Page 10 of Soul of Shadow #1

Charlie and Mason arrived home at exactly the same time.

This was unusual; they both carpooled with their respective friends, and Mason’s group had far more people than she did.

Charlie had always thought of this as being some sort of statement by her older brother.

That he would rather cram into a car with five other boys than suffer through thirty minutes with his little sister.

Today, however, Charlie pulled up in the Bronco right as Mason was walking up the driveway.

When twisted around in her seat and squinted out the back side window, she saw an unfamiliar car turning the corner in the distance.

Something low and black. An old convertible, maybe.

Definitely not belonging to one of Mason’s friends. She would remember a car like that.

She had a sneaking suspicion who it belonged to.

Charlie stepped out onto the driveway and slammed the door of the Bronco as Mason reached the front door. He hadn’t even bothered to turn around when he heard her pull in.

“Who just dropped you off?” she asked.

“Nice to see you, too, sis,” Mason said over his shoulder as he put his key into the lock .

“I’m serious, Mason.” She crossed the front lawn, coming up behind him. “That wasn’t Elias, was it?”

Mason turned around on the stoop, narrowing his eyes. “So what if it was?”

“So, I don’t like him,” Charlie said. “He’s sketchy. I saw him in the woods yesterday, and…”

“ He’s sketchy?” Her brother took the key out of the lock, letting it dangle at his side. “He’s new to town. He was probably curious. What were you doing there?”

“Oh.” She bit her lower lip. Maybe she had been too quick to judge. Then again, he had called her by her first name, and she hadn’t introduced herself.

Or had she?

Dammit. Mason was screwing with her head.

“Still,” Charlie insisted. “It’s more than that. There’s something… off about him.”

Shaking his head, Mason turned around and stuck the key back into the lock. “What do you even care?”

“I just don’t want you to hang out with someone dangerous.”

“Right.” He turned the key and pushed the door open. “Of course. So now you take an interest in my life.”

She followed him inside. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He threw the keys onto the table in the foyer. “It doesn’t matter.” He unshouldered his backpack and let it fall to the floor. “Elias is a good guy, Char. He might come off a little cold, but it’s not his fault. He had a tough childhood.”

She remembered the way his skin burned her hand in the cafeteria. Not cold , she thought. Definitely not cold.

“What would you know about his childhood?” she asked. “He’s been in town for all of five minutes. You couldn’t possibly have bonded that much yet.”

“We have a couple classes together.” Mason started down the hallway, toward the kitchen. “He told me a lot, actually. He lives with a foster family. Another foster family, the tenth in as many years. He’s bounced around his whole life.”

At those words, Charlie felt a twinge in her chest. Elias had no parents. Maybe they had passed away. If that was the case, then grief had shaped him into who he was today.

She could relate to that.

Crap. She had judged Elias too quickly, hadn’t she?

“Oh,” she said, still standing in the hallway. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Mason said from the kitchen. Charlie could hear him rattling around, opening cabinets and the refrigerator. Probably making a snack. “To be honest, I’m surprised you even thought about someone else for long enough to form an opinion.”

What’s that supposed to mean? she could ask.

But she didn’t want to hear the answer. Frankly, she was surprised by how much she had thought about Elias Everhart, too.

How much she had wanted to nose into his backstory.

And it was all for nothing. As it turned out, he was just another human being.

One with faults and sadness and a past riddled with death.

She didn’t bother responding to her brother. She turned around and walked up the stairs, an odd hole in her chest, like she had lost something she never knew she had.

After Sophie died, Charlie’s mom decided the twins’ bedroom needed a full renovation.

She removed Sophie’s bed, replacing it with a desk, changed out the carpet, and repainted the walls.

It was as if her mom thought that removing all evidence of Sophie’s existence meant that Charlie wouldn’t have to grieve.

She was wrong.

Her mom could take away her sister’s posters and drawings, the fluffy pillows she loved to stack on her bed, but she couldn’t take away the memories. She couldn’t scrub clean the ghost of her laughter, her smile, the games they used to play. Those would live inside these walls forever.

As Charlie walked over to her bed—a big four-poster her mom gave her in place of the twin bed that once matched Sophie’s—her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She kicked off her shoes, pulled out her phone, and answered.

“We need to talk,” Lou said by way of greeting.

Charlie flopped down onto her bed. “Please tell me this isn’t about homecoming again.”

“It’s not.” Loud crunches sounded in the background—no doubt Lou was snacking on Pringles, her after-school snack of choice. “It’s about how you ran into Elias Everhart in the woods and didn’t tell me.”

“It wasn’t a big deal. We said, like, three words to each other.”

“Well, those three words clearly made a real impression on him.”

Charlie rolled over, holding her socked feet up in the air. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” More crunching in the background. “And what excites me the most about all of this is that you’re finally doing what I keep telling you to do.”

“What’s that? ”

“Putting yourself out there,” said Lou. “Making new friends. Living life. Etcetera.”

“Oh, please. It was one conversation.”

“ Two conversations now,” Lou said. “Anyway. Did you hear the latest about Robbie?”

“No,” said Charlie, interest piqued. “What happened?”

“They found more symbols in the woods,” she said. “Similar to the ones on the big white ash. Scattered throughout the trees.”

Oh , Charlie thought. I could have told them that .

“All of them appear to be Norse in nature. That’s what the news said, anyway.” Charlie heard a rustle of fabric as Lou shifted on her end. “I wonder what it all means. My bet is on a serial killer with a Viking fetish.”

“You? Fixated on a serial killer? I never would have guessed.”

“Don’t knock my hobby. You could use one or two of your own.”

“Hobbies?”

Lou scoffed. “No. One or two serial killers, obviously. They’re good for the blood pressure.”

Charlie laughed. “Goodbye, Lou.”

“I got a laugh; I call that a win.” Charlie could hear Lou grinning through the phone. “Good night, Charles. See you tomorrow.”