae, when she saw them. They were slight and had clearly been malnourished during their lives. Their eye sockets sunken and cheekbones overly defined. The girl wore a raggedy gray dress, the lace trim falling off in places. No shoes covered her feet. The boy held her hand tightly. His hair short and scruffy looking. Overalls covered his legs and torso, but left his thin arms bare.
At first sight, Abby was concerned that the children were cold. They shouldn’t have been dressed like that. Where the heck were their parents? But then she had gotten closer. Where their eyes should have been were black holes void of any life.
The only assurance Abby had gathered over the last few weeks, was the ghosts seemed to stay in their designated areas. The woman staring at her over her shoulder in the cafe, never left. The man always sat by the bus stop, never on the bench outside her apartment. The library ghost stayed in the library. Knowing this, Abby could avoid them when she really wanted to. Like how she had found a way to avoid the park where the child-ghosts lived by adding ten minutes to her walk home.
But today all she wanted was a good cup of coffee and some quiet study time. She was not going to be scared away.
Trying to ignore the way her heart jackhammered in her chest, Abby took another deep breath before peeking at the corner of the room, again. The ghost woman stood there, ignorant of the world around her. If it wasn’t for her black and sightless eyes, Abby may have been a little worried about the knife protruding from her sternum. But under the circumstances, Abby quickly directed her emerald eyes back to the table.
Why was this happening? She hadn’t always had the ability to see the dead, so what changed? Sure, if she thought about, there were a few times growing up when she thought she saw something in the shadows. But every little kid was scared of the shadows in their bedroom. It didn’t help that she had lived in a dozen or more bedrooms throughout her life, none of them ever feeling quite like hers.
No, something had changed. Thinking hard, she thought back to her birthday just over a month ago. Had she felt anything weird before the day? Had she accidentally pissed off the wrong person and got cursed because of it? Nothing stuck out to her, everything had been normal until that day. That was the first day she had seen the library ghost and screamed so loudly people thought someone was being murdered. The librarian still didn’t like her.
Shock hit her like a lightning bolt. Murder — there had been a murder on the college campus the April before she started school. Some poor college girl had been found with her insides on the outside of her body. By the time she arrived on campus, the body had been covered up and police surrounded the area. But that day — months before her birthday — Abby had seen the ghost of the dead girl. How had she forgotten that? Why had she seen that ghost in the first place? And not another one until her birthday in September? Nothing made sense!
With a groan, Abby pushed her History of World Art I textbook aside and pulled her laptop closer to her. There was no way she would be finishing her homework with lady danger staring at her, or the memory of the murder fresh in her brain. Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, dread filled her stomach —there might be a way to find some answers. Reluctantly, Abby thought about her nightmare.
It was the same dream every time she closed her eyes to sleep, ever since her eighteenth birthday. Never before had she had the dream and now she couldn’t seem to get rid of it, and she had tried everything from oils and dream catchers to meditation.
Sitting in the cafe, Abby could still remember how her pulse had felt inside her veins, how her head pounded every time the thunder rumbled. She had woken up screaming that morning, after the clouds in her dream dissolved into air and she fell into darkness. The ghost’s words still rang in her head over the din of the cafe.
If that hadn’t been enough, the notes she had left on her bed before sleeping had been covered in three words when she woke up, the black marker still in her hand.
A shiver went down her spine, causing Abby to look away from her computer and back at the ghost. But she wasn’t there. She had vanished while Abby had been trying very hard to ignore her.Another chill wracked her body, causing Abby to pull her purple cardigan closer to her body. It was worse when the ghosts disappeared — she didn’t like not knowing where they were.
Shaking her head, ignoring the coldness in her fingers, Abby opened a search window on her laptop. She would find out what that ghost in her dream had been trying to tell her. It had been the first time any ghost said a word to her, it had to mean something. But what?
As soon as she put the first word into the search bar, results showed up for a town called Buern, east of Seattle in the National Forest. Her brows pulled together as she clicked on the first link, bringing her to the town’s homepage. Why would a creepy ghost from her dreams want her to visit a tiny mountain town? Could the answers to why she could suddenly see ghosts be hidden in Buern? If they were, Abby had a bone to pick with the little girl. It had been almost a month of seeing ghosts everywhere she went. If the answers had been that close, the girl could’ve said something sooner.
The second word proved to be more of a mystery. All she could come up with through multiple searches was that the word ‘Faye’ was both a girl’s name and another word for fairies. Why would a ghost talk about fairies? Something told her that the ghost wasn’t referring to little winged pixies.
And she wasn’t going to touch the third word with a ten-foot pole. Not when past-Abby had been a little too obsessed with myths and legends, especially things that went bump in the night. No, she wasn’t about to go looking for her soul-mate. She just wanted answers on why she was seeing ghosts.
Squeezing her hands tight, trying to rid her fingers of the lasting cold that never seemed to leave her, Abby sat back in her chair. Following a ghost to a small mining town was probably a stupid idea, she knew that. What she should do was catch the bus to the nearest hospital and check herself in. But was that really an option? Sure, she could see a psychologist. Which was what her roommate had suggested after Abby woke her up screaming two nights in a row. But after being carted from foster home to foster home, Abby had seen enough friendly faces hidden behind a clipboard.
No, going to the psych-ward was not an option. Not yet, anyway. She needed answers, and not just answers about this ghost girl from her dreams. Something told her this ghost, all of the ghosts, were connected to the reason why she couldn’t find anything on her birth parents; why she didn’t seem to have any memories of childhood before the age of five. She didn’t know how, or why, but deep down she knew it was connected. She needed to find out why.
A bone-chilling cold seeped into her back, making goosebumps rise all over her skin. The familiar feeling made her sit up straight and grab the table in front of her until
her knuckles went white. She glanced at the door in front of her but it was closed, no one had opened it to let in the chilly October air.
Her gut clenched tight, dread seeping into her bones. If the door was closed, there was only one explanation. Swallowing her anxiety, she held her breath as she slowly turned her head. Standing behind her with only a foot between them was the girl from her dream.
Abby sat frozen in fear, grip like stone where her hand still held the table. The ghost girl had never shown herself outside of the dream world before. She had no idea how long she had sat there staring. She must have looked crazy to everyone else in the room, staring off into nothing. When the ghost didn’t move or say anything, Abby’s body relaxed just a fraction. For the first time, Abby took a moment to study the girl. She was older than Abby had first thought, but she was still tiny. Something in her iridescent eyes told Abby she knew a lot more than a seemingly normal nine-year-old girl should. In the daylight of the cafe, Abby could see the girl’s ears came to a slight point.
A small smile began to grow on the girl’s face, transforming her into a less intimidating figure and more into a little girl. With the smile still on her face, she raised her arm and pointed behind Abby. Letting out a puff of air, Abby looked back at her computer to see the Buern township page back on her screen. Taking a deep breath, squeezing the back of her chair with one hand, Abby turned back to the girl. “What does —.”
The girl was gone.
A customer at the table behind her looked up at her voice, an eyebrow raised. With a blush heating up her face, Abby smiled at the woman before turning back to her computer. Glancing at the screen, an image of a quaint town looking back at her, Abby sighed. If the answers she sought were in this town then it looked like she had plans for the weekend.
Chapter Two
❖
Wesley
Wesley O’Bryne sat in the only coffee shop in Buern, enjoying his hot cup of coffee while he listened to old Mrs. Canry talk about her missing granddaughter.
