Keeper(12)

He remembers my name! My stupid smile got even bigger.

“Oh!” I turned around and walked back the few paces to where I’d fallen and scooped up his leather jacket from where I had dropped it. When I turned back to face Ty, though, he was already rounding the next corner out of sight.

“Wait!” I called after him. “I have your jacket!” But he was already gone.



“Geez, Styles! Where have you been? I’ve been blowing up your phone for the last fifteen minutes. I was getting ready to send a search party.”

I held my hand up and tried to catch my breath. After Ty had disappeared, I ran the rest of the way to the library.

“I’m so sorry, Mags. I got . . . distracted.”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “Distracted?”

“Yeah, on the way over here there was this fight and that guy from—”

“A guy, huh?”

I rolled my eyes. How very like Maggie to completely skip over all the other details and go straight to the “guy.”

“It wasn’t like that, okay. It was . . . interesting.”

“Oh-kay.” Maggie stared at me, but decided to move on. “Any news on the ghost front?”

My face fell. The fight had been a welcome distraction.

“Actually, yeah.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the photograph of my mom. “See the necklace in the picture?”

Maggie nodded.

“The woman I’ve been seeing is wearing the exact same one. I saw it when she appeared the first time and then again today.”

“You saw her again?”

I hesitated. The voice in my head urged me to deny it, but instead I nodded my head. “On the sidewalk. I was heading here. And I saw . . . something else too. Flashes. Tidbits of . . . memory or something. I could smell smoke.”

“Weird,” Maggie said, staring at me with wide eyes. She took the picture from my hand and stared at it. “Any idea what this means?”

I bit down hard on my lower lip. I had an idea, but I didn’t want to say it out loud, and the words were like peanut butter sitting on my tongue. “I think she and my mom are connected somehow.”

“Holy crapkittens, Styles. That’s . . . that’s just crazy.”

“Tell me about it.”

I must have look panicked or wounded in some way because Maggie leaned over and gave me a quick hug. “Look, no matter what, I’ve got your back. We’ll figure all this out together, okay? I promise.”

“No offense, Mags, but I don’t think that’s a promise you can keep.”

“Well, I’m gonna try.”

I’d always admired Maggie’s determination—even if it was fueled by mule-headed stubbornness. In this case, I was grateful for it. I took a deep breath. “So what now?”

Maggie looped her arm through mine and steered me toward the double doors of the library. “We’ll just have to April O’Neal this thing until we find the answers.”

“Just like that, huh?”

She grinned. “Yup. Just like that.”

“You’re something else, Mags.”

“Is that a nice way of saying I’m totally crazy?”

“Well . . .” I smiled.

Maggie shook her head at me. “Oh, Styles. If I ask you to hop on a Nozgul and fly into the fiery depths of Mordor with me, then you can call me crazy. But for now, let’s just go with cheerfully optimistic.”

I let out a loud laugh. “Fair enough.”





CHAPTER FIVE


I slammed the door shut behind me. The door frame

rattled, and the picture of me holding a hot pink fishing pole and small catfish from the line fell off the wall. The glass shattered into pieces against the hardwood floor. “Perfect,” I muttered, massaging my temples. “That’s just freaking perfect.”

As I bent and began picking the shards of glass off the floor, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of the situation. The library had been a complete bust. Maggie and I hadn’t found anything remotely helpful, and I had driven home with a knot in my stomach that grew bigger with each passing mile. Just like the glass, the shred of hope I had been clinging to—the one that told me we would find some kind of logical answer—was broken. I was out of ideas, out of clues, and very likely out of my own damn mind.

A small sliver of glass sliced through the pad of my fingertip, and I hissed as a thick droplet of blood rolled down my finger. I was still holding a small pile of glass pieces in my other hand, so I glanced around for something to stanch the blood.

“Here.” Gareth walked over and knelt beside me, a box of tissues in his hand.

“Thanks,” I said, wrapping the tissue around my finger. “Sorry about the picture.”

Gareth shrugged. “Frames can be replaced.” He narrowed his eyes, looking closely at my face. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Gareth, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Should I tell him? What if he thinks I’m completely nuts? I took a deep breath. “Do you believe in fate? I mean . . . do things happen for a reason, or is everything just some cosmic hodgepodge of random, unrelated events?” The words came pouring out. I studied Gareth’s face for a reaction, but he didn’t seem surprised or confused by the question.