Page 5 of Soul of Shadow #1

The most detailed videos she could find were from a similar stunt performed by the magician duo Penn and Teller.

In the trick, both magicians asked an audience member to choose a bullet and sign it with their initials.

They then lined up the red-dot sights on the guns to point directly into each other’s mouths.

At each stage, they asked the audience to confirm that the guns were loaded with the proper bullet, the safety turned off, that everything was clear and legitimate.

At last, they fired, the panes of glass between them breaking to prove the bullets went through.

Neither magician was hurt. When they opened their mouths, they’d caught the opposite person’s bullet in their teeth, as if they had grabbed it out of the air.

Penn and Teller never explained how they pulled off this trick. Anyone who tried to figure it out could only do so through conjecture.

For Charlie’s part, she was obsessed with the trick. Obsessed with peeling back its layers, with finding the lie that made it all seem true. She had watched the same video of the same trick’s performance at least two hundred times.

Just as Charlie made it to the end of her fifth rewatch of the morning, a knock sounded on the library door. She looked up to find her mom poking her head inside, a basket of laundry under one arm.

“Hi, sweetheart,” her mom said.

Charlie shut the screen of her laptop. “Hi, Mom.”

“Sounds like it was quite the party last night, huh?” Her mom quirked an eyebrow.

“You heard?”

“It’s all over the news. Police are saying they’ve identified the shoes as definitely belonging to Robbie. Sheriff Carpenter is frantic.”

“I’m sure.”

Adjusting the laundry basket on her hip, her mom tilted her head.

“Listen. I know I give you a lot of trust and leeway when it comes to the car and curfew, but I think there are a few things we should discuss.” She stepped inside the library and shut the door behind her, setting the laundry basket down on the carpet.

When she straightened up, she crossed her arms and leaned back against the door.

Charlie waited. Her mother seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

At last, she said, “Silver Shores is not safe right now. ”

“I know,” said Charlie. “We all saw that tree.”

“I don’t enforce a lot of rules around here. You and your brother are smart kids, and I trust you to take care of yourselves.”

That much was true. Her mom didn’t enforce a lot of rules.

Charlie and Mason were allowed to go to parties and keep their own car just so long as they were honest with their mother about what they were doing.

She preferred that her children be comfortable asking for a ride if they had been drinking, rather than walking home in the dark or getting behind the wheel of the car intoxicated.

She gave them leeway because she believed it actually kept them safer.

Sometimes, Charlie wondered if, had her father stuck around long enough to watch his kids grow up, he would have parented them differently. More strictly.

She would never know the answer. And frankly, she didn’t want to.

She knew exactly two things about her father: his name (Walter Moray) and the fact that, shortly after she and Sophie were born, he chose drinking and gambling over sticking around to help raise his kids.

Whenever she tried to ask for more information, her mom said that he wasn’t “worth the breath it would take to answer.”

Eventually, Charlie stopped asking.

“But,” her mom continued, “these are extraordinary times.”

“I understand. And I already know what you’re going to say: don’t stay out too late, don’t go out without a buddy, don’t take rides from strangers.”

Her mother nodded. “There’s one more thing, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to stay out of the forest. ”

Charlie knit her eyebrows. “Why would I go in there? For all I know it’s, like, a breeding ground for serial killers right now.”

“I’m serious, Charlie.” Her mom crossed the room and sat on the desk beside the armchair. “It’s more than Robbie’s disappearance. I can’t explain it, but… every time I drive past those woods, I get this… pit. In my stomach.”

“A pit?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense. And I probably sound crazy to you, but…” She leaned forward on the desk, eyes pleading with her daughter. “Just… don’t go in there. Please.”

Charlie couldn’t believe her mother really thought she needed to ask her this. Why would she go back into that forest? Why willingly risk her life by entering the place where Robbie’s shoes were found?

And yet—

And yet there was an odd tug inside her. A sort of wire running between her chest and that tree. She hadn’t known it existed, not until now. Until she went looking for it. But all it took was one glance into the forest, and she felt it. A yearning. A call to the wild.

Ridiculous , she thought. She wasn’t an idiot. Of course she would listen to her mother.

“Yes,” she said finally. “Yes. You have my word.”

Her mother exhaled, as if she’d been holding her breath. “Wonderful,” she said, standing up and walking back toward the door. “Oh!” She clapped. “Last thing.” She bent over and pulled a slim object out of the laundry basket, then carried it across the library. “I brought you something.”

She held out a small book. Charlie accepted it, studying the cover .

“ With Sin and Roses ?” she asked, looking up at her mom. “Seriously? Is this another one of your sex books?”

“They are not sex books ,” her mom said, feigning offense. “They’re romance novels. They inspire us to dream of great love and adventure.”

Charlie rolled her eyes, tucking the book into the folds of the armchair. “Thank you.”

She patted Charlie’s head, then recrossed the room and picked up her laundry basket. “Just give it a try,” she said over her shoulder. “You never know; you might like it.”

“Sure,” Charlie said as her mom closed the door to the library.

She reopened her laptop and went back to rewatching Penn and Teller. Every few minutes, however, her eyes darted over to the book stuffed into the side of the armchair.

The truth was, Charlie used to love books like that.

She and Sophie used to tear through little-kid love stories about princesses and fair maidens, stacking the finished books on their bedside tables until they formed towers so tall and precarious that the girls were forced to move the books to the bookcase in the corner of their room.

As they got older, their interest in books waned, until all that was left of that obsession was a dusty old bookcase filled with dusty old books.

Which, if she was being honest, was the perfect metaphor for her own love life. A dusty bookcase filled with little more than a few dusty, drunken dance-floor make-outs—and that was exactly how she liked it.

No reason to go changing things now.