Bone Dry_ A Soul Shamans Novel - Cady Vance Page 0,85
much death. It was hard to think straight knowing I was walking over dead bodies.
We had to get out of here.
It wasn’t until we were back in Nathan’s car that I realized I was still clutching the shaman guy’s wallet. I felt bad about taking it, like he’d still need it in his afterlife. I opened it again and looked through the pictures he kept in the little plastic covers. A girl with reddish-brown hair stared back at me, smiling and happy, with her arms thrown around him.
He looked so alive there, so different from the slack face I’d seen under the floor. It made me think about my mom again, how her face resembled a dead person’s now, and how she used to look just like he did in that picture. I tried to imagine what he’d been like, and I wondered if he’d tried to fight back, if he’d suffered at all, if he’d been stuck in the Borderland for a year.
“Holly?” Nathan asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “No, but it doesn’t matter.” I glanced at the glowing clock on his dashboard. It was already eleven o’clock, and my mom only had a few hours left to live.
CHAPTER 28
Nathan pulled into the drive of a pale blue paneled house with wicker chairs rocking on a small porch. A yellow striped birdhouse hung from the low overhang where a red jaybird flapped its wings. Flowers burst up in wild bunches on each side of the walkway and stoop, and the front door was open, letting the cool breeze waft in through the screen.
The place looked warm and welcoming. Cheery even. My stomach boiled with unease. I wondered how worried these people were about their son and if they had any idea he was in trouble. Dead.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” I pushed my still un-brushed hair out of my eyes.
“We can. Team Awesome.”
I gave him a weak smile and followed his lead as he slipped out of the car. Thunder rumbled overhead, and I looked up into a sky full of thick, dark clouds rolling across the sun. Great, it was going to storm again. This gloomy fall was a perfect match for my mood.
Nathan and I made our way to the porch and rang the doorbell, a jingling happy tune that made me cringe. I couldn’t stand the thought of any sort of brightness in the midst of all this darkness. It made me feel detached, distanced somehow, from the real world. Like I was walking through clouds of cotton candy.
A woman appeared behind the screen door, lined face surrounded by light curls that bobbed on her shoulders. She seemed like such an opposite of Mom from Before—Mom and her straight brown hair, her only domestic interest the cinnamon snickerdoodles. Instead of the pressed khakis and collared light blue shirt this woman wore, Mom would always don her charcoal army jacket when she wasn’t dressed to impress in a class black suit. I felt a pang somewhere deep inside me, missing Mom.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked. She gave us a smile and opened the door. Her eyes were kind, her smile warm, but I saw a hint of suspicion in them.
She didn’t know. She didn’t look like a mother who had just lost a son.
I opened my mouth, unsure of what to say. I hadn’t worked it out beforehand, and I should have.
Nathan cleared his throat and gestured to the wallet I still clutched. “We found this.”
The woman looked down at my hand and gasped, reached out and plucked it from my fingers. “Where did you find this?”
“In the city.” I shifted in my sneakers. “In Boston. On the street. There’s a driver’s license in there. We were coming back this way so we thought we would return it.”
She nodded her head, and her eyes went distant. “Thank you. Where in Boston was it?”
“Um,” I said, grasping for an idea of what to say. I didn’t want to tell her where, but maybe I should.
“At the corner of Belleview and Lark.” Nathan said, saving me.
“And is it just a coincidence that you’re a shaman?” she asked me.
"Actually,” I said, taking the plunge. “I saw in his wallet something about being a shaman, and I was hoping to meet him. I’ve been kind of isolated from the shaman community, but I want to know more about it. Meet some other kids like me.”